Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
If you’re still falling for this idiot-fodder after seven years, give yourself a shake.
Because for the love of Christ, an orangutan would have twigged by now. And we’re not talking about the long-suffering fans of Dundee United.
In today’s Sunday Times, it’s revealed that Humza Yousaf would actually TURN DOWN a second indyref if it was offered by the Tories.
Now, that’s a mischievous question about something that isn’t going to happen. But in a sane world, it would and should still be an instant resignation matter for any leader of the SNP. The leader of the SNP should be prepared to do a deal with Satan himself and all his little minions in the name of Scotland’s independence.
But we don’t live in a sane world. According to Yousaf we live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Because if the Tories are never going to concede a Section 30, and he’d refuse even if they did, why does he keep begging them for one?
(It’s not a “demand” if you just meekly scuttle away every time they say no.)
By saying there are no circumstances under which the SNP would deal with the Tories even for an indyref, Yousaf is of course setting fire to any faint hopes he might have of leverage with Keir Starmer in the event of a hung Parliament at the next UK election – a point so staggeringly, mind-shreddingly obvious that even John McTernan couldn’t manage to be wrong about it.
And any remaining microscopic fragments of sense the stance might have made are obliterated entirely when you factor in Yousaf’s own assertion barely a week ago that Labour are a “replica” of the Tories anyway.
His only objection to the Tories appears, ironically, to be their colour. (Although having an objection to blue is we suppose at least a change from him hating white stuff.)
The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the SNP being willing to deal with the Tories would be electorally toxic. That’s, allegedly, why Nicola Sturgeon didn’t use her arithmetical power over Theresa May to either secure another indyref or at least get Scotland some Northern Ireland-style Brexit concessions in 2019.
But the SNP did deals with the Tories at Holyrood from 2007-2011 to pass their budgets when they only had 47 MPs, and it didn’t prove electorally toxic at all. Indeed, after four years of doing so the party secured a historic landslide and the only majority in Scottish Parliament history. Sensible people recognise political realities.
The idea that independence supporters would be outraged at any deal that delivered a second referendum is so self-evidently absurd that it’s an insult to the intelligence. Putting the Tories in power at Westminster is completely irrelevant if you’ve taken Scotland out of Westminster’s control.
(We don’t recall anyone minding that the first indyref came from a Tory government.)
Meanwhile if England wants to vote for Tories, England should get Tories. It’s not our business to deny England democracy. That’s the very thing we’re angry about them doing to us. It’s the utmost hypocrisy.
If the ONLY thing you care about is keeping the Tories out no matter what and putting Labour in power, then you should just join the sodding Labour Party and be done with it. The only hitch is that there’s a bit more competition for tickets on that gravy bus.
Just days ago, the SNP’s (cough cough cough) “Minister For Independence” said this:
But you DON’T hold the balance of power if you’re only willing to deal with one side, and you’ve told everyone that in public. You’ve just folded your hand before any of your opponents have made a bet. You’ve told the Tories not to bother offering you anything, and you’ve told Labour you’ll back them even if they give you nothing. You are the worst poker player in the history of the universe.
(As an aside, you could of course also pull a double-cross: do a deal with the Tories, get your referendum, and if you lose it just renege on the deal and trigger a vote of no confidence to get them out. Who’d be mad at you?)
The very BEST interpretation of the current leadership of the SNP is that they’re utterly spectacular buffoons, on a scale of spectacular buffoonery so dizzyingly enormous in its magnitude that you’d need to travel to the Moon and look back at Earth through a telescope to fully comprehend it.
But that would still be a naively over-generous assessment. The truth is that the party, more and more openly every day, has totally abandoned independence as a concept and settled for devolution and personal enrichment.
They are – in every possible sense of a word this site does not use lightly and has only ever uttered once before in its eleven and a half years – traitors.
They have taken the blood and the sweat and the tears and the votes and the hopes and the dreams of independence supporters and sold them for money and power, every bit as much as the treacherous “nobles” of 1707 did. And at least when the latter did so they were genuinely under duress.
And if you still can’t see that after today, you’re beyond any hope of salvation.
It’s become obvious now that Humza Yousaf is completely devoid of political skills. Not is there evidence of any logic.
At last, ("Tractor" - Ed)s! For sure, and certainly buffoons – with a giant apology to buffoons!
HY: Give us a Section 30 (even with the loaded franchise).
RS: Oh, you want a deal?
HY: Deal? No, no deal! (scuttles away..)
RS: Was going to say NO anyway (sniggers…)
Just how clueless are this lot? Yet the media will support their taking the piss out of as many of us as possible for at least the duration of the summer or until NS is safely tucked away – either in her fab new UN job or the pokey.
How, in the name o the wee man, did it come to this?
The bad faith actor Tawdry Hepburn must sit most of the day at his ‘indy minister’ desk just twiddling his thumbs.
Because if the Tories are never going to concede a Section 30, and he’d refuse even if they did, why does he keep begging them for one?
Catch 22?
Bought and sold etc.
I think we should lighten up on Humza. If he resigns, it’s over to Robison.
Actually, fk it.
Fk ’em all.
A brilliantly written article.
The current state of the SNP broken down and laid bare for all to see using impeccable logic.
And the last couple of paragraphs deliver a powerful punch to the gut in summing up just what the SNP has become, and what it has done to the hopes and dreams of all independence supporters.
There is no other word in the English language which describes the SNP more accurately than – ("Tractor" - Ed)s.
Where do I sign up for a winner takes all poker game with yousless?
That guy is the clowns clown.
We need a hard reset on Indy ASAP.
SNP must cease to exist.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison
Never wear your best trousers (or suit) when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen
This country needs an enema.
I’m glad we are finally going to start calling the nuSNP cowards who betrayed the independence movement – Traitors.
They should all hang their heads in eternal shame.
I also applaud the use of the term ‘Vichy Scots’ for those who favour ‘greater England’ and endless English rule.
Humza is a Vichy Scot ("Tractor" - Ed). He deserves all that is coming.
Exactly, Sturgeon could have extracted a deal out of Theresa May regards Brexit. According to Robin McAlpine, multiple Civil Service contacts told him various options were prepared in advance of Sturgeon’s first post-Brexit summit with PM May. Sturgeon stamped her wee feet and squweemed “No Brexit”. The options were removed from the table before they were ever discussed.
A Northern Ireland deal was entirely possible. N.I. has four designated Customs points of entry (as far as EU trade is concerned). That’s Belfast Port, Larne ferry terminal, Warrenpoint container terminal and Belfast International Airport (due to the Irish / UK free movement area, the EU only concerns themselves with freight traffic).
Northern Ireland has a population of 1.9m, a combined N.I. / Scotland entity would have a population of 7.4m and on a pro rata basis would be “entitled” to 15 Customs points of entry.
Customs checks at Larne would be superfluous (N.I. / Scotland trade only), leaving 12 Customs posts for Scotland. Subtract Grangemouth docks; Glasgow, Edinburgh, Prestwick and Aberdeen airports, this leaves 7 potential Customs posts to cover the Solway / Tweed border. With only two main logistical arteries on the land border, joining Northern Ireland in “the best Brexit deal ever” was entirely feasible.
