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Context phobia

Posted on April 22, 2019 by

Alert readers will know by now that there’s nothing the Scottish media – and the Scottish Daily Mail in particular – likes more than printing scary-sounding figures with no context whatsoever by which people could judge how big or small they really are.

Nothing’s changed today (other than a rather sneaky inset shot of an old story about a different statistic which misleadingly makes today’s one look like a big increase), so rather than bang on we’ll just fill in the blanks: ScotRail runs around 760,000 trains a year, so this year’s cancellation figures amount to about 3.5% of all trains.

Which is to say, around one time in every 30 that you go to get a train it’ll have been cancelled and you’ll have to wait for the next one, which on the average commuter line will probably mean 15-20 minutes.

Which is still a pain in the hole, of course, but if it’s such a high number ask yourself why the Mail is so pathologically averse to simply telling you what percentage it is.

We’ll see you again with these figures in a few weeks, folks.

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Millsy

Isn’t it about time that this ‘newspaper’ came out of the closet and changed its name to what it really stands for – The Anti-Scottish Daily Mail !

robertknight

Scottish Daily Denigrate

Your daily dose of doom and gloom for just 70p.

Should you ever be in any doubt that you and your country are just, well, shit.

Dr Jim

Scottish *newspapers* print 100% crap in a *Decade from hell*

Before the SNP took over, Scotland was veritable paradise when Labour were in charge

We remember it well

Alasdair Galloway

You might have missed this one – understandably with everything that has been going on – but on 20th April Michael Blackley published an astonishing piece in the Scottish Daily Mail, under the headline “Buy a new boiler ….. or face a huge fine”.
The whole thing is underpinned by the drive to lower emissions from our homes, but includes such phrases that will give home owners a good night’s sleep such as “Details of the punishments for failure to comply have not been revealed, but are believed to include fines and restrictions on sale of properties” (ie you wont be allowed to sell your house). A Quango will be set up and so on and so forth.
After the first half dozen or so paragraphs it gets a wee bit more sane (not difficult) and references start to be made to a “report”. It is though only right at the end that it becomes clear that the proposals are made in a report that has “been conducted independently of the Scottish Government and provides an impartial view of the options. We will carefully consider the findings …..” and once we have consulted with local government will set out their next steps. Even the Tory spokesman says they should be more bold! But not that you would know that from the first few paragraphs!

Welsh Sion

Here’s a train journey that’s on the right tracks and will not be cancelled.

53.(of 60.)

Passenger announcement for those travelling by Free Caledonia Rail

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard this Free Caledonia Rail express service to Independence, which is the end of the line and where this service will terminate.

My name is Nicola and I am your chief guard on this train today. We started out from Essennpee at 19:34 and we will be calling at the following stations: Ewing Central, Devolution Halt, Parliament, Referendum Junction, Fortyfive Central, New-vote and Independence.

Please note that owing to outside engineering work on the line, this could slightly delay our journey to our final destination.
Additionally, work in replacing the track by outside contractors in the Devolution Halt area will mean that we will be shunted off the main track and find ourselves in the sidings for some time.

However, please bear with us, as we hope to be back on the main track before too long and making up for that lost time. The train will pick up speed again after leaving Fortyfive Central.

We wish you a pleasant onward journey with us and we thank you for travelling with Free Caledonia Rail.”
______

Parables for the New Politics
2012-2019

Capella

I still haven’t forgiven Beeching. Pity the newspapers don’t get more incensed at why Scottish infrastructure resembles a colony.

Robert Peffers

Excuse me for commenting, it will not now happen often, but I have not seen any Wings comments about the important, “National”, article by Nicola Sturgeon about the path to Scottish Independence. Did everyone on Wings miss it? I wonder why.

Ah! Well! Back to lurking and watching.

yesindyref2

It does need context. Like, it seems to me, Network Rail have – rightly – become more aggressive on cutting down trees lining embankments. But once they move in, some trains if not all would be cancelled at times, for obvious safety reasons.

It’s also possible Network Rail are doing more than before, in the way of preventative maintenance. Short-term loss for long-term gain.

Not everyone’s a villain, apart from reporters who don’t do their job of – reporting.

Jack collatin

Scotland is shite…when are you Jocks going to believe the ProudScotsButters of the Fourth Estate Fifth Column who are basically a talentless bunch of Winston Smith agents of the Anglo Iron Heel Oligarchy who own the media and who are determined to lie distort and threaten Scotland back in to colony status.
When the history is written in Independent Scotland, their names will be Mudd.
Anything for money like a one trick shyster.
England is going down the plug hole. We are not going with them
Get that into your evil little heads.
Threaten one, you threaten us all.

yesindyref2

I say they “Network Rail” move in, but they use contractors for the cutting and disposal. Network Rail themselves would do the safety and any track straightening.

Nigel

That’s still too many cancellations though, no matter how its reported. And on the ScotRail routes I use, there is no next service in 15 or 20 mins… Quite a large area of the SR network does not have the E-G type frequencies enjoyed by many in the Central belt or suburban Glasgow.

Legerwood

yesindyref2 says:
22 April, 2019 at 12:30 pm
It does need context. Like, it seems to me, Network Rail have – rightly – become more aggressive on cutting down trees lining embankments.””
……….

They were cutting down trees along the railway lines last year. If I remember correctly the UK Government had given NR extra money to fund it. But it came to a stop when people down south objected to the trees being cut down and the UK Gov pulling the money that was supposed to fund the programme.

So ‘leaves on the line’ may still be a reason for delays although I have seen some signs that the programme, or truncated version thereof, may be underway again.

[…] Wings Over Scotland Context phobia Alert readers will know by now that there’s nothing the Scottish media – and the […]

Legerwood

Nigel says:
22 April, 2019 at 12:36 pm
That’s still too many cancellations though,…””
……………..

Much of the apparent increase in cancellations is probably the result of the industrial action taken by train staff from October through to the start of December. They stopped working on rest days in pursuit of a claim to be paid the same as drivers for rest day working. Drivers are paid £300 for working rest days.

Of course the decision to take this ‘action’ had nothing to do with the announcement by Abellio in August last year that they were going to take on 140 additional staff in an effort to reduce the amount of rest day working.

Then there was the late delivery of the new electric trains from Hitachi which contributed to the number of cancellations and delays to the introduction of the new, speedier service.

yesindyref2

@Legerwood
They were doing it round my way recently. It’s not so much leaves on the line, though that’s a problem – they get compressed by tons of metal on narrow wheels and get slidey.

It’s trees falling, branches coming off, wind blowing brances and overheads together and they don’t get on very well!

One answer is to scrap HS2 or HSx, and spend the money instead on the existing network. And trains. Not a glam project for attention-seeking Westminster politicians though, and sadly ours follow suit as well. I mean, shaving two minutes off the Glasgow to Edinburgh train, like, wow.

Jack collatin

Is it beyond the wit of engineers to fit blowers to the front of trains to blast the heaviest fall of autumn leaves from the tracks at peak times?
Just saying.
I recall reading about a links golf course which suffered badly from sand blown up from the beach on blustery days. The solution was to send up a helicopter to blow the offending sand back onto the beach.
Or am I just being stupid here?

Graeme McCormick

In 2018, 7.6 %of the trains in France were cancelled. Is this another reason for Brexit?

Artyhetty

How many of the cancellations are due to work being carried out by Network Rail. Network rail are controlled by the Britnat state are they not, it’s a reserved power so to speak.

SNP government are not allowed to renationalise the railways in Scotland, and if they were, would English controlled Network Rail still be in control of the actual technical side of the system working or not as they are now?

Devolution is a farce, the masters in England’s government have Scotland under their big bullying colonial boot. Didn’t the Labour London based, UK party refuse to devolve powers to renationalise Scotland’s infrastructure?

Scotland only has roads because the land thieves needed to get to their mansions and move the sheep around Scotland’s countryside. Scotland’s infrastucture is only just being brought into the 20th century, nevermind 21st century.

The Brit colonial masters spent Scotland’s revenues on infrastructure in south of England, bugger the Scots!

Ther’s an excellent book, by Christopher Harvie, called, ‘Deep Fried Hillman Imp, Scotland’s transport’. Argyll publishing, 2001. Very eye opening about the neglect and refusal, by the Britnat state, (under their rule including and importantly Labour’s reign at Holyrood) to improve, upgrade, or expand Scotland’s dire transport system.

There would be NO Borders rail line, and No new arterial bridge across the Forth if the Britnats parties had their way. Utter disgrace. Only the SNP have begun to invest in Scotland’s transport.

Just as a note, when I came to live in Edinburgh thirty years ago, worked in Glasgow, there was one train an hour if you were lucky, to get from one city to another, and it was over an hour train journey, so when they cancelled them, it was disastrous.

Now it’s brilliant, trains are running all the time, must be every few minutes, and the express runs every fifteen minutes. That’s how it should be.

Reluctant Nationalist

Scotland’s fine. It’s Abellio that’re shite.

Does anyone have the worst year cancellation stats for when it was FirstGroup?

Notwork Fail

Jack Collatin, blowers no good, needs to be high pressure water cannon and because of the volume of water required it needs to be a special train.
Simply isn’t economically viable to run them on all lines every day.
link to networkrail.co.uk

jfngw

It’s all part of Scottish unionist exceptionalism, they believe Scotland is the only country in the world that is totally incapable of running or having the institutions that every other country takes for granted.

Scotland can only survive if it uses another countries money, and even more precisely it is only one other countries money that would work, the use of any other currency would lead to disaster. They warn that using the Euro would result in the loss of control, somehow forgetting that currently we are effectively in a currency union with another country in which we have no meaningful control

I know some will say the pound is also ours, but I don’t consider a currency that you have virtually no control over as ‘our currency’.

Ed R

As someone who rides NYC subway on a daily basis.. I’d love if the MTA’s delay/cancellation rate was only 3.5% …

Another Union Dividend

O/T but Scotland Union green ink scribe Keith Howell is attacking Rev Stu and Wings in Edinburgh Evening News letters page to-day.

link to wingsoverscotland.com

mike cassidy

Leaves on the line cause problems for the railway – here’s how, and what we’re doing to reduce the impact

link to archive.is

Legerwood

Artyhetty @ 1.22pm

If you want the most recent info on Scotrail Performance and a breakdown of who is responsible for delays you will find it here

link to networkrail.co.uk

It compares performance in Feb/Mar 2018 to same period in 2019. Scroll down to see a pie-chart breakdown of who or what was responsible for delays.

Robert Peffers

Why was there no SMSM news about the FM’s, “Path to Victory”, article?

This is all I could dredge up from the mud that is the SMSM:-

link to thenational.scot

Any I saw not a single mention of, “The Path to Victory”, article by those on this forum who have been castigating the FM/SG/SNP so frequently over the years. In fact several of them have still been harping on about the FM/SG/SNP in the last couple of days.

Perhaps they just prefer reading, “The Scotsman”, to reading, “The National”.

Legerwood

Jack collatin says:
22 April, 2019 at 12:58 pm
Is it beyond the wit of engineers to fit blowers to the front of trains to blast the heaviest fall of autumn leaves from the tracks at peak times?””
………

See Mike Cassidy’s post at 1.38pm which contains a link to a very good article on how leaves on the line are dealt with which includes specially adapted trains to clear the lines

yesindyref2

@Jack Collatin

link to networkrail.co.uk

Network Rail Scotland look after Scotland’s railway and infrastructure, including the world-famous Forth Bridge which connects passengers in Fife, north of Edinburgh, with Edinburgh and the Borders. The ScotRail Alliance was formed in 2015 and is a close working relationship between Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail Scotland Route. The aim is to improve the railway in Scotland for passengers and businesses by working better together. While remaining separate companies, both organisations will work to achieve common aims and objectives led by a single managing director and senior management team under the ScotRail brand.

and then

link to hitrans.org.uk

It’s a fluff piece of course, but the two parts of rail, operator and network are not totally unco-ordinated!