As a bonus, Scots rendered nervous by decades of Unionist propaganda would get used to having a “hard border” at Gretna and Berwick-upon-Tweed. A border with negligible impact on their daily lives.
Sadly what Flynn has in mind regarding more powers is more money to spend on their woke agenda.
Not powers that will lead us up the path to independence.
But to be fair to them they are only following the American new model of democracy which is to concentrate meaningful power (war, trade etc ) in the hands of politicians bought by capitalists and their corporate vehicles and leave the fluff to ‘democratically elected’ spongers.
Their mission..replace workers with AI and machines and place them on a living wage that allows them to watch Netflix all day while eating take away food.
The corporates will of course help pay this living wage from their astronomical profits … in the hope they will generate a useless zombie society that cares nought for anyone else and is powers to do anything about it.
The SNP leadership seemed to be obsessed with dressing up.
They idolise the cross-dresser and they themselves dress up as supporters of independence when they are nothing of the sort.
Reminds me of the episode of Black Books when Bernard became obsessed with playing poker. He was so rubbish at it the others in the poker school nicknamed him The Goldmine.
In my (imaginary) independent Scotland, there will be a Conservative Party, a Labour Party, a Liberal Party, a Socialist Party, maybe even a Green Party.
There will not be an SNP or an ALBA.
Why no SNP, no ALBA?
Because if you get the painters in to decorate the sitting room, they do not stay on to sit round your fire and drink your tea and eat your scones. They do the job and then vanish.
SNP/ALBA have one job to to do and that is to bring about independence as quickly as possible. They then need to vanish as they have demonstrated broadly, widely, in detail, and at vast expense that running a country is far beyond them.
I don’t bother visiting WGD anymore (not done so for many years) so does anyone who does know what the folk who post there actually think of the direction of the SNP? Maybe that’s some barometer of wider indy supporting mood.
“YES” facebook pages are awash with increasing numbers of dissatisfied indy supporters, with some seemingly full-time SNP posters desperately decrying “Abla” and begging for people to join the SNP. Quite a few yes site admins (I have personal experience of two situations like this) are kicking out the dissatisfied.
Out on the streets, I’m not sure. You’re never sure what kind of online bubbles you’re inhabiting and I haven’t been involved in door-to-door stuff since 2021 when, at that time, SNP were still the choice of the indy supporter.
They have no skin in the game which is why they do not prioritize their reason for existing. It’s a win/win for the gravy train as long as the sheep keep voting for them. Hopefully once the truth of the 600k comes out it will be a mass extinction event as currently this mob need to be nowhere near the Indy movement.
Cant disagree with anything, they truly are ("Tractor" - Ed)s in every sense
Any deal with the Tories is tantamount to political suicide ask the Lib Dems and the DUP
Rogues in a Nation – 1707
Rogues in a Nation – 2023.
Funny how history repeats its self.
You would think, people would cotton on.
Personally – I think Humaz is crapping himself, as was Nicola.
Vivian O’Blivion says:
21 May, 2023 at 11:53 am
Exactly, Sturgeon could have extracted a deal out of Theresa May regards Brexit.
Neither Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon care about their dumb voters, or have any interest in doing anything whatsoever for their benefit.
Our problem is not the colour of the rosette, it’s the people wearing rosettes who are the problem. Politicians have gone feral and no longer answers to the electorate. If you vote the “wrong” way, they’ll simply ignore you or call you a transphobe or whatever.
“We will use the powers of devolution to the maximum”
Is that Humza’s version of “Devo Max”?
Because I wasn’t aware Scotland’s individual powers came with an inbuilt volume dial. Either you use the powers or you don’t.
What a clown.
It’s Sunday, everyone has more time to read the “newspapers” and as we all have known for quite a while, MPs and MSPs as well as other sundry characters such as “journalists” regularly read WOS.
The Winds of Change are coming and the SNP can’t avoid the fact that it’s now a party of “Traytors” “Tractors”, lap-dogs of England and dedicated to the gravy train.
Ash, Fergus, Joanna and maybe one or two others, if you don’t get out now from the dead duck SNP then you’ll have to go down with the rest of them.
Independence is not just a word you can read in a dictionary, it has a meaning for the Scots and Scotland.
It’s what we want and we need the fighters for it, are you with us or against. It’s time for you to decide.
“Because for the love of Christ, an orangutan would have twigged by now.”
Don’t diss the orangutans! 🙂 They aren’t that slow.
The only task independence supporters have now, given the SNP are a devolutionist party, is to inform the low info voters that the SNP are a busted flush and are doing a “Labour – vote for us for home rule and abolition of HoLs” con job.
I’ll be very interested to see the turnout at the Stirling AUOB march!
Stop trolling Mr Slippers, you will upset him again. I really want wait until that git gets voted out. I really want to see that.
“The very BEST interpretation of the current leadership of the SNP is that they’re utterly spectacular buffoons”…..
…..And if you still can’t see that after today, you’re beyond any hope of salvation.”
On the first of the above two observations the best that could be said is that the SNP leadership are not outliers or a bug but part of a wider long standing manufactured feature of the cultural Zeitgeist within this part of the planet.
The same ‘buffoonship’ is endemic everywhere you look and in everything you encounter at every level.
Which brings us to the second of those above two observations. An observation which can be explained thus: that having managed out of the system all experience, expertise, knowledge, nous, and gumption those establishment elites responsible for this have created a populace which is in the main made in their own image.
The kindest description being that of a complete absence of gorm across most of the landscape.
Anyone not completely gormless who raises their head above the parapet with pre-postmodernist concepts such as facts and empirical observable evidence which shows up whatever bullshit narrative is being sold – from the incomprehensible SNP pseudo-independence narrative to the selectively use self-id narrative and everything in-between – is cancelled. Not just by the mob manufactured for that purpose but also the establishment institutions and organisations behind them.
To paraphrase Pepe Escobar……
(https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/05/20/adventures-in-natostan-sparks-flying-in-ibiza-locked-down-bilderberg-in-lisbon/
….when confronted with facts which show the narrative to be completely without either merit or foundation in reality those selling such nonsensical narratives become livid and barely manage to stutter.
“Asked if the conservatives made such an offer Yousaf said: “First of all, they would never do that, and, second, we will never make a deal with the Tories”
This has a very strong whiff of deja vu. It brings back vivid memories of 2015, when the political fraud Sturgeon was attempting to fly the lead balloon of a deal with Labour to keep the tories out. At that point there were also delusions, or rather pretence, of ever holding the balance of power. It was all bollocks, of course.
Information on the polls at that time pointed towards a labour win. However, the political fraud’s strategy of flaunting a deal Labour was not prepared to agree to in collusion with a rather genius marketing strategy by the conservatives, which put Milliband on Mr Salmond’s pocket, was very effective. It trashed labour in England.
One cannot help but wondering if the exact same old strategy of collusion between the SNP and the tories is being deployed here. If that is the case, in due course we will start to see the beginnings of another tory marketing campaign depicting Starmer under the SNP control.
They have plenty of material to choose from, for instance, they can just depict Yousaf driving the campervan and Starmer sitting in the copilot’s seat.
There is something in Yousaf’s words that stands out and is both, his conviction the tories will never offer indyref and then his reaffirmation that he would never do a deal with the tories anyway.
Yousaf is purposely limiting the possibility of indyref to the existence of a deal with labour and with labour only. First of all, labour has to make it to n10. It would not do so if a collusion strategy between the SNP and tories like that deployed in 2015 works. Second, the SNP has to be the only party labour can choose from to form a deal. That is most unlikely. It is far more likely the establishment would guarantee tory rebels onf demand for the crucial votes. Thirdly, labour has to agree to such deal. They will never do that.
It seems to me Humza is just ensuring indyref never comes about.
Ensuring the conservatives win will mean Yousaf can sit on his backside for the remainer of his government term confident that nobody would blame him for not pushing for indyref because he already made crystal clear the conservatives would not agree to it and he would not make a deal with the tories, anyway.
Sounds an awful lot like what Sturgeon would do. Continuity candidate indeed.
There is no future for the SNP. Our only hope is a new independence party. A party
Which brings all independence supporters together.
If this doesn’t happen soon , then Scotland is lost forever. Where are the brave souls in the SNP,willing to risk all to free Scotland?
Despite everything. They still sit in WM and Holyrood doing nothing. Watching the SNP sell out our nation. Watching their party morph into Scot/Labour. How can these people see this happen to our country and do nothing.
I call out Angus McNeil, Jo Cherry, Fergus Ewing…the lot of them. They are all as useful as a chocolate fireguard. They do the talk, criticise,call out everything the SNP are doing wrong. But there is zero action.
Judge a man by his deeds, not by his words.
Plus ca change, plus c’ast la meme chose, as they say in Dundee.
What did anybody expect from the SNP, and Humza in particular?
The Duggers and the National will try to justify anything they do or say. Even Peter Bell clings to the hope that they can be pushed into change. If a man of his intellect cannot see the problem, what hope is there that the sheeple will?
The only politician who could read the runes was Alex Salmond. He saw what the SNP had become and was about to sort it out, so Sturgeon had to dream up a plan to sideline him, and persuade her mates to step up to the line and make allegations against him.
Only when the full truth comes out about what happened, and the identities of the liars is made known, will there be any chance of holding the SNP to account.
Until then it will be business as usual, and Scotland will continue to pay the price.
It is Scotland’s abiding shame that this situation has been allowed to continue for so long.
The one way to get an s30 would be where in the rUK alone the Tories had a majority and only with the SNP backing them up would they have that majority UK wide. Probably then only having a handful of MPs in Scotland would persuade them that independence would suit them personally regardless of the impact the loss of our resources would on the rUK. After all being able to profit from a recession is one of their talents.
Y’all know you are being played, don’t you?
You do don’t you?
Of course the BBC, with their usual finger to the pulse, says “Opposition parties have criticised the SNP’s renewed focus on independence”.
The BBC are easily fooled, it seems.
I think there is prima facies case for the SNP being seen as treacherous and ("Tractor" - Ed)s. Question is, where now?
The BBC still punts the line that a lone gunman shot JFK.
Stop listening to the BBC.
Lloyd Quinan made an excellent point of today’s Scottish Prism.
Just imagine, in a parallel universe of course, that prior to appearing on BritNat Question Time, that Alex Salmond and Mairi McAllan had spoken before going on air and used the exposure on BritNat TV to announce an Independence Convention for all pro Independence parties, political and otherwise…
You’d have seized the initiative, wrong footed the propagandists, and put Independence right at the top of the agenda, and changed the entire political landscape of Scotland.
If only….
https://www.barrheadboy.com/through-a-scottish-prism-21-05-23/
Johnlm says:
21 May, 2023 at 1:29 pm
The BBC still punts the line that a lone gunman shot JFK.
Stop listening to the BBC.
Oh, I’m not, don’t worry. I just think it’s funny how far off the mark they continually demonstrate they are.
I can feel your anger coming off the page Stuart. I and many others share that anger. Buffoons they are, and treacherous too, but don’t forget who gave them their jobs. A smug little rat who now seems to feel protected from any retribution for her actions.
As for Yusaf, the only time that I felt he was being sincere was when a few years ago he made that anti white speech.
I bring desperately bad news for the SNP.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rv-bust-worsens-dealers-discount-trailers
We need Independence. Immediately. Zelensky. The cuddly hero puppet. We’re getting dragged in more every day. 2 snacks stoking a trade war with China.
Stephen Flynn. It was honour to meet you Zelensky. It was an honour. Here’s more weapons. 300,000 dead. More weapons from the G7, love Joe Biden.
We need Independence now before the World explodes.
There’s to be a Westminster election in under 18 months.
I wonder how the electoral maths is going to play out, with perhaps 50% of the SNP vote disappearing to Alba or other parties. Given the nature of the first past the post system, it’s quite possible that there won’t be more than a dozen MPs in Westminster who belong to a party with a pro-independence policy. That means that any chance of an indyref is effectively dead.
The SNP senses the approach of its imminent demise.
Obviously at an instinctive level, because there’s no discernible intellectual activity.
It thrashes wildly about in a vain attempt to restart its heart.
But the SNP’s heart has gone out of it.
The independence movement was the heart of the SNP, and that heart has abandoned it in search of a more deserving host.
The SNP’s frantic, twitching death spasms are like those of an organism desperately gulping down its final breaths.
In time, possibly soon, it will finally expire, at least as a political party with any credibility, much in the way of native support, or any real influence in Scotland, and will be no more.
And who will mourn its passing?
Anyone?
You can do a deal with the devil if it allows you the chance to escape the devil’s clutches.
Scotland is currently devoid of ANY political nous.
“But the SNP did deals with the Tories at Holyrood from 2007-2011 to pass their budgets…Sensible people recognise political realities.”
“And if England wants to vote for Tories, England should get Tories. It’s not our business to deny England democracy. That’s the very thing we’re angry about them doing to us. It’s the utmost hypocrisy.”
“You are the worst poker player in the history of the universe.”
Completely spot on, Stuart, and a flawless analysis, full of quotable quotes! They are hypocrites of the highest order and don’t have two brain cells to rub together between them. The SNP should be using every expediency at their disposal to gain independence, not drowning themselves in fallacies and imbecilities and telegraphing their intentions.
As someone wrote on another forum, “If you vote for clowns, expect a circus!”
Quoting the BBC is part of the game.
The BBC claim ‘impartiality’ but they present the (biased) newspaper headlines on TV each night which conveniently sets the agenda for the next 24hrs.
Do not be steered by the BBC.
@David Hannah 2:08
If the world explodes, Scotland explodes with it.
You will be familiar with the definition of a “Little Englander”? Maybes you use it yourself as an abusive term?
Careful you don’t turn into a Little Scotlander.
@Antoine Bisset
Agreed, also the SNP should never have stood for the Holyrood assembly. Domestic political parties for domestic politics. Independence parties should fight Westminster elections only, until they achieve their objective then disappear.
Yousaf still calling the shots, then?
Such a pity nobody had the balls, nous, commitment, gumption, regard for scrupulous legality, [insert your own nouns of choice] to mount a serious challenge to the flawed and fraudulent process that put him in charge.
Just think. A serious, law-abiding, democracy would now be in the final stages of a re-run of the election. Open and transparent this time. No SNP meddling in the process. No lies over the voting and membership numbers. No resignations half way through. No collars being felt by the polis.
Just think. Maybes Regan in pole position this time.