Daz

The story also does not mention how many of the cancellations were caused by network rail. Nor does it say how many were caused by trespassers, vandals, lorries hitting low bridges. And various other things out with scotrails control. In fact only about 39% of the delays and cancellations are attributable to scotrail.

Republicofscotland

STV luchtime news giving James Kelly a London Labour branch office lackey at Holyrood plenty of airtime on its anti-SNP/Scottish independence “news” programme to run down Scotrail.

I loathe the “Scottish” media.

Effijy

When I was at Engineering College, we were told that a good performing machine would hit 96 %
Efficiency!

Congratulations to the SNP government for running the best performing rail network in the UK inspite of having the most difficult geographical area and years of under investment from red and blue Tories over decades.

Rev, Thank you so much for all of your wonderful endeavours!
The idiot Dugdale and Corrupt Sheriff scenario must have taken a
Lot out of you so please do try to get a break and we will soon need
You more than ever.

Happy Holidays!

mike cassidy

Robert Peffers

Keep posting, auld yin.

Don’t let the epistemologists get you down!

Capella

@ Robert Peffers – GMS on Sunday morning mentioned it and had a studio discussion about it between 8.05 and 8.20. I put a link up on a previous thread.

No SNP person was there. Peter Duncan (Tory), Gerry Hassan and Shona Craven, a National journalist – she at least knew what she was talking about.

link to wingsoverscotland.com

But you are right, I haven’t seen any analysis on WoS comment thread. Yet. I have not read the article either. Yet.
Spring comes late to these high pastures – all in good time. why not kick it off?

Dorothy Devine

RepublicofScotland , you are far from alone in your loathing – I would love to know of any other country which puts up with the kind of denigration , lies and spin as this .

Was in the countryside yesterday and it was gobsmackingly gorgeous!

Sorry I missed the bikers easter egg run but thanks to those who put up video of the event as the BBBC nor STV bother their bahoochies to give it prominence , I suppose that’s because the many folk who give up their time to do it might ( heaven forfend!) give Scotland a good name

Never in all the time I have cheered then on have I seen decent coverage by the two ‘Scottish’ channels – despite the fact that on a couple of occasions , thousands left the carpark opposite both broadcasters.

I am wondering if it was ‘our’ Cactus who put up one of the videos –

It gets one wondering why anyone in Scotland bothers to tune in , though maybe with the Nine having low viewing figures somebody might begin to think that they are not most popular with the populace.

CameronB Brodie

There is a logic to the yoon’s fear of context, which enables “inductive” reasoning and strengthens judgement. Subsequently, yoon hacks will avoid providing context as that would empower their readership to conclude that they are reading partisan pish.

Learn more about Inductive Reasoning
link to sciencedirect.com

Tatu3

A link to this article about a report written by Murdo Fraser was posted on fb today. He thinks the UK should become a quasi-federal state after Brexit to stop separatism!

brightblue.org.uk/federal-state-separatism/

Tatu3

I’ll try the link again!

link to brightblue.org.uk

CameronB Brodie

This purging of context has huge significance, as it impairs reasoned logic and good judgement.

Structuring inferential reasoning in criminal fact finding: an analogical theory
link to academic.oup.com

SOG

I wonder if the stats take any notice of the geography, and the proportion of single lines. So with summits of 460m, 400m and 310m, at Drumochter, Slochd and Beattock, weather problems are going to be significant.

I’ll guess not. Objectivity won’t be one of their strengths.

CameronB Brodie

Time for some Philosophy of Science?

The Material Theory of Induction
link to pitt.edu

Ottomanboi

Not enough rope, not enough lamp posts for the servile North British media…..figOuratively speaking of course ?

Colin Alexander

Robert Peffers

Regarding the FM and SNP.

There’s been too much talk, too many announcements and little or no action.

I no longer have any expectation of indyref2 or a plebiscite election. I feel the FM is just stringing us all along.

Of course, I would love to be proved wrong. But won’t waste my time reading the FM’s thoughts or more announcements about announcements.

CameronB Brodie

OK, they were sledgehammers, here’s a lump-hammer. 🙂

Introducing Critical Media Studies
link to researchgate.net

sandy

Re, leaves on rail tracks

If my memory serves me well, weren’t steam engines (well. some of) fitted with a tube affair that blew sand onto the rails to increase traction.

Terry callachan

So many train stations in Scotland don’t have as many as thirty trains in a day

CameronB Brodie

Without context, rational thought is impaired and moral judgement is harmed.

Educated intuitions. Automaticity and rationality in moral judgement

Abstract

Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance – in short: education – of our moral intuitions.

Keywords: moral judgement, moral reasoning, moral intuition, moral rationalism, Jonathan Haidt

link to tandfonline.com

Gary45%

Its in the “Daily Racist” , where CHURNALISM brings a whole new level of depravity.
In an Indy Scotland this gutter, scum, bigoted garbage should be banned from shops/outlets.
Nothing more to say.

GrahamB

Thank you Welsh Sion at 12:12
A pretty good description of the route to independence. Expected future hazards will no doubt include “leaves on the line” (establishment dirty tricks), snow drifts (‘now is not the time’) and misreported delays on our ‘national media’ but we have the momentum now to keep going to our final destination.

Robert L

Goodness me I hadn’t realised just how lucky I was all those years ago when the branch offices were in Government at Holyrood.Not one train broke down,they all ran on time the fares never increased blah blah blah.

It’s utterly pathetic listening to these tired out old dinosaurs in Labour desperately, absolutely desperately trying to pin every problem with our train network on the SNP. The sad thing is they actually think we’re listening.

Bobp

Dr jim 11.34am. Absolutely. Some of us know who were in government in Scotland when bathgate,ravenscraig,mining industry,shipbuilding all happened under their watch. Clue! It was’nt the bad essenpee. We remember you lying liebor troughers alright.

Bobp

Gary 45%. I remember when i first came down to england in the early eighties, i would always buy that sh***rag for the scottish football roundup. No internet/social media then. Never bought one since 19th sep 2014. Seen the error of my ways, but as my old dad used to say, you cant put an old head on young shoulders.

Welsh Sion

Graham B @ 5.20pm

And thank YOU for the acknowledgement. It’s good to know I’m not just typing into the ether.

You’ll have noticed that I have another 59 pro-indy stories/allegories like that one. Feel free to contact me off topic if you’d like to read/share any more.

Luigi

Scotland’s railways do perform better than in the rUK, but they could be in a much better shape. Under-investment still plagues the network. Literally every study undertaken for new lines and stations has grossly underestimated passenger numbers subsequently realised. THE SG could be onto a winner of they focussed more on reopening railways and electrifying existing ones. Sure they have a small number of projects, but the spend on rail has been a fraction of that allocated to the Aberdeen bypass, A9 dualling and other big road projects. Railways are still popular and are well used if properly invested. I just wish the political will was there. 🙁

Ken500

The SNP Gov builds and improves railways, roads and bridges. The unionists/greens oppose them. AWPR, Queensferry Crossing saving emissions, time and expense by 2/3 ie 60%. Cutting travel times/working days by 2 hrs. Improving conductivity.

CameronB Brodie

Here’s another lump-hammer. This stuff might be hard going but these are the scientific tools needed to rid ourselves of partisan media.

Text, Context, Pretext
Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis

link to epdf.tips

Ken500

Built the Borders railway. Improving Edinburgh/Glasgow. It would be good to cut journey times, in the North and Scotland instead of spending £Billions on HS2. A total waste of moneyed. Instead of cutting journey times throughout Britain. To rival flight times. A better more comfortable journey. Intercity to intercity centre.

CameronB Brodie

OK, “The Material Theory of Induction” might have been a bit OTT. 🙂

J Galt

I get your point but the thing is Abellio Scotrail are underperforming. The context is of course that the SG have little or no power over the rules of rail franchising which are essentially a license to print money whilst under very little obligation to provide a good service.
They increase profits by running the thing on a shoestring – permanently understaffed, no spares etc so the service to the punters is shite and if they do start loosing money they can hand back the keys and walk away from their obligations with little financial consequences.
So yes, wrong to imply it’s all the SNP’s fault but IT IS A MESS.

CameronB Brodie

I’m not suggesting folk strive to become critical practitioners of political philosophy or linguistic science, I’m simply drawing attention to the relevant knowledge.

The Scottish Daily Mail is harmful to Scotland’s social cognition and should come with a health warning. Simples.

Book Review: Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis
link to journals.sagepub.com

Undeadshuan

@luigi

There are projects to electrify existing lines.

link to egip.info

Once electrified to dunblane, hopefully perth/dundee/inverness/aberdeen will be logical extensions in future years.

Likewise a dual line to inverness.

CameronB Brodie

OK, re. trains and their operation.

BRITISH RAIL PRIVATISATION ~ COMPETITION DESTROYED BY POLITICS
link to bath.ac.uk

Legerwood

Luigi says:
22 April, 2019 at 6:16 pm
Scotland’s railways do perform better than in the rUK, but they could be in a much better shape. Under-investment still plagues the network. Literally every study undertaken for new lines and stations has grossly underestimated passenger numbers subsequently realised. THE SG could be onto a winner of they focussed more on reopening railways and electrifying existing ones””
………..

A quarter of the rail network in Scotland is electrified which is not bad considering that electrification just a few years ago was non-existent. The Cumbernauld line was the first to be completed – in 2014

And the programme is set to continue.

link to transport.gov.scot

Rail electrification is estimated to cost £250 million to £500 million for each of the five phases.

The Aberdeen bypass was a fixed price contract of £745 million. The A9 dualling has an estimated cost of £3 billion.

orri

Something doesn’t sit right about those figures.
They give the total for cancellations and delays as 3.7% But that seems to be the figure for delays the Rev worked out. Which seems a bit odd. It’s as though they’ve inflated the problem by dropping the word cancelled and hoping no one will notice.

CameronB Brodie

More on trains and their operation.

A public future for Scotland’s Railways
How public ownership could be the start of a transformation in Scotland’s transport system

link to tssa.org.uk

CameronB Brodie

And a bit more on trains and their operation, for those uncertain of public ownership.

The Privatisation of Infrastructures in the Theory of the State:
An Empirical Overview and a Discussion of Competing Theoretical Explanations

CameronB Brodie
AndyH

The rail service is terrible just now. I’m surprised it’s not been in the news more often.

Scotfail should be ashamed. They’ve been cancelling loads of trains daily going through Fife.

Apparently it won’t get back to normal until Decemember according to one of the station staff at Waverly.

CameronB Brodie

And a bit of backstory.

Rebuilding Rail
Final Report June 2012

link to transportforqualityoflife.com

Petra

@ Tatu3 says at 3:44 pm … ”A link to this article about a report written by Murdo Fraser was posted on fb today. He thinks the UK should become a quasi-federal state after Brexit to stop separatism!

link to brightblue.org.uk

It would make you laugh and this from a Scot! So-called that is. They just don’t get it, do they? One of his four key recommendations is as follows:-

“A new English Grand Committee would finally resolve the West Lothian question, allowing the people of England for the first time a proper voice within the institutions of the UK, distinct from that of the UK Government.”

yesindyref2

@Legerwood
Electrification down my way (Ayrshire) was done in the 80s!

Sinky

Scotland in Union house economist Ronald McDonald spouting usual rubbish in Daily Telegraph regarding currency options.

galamcennalath

Petra says:

He thinks the UK should become a quasi-federal state after Brexit to stop separatism!

Hmm, is he serious or just trying to ‘having us on’?

Many of his colleagues have a more probable solution in mind ….. the UK could become a quasi-fascist state after Brexit to stop separatism, and clamp down on any other democratic notions.

Legerwood

yesindyref2 @ 7.50pm

The Ayrshire line was electrified in the 1980s but my reply to Luigi was on his specific point about the SG doing more with regards to electrification not historic schemes that did not lead to a wider roll out of electrification across the Scottish network.