But naw. In the full gaze of the entire world, Scotland’s population meekly accepted the political coronation of the Pretendy Continuity Incompetence Candidate. In the full gaze of the entire world, Scotland’s arrogant and untouchable political and legal establishments closed ranks to protect their own.
Everybody in Scotland tacitly agreed that this corrupted travesty is still good enough for the likes of us.
It did not have to be like that.
But it is. Too late now to start complaining that he’s shite.
What is the true state of the SNP, well if you find Horsebox HQ you’ll get your answer.
It sounds like sheer desperation to me from the Rag and Yousless, I heard wolf far to many times.
@David Hannah (2.08) –
Looks like it’s your turn to get the Main treatment. Yesterday it was Tinto Chiel.
It’s a real shame we can’t discuss this stuff properly.
Hey-ho, so it goes…
Just been having a talk with some people I know who are SNP members, I’m amazed that all the shenanigans over disappeared money, the pact with the greens and so much time and energy spent on social deviance, has had little effect on these people. They would still willingly die for Sturgeon who has the aura of Sainthood about her.
We must be totally without hope now as there looks like a whitewashing operation on the horizon, are Police Scotland really involved in the corruption or are we in wings deluding ourselves about what motivates the people of Scotland?
It’s very quiet here today. A Sunday is usually livelier than this.
@vivian o’blivion
I was unaware of just how much T May had offered Sturgeon.
What a bloody fool she was.
An idiot of the first order.
Had she accepted the deal, Scotland would’ve been in a much stronger position today.
It’s no accident that NI now sees the point of reunification.
They see what a better ecomony they can have away from the UK.
If only Sinn Fein would drop the woke crap.
How about an early morning Dundee visit on route to Stirling
To cheer our leaders as they define the route to Indy!
‘Dirty Rotten Scroundrels’ sounds awfully posh
so does traltor tractor & Vichy Scot.
I checked the online Thesaurus for alternatives. Nothing too exciting there but I’ll setting for
double-crossing snakes for the moment. I’m off to check the ‘Slang & Colloquial Thesaurus’
conspirator
deserter
hypocrite
impostor
informer
renegade
spy
turncoat
Judas
apostate
backslider
betrayer
deceiver
defector
double-crosser
fink
intriguer
miscreant
("Quizmaster" - Ed)
rebel
snake
sneak
snitch
snitcher
squealer
tattletale
traducer
treasonist
two-timer
whistle-blower
wolf
Benedict Arnold
back-stabber
stool pigeon
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this post doesn’t get modded. Finger crossed emoji
Ruby, 3.22pm
Yes. Quiet covers it.
“They have taken the blood and the sweat and the tears and the votes and the hopes and the dreams of independence supporters and sold them for money and power…”
Oh look I got a (“Quizmaster” – Ed) in my last post
("Tractor" - Ed)
("Quizmaster" - Ed)
Going for a double in this post.
@Ian Brotherhood 3:12
OFFS!
If the world explodes, Scotland explodes with it.
Come back to the real world, Ian. I can accept you maybes had a hard time with reality last time around.
But you will be healthier and happier back in the real world for the long term. Trust me on that.
There is no variant of the collapse/destruction/annihilation/defeat of the west that leaves a thriving, vigorous Scotland standing in splendid isolation. Trust me on that too.
Bottom line. No First Minister of Scotland should be considering a Section 30 referendum at all. EVER!
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is too weak.
Think of all the sick children needing operations in Scotland, needing to raise money from the public to go to places like America, like this brave lad:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/jack-dow
Then think of the money stolen from the “ring-fenced” indyfund, the expenditure on campervans, coaching politicians how to lie to parliamentary committees, the salary given to Angus Robertson, payments to useless SPADs (“wee wanks”), the expenses of Mhairi Black and Ian Blackford…
With Scotland’s oil, gas and wind power in its own hands, we could be rich enough to pay for operations for all our sick children – and help out our neighbours as well.
Chief Mammy? Thief Mammy!
Liz,
re NI and the possibility of unifying with the rest of Ireland, I have never been convinced that Dublin welcomes the possibility. It’s good politics in Dublin to talk about it, as it gets you votes, but the implementation of it is difficult. Ireland has become wealthy through offshore taxation, but the costs of taking on NI in terms of health system, social welfare payments, and the need to scale up their security forces are pretty high, as well.
I know an Irish TD quite well: we were friends at university, and are still in touch. He’s privately aghast at the thought, and yet represents a party that is officially a party in favour of a united isle of Ireland.
Some interesting words for (“Tractor” – Ed) in Slang Thesaurus
Judas Worm Tongue
A “Judas Worm Tongue” is a conniving, weasel–like traltor who is a backstabber and has troll-like characteristics. Many times, this person is a co-worker, dysfunctional family member or neighbor.
Judas is from “Judas Iscariot” the buddy and 13th student of Jesus of Nazareth who handed him over to the authorities to be executed for a bag of silver. Worm Tongue is from that nasty “shit stirring,” “dark friend” character in “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Aunt Sarah
Derived from the phrase “Uncle Tom” an Aunt Sarah is a woman who is a ("Tractor" - Ed) to her own gender.
The Scottish version of Aunt Sarah is Chief Mammy
@ Ian Brotherhood 3:12pm
Indeed, Ian.
I see @A Scot Abroad 2:17pm, descendant of the ‘Plunderer of Burma’ and actually King Charles III, as we all now know (how’s Camilla the day, Charles), has spoken.
And, after ruthlessly deploying an undeniably powerful argument, he’s convinced me (in a Borg kind of way) that fighting for Scotland’s independence is fultile.
That’s it for me then. Might as well give up. Ah well, it was ‘fun’ while it lasted.
My great-great-great-great-great… ancestor, Bob (I don’t think he ever met Charles’s), felt the same way sometimes, I’ve been told.
But after having a chat with a spider (I know, whit a bam) he decided to push on.
Of course he never had to deal with @A Scot Abroad so it was a bit easier for him.
Sorry, Bob. Here in the 21st century we Scots have been defeated by a bloke called A Scot Abroad AKA King Charles III.
That’s right, Bob. Hard to believe, I know. Scotland still has a king after all these centuries, allegedly.
Charles was very rude to @Alf Baird on another comments thread in the “Full Ahead Backwards” article.
And because Charles was rude to Alf, I have, once more, included links to Alf’s paper. I can’t get the link to his book to work so I’ve just given the title.
Alf Baird’s Paper: The Socio-Political Determinants of Scottish Independence
Alf Baird’s Paper: Summarised version
Alf’s Book – Doun-Hauden-Socio-Political-Determinants-Scottish-Independence(Kindle version)
Underpinned by a code of conduct.
That’s the current favourite phrase of Cosyfeet Pete. It appears on about every second tweet he makes. It’s like he’s proud of it. He probably thought it up all by himself. Not the “code of conduct” bit of course but the idea of prefacing that with “underpinned by”.
Ruby@3.22
It’s very quiet here today
/
As someone once said –
And the rest is silence
It’s as if the SNP hierarchy is daring independence supporters to abstain or vote for another party.
I’ve NEVER understood what the big deal is about trading with the Tories. However rotten they are, they’re surely no worse than Labour or the LibDems. Labour was, is and remains the functioning definition of “crooked”, but Scots STILL seem to have an “it’s different when putative leftists do it” mentality. That has GOT to stop, or there’s never going to be an independent Scotland. There are thousands of votes to be had from small “c” conservatives in Scotland, but the nationalist movement (because this is not a purely SNP problem) doesn’t seem to want independence unless it’s in the form of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Scotland.
Doug @4:54
“It’s as if the SNP hierarchy is daring independence supporters to abstain or vote for another party.”
Why would any Indy supporter, other than the weak and feeble-minded Wee Ginger Fud types, want to vote for a bunch of Devo-Max troughers like the SNP? I didn’t vote SNP last time – took the spoiled ballot option. Next time, no ALBA candidate, I’ll be voting for whoever is most likely to get Alyn Smith out.
All these nuSNP to$$ers do is put the cause of Indy back, what with all their perversions and corruptions and incompetencies, whilst getting fat off the public purse.
I keep myself positive these days with visions of shaven-headed, tarred and feathered representatives of our Vichy government being marched up the Royal Mile the day after we secure Indy.
The AUOB should change the date of the march and call the SNPs bluff.
I know it might be problematic but it would certainly make the SNP look like what they might be if they still don’t turn out.
Re Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you could have went the musical route and called it Dirty Rotten Imbeciles after the US hardcore band D.R.I. It would have been equally descriptive.
Northcode, at 4:28pm,
I’m not trying to persuade anyone to give up on the idea of an independent Scotland, I’m trying to persuade them to take an intelligent path towards it, if that’s what they want to achieve. And that means putting aside, for the while, endless demands for another S30 referendum, and putting aside forever lunatic ideas if Scotland just skipping away merrily citing some ancient guff that they haven’t understood (the James Che approach), and instead actually sitting down and coming up with credible policies for how an iScotland would peerage in the 21st century of global trade and money, within the world trading order of creditworthiness, trade blocs and tariffs, and so on.
It would probably take 10 or more years to come up with those policies, and when enough Scots are convinced of them, they will lend the indy movement their vote.
“operate”, not “peerage”.
I absolutely hate auto-correct. It’s almost always wrong.
17 years ago today Montenegro held an independence referendum achieved 55.5% Yes vote and thus became independent, recognised by EU and indeed Serbia and the UN. Meanwhile in Scotland Mairi McAllan MSP doesn’t think we should even ask for a referendum until we achieve that level or indeed higher support (she mentioned 60% on QT) in polling…
Just released, new WM SNP House of Commons routine (rara skirt/codpiece/merkin optional) :
Whaddy we want?
Independence *snigger*
When do we want it?
Any time you see fit *touch phalanges*
When you think of it, in late 2019, Boris had a tiny majority and was limping chaotically from day to day in the HoC and then The Sturge and Labour forced an election which gave him a thumping majority of 80+ IIRC.
Tactics will always just be strange wee mints to the clueless/complicit SNP.
Shug
The Stirling march is always held on the nearest Saturday to the 23rd/24th of June to commemorate the Battle of Bannockburn. Humza was invited to attend this year…I don’t know for sure but probably when he was anointed as fixed minister he’d be given all the dates for this years AUOB marches? There are 4 more already planned for this year.Time to take bets on what his excuses will be for them if he’s still in post come July 29th AYR. August 26th ISLE OF SKYE. September 23rd FALKIRK. and October 7th EDINBURGH.
“I’m not trying to persuade anyone to give up on the idea of an independent Scotland”
Yes, you are precisely doing that.
“I’m trying to persuade them to take an intelligent path towards it”
No, you are not. The only intelligent path towards Scotland’s independence is to unilaterally resile the Treaty of Union and Act of Union with England, as it is Scotland’s legitimate right under internationa law, communicate it officially to the UN and request UN mediators during the divorce negotiations with the Kingdom of England.
To revoke the Treaty of Union and Act of Union with England we need either a majority of anti-union MPs willing to not take the seats and to not swear alleagiance to the crown, or a majority of Scotland’s MSPs willing to ditch once and for all, the Scotland Act to upgrade Holyrood to the status of Scotland’s independent parliament.
There isn’t another “intelligent” path towards it. Pretend Scotland is seceeding from an imaginary entity who is resting on a bipartite treaty is not intelligent. It is dumb. It is an attempt to undermine Scotland so it walks away with nothing.
That is unacceptable.
Excellent article Stu, were going nowhere with this lot in office, so we need to vote them out starting with the next GE, get the SNP MPs out and Alba ones in.
The same applies at Holyrood get the self-serving SNP MSPs out an Alba ones in.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
@shug, no, no, no.
AUOB should not bend to accommodate the SNP
@Northcode (4.28) –
Thanks for the laugh and the links.
😉
Just released, new WM SNP House of Commons routine (rara skirt/codpiece/merkin optional) :
Whaddy we want?
Independence *smirk*
When do we want it?
Any time you see fit *touch phalanges*
When you think of it, in late 2019, Boris had a tiny majority and was limping chaotically from day to day in the HoC and then The Sturge and Labour forced an election which gave him a thumping majority of 80+ IIRC.
Tactics will always just be strange wee mints to the clueless/complicit SNP.
Tartanpigsy says:
21 May, 2023 at 3:42 pm
How about an early morning Dundee visit on route to Stirling
To cheer our leaders as they define the route to Indy!
Steady! They are feart enough already lol. Whose “leaders” btw? No mine. That’s one reason they want a conference on the same date – all the usual suspects, the trouble makers will be down in Stirling (they hope). There are other reasons, of course, but that’s a biggie IMO. Despite the continual mocking, the ignoring, the downplaying, the dishonesty, they are becoming very afraid of the people of Scotland. Let’s not disappoint them!
On another thread..
Peter A Bell says:
20 May, 2023 at 11:29 am
“The notion that we can just scrap the SNP and “start again” is frankly idiotic.”
———————-
‘Starting again’, is misleading, when the polls are roughly 50/50 for independence.
In any event, SNP being scrapped entirely, not sure how that happens, unless they change their name?
In the meantime, MPs/MSPs jumping ship likely to become significant enough to impact parliament, new ALBA politicians being fast tracked. SNP will never again match their current numbers, in any GE.
The above transformation, dependent on those within SNP, weighing their options, right now. MI5 most likely, monitoring that possibility (defecting to ALBA, probably perceived as the most serious political threat to the UK).
I don’t accept the notion, that ALBA, will take decades to make up the ground needed to influence SNP policy. ALBA doesn’t need to match SNP for numbers, their presence in Holyrood in any number, will have an immediate effect on Indy policy.
Starting from scratch? Not really, the race is ongoing, with voters ready to put their money where their mouths are.
@panda paws 5:46
See the people of Montenegro who voted for Indy – did the organisers of their Indy campaign by any chance provide credible and persuasive evidence for how the Montenegrins would be better off post-Indy.
I’m thinking maybes some catchy slogan like Show us the fucking money!
In Montenegrin, obviously.
Asking for a stereotypical grippy Scot.
Seems to me that a campaign like that would be even more effective in Scotland, due to us being stereotypically grippy, etc. etc.
But the opposite holds, too. Any bawbees us Scots have managed to accumulate, we are not going to risk placing them in the hands of eejits who will spaff them up the wall on fatuous, no-hope legal challenges, ferries that only work on dry land, trying to convince the world that guys are gals, etc. etc.