Electrification of the Airdrie-Bathgate line around 2010 was one of the first of the current on-going programme of electrification promoted by the SG

Graham

@ Jack Collatin, blowers no good, needs to be high pressure water cannon and because of the volume of water required it needs to be a special train.
Simply isn’t economically viable to run them on all lines every day.
link to networkrail.co.uk

Mad Unionist

The SNP cancelled GARL. Sitting on the buses spewing emissions on the M8 is an SNP Tory idea. Then of course they like the bus oligarchs.

Liz g

OT..
Can I just take a wee minute to point out to any kind Wingers who donate to food/clothing/baby banks,that Sun Screen is horrendously expensive for young parents 🙂

It should be free for kid’s in low income families, or better still every family should have income enough to afford it!!!

Welsh Sion

Petra @ 7.39 pm

Re: Murdo’s proposals:

… … the designation of an English Grand Committee composed of all MPs representing constituencies in England.
– That’s us Celts telt, then. The Welsh Grand Committee has always been populated with some MPs from constituencies in England. ( Maybe you can clarify if the same has applied in Scotland.) Will this situation pertain if Murdo’s proposal gets off the ground – or will the Welsh Grand Committee only consist of Welsh Members? He doesn’t say.

– Nor would any UK Government want representatives of devolved governments who are separatists, and thus committed to the disintegration of the United Kingdom, to have a right of veto over policies that would affect the entirety of the UK.
– So … in a situation where you have a Nationalist Government elected by the people of Scotland (and, hopefully, Wales) – it’s called ‘the will or the people’ or in Greek, ‘democracy’, Murdo – do you intend that these peoples’ representatives are debarred from taking part in discussions …

Murdo avers that ‘separatists’ can’t veto policies that affect the entirety of the UK … yet, by his own lights, he wants … ” a QMV system, with weighting to reflect the relative population of the component UK parts, and a representation for England …”, which given the weighting he proposes, gives undue representation – a veto – to England, a veto moreover over a policy which may be beneficial to Scotland and Wales (e.g. control over migration numbers), but which England does not want.

And then there is this problem of the composition of the UK Government as overseeing all this bright, new, shiny democracy. There is no mention of allocating Members to it (Cabinet) on a pro rata or equal representation from Scotland, Wales and England. We will all retain our national Secretaries of State (whoopee-do!) England will get its own SoS, I guess. What of the other SoSs? Are these all going to be ‘pure UK’ representatives? Unlikely, they will be fighting for their own part of UKanian territory, and in any case mostly figure as England’s proxies. The Celts will be outnumbered, talked out and rendered ineffectual – as usual (Alun Cairns, David Mundell, anyone?)

Did Murdo issue this on 1 April? The Cottingley Fairies – whose photos were recently auctioned off – were shown to be a hoax. I put it to Murdo Fraser that Federalism, particularly that which panders to an English (imagined sense of) grievance is likewise completely useless. And to think it’s a so-called Scot who is proposing such imbecility …

Nothing short of independence for Scotland and Wales (and England too if it wants shot of us both) is good enough by now. Now that, Murdo, is truly representing your people. And we the good people of Scotland and Wales are going to win it for our own people.

yesindyref2

@Legerwood
Ah yes right, that context thing again 🙂

CameronB Brodie

And a bit deeper in to the backstory of trains and their operation. Remember neo-classical economic theory is old-skool pants and rational choice theory is undermined by the fact that folk simply aren’t rational economic agents.

Sorry for the length of this post but I think it provides valuable context.

PRIVATISATION TEN YEARS ON: A CRITICAL
ANALYSIS OF ITS RATIONALE AND RESULTS

The Efficiency Argument
The economic argument against state ownership in the 1970s came from the “new right” and drew on the public choice and property rights theories. Both theories are rooted in neoclassical economics and the concept of the rational utility maximiser and are worth reviewing in some detail. According to public choice theory, boards of state industries, civil servants in sponsoring departments and politicians in government and Parliament are no different to other people.

Whereas earlier in the century Weber had popularised the notion of disinterested state officials pursuing the “public interest”, public choice theory argued that government employees are strongly motivated by their own self-interest. According to one of its leading exponents, Niskanen (1971), this translates into the pursuit of ‘….salary, perquisites of the office, public regulation, power, patronage, output of the bureau, ease of making changes, and ease in managing the bureau”. For politicians it means attempting to maximise the chances of remaining in office by shaping policies to gain
votes justifying any kind of policy as being in the “public interest”, even one which resultes in considerable burdens on tax payers.

In this atmosphere, public choice economists considered it inevitable that the management of state industries would become demoralised in the face of shifting and inconsistent objectives and that the industries would fall under the
influence of pressure groups, notably rent seeking trades unions. Consequently, the industries would suffer both overmanning and wasteful investment. This pessimistic view of public ownership seemed to be born out in the UK. In the 1970s productivity growth in the nationalised sector lagged well behind growth in the private sector and profits net of state subsidies were negative (Pryke, 1981).

Property rights theory complemented the public choice critique. This argued that the source of the differing levels of efficiency in the public and private sectors lay in the capital market. State industries raised external funding
through government, by loans with state guarantees, or directly from tax payers. The public, which in principle ‘owns’l the state assets, has no formal property rights in the industries.

They do not own tradeable shares or have rights to attend annual general meetings of the firms to, censure management. By contrast, in the private sector AGMs are held and shares are traded. Owners of shares are free to buy and sell them – buying further shares in companies which are wellrun, hence raising the share price, and selling them in firms considered to be failing, thus deflating the share price and leaving the company exposed to a hostile takeover bid.

Ultimately, according to property rights theorists, it is the vulnerability of companies to takeover by new management which is the vital spur to managerial efficiency in private enterprises and this is missing in the public sector. Inefficient nationalised industries are immune to take over. From a property rights perspective, the attenuation of property rights in the public sector inevitably leads to lower efficiency. No matter the good intentions of civil servants and politicians, the agent-principal relationship in the public sector leads to a waste of resources.

In sum, the idea in the early.’1980s that privatisation would improve operating efficiency was based on removing political control and making firms rely on the private capital market. This is illustrated in Figure 1 by a movement from west to east, i.e. away from direct political control towards reliance on the private capital market.

The public choice and property rights literature was popularised in the UX by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. It undoubtedly had a major influence on thinking about the public and private sectors in the 1970s and early 198Os, notably in the Conservative Party. However, it is not free from problems. In particular, studies of the operation of private capital markets have not demonstrated conclusively that a more active market in shares with an openness to hostile take over bids is economically beneficial.

There is some suggestion that it might lead to an overemphasis on short-term profits over long-term investment, thus lowering economic well-being. The economies of Japan and Germany with capital markets in which hostile bids are rare have performed much better since the War than the UK and the USA, where such bids are more common place. Of course, the capital market may not be a reason for this, but at least their experience demonstrates that an open capital market is not necessarv for high efficiency.

It is also difficult to square the notion of the takeover threat as the key motivator for managerial efficiency, with the Government’s retention of a “golden share” in a number of privatised firms. The golden share was introduced precisely to prevent unwelcome (especially foreign) takeovers of companies considered to be of strategic importance, eg. British Aerospace and Rolls Royce. The removal of the golden share which led to Ford’s takeover of Jaguar may be seen as a
belated recognition of the contradiction in government thinking about the desirability of takeovers.
link to dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk

Robert Kerr

Hi peeps

Why are not all railways in Scotland electrified?

Is is the Union Dividend?

Better together!

Mad Unionist

CameronB Brodie. It was a long saga! The railways were not really in a bad state prior to privatisation. Even Michael Cho Cho has stated this. The privatisation was merely for profit. It was also the death of many by accidents due to lack of maintenance by rail track. The money made by the original train stockholders was phenomenal and they never did supply new trains. If you admire capitalism the bus and train industry was the best ever sell offs. The job loses in the bus industry were around 100.000. And did the SNP get any donations from that industry!

CameronB Brodie

Mad Unionist
I’m old enough to remember British Rail before privatisation and it it suffered from under investment and rent-seeking unions. I’m not a fan of Thatcherism, simply providing context. You, however, appear to ken feck all.

CameronB Brodie

I do agree that the privatisation of much of Britain’s public infrastructure, was ideologically driven and harmful to public finance and social well-being.

Train planning in a fragmented railway: a British perspective
link to dspace.lboro.ac.uk

Clootie

The key word is “context”.
We will never have a balance press while we remain in the Union. It is a relentless campaign of negativity

CameronB Brodie

What sort of regulatory state do Scots want to live in, one that employs a written constitution to support a “right-based” approach to government? Or a regulatory state that has developed a blind eye to the rule-of law, is institutionally integrated with global financial corruption and money laundering (see City of London)? What sort of regulatory state will Brexitania be, given it is founded on political corruption conducted by the New Right?

The Rise of the British Regulatory State: Transcending the Privatization Debate

Abstract
This article reviews three recent books that explore the social and political foundations of the regulatory changes in the governance of British society and economy. Beyond privatization, there is increasing delegation to autonomous agencies, formalization of relationships, and proliferation of new technologies of regulation in both public and private spheres. Sociolegal, public administration, and political economic perspectives can help explore the forces that shape these new institutions. The notion of regulatory society accompanies the rise of the regulatory state.
link to researchgate.net

Mad Unionist

CameronB Brodie. Who is Ken?

CameronB Brodie

Mad Unionist
Dinnae ask me, I dinnae ken. 😉

Legerwood

yesindyref2 says:
22 April, 2019 at 9:02 pm
@Legerwood
Ah yes right, that context thing again ?
…………..
Aye, your a wee sweetie right enough.

……….
Mad Unionist @ 9.24pm

British Rail was awful. Old rolling stock, infrequent trains, ever rising fares with no improvement in service and ever more frequent strikes – one day strikes whose effects were felt over 3 days – culminating in a complete shutdown of the entire UK network in July of 1982 or 83 just as Scotland went on holiday.

Passenger numbers were falling throughout the 70s and early 80s. It was not until Mrs Thatcher’s employment legislation took effect that BR started to improve. Fewer strikes. Increase in passenger numbers and improvements in the frequency of trains.

Mrs Thatcher did not want the railways privatised so it did not happen until after she left office.

Railtrack was the privatised company that took responsibility for the track but used outside contractors so all the experience of BR engineers was lost. The Potters Bar crash in 2002 was the end of that system – Railtrack was insolvent. Network Rail was formed to take over but had to build up the in-house experience lost under Railtrack.

Network rail is effectively a nationalised company. It has debts of more than £45 billion. It receives an annual direct grant from the Government of around £4 billion.

Over the last 6-7 years the majority Train Operating companies (TOC) make direct payments to the UK Government, under the terms of their contracts, that are sufficient to cover the subsidies paid to the other TOCs and leave the Gov with a ‘profit’ in each of the last 6-7 years of several hundred million pounds. Usually the TOCs that receive subsidies are the smaller companies such as Scotrail

The Office of Rail and Road produces an annual financial statement which sets out all of these figures.

If people are proposing re-nationalisation then they had better take a really hard look at the sums of money that will be involved

yesindyref2

@Legerwood
Ah yes right, that context thing again ?
…………..
Aye, your a wee sweetie right enough.

Emmm, it was a pun on the title of the thread, not about you.

CameronB Brodie

Legerwood
I wasn’t trying to give rail nationalisation the hard sell,I was simply trying to provide context. It’s all a bit pie-in-the-sky without indy.

Mad Unionist

The cost of the tendering process of buses and trains is only something that Ken would Ken.