Still, everything else has been tried, and failed. What would be the harm in, just once, credibly and persuasively showing us the fucking money.
Worth a try, no?
Mia, @ 6:12pm,
you really are utterly deluded and bonkers if you think the path to independence involves a unilateral rejection of the Treaty and Acts of Union. You are further crackers if you think that any international body at all, far less the UN is going to deal with such a lunatic proposition, particularly if it hasn’t had the grace of a democratic event in which it is the sole question. And you are utterly barking, no howling mad if you think that the international community – including the WTO, IMF, and EU are going to countenance talking with Scotland under those circumstances. International finance is just going to disappear from Scotland overnight, and that’s before the laws of the UK are used to stop your arrant nonsense in its tracks.
I spent nearly four years in the Balkans during their civil wars after the collapse of Yugoslavia. The UN only gets involved in circumstances of civil war and natural disasters. If you think that a few hundred wannabe and never-were Bravehearts invoking civil war in Scotland is the way to get the UN’s attention, then you have no humanity and should be sectioned for the public’s protection.
@Peter A Bell 4:10
How does that apply to HY then?
Technically, due to the flawed and fraudulent nature of his election “success”, he is no FM of Scotland.
Does that then give him the right to seek a S30?
Asking for a Scot (maybes the only one) who believes Yousaf’s pretendy First Ministership is a national disgrace.
ASCOTABROAD.
The methodology you advocate would have resulted in very few states, now independent, ever achieving it.
Why should Scotland be required to jump a far higher hurdle?
A rhetorical question as the «why» may be easily deduced.
Can’t understand what all ur fuss is all about.
Had this mob actually won the once in a generation referendum it’s pretty clear they would have laid waste to our country in a nano-second.
Motor homes all round.
Shug says:
21 May, 2023 at 5:29 pm
The AUOB should change the date of the march and call the SNPs bluff.
Change the date of Bannockburn too?
The Independendence Movement has been called to assemble under one banner in Stirling, on 24th June, the 709th commemoration of the Battle of Bannockburn. That’s good enough for me.
If Humza’s SNP is washing it’s hair that day, or wilfully trying to sabotage the march, (again), then fk ’em either way.
Maybe Humza’s “deputy” he’s sending along is Alyn Smith, the model of charm and SNP camaraderie, who at last year’s Stirling march so publicly called for unity, then arrogantly snubbed the SSRG’s invitation to their own conference before he’d even left the stage. “Never! Not ever!”
Or maybe he’s sending along Tommy Sheppard who so arrogantly snubbed AUOB’s Glasgow march in favour of his on wee shindig on Calton Hill, just this very month…
There’s a pattern here, and the more you scratch, the more you see.
See you in Stirling folks. That’s where the Independendence Movement is assembling on June 24th.
Listening to the Prism show. There’s manoeuvring going on behind the scenes with the party faithfull. Restless at the gold standard begging letter and the can’t do attitude of the party beaks.
Alex Salmond on Question Time with 7,500 Alba backers has sent shockwaves through SNP HQ, previously raided by fraud cops.
Now they are saying, back SNP or wait 20 years. Another line to spoon feed the gullable.
SNP – the only mass membership Independence Party. Aye right. Very good. The only mass membership party that lies about the numbers and can’t sign off its accounts.
10 days until short money stops being funneled into the pockets of the corrupt SNP. The most corrupt party Scotland has ever known. No more corruption for their filthy dirty corrupt hands.
“They have taken the blood and the sweat and the tears and the votes and the hopes and the dreams of independence supporters and sold them for money and power, every bit as much as the treacherous “nobles” of 1707 did. And at least when the latter did so they were genuinely under duress.”
Rev. Stuart Campbell, this has been clear to many of us here at Wings Over Scotland for a long time, thanks mainly to your efforts.
But what is the way forward?
All the organs of State are corrupted beyond redemption.
If Scots really are “sovereign”, isn’t it time for these “sovereign” Scots to take some “sovereign” measures?
As we know, the vast majority of independence supporters are extremely gullible and cowardly.
Politicians are experts at scaremongering them about the slightest change.
What can awaken them?
The chances of independence are decreasing by the day.
Stephen Flynn seems to be word tracking an expression that I thought we were all way past “increased devolution” what does that mean ?
Why is he using that expression when the SNP charter calls for Independence
The Tory on QT talked about Scotland having the best Devolved deals of anywhere in the world. If we are talking countries does that make us the best out of one maybe two
May offered a deal for soft Brexit for indy ref. Snp walked away.
@A Scot Abroad 7:42pm
Charles, play nice and don’t be rude to @Mia. She presented her view without resorting to rudeness. You can at least respond to her in the same manner.
https://caltonjock.com/2023/05/21/mairi-mcallan-minister-for-environment-speedily-with-unseeming-haste-was-moved-onwards-and-upwards-when-her-inexperience-in-shtty-matters-exposed-her-limitations-leaving-scotland-still-in-de/
https://twitter.com/jamiehepburn/status/1655210432368369665/photo/1
The coronation and the Independence rally was the 6th of May.
His twitter shows him and his 4 mates in his front garden with SNP clipboards on the 7th of may.
What was he doing on the 6th of May? Was he sitting at home with his union jack bunting out? Eating coronation cupcakes? I wonder.
Not a saltire in sight. If I saw the four of them coming to my door I’d put on the snib.
“you really are utterly deluded and bonkers if you think …”
“You are further crackers if you think…”
“such a lunatic proposition…”
“you are utterly barking, no howling mad if you think…”
“International finance is just going to disappear from Scotland overnight…”
“to stop your arrant nonsense in its tracks…”
“If you think that a few hundred wannabe and never-were Bravehearts…”
” you have no humanity and should be sectioned for the public’s protection”
Thank you. Your hyperbole over hyperbole over hyperbole had me in stitches and has just convinced me beyond doubt that unilaterally revoking the Treaty of Union and Act of Union with England and then requesting mediation from the UN for the division of assets, is indeed the correct pathway to follow.
@A Scot Abroad 5:41pm
I have to say I’m concerned that you might have had a fall and banged your head or something,
Because your comment, although I disagree with you, seemed reasonable and snark-free.
If you strongly believe the union between Scotland and England benefits both nations, and that the dissolution of that union would be detrimental to one or the other or both, then you absolutely should be trying to persuade me to give up on the idea of independence.
If you feel that strongly it’s almost your duty to try to convince others here that your argument is sound and that theirs is flawed.
That’s the whole idea of two opposing points of view, presented as logical argument in a civilised manner.
I am more than willing to hear your argument, but how am I to be persuaded of its merits if all I hear are insults and snarky remarks?
Present the points which make up your argument for Scotland remaining in the union in a way that doesn’t immediately provoke an aggressive response, and I’m sure others here will present theirs for dissolving the union in the same way.
It’s okay to try and make nonsense of your opponent’s argument in an attempt to expose it as a fallacy. And gentle ridicule is a useful tool in rhetorical argument.
Robust debate is a good thing, but resorting to nasty personal insults will instantly defeat your own argument.
From ALBA :-
“On June 15th there is a by-election in Bellshill and we need your help in the campaign. Our candidate is John Marshall a local charity worker and independence campaigner. There is a day of action on Saturday 27th May and I hope you can join us to lend a hand in John’s campaign.
We are meeting outside the Bank of Scotland on Bellshill Main Street, ML4 1EN at 12 noon. There will be canvassing, leafletting, and a street stall – so something for everyone!
The ALBA Party is going from strength to strength and we are all working extremely hard for Scottish Independence. We really hope to see you there.
For more information see: Bellshill By-Election Day of Action.”
I am not from Lanarkshire, but I am going to give my support to this guy.
Let’s hope there are other like minded people out there who can make their way to Lanarkshire to give them the support they need.
Northcode,
what I wrote wasn’t rude. It was an accurate and sober reflection of reality. Truth hurts, sometimes.
What the independence movement needs is to be accurate and sober in their assessment of what it would take to gain Scottish independence. It also needs to drop the howling mad nutters such as Mia and James Che, because what they are doing is far, far worse than what the SNP is doing. They are actively turning sensible people against supporting their utterly crackpot ideas.
@Mia 9:29pm
What did I just Tell you, @A Scot Abroad?
Mia, your comment could not have been more perfectly timed.
@A Scot Abroad 9:51pm
Whether you meant to be rude or not is irrelevant. I, perhaps wrongly, perceived your comment as being rude.
And it’s obvious that Mia did too.
Maybe it’s just the way you express yourself when you write, ASA. And you might not intend to be insulting.
If that is really the case, then perhaps you should think about how others might perceive your comment before you submit it.
I know you’re a military man. And it could be that you are just used to speaking your mind in a more direct manner than civilians are used to.
But I’m guessing many, if not most, folks on here were never in the military. And they just won’t get it.
If you thought Sturgeon was bad, well HUmza has proved within just a few weeks that he is even more useless. Humza Useless, an appropriate, and factual title.
As to the SNP overall, well Burns as many have pointed out was way ahead of his time. For London’s gold, they are bought and sold, such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
Like many here, I left the SNP and joined ALBA. Very glad I did.
@A Scot Abroad 9:51pm
…And @A Scot Abroad. It’s extremely unlikely that you can present any argument that will persuade me that the union between Scotland and England is in any way good for Scotland.
But I’ll defend your right, unhindered, to give it a go.
If you get snarky with me, though. I will retaliate.
I’ve a feeling that I’ve typed this before.
If a majority of voters in Scotland provide the pro-independence parties with a mandate to remove Scotland from the Treaty of Union, then job done.
Then we appeal, internationally, for recognition, as a, once again, independent nation.
What does Ascot Broad find so mystifying?
Northcode,
well, you are generous. There’s some truth about my habit of direct speaking (and I have been pulled up for it before). But, I am a (now ex-) military man, and am a trained engineer, and have run a few small businesses since (mostly being brought in to rescue businesses that are about to go bust), and my default is to be direct, and focus in on what matters.
So, to return your generous remarks, let us be civil in our discussions from this point forward, and understanding of our differing perspectives. One never knows. We together might actually move the debate forward, as opposed to enter into trench warfare.
You’ll have to forgive me if I still sometimes use the words moonshine, crackers, bonkers or howling mad. Because those words are often simple descriptors, and there’s no getting away from the fact that this Scots indy debate does sometimes attract people who are not that closely attached to political reality.
David Hannah’s comment @ 8.13pm hits the nail on the head.
For once, the BBC played into our hands! The difference in the convictions about Scottish Independence from Mairi McAllan of the SNP and Alex Salmond of ALBA was so obvious – the SNP showed us how disinterested they were in Independence and ALBA showed us that it is the most important item on their Agenda.
No wonder the SNP quickly booked their “Convention on Independence” the day of the AUOB March – they’re running scared! Humza’s inability to realise what a bad set of cards he has been handed leaves him so vulnerable! I’d love for Andrew Neil to set up a discussion between Humza Yousaf and Alex Salmond about Independence!
I bet the viewing figures for Question Time shot up last Thursday (most of us only tuned in because Alex was appearing). All TV Channels like lots of viewers – I suspect we may see much more of Alex Salmond on TV now!
“The leader of the SNP should be prepared to do a deal with Satan himself and all his little minions in the name of Scotland’s independence.”
Read as;
The leader of the SNP is prepared to do a deal with Satan himself and all his little green minions in the name of keeping power.
Ascot A broad
You’ll have to forgive me if I sometimes use the words disingenuous, muscular, protestant upper (middle) class, twit. Because those words are often simple descriptors, and there’s no getting away from the fact that this Scots indy debate does sometimes attract people who are not that closely attached to political reality.
I’m a fellow Edinburgh schoolboy, lower (middle) class. Left school 1970, to give you a clue what my cultural influences might be. Grandparents had a small dairy farm in Ireland. Your provision of the dummies guide to grown-up politics is risible. I’ve been friends with a few military men. Not my scene but you would embarrass them with your Boys Own benevolent empire observations.
Bugger, I rose to the bait.
@A Scot Abroad 11:03pm
Fair enough, ASA.
Let’s call a truce and we’ll see how we get on.
Fruitella,
I don’t embarrass my old comrades. We all think this way.
I recall once, as Adjutant of my regiment, getting a military signal (telegramme, in old parlance) from the Army’s Personnel branch stating that we were to receive 17 newly trained soldiers from the training depot. I looked at our existing manning, and allocated these new soldiers to different squadrons, to even up some slight imbalances.
The next day, the Regimental Sergeant Major appeared at my office door and asked me to reconsider much of my allocation, on the grounds that I had allocated Roman Catholics to Protestant squadrons, and vice versa. That hadn’t crossed my mind at all, but it’s a fact that sectarianism is a bit of a fact throughout Scottish life.
And that’s when I realised that Scotland is nothing greater than a little village. And there’s nothing that I have seen since to convince me otherwise.
“The next day, the Regimental Sergeant Major appeared at my office door and asked me to reconsider much of my allocation,…”
Did you?
Telegramme? Scottish regiment?
Fruitella,
no, I didn’t give in to his request, because (firstly) I had the numbers and logic on my side, and (secondly) because I didn’t want to perpetuate the utter wrong-headedness that he was proposing to maintain a sectarian status quo. I backed off that decision by chatting to my RC wife, and going to the CO’s house to take a dram with him, and then took some tea with the Sarn’t Major the next day to tell him of some new realities under my watch.
A comment to “The Scot Abroad” made at 12.26am:
You’ve given yourself away – you’ve never been to war! Yet you think that you have the right to tell the Scottish people off because they don’t think the same way you do!
Both my parents fought in World War II. My father served with the KOSBs on the Khyber Pass – out of Fort Peshawar. My mother was a WAAF in Egypt. Both my Scots father and my Welsh mother told me that they never fought for “The Great British Empire” – they both fought for their countries of Scotland and Wales!
Incidentally, my great grandfather’s farm was “compulsory purchased” by the MOD to test their tanks.My grandmother was one of the first teachers in Scotland to have her own school and it was flattened to the ground! You have no idea how much devastation the MOD inflicted in Galloway!
You describe yoursELF as an “adjucant” – does that not describe a jumped up little upstart who considers himself far above the rest of the people? (In other words, a little nobody, who was once in the British Army, but left – or was dismissed!)
Now “A Scot Abroad” is so disillusioned with his own life that he tries to pick holes in other people’s lives.