Jack collatin

‘Privatisation’ is a Blue Tory mantra, enthusiastically taken up by Tory Blair and Clunking Fist, hence the ‘red;’ Tory jibe.
Thatcher’s diktat was ‘public bad, private good’, and from the get go she sold off everything she could to her pals in the City. Remember Tell Syd?
Gas, Electricity, the Prison service, air Traffic Control, you name it the Blue Tories sold off the ‘Family Jewels, a Supermac MacMillan decried in Parliament.
It is part of the Blue Red and Yellow Tory Grand Plan to destroy our civic society and return it to Edwardian penury for the many, riches for the few.
Nothing is safe in th3e hands of the Red Blue and Yellow Tories. Our NHS, Police, GP service, roads, railways, air sea rescue, well, just about any publicly owned, financed and staffed organisation or service has been and will be sold off.
They hate the thought of a powerful body of public servants, well paid, unionised, with pension rights.
The Postal service was sold off by that sinister little man Vince Cable to his pals in the City at a knock down price, and none of the Unionist Parties in WM batted an eyelid.
Remember Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ nonsense, where he painted a picture of Hoi Polloi relying on charity and handouts just to eat heat and be clothed.
15 years ago, nobody had heard of Food Banks, now Baby fucking banks.
Zero hour contracts on low wages were the brainchild of ‘privatisation and ‘Arms Length’ Red Tory Council contracts.
It was Blair who announced that there was no such thing as a ‘job for life’. Fuck the Many then, Tony.
WE get the services the Oligarchy allow us to have, because our lives depend on Spanish French and Dutch ‘companies’ running things, rather than services owned by, financed by, staffed by, and accountable to our own citizens.
Come the Revolution, guys, we must drive the carpetbaggers ,big land owners, Robber Barons and Pay Day Loan shysters from our land.
The essentials of life, water heat food a roof over our head a steady income health, public transport, and so on are not ‘commodities’ to be sold like Mars Bars for big profits.
It’s time to put a stop to this madness now.
Private Bad, public good.

Capella

@ Legerwood – I have a very different recollection of B.R before privatisation. I travelled a lot by train without any problem. The Tories and Labour starved BR of investment for decades which caused deterioration.

AFAIK most European countries run public service transport. Switzerland is a good example of an integrated system.

Re cost of renationalisation. This could have been by Labour c 2005 when the franchises came up for renewal. Simply let them lapse.

It seems to me to be complete folly to privatise a national network of any kind. It is a natural monopoly. Operators will just act as a cartel.

Is it not true that the public spend far more now on the privatised rail system than we ever did on BR?

Jack collatin

As many know, you can gauge my rage by my typos.
Why would we put up with this any longer.
Capitalism globalisation and privatisation have been massive failures for the Many, but not the Few.
It is time to act now.

CameronB Brodie

Education is the cradle of culture, so it is a concern that the New Right have been shaping England’s education system for decades now, along narrow, homo-economist, utilitarian lines. A veritable infusion of reactionary, right-wing, ideology in to the fabric of English culture. There will be no alternative allowed, apparently.

Scotland is doing better in providing a balanced education, and must ensure everything possible is done to protect our EU membership and a pluralism of economic thought in our schools and universities.

Battle for the Enlightenment: Neoliberalism, Critical Theory and the role of Circumvential Education in Fostering a New Phase of the Enlightenment

Absstract

Higher education is one of the last democratic institutions in society and it is currently under attack by advocates of neo-liberalism. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this “battle” can be framed as a battle over the direction of the Enlightenment. Critical Theory and neoliberalism both emerged from academia in response to historical conditions, but each school drew its inspiration from the same source, the promises of the Enlightenment.

It is my ultimate hope that framing critical theory and neoliberalism in a battle for the Enlightenment will shed light on the dialectal heritage of present day higher education as well as its dialectical capabilities. Finally, to utilize the dialectal capability of higher education, a new critical pedagogy is examined, that of circumvential education, which seeks to circumvent and dialectically surpass the neo-liberal paradigm.

Key Words: Critical Theory, Dialectic, Enlightenment, Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism

link to jceps.com

Bobp

Jack collatin. Excellent post, on the money.

Capella

BBC say Nicola will update Parliament on Wednesday afternoon.

Nicola Sturgeon to issue Brexit and indyref2 update – link to bbc.co.uk

Mad Unionist

The UK shaped education by sending children to different schools and the people accepted this. My Mrs went down the same lift in her multi storrie with her cousin and they walked seperate ways. Fortunately they are not divided as was intended by the State.

CameronB Brodie

Some more on the restructuring of the neo-liberal “regulatory state”.

Convention theory and neoliberalism

Introduction

….Today, neoliberalism remains neither a doctrine nor a coherent body of theory. Instead, it is a key term used in different forms of contemporary criticism of capitalist societies. The book written by William Davies presents this international phenomenon as a way in which liberal economic theory and its methods ‘take over’ the government of many social spheres – including public discourses and the state – thereby producing disenchantment with public political deliberation and democratic politics.

Many of the positions and arguments presented in this new book extend well-known discussions about neoliberalism. What makes Davies’ book innovative and outstanding in the field of contemporary critical analysis of neoliberalism is its relation to the French ‘convention theory’ approach. Davies relates neoliberalism to foundational conventions of the economy not only to offer an external critique but also to discuss the internal problems and paradoxes of neoliberalism itself.

link to tandfonline.com

North chiel

Petra @ 0739 pm “ new English grand committee proposal” . I thought that we already had one called “ the Tory Downing st. Cabinet” ??

Dr Jim

*Nationalisation* because Labour and the Unions did a great job of that

I remember its smell well

Dr Jim

The Grand Committee

This was originally a proposal by Helen Liddle, Michael Forsyth, and Michael Moore, and they’re not even kidding
Ffoukes is behind this as well, as if he doesn’t get enough cheap drink in the HOL he wants one here as well

They said they had the experience to understand Scotland and we needed that to help run our country because the SNP don’t have enough apparently,they did offer to have elections over it though, Pete Wishart smiled because he was chair of the Scottish affairs committee that day

I doubt whether I could have just smiled

Jack collatin

Dr Jim @ 12.09
Thing is, the world has moved on, old chap.
Central Heating, electrified lines, the Common Herd not being treated like cattle, the Great Unwashed crushed by their betters…
The Old Days of Steam and workers dying of industrial related illnesses and disease, asbestos, hardening metal using arsenic, working ’til you drop, should be a thing of the past.
The world has moved on.
To compare ‘nationalised’ industries of the ‘fifties and ‘sixties with 21st Century technological advances is the usual canard of the ‘private best’ lobby.
If we have publicly owned services and institutions staffed by public servants in well paid valued jobs with security and a living pension at the end of working life, rather than carpetbaggers paying peanuts for profit, then our world will be a better place.
Zero hours cleaners, catering staff, porters…
Pay peanuts, hire monkeys.
Who gives a fuck about public service? Certainly not the Rees Moggs of this exalted world.
The Red Blue and Tory way.
Let the Market decide?
It did, and we are plunging into Edwardian serfdom with a Ruling Class sitting atop the dung heap, the rise and rise of the Rentiers, and the Oligarchy closing ranks and stifling progress.
That’s what Brexit and ‘taking back control’ is about.
Ignorance is Strength?
Why would a train driver not have a well paid ‘job for life’?
Well, why not?
Other countries have ‘nationalised’ public services, why not Scotland?

Mad Unionist

I remember going to the lavvie on the stairhead and wiping my bum with cuttings from the daily record and express. The poor were very right wing in those days although they did not know it. Personal hygiene was not good and that is why we old Unionists are still around.

yesindyref2

Happy St George’s Day, I’d forgotten.

And of course, Dr Jim, this is not the right day for Sturgeon to give her update, tomorrow never dies.

CameronB Brodie

Here’s one for those who suggest re-nationalisation of Scotland’s railways would be prohibited as EU members.

Fact Check: do new EU rules make it impossible to renationalise railways?

When it comes to liberalising passenger services, the word “liberalise” is open to interpretation. It could be taken to mean they must be run by private companies, which would rule out any renationalisation in mainland Britain. But that looks to me like the very worst-case scenario.

More likely, state-owned passenger rail service companies – which still exist in all member states except the UK – will have to compete to retain the routes they currently run, probably through competitive tenders. The situation would resemble the current situation in Britain, where subsidiaries of the German and Dutch state rail companies both run franchises.

Rail would become similar in this respect to many other public transport markets in Europe, such as provisions for bus services in most European capitals. Again this would include the UK, where state-owned Scottish ferry provider Calmac recently won the right to operate the network for another eight years in preference to private provider Serco.

link to theconversation.com

CameronB Brodie

Mad Unionist
I left a reply to you on the previous post, re. sovereignty in the EU.

link to wingsoverscotland.com

Liz g

Dr Jim @ 12.22
I think he smiled because he Knew that they are desperate to sell “New Act’s of Union” ….
We all know it’s the TREATY of Union that’s the problem…
AND we are never going to shut up about it!

# Dissolve the TREATY wasn’t really a feature in 2014, (but it is now) about all we got was, “if the Union didn’t exist, would you sign up to it again?
A campaign tactic that, IMHO, was grossly understated.
Not this time though…

All the British Nationalists saying that we need to have a “Federal UK” should be getting asked…..
Are you willing to Desolve the TREATY of UNION and then Discuss it???
Because nothing less changes anything,if we, (Scotland) are going to sign up to a new UK. Then the old Treaty has to go where old Treaties go to die, otherwise the new proposals are as fake as the old 2014 Vow…..

We need to be shouting this from the rooftops,before the British Nationalists seduce the soft No voter’s into buying what they are selling…
Because it all they have now,and they’ll punt it!!!

Cactus

Aye, it’s their St George’s Day, today

Ain’t it strange how schgoogle’s homepage today, recognises this annual English date, yet on oor Saint Andrew’s Day last year… there was no similar recognition for Scotland. If aye remember correctly they featured some famous lady’s 700th+ birthday or other instead, shocking

Right England, dae yerselves ah favour, put down and stop waving around that ukUnion flag fur just a minute eh and replace it wae yer own Independence for Yes England flag – yay

Here’s a question for the people in England on ur special day…

Independence question for England:
“Would you like England to become an independent country again?”

Available options for answers:
– Yes
– Naw
– Not sure / don’t know / spoiled paper / where am I?
– Keep things the way they are (by stealing Scotland’s resources)

Get on yer ain train and go figure, England

Dr Jim

@Jack collatin 12:59am

The world has moved on but *Britain* and it’s oldies haven’t
and they’re the ones who still run it and vote
Get rid of *Britishness* and the mindset and you have a chance

I’m quite some time retired now but am an expert in my field of digital musical technology because I moved from analogue 30 years ago and still spend time doing it, but in my age group I’m an oddity because most folk my age don’t learn anymore because they don’t think they need to, so when it comes to new technology old folk don’t like it, they want the same old stuff but better and don’t want to embrace the idea of new better stuff

Removing the mindset of what was or what people thought was, isn’t easy but unfortunately governments are run by people my age and even older (House of Lords)

The Japanese have done it pretty well but even they are still coping with two societies where we’ve just got one big mess

Independence is the first step then the work has to be put in to create change

Dr Jim

@Liz 1:58am

You’ve gotta laugh at them though with their federal nonsense it’s another sign of desperation from the *British* it’ll be a VOW next that they give themselves more votes on like the Myth Commission

*We’ll give you more powers Scotland* they said then the three *British* parties voted against the very powers they vowed to give, and not one newspaper or TV news channel mentioned the fact the whole deal was a confidence trick perpetrated on Scotland’s people

Scotland can be Independent and I bet money the English won’t federalise their own country they’ll keep right on doing what they’ve always done, making promises they never keep

Dr Jim

@Cactus

England should be Independent and stand on its own two feet instead of Scotland’s sair backs

Cactus

Aye Dr Jim it would do them good on the long run
link to youtube.com

It’s like carryin’ aroon’ ah bag a coal on yer back

Sing!

CameronB Brodie

The idea of the British union is dead, long live Brexitania. So where does Scotland’s future sit as a result of the full-English Brexit? What does the Scottish Law Society have to say about the way the human rights of Scots are at risk of abuse by Westminster?

Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory

Abstract

This paper has two objectives: one is to explore the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, an issue traditionally neglected in psychological memory research; the other is to question the widespread dichotomy of individual and social memory. To do so, a cultural-historical perspective is outlined that allows us to conceive of individual memory as an inextricable part of an overarching cultural discourse, the discourse of cultural memory.

In this discourse, narrative practices are of central importance because they combine various cultural symbol systems, integrating them within one symbolic space. In order to explain and illustrate this conception of narrative, a historical memorial and work of art is examined. Three narrative orders of this artwork are distinguished—the linguistic, semiotic and performative or discursive—and discussed as particular forms of meaning construction. Together, they constitute a mnemonic system, a symbolic space of remembering and forgetting in which the time orders of past and present are continuously recombined.

Keywords cultural memory, narrative, remembering, symbol system

link to journals.sagepub.com

Cactus

Regarding our railways, all we need are ALL of Scotland’s levers to make THIS and all else work for Scotland, ah can imagine a toon with Cairnstoon Hamish in the train operators shed with his paws on the auld track-line-wooden-changer-levers, Yes that could look nice in sepia colours

Cactus

Hmm, mibbies they’d be metal levers, not wooden like 🙂

link to youtube.com

Lever 17 is…

Cactus

For the pleasure of all the new readers that huvnae seen THIS one:

link to wingsoverscotland.com

It’s awe aboot dem fiscal levers, folks

Cactus

And being in control of them all

Liz g

Dr Jim @ 2.31
Aw, Dr jim
I am so looking forward to the day the”British Nationalists” in Scotland stop being deferential to their “Landlords” and start working out that they are much better served by…
Bringing their Government within slapping distance..
The Westminster Government is never going to serve Scotland,and the quicker they works that out the better!

Liz g

Hey Cactus …. 🙂
The time is vital…. We’re looking for the answers ….
Nicola needs to go cold… 🙂

Liz g

And to let us know…

Capella

OT
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mairead Maguire, accepts GUE/NGL Prize on behalf of Julian Assange

link to youtube.com

Scot Finlayson

Happy St George`s day to all our English guests,

roast beef and mustard and jellied eels for dinner,

stand up and free yourselves from the Scottish yoke,

Independence for Englandshire.

Davosa

A true Year from Hell would be forced to read the Daily Heil every day. Worthless, pro- fascist, imperialist scumbags.

David P

Am I the only one missing Nana’s links?

Always informative… In many ways a better news source than all the mainstream press combined!

Dorothy Devine

Davosa ,I think a year from hell would be being forced to read the Herald in its current form.

I had a brief jaunt over there and SNP BAAAAAAD is in overdrive.

All the crap with which they can attempt to force feed the populace is there – it makes me wonder what their circulation figures have told them , how far they have plummeted, not far enough for my taste!

sassenach

David P @ 8-30

Nana said she was taking a break, expect her back anytime soon.

Dr Jim

Donald Trump is getting his state visit at last which is making him happy because he has many words to tell us, and many of them really good words, some of the best words in fact, and he knows them and thinks we’ll be very surprised at how good his words are

I’m really sure we’ll all be impressed by President Trump, because he says so with his really good words

galamcennalath

Brent Crude $74.23

Poor wee stupid Scotland, doomed, doomed we are.

Well, we will be if we don’t get away from this full English Brexit.

Dr Jim

Greens are dishonest says Scot goes pop’s James Kelly

Greens slammed for demanding SNP voters vote for them in the Euro elections

Why do the Greens not target Labour Tory or Lib Dem voters (we have to) say SNP voters

Sinky

Richard Leonard talking usual p*sh in Scotsman on rejecting both Scottish and British nationalism . His English internationalism stops at Dover and Berwick.

Anyone else having trouble accessing Business for Scotland web site, as keep getting “Error establishing a database connection”?

Welsh Sion

Happy St Jordi’s Day to all our Catalan friends.

(This Welsh dragon has to negotiate Luton town centre, the home of the English Defence League today. Wish me luck.)

Dr Jim

Sky news reports 8 out of 10 doctors in NHS England and Wales are burnt out according to a poll, with up to 10% suffering mental health problems

Safe in their hands said the Tories

Not reported in Scottish newpapers, apparently they don’t want to tell us that

Wonder why

galamcennalath

” BBC Scotland bosses have defended their new channel after audiences for one edition of flagship news show The Nine dropped to just under 9000 “

link to thenational.scot

Scotland doesn’t need alternative ‘fringe’ programming, it needs to have some of the London centric, often irrelevant output on BBC1 replaced by more relevant Scottish material.

The original concept for the SIX was that it did in fact replace the London six o’clock news. The idea was to report world and European events from a Scottish perspective.

The new BBC Scotland channel will be deemed to expensive and be closed. That will declare, no demand.

Abulhaq

@ScotFinlayson
If England has an authentic patron saint it is St Edward the Confessor. George, about whom according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia next to nothing is known, there may have been more than one, and whose exploits possibly derive from late pagan folk mythology was at the English Protestant reformation the only permitted saint, hence his survival.
His legendary militaristic imagery acquired from the Levant at the time of the Crusades and latterly imported to England served during conflicts with Scotland and France.
The vagueness and uncertainty surrounding the St George legend is so very English. Great noise about something of little substance.

Capella

Context phobia from Stu’s twitter, a superb example

link to twitter.com

Scot Finlayson

Brent Crude Oil,which is the type found in Scottish waters and considered the bench mark for quality,is trading just of $75 per barrel,

could go down could go higher,

has been well over $50pb for nearly 2 years with a high of $85pb,

the average price over the last 40 years is just over $50 pb,

nearly 1 billion barrels taken from Scottish waters each year,

40,000,000,000 barrels X $50 = 2 trillion dollars,

that`s $2,000,000,000,000,

we are basically being robbed blind by the crooks of Westminster and their Big Business bankers/lobyists.

Legerwood

Jack collating @ 12.59am
“”Why would a train driver not have a well paid ‘job for life’?””

Train drivers working for Scotrail are earning just over £47,180 plus overtime and rest day working payments (£300 per day). They are paid £26,813 during their training year and probationary year post-training.

They are by no means the highest paid drivers.

Some of the Train Operating Companies down south such as Virgin West Coast are paying drivers £65,520 plus overtime etc. in 2018 while Customer Services Assistants are paid £28,789 and their line managers up to £33,000.

jfngw

Not sure how much I could trust a politician that tries to deviously replace the Treaty of Union by one that effectively gives our sovereignty to another country, makes me question where the loyalty is placed.

The ‘new treaty’ gives the power to the unionists, they want it impossible to ever have independence, it’s like the 1979 choice but on steroids. The unionists would only need 34% of politicians to stop it ever getting to a vote.

We need to ensure when the next vote happens these people who lied to Scotland about the powers it was going to get are highlighted. They lied to you in 2014, they are lying again.

mike cassidy

The English education system under the Tories.

Early April brought news of a school in West Yorkshire that has introduced a once-a-week “dark day” when all the lights are turned off. I’m actually going to write that again. Early April brought news of a school in West Yorkshire that has introduced a once-a-week “dark day” when all the lights are turned off.

link to archive.is

And a direct link to the article revealing the ‘dickensian’ cost-cutting initiatives.

Including one school being told it should keep half the money its pupils raise for charity.

link to archive.is

Jack collatin

Legerwood @9.53 am

‘Collating’ here:
And your point?
Private best because they are getting a decent wage? Until the company goes bust, or there is a round of ‘downsizing’, ‘rightsizing’, and profits matter more than service or people’s livelihoods?

My point, as the intelligent but deliberately lightheaded wooden top you contrive to be buries under the train drivers’ wages quote, is that the ‘essentials’ of life in any modern caring society, like health, public services, utilities like water and energy to heat and light our lives, security of employment, and freedom from eternal threat from Oligarchs who see all of this as a commodity on their Market Place under the control and influence of the Invisible Hand of unfettered Free Trade, is how a civic society should run, not Rees Mogg’s Monopoly Board.

The failures of privatised services since Thatcher are legend.
And we, the mugs keep giving the Rich more of the wealth of Scotland to store in their private vaults.
We are being robbed blind, and we just sit by and let it happen?
Look at the wedge a train driver is getting in take home pay.
Really? Really?
I would drive them from our land tomorrow, every last man and woman jack of them.
And the Robber Barons and their ilk.

Legerwood

Capella @ 10.47 PM

I commuted to Glasgow by train in the 1970s. The carriages were holdovers from the days of steam – corridors and compartments seating 6 or 8 if you put the arm rests up. Quite good in the winter because you could huddle together for warmth.

The train in the morning was often late due to ‘the late running of the train ahead’. Strikes, one day ones, were frequent usually in pursuit of a pay claim. Fares increased annually but no compensation if train did not run because of strikes.

The reason I remember the shutdown in the early ’80s was that I was due to travel to York to attend an OU summerschool but had to go by bus and return by bus because they were still on strike.

I started commuting again in the late ’80s. By then the employment laws had kicked in so hardly any strikes. There had been some investment in rolling stock and, more importantly, an increase in the frequency of the trains driven no doubt by the increase in passenger numbers.

I did not see any point in privatisation at that point. There was a clear improvement in the system and it looked as if it would continue albeit slowly. However, the Tories post-Thatcher were determined to push it through and botched it.

I commuted by train post-privatisation in the mid-’90s and again in the noughties by which time privatisation had bedded in. I still travel frequently by train. Overall I think privatisation in its current form edges it over nationalisation even with the improvements see in the late ’80s.

Labour did very little to fix it other than to bring Network Rail into being and it is Network Rail that is the major recipient of subsidies although in the past 10 years or so that has been cut by around 40%.

There has also been a huge investment in new rolling stock and on the back of that several new train manufacturing companies have opened up in the UK eg Hitachi.

There are also more people working on the railways than under BR. The major expenditure of the TOCs is on salaries.

Al

I (respectfully) disagree with the interpretation of context in this case. Looking at it as ‘one time in every 30’ is assuming that the trains that are canceled are completely random/mixed across all routs and times. Unfortunately this is not the case. Some routes are getting it much worse than others. The cancellations are concentrated on some routes and at the busy periods.

As a result, my wife has experienced cancellations more days than not. I personally have also experienced four canceled trains in a row leading to waiting more than an hour in Edinburgh with two very tired children.

Context is important. But it is also important not to ignore that averages don’t necessarily show the whole picture.

auld highlander

The Great Dictator – David Haymsn – Scottish Independence.

link to youtube.com

Capella

@ Legerwood – you seem to have had n unfortunte expereince of ril in the 70s. I won’t lunch into the ghastly experiences I have had since privatisation wxcept to say, IMO, it is an expensive mess.

The rest of Europe retains its state owned railways. In some there is a devolution to regional, but still publicly owned networks.

If anyone wonders what it is like to travel on efficient, clean and cheap public transport I recommend a long holiday touring Europe.

link to tssa.org.uk

Capella

Oops – sorry abut typos. I seem to have lost my aaaaa key!

galamcennalath

Scot Finlayson says

nearly 1 billion barrels taken from Scottish waters each year

Another way to look at it. That ~$50 billion worth of oil. More in a good year.

So what has gone wrong? This article from last year clarifies …

link to businessforscotland.com

Wullie

State owned railways.
In China at the moment, couple of weeks ago made a journey off 600 kilometres for £20 of course on high speed train 250 to. 300K per hour. The passage way on the train was constantly washed and swept clean. Dread coming home to the pigsty that the unionists Havel mashed of Scotland.

Wullie

Have made of Sjcotland. ffs

Legerwood

Capella @ 10.45 am

I was not alone in my experience of 1970s BR.

Yes, many European countries still have state owned railways and offshoots of some of these state owned companies are over here running rail franchises in the UK.

Now ask yourself this: if the positions were reversed could you ever see BR doing that running rail services in other countries?

Legerwood

Jack collatin says:
23 April, 2019 at 10:21 am
Legerwood @9.53 am

‘Collating…””
…..

Predictive text strikes again.

galamcennalath

Not news, the EU say the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations have been completed and won’t be reopened.

link to uk.reuters.com

… and still the Loonies in London discuss making changes.

Capella

@ Legerwood – well I don’t see why BR couldn’t have run rail services elsewhere. It would have needed adequate funding by the Westminster government. Underfunding was always a problem but the expertise was certainly there. It’s the Dutch state owned Abellio which runs Scotrail services here. It’s the German state owned DG which runs the Arriva services down south.

I’m tempted to provide a litany of the disasters which followed on privatisation in my experience. But I won’t. The fact that no other European country has followed the UK example is sufficient, IMO.

I can only recommend travelling in Europe to experience the huge difference in levels of service. Or go via Youtube!
Trainspotting Swiss style:
link to youtube.com

Tatu3

Nationalised/ing railways. Then, and now (well near future).
Then – run badly, by British!! Rail (British government)
Now – run well, by an Independent Scottish government
BIG difference.

Breeks


galamcennalath says:
23 April, 2019 at 10:51 am
Scot Finlayson says

nearly 1 billion barrels taken from Scottish waters each year

Another way to look at it. That ~$50 billion worth of oil. More in a good year.

So what has gone wrong? This article from last year clarifies …

link to businessforscotland.com

To my mind, this is a scandal just as epic as the McCrone report, and yet we all shrug our shoulders. I just don’t know what is wrong with us. It isn’t cowardice, or frustration but a horrible sense of forlorn impotence… what can we do?

Just imagine the impact it would have if Scotland changed places with Norway for one single year… then just imagine that windfall happening every year.

Just imagine too that a renewables industry extracting limitless, clean environmentally sound energy, and exporting that surplus to mainland Europe indefinitely. With appropriate foresight and planning, Scotland could have both an oil fund, and a renewables fund, making Scotland richer every day, even if every one of us stood still.

What a curse this Union has been for Scotland, yet there are still those who would forfeit more and more until we have nothing.

I am so heartily sick of this same forlorn impotence, bickering amongst ourselves while our attitude towards the Union reeks of supine appeasement.

We should crowd fund one of those millennium clocks and have it ticking over how much revenue Scotland loses every day compared to Norway. Did I say one? Have loads of them above our motorways and congested ring roads where people have time to think.

The Soviet troops destroyed the morale of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad broadcasting “Every seven seconds, a German dies in Stalingrad”, and then an ominous countdown… tick, tick, tick…. It was effective in destroying morale because the German soldiers knew it was true.

Effijy

Thousands of trains cancelled in Liverpool alone!

Major Liverpool train station CLOSES for TWO MONTHS – starting from today
LIVERPOOL’S main train station has closed – and will stay shut for another eight weeks.

By Nicholas Bieber / Published 2nd June 2018

yesindyref2

It’s not 1 billion BoE per year, even at 365 days per year at 1.7 million per day in 2018, it’s 620 billion.

link to ogauthority.co.uk

Not sure if that 1.7 million a day though is per calendar day average, or on production days.

yesindyref2

Or even peak day production.

geeo

So, announcement tomorrow at Holyrood re: indyref plans.

The 3 branch office accounting units will be fuming tomorrow !!

Now they have to explain why they were talking mince about there not being an indyref any time soon because they said so…oops 🙂

CameronB Brodie

re. Scotland’s political inertia and submission to English Tories. Time for some Evolutionary Psychology and stuff?

Speculations on the Evolutionary Origins of System Justification

Abstract

For centuries, philosophers and social theorists have wondered why people submit voluntarily to tyrannical leaders and oppressive regimes. In this article, we speculate on the evolutionary origins of system justification, that is, the ways in which people are motivated (often nonconsciously) to defend and justify existing social, economic, and political systems.

After briefly recounting the logic of system justification theory and some of the most pertinent empirical evidence, we consider parallels between the social behaviors of humans and other animals concerning the acceptance versus rejection of hierarchy and dominance.

Next, we summarize research in human neuroscience suggesting that specific brain regions, such as the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex, may be linked to individual differences in ideological preferences concerning (in)equality and social stability as well as the successful navigation of complex, hierarchical social systems. Finally, we consider some of the implications of a system justification perspective for the study of evolutionary psychology, political behavior, and social change.

Keywords system justification, ideology, political neuroscience, amygdala, hierarchy, evolutionary psychology

link to journals.sagepub.com

geeo

@yesindyref2

There was a forecasted 5% increase in production expected for 2018/19 by oil and gas producers.

Posted a link to it a while back, but can’t find it.

I’m sure the barrel/day production was a daily average figure in said mentioned article.

As you say, not 1bn but imagine that hitting an independent Scotland’s treasury !!

And more being found all the time, and thats before exploring West Coast basin potential.!!

Jock

The Mail is a mendacious bumrag of a paper but, as someone who has commuted by train for the last 20 years, the last 12 months have been the worst I have ever experienced with the highest number of cancellations and delays. To dismiss this out of hand is just as wrong as exaggerating the problem

CameronB Brodie

Which lead to.

Political Psychology: Inequality & Prejudice
link to lse.ac.uk

CameronB Brodie

Of course, one shouldn’t forget the negative light the indy movement has been refereed to, for decades now. This misrepresentation of our desire for rational self-determination, has lost much of its’ power due to technology, but it is the last weapons the yoons have. Their argument is one of prejudice and fear, as contemporary British nationalism has nothing to offer Scotland other than more exploitation.

Social psychological research on prejudice as collective action supporting emergent ingroup members
link to onlinelibrary.wiley.com

yesindyref2

@geeo
Indeed, it’s a ferociously large amount.

I just correct because we need to be accurate, not exaggerate – leave that to the Unionists is what I think.

CameronB Brodie

In case folk are interested, there is a post of mine @1:53pm that goes in to the science of Jockholm syndrome. It is caught in moderation, for some reason.

Capella

@ CBB – have you checked for a banned word – eg r*pe? Not sure how many there are.

CameronB Brodie

Capella
I think I’m just being too busy, there’s no banned words that I can see. 😉

Lenny Hartley

Posted this on wrong thread doh
New panelbase poll , looks like its for SNP or to co-incide tith SNP Spring Cnference. Amongst questions asked aside from obvious are ones regarding OBFA and transgender issues.

Dr Jim

See all this talk of Independence, that’s the oil run out again
See if we never mentioned Independence ever again do we think they’d be nice to us, thought not!

If we banned all *journalists* from Independence statements and events do we think they’d write anything different, thought not!

Cactus

Afternoon Capella ~

SO true about the trains in Helvetia, here’s a journey up Mount Rigi, we went there once in winter, it was a white-out up top back then, there is a whole new civilisation living up there in them mountains, some view frae the tap 2

link to youtube.com

iScotland can do anything and everything

Cubby

We would have a better train service if Westminster was not ripping Scotland off. All those hundreds of billions of oil money going south over the last 50 years and potentially another 100 years more.

What words can you use to describe Scots who have lied to the Scottish public over the last 50 years. They said in 1979 oil would run out in the mid eighties. They said in 2014 oil was finished – at best 5 years left.

In summary:

1. The original oil fields Brent/Forte from the 70s are still producing and Forte forecast to continue for another 20 years.

2. New oil fields are producing oil – Clair Ridge is forecast to be bigger than Forte/Brent. 30 new fields since 2015.

3. The UK gov is currently selling off exploratory licences for a large number of areas West of Shetland that are forecast to be in production for 100 years.

4. Unexplored areas north of Scotland and down the west coast are still there as a future possibility.

This is a robbery on a massive and unprecedented scale. No voters please wake up.

I repeat no thanks voters please wake up. You have been lied to – swallow your pride – open your eyes to the facts.

Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. Scotland has even greater resources. No voters you are sending Scotlands wealth down to London to benefit non – Scots.

Cubby

It is my opinion that we have allowed the Britnat media/politicians to convince independence supporters to play down the value of the oil removed from the North Sea to date and potential future revenues. That is what the Britnats want.

The truth is that there is loads of the stuff and loads of revenues. It’s time the truth was shouted from the rooftops – not softly stated in a cringe like fashion. It’s like independence supporters cannot believe it themselves the extent to which Scotland is being ripped off.

Well believe it.

Scotland is being ripped off.

Breeks idea of the clock counting how much oil revenues are going down south is the type of thing needed.

It’s about time all those liars over the last 50 years are also called out. All those Britnats complaining about this or that service not being good enough but at the same time promoting the union that takes all the oil revenues from Scotland.

manandboy

The wholly successful exploitation of North Sea Oil & Gas is down to the blanket suppression of its existence, as with the McCrone Report, kept secret for 30 years, till 2005 when it was ignored, presumably under instructions from Downing St..

In the politics newsmedia, oil and gas are rarely, if ever, discussed, while politicians avoid the subject. It is true to say that Theresa May, by her silence, is apparently pretending that the North Sea Oil & Gas Industry doesn’t exist.

Forget Trident nuclear missiles, State Propaganda is by far the UK Government’s most important weapon.

It is depressing to realise how many of Scotland’s educated classes refuse to believe in Scotland’s vast mineral wealth, while insisting we are so lucky to have the Barnett Formula charity handouts.

Garry Henderson

Just completed a YouGov poll which asked specifically about independence and Scottish Elections including the EU Election.

Capella

Hi Cactus – great video. Maybe the ScotGov should send everybody to Switzerland for a holiday with a travel pass. Trains, buses, boats all co-ordinated and affordable. Why? Because it makes life so much better.

You can’t drive to Zermatt. you have to park down the valley and take the train to Zermatt where you can get around on an electric bus or a horse and carriage.

German lorries travel through Switzerland on their way to Italy. But they have to get on a special train (the Swiss built the railway specially for this) and pay to train the lorries through Switzerland thus saving their motorways. The drivers get to relax and sleep then wake up in Turin etc.

Swiss engineering is first class too. We could learn a lot from them. And people live right up the mountain slopes. Not like Scotland where the population was cleared and herded into the cities.

Cactus

Oil is it, Scottish oil is it, you can bet yer TOP dollar it is.

iScotland’s Oil will be a 100% bonus coming in

It is also God’s oil:
link to youtube.com

We’re leaking it out by the gallons…

Cactus

Capella Yes indeed, that’s the kind of things unrestricted international independent countries around this world do… we look around and see how other places function, then take some of their good ideas back HOME with us, to model, customise and form as part of our own clever transport network infrastructures and way beyond. Then we continue to assess, review and improve upon it (if necessary)

As each unrestricted international independent country continues to learn, share and implements what works for itself… aye give reference to the following…

“There’s no limit to what a man can do, or where he can go, if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”

THIS can only begin when Scotland becomes iScotland

Legerwood

Capella @ 12.36 PM

I am well aware of the state owned companies from Germany and the Netherlands who run rail franchises in the UK. That was my point. They tendered and won contracts to run these services but the idea that BR could have done the same whatever the money poured into it is not credible.

I am also well aware of train services in Europe since I have travelled by train in many European countries as well as in China, India, NZ, Canada and the US. Therefore I do not require the third-hand experience of a YouTube video to know that they have their good points and their bad points. Just like the services in the UK.

geeo

yesindyref2 @1.56pm.

Absolutely, the numbers involved are huge enough without making them bigger, and therefore rubbished by opponents and hard to defend.

galamcennalath

So why did the UK make such a bad job of managing the oil income? Why didn’t it follow a ‘Norway model’ and ensure maximum income for the state? Why does it appear to have handed it all over to oil companies?

The answer is probably very simple and goes right back to the ‘advice’ the UK government received in the McCrone Report. Scottish oil is an existential threat to the continuation of the UK. It was/is absolutely essential that the true value of our oil is hidden from us so the UK could survive as an entity.

The the UK had adopted the same approach to oil as Norway did, the UK itself would have dissolved decades ago.

Cactus

Keeping things in context aye…

Question:

“Is Scotland an unrestricted international independent country?”

Answer:

Nope, Scotland is currently a unrestricted international independent country

————-

Should the Tories try to take Scotland out of Europe, that’ll change to “Scotland is a unrestricted international independent country”

Given half the chance, the Tories would try to have us as:

“Scotland is a unrestricted international independent country

————-

Scotland’s goal:

– To return to being an unrestricted international independent country

CameronB Brodie

Seeing as how this is another CORE issue, I hope I can interest folk in wafer of Political Science. Remember, much of British cultural history is one of supremacist expansionism. I’ve got another paper that goes in to some detail of “implicit associations”, but I don’t want to be a space-hog.

IMHO, British nationalism is a harmful social pathology that is hard to avoid on the subconscious level.

Prejudice and Politics Re-Examined The Political Significance of Implicit Racial Bias

Abstract

As part of a general inquiry into mental mechanisms that operate outside conscious awareness, experimental psychology has recently established the presence and importance of “implicit attitudes.” The purpose of our paper is to compare the roles played by implicit and explicit prejudice in politics.

Relying on two national surveys of the American electorate that included standard measures of implicit and explicit prejudice, we provide a systematic comparison of prejudice’s political effects: for the candidates Americans choose, the policies they favor, the assessments they make of government performance, and the racialized information they absorb. We find that implicit and explicit prejudice provide radically different pictures of racial politics in America.

link to cambridge.org

#WorldMurdoDay

JMD

jfnjw 9.56

“We need to ensure when the next vote happens these people who lied to Scotland about the powers it was going to get are highlighted”.

Unless the SNP and Yes movement get their finger out just how exactly is that going to happen?

CameronB Brodie

I’ve actually got three papers to share now, on fighting prejudice. 😉

#WorldMurdoDay

CameronB Brodie

Second thoughts, I’d better stick them in OT.

#WorldMurdoDay

stewartb

Given the posts on oil & gas matters appearing today, this comparison by the independent Natural Resource Governance Institute in 2015 of the policy/fiscal approaches taken by the UK and Norway to their offshore assets makes for interesting (but hard to bear!) reading. The figures (reproduced below) from this article are startling. Although this is a topic covered in the past by Business for Scotland, an independent source is likely to bring additional weight.

(Source: link to resourcegovernance.org )

“Whilst the geology and resource base in each country is similar, the two countries have taken very different approaches to governance of the sector. Since 1986 the U.K. government has had effectively no direct equity participation in the North Sea and has had a fully private upstream sector, with taxation as the only channel of government revenues from hydrocarbons.

Norway has taken a different approach, with over 50 percent of production coming through Statoil (of which the state owns a majority) and state ownership of assets via the State Direct Financial Interest (SDFI), held through Petoro (wholly owned by the state). Norway generated more than double the revenue the U.K. did from each barrel it produced.”

The NRGI article goes on to note: “For other countries seeking to extract more from their resources this case study suggests a valuable lesson: given political stability and competent institutions, a state can have both a relatively high tax burden on its industry AND direct ownership of assets, AND deliver more revenue for its citizens AND still attract investment.” (With my emphasis.)

And on the actual tax take: “So how much revenue has each country generated from its oil and gas production over the past 45 years? Analysis of official government statistics show that the U.K. generated $470 billion in revenues whilst Norway has generated $1,197 billion since 1971 in real (2014) terms.” Think of the share of this UK revenue gained by Scotland and what might have been … and weep!

And then there is this conclusion: “The $18.8 per barrel extra government revenue Norway enjoyed equates to $727 billion in money of the day terms. On the face of it, this is a staggering sum, equivalent to 35 percent of the U.K.’s national debt stock in 2014.” – and then recall this scale of UK national debt is one whose costs Scotland has also had to bear.

(As far as I can ascertain from the article, these differential benefits accruing to Norway do NOT even include those also being realised through the investments made by Norway’s ‘Oil Fund’.)

Lenny Hartley

Garry Henderson, you gov as well!, i just did a Panelbase one with similar questions, just like a bus you wait for ages then two come along at the same time 🙂

Douglas Mitchell

Breeks says:
23 April, 2019 at 1:00 pm

I have never understood why Westminster has never made a big deal about spending oil revenues on capital projects, infrastructure, schools, housing, hospitals etc.

They make a big deal about tax raised by business, money raised by the Lotto, money raised by individuals or even money raised by the big ticket items such as Red Nose Day etc.

Even more bizarre, nobody seems to ask the question of politicians what is the oil money being spent on. It is like it is some dirty secret that should not be mentioned.

twathater

Auld highlander 10.38am A cracking uplifting video by David Hayman who is also a great Scottish export . If videos like this had been unrestrictedly shown in 2014 we would have won.

That , the oil revenues , and the vast natural resources , gas , water , renewable energy , whisky , gin , tourism , is the reason the establishment will hold broadcasting in its death grip , until we have our own properly funded independent broadcaster to tell the REAL TRUTH the Scottish asleep public will continue its zombie walk into oblivion

When all the sniping and fighting is put to one side this site and it’s contributers are a class above when it comes to information and exposure , eyes on the prize INDEPENDENCE AND DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION

Scot Finlayson

You have got to see oil in the context of price and production goung up and down,

so always go with the average over the years,

from wiki,

`Over the last four decades, 39 billion BOE have been extracted on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS)` = just under 1billion per year

link to tinyurl.com

price has gone from low of $12.80pb to high of $111.63pb

but average over 40 year is just over $50 pb,

link to tinyurl.com

which means $2,000,000,000,000 dollars in someone`s pocket.

f

yesindyref2

@galamcennalath
Let we forget one of the things the UK did with our oil:

link to en.wikipedia.org

yesindyref2

@Scot Finlayson
Absolutely, in your own posting you made that clear. It’s when figures get requoted it accidentally becomes unclear and bit by bit distorted – and then becomes the “new reality”.

Jack collatin

I refuse to allow England to steal any more of our resources, period.
It’s my oil, my water, my energy, my fish, my agriculture, my land.
Now is the Time, now’s the hour.
Who the fuck do Hunt and May think they are?
My colonial masters?
Join me in driving out the invader.
Or are we just to wring our hands anxiously while Mundell and Jackson supervise the loading of plundered Scots booty on to freight trains for shipment South to their Imperial Masters’ coffers?
Our children starve while the rich get ever richer?
It is getting beyond farce, the notion that I need permission from a fat fuck of an Englishman to announce my freedom from tyranny and oppression.
Had enough. Driven beyond reason now.

CameronB Brodie

yesindyref2
And that feeds in to “system justification”.

galamcennalath

Norway has Equinor previously known as Statoil, but let us not forget the UK had British National Oil Corporation which Thatcher sold off in 1982. At the time we assumed … ‘fast buck’, to help a near bankrupt economy. However, there was almost also an element of hiding the wealth from the Scots.

link to en.m.wikipedia.org

CameronB Brodie

Jack collatin
….and breath in….and breath out. It’s not the fault of British nationalists that their world view is harmful to the well-being of Scotland. Social identity isn’t a thing that most folk considered. Then you have the BBC in Scotland, framing Scotland and all things Scottish as parochial and shite.

Principles of Social Psychology – 1st International Edition
3. The Self
The Social Self: The Role of the Social Situation

link to opentextbc.ca

galamcennalath

The Telegraph tells us (from behind paywall) ….

” Brexit latest news: Theresa May accuses Labour of dragging its feet in compromise talks as Jeremy Corbyn says PM is still refusing to budge “

… or to put it another way, there is no Brexit news.

May gives the distinct impression that her idea of compromise is to get the other side to agree with her position by stating it over and over again.

Corbyn must be listening to the polls. If he I is true to form and puts party before country then he has no incentive to help the Tories out. He wants them to fall and an election to follow.

They have days to make progress or there must be EU elections. Those will not go well for either Lab or Tories.

mike cassidy

galamcennalath

Don’t forget English local elections on 3 May.

Perfectly not timed for the Scottish Tory Conference starting the day after.

And which sees the return of Jesus…eh Ruth Davidson

link to archive.is

link to archive.is

Cactus

Hehe ah just realised what our shared sixth sense is called…

“The Indy Sense!”

That’s an Indy sensation 🙂

Ahm renaming the Pineal gland to the Indy sense:
link to en.wikipedia.org

Ra is shining

Capella

@ Douglas Mitchell – what you fail to understand is that our oil is worthless. It costs a fortune to extract and then decommission. It comes from terra incognito and nobody knows where that is.

Westminster pays for all this. So count yourself lucky that you don’t have a huge invoice for the effort they expend on our behalf.
Ungrateful wretch. 🙂

Dr Jim

Thank goodness we’re blessed in Scotland with world class broadcasters like Bryan Taylor who despite having zero knowledge of the First Ministers statement tomorrow because it’s a secret, Bryan is able to phsychically tell us every word

Or on STV they had Archie McPherson who was happy to inform the nation that if it hadn’t been for him and his broadcasting Celtic football club would never have had Billy McNeil, he came from the same place as Archie y’know, and Archie gave him a job in broacasting, and taught him how to do it, who was I talking about again, Oh aye Archie McPherson talking about a fella that played for somebody or other, he was British y’know

Dr Jim

*Scotoil* wonder why nobody ever thought of that, or did they

starlaw

Back in the day we had Scottish oils This was the amalgamation of all the small shale oil companies. Eventually taken over by BP.

Republicofscotland

Dr Jim @ 6.56pm

Lets not miss out the appearance of Michael Kelly, of Glasgows Miles Better fame, but only if its part of the union. I half expected John Reid to pop into view.

Brian Doonthetoon

Hi starlaw.

Typing about “Scottish oils”. These two snippets are from the following link.

“The company was founded as the Rangoon Oil Company IN GLASGOW (my emboldening) in 1886 by David Sime Cargill to develop oil fields in the Indian subcontinent.
In the late 1890s, it passed into the ownership of Sir Campbell Kirkman Finlay, whose family already possessed vast colonial interests through their trading vehicle James Finlay and Co.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Burmah Oil became an early and major shareholder in Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) – later Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then British Petroleum and eventually BP. It restricted its downstream interests to the Indian subcontinent, where BP had no business interests.

In 1923, the company gave £5,000 (£236,000 in 2011 money)[2] to future Prime Minister Winston Churchill to lobby the British government to allow them sole control over oil resources in Persia.”
and
“In 2000, Burmah-Castrol was acquired by the then BP Amoco (now renamed BP).”

link to en.wikipedia.org

Jack collatin

Dr Jim @ 6.56 pm.
Both STV and BBC Propaganda Wings of the Brit Nats referred to Billy McNeill as ‘British’, not Scottish.
Like conquered slaves of the Roman Empire,who were ‘Roman’ by conquest, Scots are British by dint of conquest by ‘England/Britain’,’
They even denied this truly Great Scotsman his birth right in death.
Fuck you all, ye ‘Britons’.

Lenny Hartley

Brian doonthetoon, Denis Thatcher was a senior executive at Burmah, strange that the only Scottish Oil company went tits up on the eve of the North sea boom

Maid_in_Scotland

“It’s my oil, my water, my energy, my fish, my agriculture, my land.”, says Jack collatin @ 5.47.

Noo hang on a wee minute there, Jack. You and I know that as Scots, we are expected to ‘pool and share’ all our wealth. Wisnae that what ScotLab told us way back in 2014, and being good little weans, many obeyed, said “Aye”, and voted “Naw”. EngLab on the other hand, in the guise of the great Marxist/Communist/Leftie/Internationalist/Brexiteer/Whatever, Mr Jeremy C, (and his many buddies), believes that pooling and sharing is for everybody else, but not for England.

CameronB Brodie

It is indeed unfortunate for Scottish culture, that Scotland is joined in political union with England, and England is wedded to an historically-bound self-imagination and Anglo-American neo-liberalim.

The Psychological Spectrum: Political Orientation and its Origins in Perception and Culture

Abstract

Rightists need difference,
Leftists, similarity;
But both need culture.

In this paper I employ a simple methodological innovation to test the relationships between political orientation, perception and culture. Previous studies have indicated that right-wing policy stances are related to the wish to sustain order and hierarchy and to disgust sensitivity, and that left-wing policy stances reflect a need for novelty, equality and autonomy. This relationship is not universally constant, however, but varies between cultural environments. Previous literature is limited by its reliance on Western convenience samples, a bias against scrutiny of the political left, and a lack of cross-cultural and cross-situational comparisons.

Use of representative survey data for this purpose has been hindered by the lack of psychological variables. I overcome this difficulty by producing a new psychometric measure, an average measure of the extent to which individuals provide polarised responses to Likert scales. Using this variable in an analysis of Wave 6 of the World Values Survey, I find evidence to support the claim that political opinions are intimately linked with classification of similarity and difference, and with cultural context.

Keywords: ideology, perception, politics, opinion, psychology, culture

link to ujpir-journal.com

Fireproofjim

Jack Collatin
Hi, Jack. Like you I hold no brief for the BBC, but to be fair, it is a fact that Billy McNeill WAS the first British player to lift the European Cup, and I don’t think this was an attempted put down for Scotland as they gave a fair summing up of his career a Celtic and Scotland player.
Nobody could be in any doubt that he was Scottish.

Dr Jim

Sky news reported McNeil as British as well

The other day Sky news talked about Englishman Paul Scholes which would be correct

There was also a question on the Chase quiz show about someone’s nationality and the answer was *British* You can say someone comes from Britain you might even suggest incorrectly someone is British, but nobody’s nationality is British, you can’t be born from four countries simultaneously, it’s like refusing to call a Frenchman French and substituting european for nationality

CameronB Brodie

It is also unfortunate for Scottish culture that the human mind is not always a reliable source of reason. Remember, a sense of self-preservation is a foundational component of being a rational individual. Subsequently, I expect the BBC in Scotland will downplay the threat posed to Scotland by the full-English Brexit.

Attitude Moralization: Probably Not Intuitive or Rooted in Perceptions of Harm

Abstract

People vary in the extent to which they imbue attitudes with moral conviction, and this variation is consequential. Yet we know relatively little about what makes people’s feelings about a given attitude object transform from a relatively nonmoral preference to a moral conviction. In this article, we review evidence from two experiments and a field study that sheds some light on the processes that lead to attitude moralization.

This research explored the roles of incidental and integral affect, cognitive factors such as recognition of harm, and whether attitude-moralization processes can occur outside conscious awareness or require some level of conscious deliberation. The findings present some challenges to contemporary theories that emphasize the roles of intuition and harm and indicate that more research designed to better understand moralization processes is needed.

Keywords morality, emotion, intuition, harm, moral conviction, dyadic morality, social intuitionism

link to journals.sagepub.com

P.S. for those that have the time and are interested, it might be worth while checking out the links that only link to abstracts and not full documents, as you might be interested in the click-through links that you’ll find.

Mad Unionist

CameronB Brodie. I always liked the term Culture. Is that like the English like sugar in their porridge and we like salt! Are the Carlisle working class different in Culture from the Dumfries working class?

CameronB Brodie

Mad Unionist
My English granny came from near Carlisle, which is reasonably close to Dumfries. I imagine that the culture of that region is a mixed hybrid. Scotland and England do definitely have separate cultures though (see Churches of Scotland and England, for example).

Socrates MacSporran

While we don’t particularly like it, news in the UK is London-centric. So, for the death of a Scottish sportsman to get a mention on the London-based news is pretty big.

It still bugs the English rotten that Celtic were the first team from these islands to win the European Cup, so they muscled-in on a Scottish triumph, putting a Union flag on it.

Celtic’s win was a “British” first, so, it had to be recognised. However, in the eyes of the London media, the main events were the year before: 1966, England winning the World Cup, and the year after, 1968 – Manchester United, albeit a team managed by a Scot – Matt Busby, and with a Scot, Pat Crerand, and three Irishmen, George Best, Shay Brennan and Tony Dunne in the team, winning the same European Cup. This could, like 1966, be sold as an “English” triumph.

It’s nothing personal, it’s what they do in their quest to have everyone believe in the greatness of Mother England.

Dr Jim

Yeah, Mo Farah, Ooops! Sir Mo Farah who lives in Portland Oregon apparently he’s still *British* and he’s adopted all the *British* ways as well

He’s a tax exile

Dave McEwan Hill

Mad Unionist at 930

“Are the Carlisle working class different in Culture from the Dumfries working class?”

Are they different from the working class in Dublin or Paris? Should they all be ruled by London as well? We got tired of this infantile argument a long time ago.

Sarah

O/T

The week before 18th September 2014 the polls showed “Yes” winning.

I don’t agree that the currency issue or any other made that lead disappear.

It was the lies that did it. The Vow, and the Unionists telling old people that their pension would stop the day after a Yes vote.

In my view the approach now should be simple, straightforward, and not hung up on currency or any other detail. I wish and pray that tomorrow’s announcement will state that all countries are equal so Scotland is going to regain its equality. No more trying to bring a hopelessly biased media and political system round to accepting that Scotland’s subservient position is an outrage.

That is my hope.

Mad Unionist

CameronB Brodie. My granny was from Carlisle and moved to Glasgow to obtain work. Her culture was no different from those others in the tenements and her Anglican religion was not a problem. She did apparently call a roll a muffin and she married a Scotsman. My other Scottish granny married a Belfast man who came to Glasgow looking for work and she was a rabbit, twelve weans. They are all buried in Glasgow East End. I think I am a multicultural British bloke! ?

Dr Jim

@Dave McEwan Hill 10:13pm

Have you no sense of history man

Everybody should be ruled by London it’s in their DNA, they’re born to rule they were the master race first and will be again, they just haven’t seemed to get used to the idea that no other countries agree with them

They should have ruled the EU but the Foreign Bastirts wouldn’t let them, see how evil and mean other countries can be when they don’t knuckle under like they’re supposed to

Ungrateful bloody foreigners, they had their chance to be ruled and blew it

Terry callachan

Dr Jim..
Good point about nationality
The British passport states your nationality as British it mentions the town you were born in but it doesn’t say if you are Scottish English Irish or welsh but I’m sure the government record shows which it is.
Under nationality on your passport it says British citizen
Imagine that on a french passport it said European citizen under nationality ,the french wouldn’t allow their country to be erased like that.
Of course England don’t mind the passport saying British because England and it’s westminster government and allies such as the newspapers and BBC continuously refer to British or Britain when they mean English or England they are trying their best to erase Scotland wales Ireland and just call everything English or British with English British being one and the same thing.

Terry callachan

To mad unionist….
When you say your granny is from Carlisle is she English or Scottish or what ?
Saying someone is from a town doesn’t really cut it when talking about nationality
You can be from Carlisle and have Malaysian nationality or Russian nationality or whatever …

dakk

@ british working class 9.30

Sugar or salt in porridge. Dumfries working class or Carlisle working class.

The working class of Baghdad and many more were incinerated and eviscerated by this britnat warmongering union.

Wonder what they took in their porridge.

Mad Unionist

David McEwan Hill. Of course the Irish and French should be ruled from London. Might stop them moaning like the Jocks and give them a sense of humour.

Mad Unionist

Terry callachan. It was during the late nineteenth century until the Irish arrived to take our jobs.

Legerwood

I saw the report on the 6 o’clock news about Mr McNeil and noticed the ‘British’ reference when talking about the European Cup but I felt they had to do it that way so that there would not be any doubt that it was a Scottish team, Celtic, that had been the first team in the UK to win the European Cup.

If they had said, ‘the first Scottish player…’ then to anyone who did not know football history it would have suggested that another team from the UK, most likely an English one, had lifted the Cup before Celtic.

Saying first British player left no doubt that Celtic were the first in UK to lift that Cup and the rest of the report covering the Lisbon Lyons left no doubt about that.

Dr Jim

@Terry callachan 10:12pm

Because of the EU I’ve travelled backwards and forwards all over the place and never had to show my passport hardly ever

The Brits are now going to experience a whole new level of displaying their passport and having it checked thoroughly everywhere they go much more than ever it used to be before we joined the EU because customs will not be smiling and welcoming like they used to be

Because that Brit country will be out of the club so will be immigrants in the same category the Brits put immigrants in if they come here

I wonder how quickly the flood of returning *expats* (stupid expression) will start because they’re not being treated like the proper Brits they think they deserve to be

Terry callachan

To Sarah….
Good point.
I think it would be easy for the SNP to say that they will increase state pensions by 50% overnight once Scotland is independent it wouldn’t be too costly 3 billion or less ,compare it with the hundreds of billions spent on trident.
State pension is only about £150 a week at present which is £7500 a year so increasing it by 50% would mean an increase of about £75 a week max just over £3500 a year.
There are about a million pensioners in Scotland
Not all get state pension for various reasons
Announcing such a state pension increase on independence would change a lot of NO,s to YES overnight

Jack collatin

“The first man to lift the European Cup for a British side has a special place in world football.”
From the Hootsman. QED, Fireproofjim @8.39.
It is trailed as a ‘British’ triumph, lumping us in with England/Britain, not a Scottish triumph, whereas Man U was the first English team to win the Cup in ’68.
But you know what I’m getting at.
When Murray first won Wimbledon the Great Unwashed watched from Henman Hill.
Murray was ‘the first British player since..’ rather than the first Scottish Player ever to’.
Scotland’s triumphs are tributes to modern Rome, London, and the English Establishment.
Why was McNeill hailed as the ‘first Scot’ to lift the trophy?
Because Scotland is Shite, and McNeill a colonial serf of Great England?

Mad Unionist

Dr Jim. I travelled with my ten Bob Post office passport all over Europe before we joined the EEC and never had it checked. It is not the passport but who runs Scotland and the UK. If you want to give up the Scottish Parliament and let the EU run Scotland then propose it.

Jack collatin

Just looked it up: Quote: “United’s win meant that they became the first English team to win the European Cup, just a year after Celtic had become the first British team to do so.”
Scotland no more, we’re ‘British’, but Manchester is ‘English’.
Fireproofjim @8.39 pm.
You get my point now?

Terry callachan

To Dr Jim.

Very true.
I’m 63 now I can still remember the delays and questions when travelling overseas before we had freedom of movement being an HM Forces family we travelled a lot overseas and it took a long time to get through passport checks.
I was actually overseas when my mother died she was in Dundee Scotland I was in Greece, I had to go to the British embassy in Greece and get a letter from the high commissioner personally signed by him confirming my reason for leaving Greece earlier than I had said I would be leaving when questioned on length of stay on entry.
I then had to take the letter to the Greek police and only after that was I allowed to book a flight out of Greece it took me 36 hours to get back to Dundee.
It’s not just getting into a country that will be more difficult after brexit it will also be more difficult getting home.

CameronB Brodie

Mad Unionist@ 10:12pm
My granny ran away from service at 14 and found work in Dundee’s mills and yes, you appear to have a mixed heritage. You also appear not to grasp the time-line of cultural significance. Scotland was an independent nation for roughly a millennia before union with England.

Three centuries later, England’s larger population, the outdated British constitution and a blind eye to illegal political practice, now threatens to undermine Scotland’s economy and social environment. It also annihilates the principles of the Treaty of Union. Where is the protection of my human rights? Remember, “harm prevention” is the most compeling of moral and legal arguments.

Moral Complexity

Abstract

Recently, intuitionist theories have been effective in capturing the academic discourse about morality. Intuitionist theories, like rationalist theories, offer important but only partial understanding of moral functioning. Both can be fallacious and succumb to truthiness: the attachment to one’s opinions because they “feel right,” potentially leading to harmful action or inaction. Both intuition and reasoning are involved in deliberation and expertise. Both are malleable from environmental and educational influence, making questions of normativity-which intuitions and reasoning skills to foster-of utmost importance.

Good intuition and reasoning inform mature moral functioning, which needs to include capacities that promote sustainable human well-being. Individual capacities for habituated empathic concern and moral metacognition-moral locus of control, moral self-regulation, and moral self-reflection-comprise mature moral functioning, which also requires collective capacities for moral dialogue and moral institutions. These capacities underlie moral innovation and are necessary for solving the complex challenges humanity faces. © The Author(s) 2010.

link to researchgate.net