Don’t feed the wanker Trolls.
The Main/Ellis double act continues.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-the-point-of-the-snps-independence-convention/
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-minister-admits-scottish-independence-30034529
Galloway Lass,
I led the breakout from the breach in the Iraqi army’s defences of their lines in Iraq in 1991 before we retook Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1991. Literally: it was my armoured vehicle that was the first vehicle of 150 vehicles, and navigated my Regiment forward into southern Iraq, through their minefields, and 80 kilometres into their depth at night. We were the Divisional reconnaissance regiment. There was no one ahead of us. And I am mighty proud of that, along with Jonesy the driver, and Lewis 196 who was my gunner. You were probably asleep at the time and worried about little else than which lipstick you would wear, and the timings for your bus into town.
I’m a Scot. I have the right to have an opinion and to make a comment about Scotland’s future.
I think it is time to remove the editor filter on the T-word. It is no longer hyperbole, hasn’t been for a good while.
A Scot Abroad says:
21 May, 2023 at 9:51 pm
“… It also needs to drop the howling mad nutters such as Mia and James Che, because what they are doing is far, far worse than what the SNP is doing. They are actively turning sensible people against supporting their utterly crackpot ideas.”
In translation, the Ascot Hat can’t beat Mia or James Che in a Constitutional argument, so must instead resort to ridicule and defammatory insult. It’s the Briddish way.
It’s why the Scots are Jocks, the Welsh are Taffs, the French are Frogs, the Germans are krauts, Arabs are rag-heads, and so on, and so on, and so on. It’s the Briddish stiff upper lip exceptionalism at work, and it’s been indoctrinating Scottish soldiers since the 19th Century.
There’s a famous quote from US General Patton in WW2, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”.
The Briddish General Wolfe was of similar opinion in 1759 “I should imagine that two or three independent Highland companies might be of use; they are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall.”
The critical difference of course is Patten saw the poor dumb bastards as the enemy. Wolfe saw the them as Scotland’s formidable Highlanders.
Don’t feed the Unionist trolls people. You simply flatter their ego. None of them have ANY right to preach to those of us who would rid Scotland of this disgusting three hundred year oppression.
I remember that Brexit meeting between Sturgeon and May, but the MSM focused on who had the best legs, Nicola or Theresa.
You would struggle to find anyone who is more the living embodiment of ‘betrayal’ than Nicola Sturgeon and the abomination she turned the SNP into.
Sturgeon was Scotland’s Blair. A consummate liar. She lies like she breathes. You can see how easy she lies when you watch her deny things that we know are true. That is when you see how seamlessly she lies. How effortlessly she lies through her teeth while putting out Blair’s trademark ‘forgive them Lord they know what they do’ vibe when anyone hard questions her.
Anyone who thinks this wall-to-wall mess Sturgeon left behind was just the result of a series of well intended but miscalculated decisions stretching back 9 years buttons up the back. It was obvious what she was years ago. It staggers me that otherwise intelligent people still can’t accept what is staring them in the face.
Nicola and Peter especially are not smart enough to have done all this by themselves, not even close…
You know the tree by the fruit it bears.
Well said Breeks. I just scroll on by
I sometimes wonder why some anti independence folk come on to this site to spew their insults. Do they actually think they are doing some good for the ‘unity’ of the UK?
I am also reminded that the Rev said to ignore them and some folk who should know better can’t seem to do that – just saying.
Meanwhile Ireland looks as though it will beat Scotland to the happy , heady position of being independent and part of the EU.
I also clocked the charges which my country faces for keeping another alight – you’d think that someone in the Scottish Government might squawk noisily about that – I hear little squawking.
Firstly I have no idea who or what A Broad Scot is and don’t care. If he did serve in the armed forces I thank him for his service. What I do know is he is constantly looking for a fight or an argument and is best just ignored. It is getting like the bad old days when our old playmate Randy Trellis was sneering and snarling at everyone and just messing up the comments section. I just tend to scroll bye our Broad friend along with a few others and just read those that have something informative or sensible to say as life is too short.
@Breeks 7:37
To be scrupulously fair, if you have to fall back on quoting General Wolfe from 1759 in support of your argument, impartial readers might well think you are desperately scratching around for straws with which to bolster your views.
Scotland at this moment is a shithole of epic proportions, much of this due to the incompetence, criminality, and nepotism of the SNP.
Truth is, none of you die-hard Indy veterans have much right to preach either. You have aided, supported and facilitated the mess that sees the flawed and fraudulent Yousaf squatting on the position of FM and daily driving Scotland deeper into his mire of lies, shambles and reality denial.
A little humility from you is long overdue.
It’s not your Scotland. It’s our Scotland.
@Dorothy Devine 8:22
No “independent” nations in the EU. I suggest you check out definitions in a dictionary.
But if you are happy that Ireland has traded independence for financial enrichment, why not further the cause for the post-UK Scotland’s EU membership by outlining how we Scots will be better off.
Show us the fucking money.
BTW, you do know that iScotland will have to negotiate membership of the EU from scratch? Maybes tell us why you think that will be so great, when you don’t have a scooby about the T’s & C’s of iScotland’s membership deal.
Maybes tell us why you think iScotland will be so keen to get signed up to a rapidly militarising EU, whose member countries are accelerating onto a war footing.
I can see though, why rather than deal with any of these realpolitik issues, you might prefer to just scroll on by.
Why do you think Unionist trolls are targeting this site? Answer they are sowing discord in the Independence movement. I don’t think that constantly attacking the SNP advances the process.
Dorothy Devine says:
22 May, 2023 at 8:22 am
I sometimes wonder why some anti independence folk come on to this site to spew their insults. Do they actually think they are doing some good for the ‘unity’ of the UK?
They are well aware that neutrals, non-committed and interested parties (folk that could be swayed one way or the other) often visit this site and are terrified that WoS may build some traction with them. After all, the articles are usually well-researched and argued, and backed up with powerful, hard-hitting comments from some of the regular posters. This is the BritNats’ way of trying to spoil the soup and confuse the visitors. Insults and untruths. Rather pathetic, but it’s all they can do.
A Scot Abroad said;
“I led the breakout from the breach in the Iraqi army’s defences of their lines in Iraq in 1991 before we retook Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1991.”
Good for you! But you still don’t know shit about constitutions and sovereignty, and why they and their histories still matter today.
You’ve made it abundantly clear that you just don’t listen; you’ve swallowed all of the unionist tropes and now you think you know all there is to know about Scotland’s options for regaining its independence, and making a decent life for its people with its own wealth, and making its own way in the world.
You’ve made no attempt to understand the real nature of Westminster rule, the ruthlessly dodgy assertions of its ‘unlimited sovereignty’ over the UK, and the pseudo-legal Gordian knots made of the interactions of the Treaty and Acts of Union along with the pseudo-democratic voting system in Westminster, that puts the sovereign English partner of the Union in charge of the whole Union, leaving his equally sovereign Scottish partner with no effective, and certainly no authoritative, voice in the supposedly joint governance of the Union, where even a unanimous vote by the Scots MPs, who represent a full sovereign partner, can be routinely set aside in favour of the English partner any time he feels like it.
We didn’t sign up for that, and continuing to putting up with it is not an acceptable option for us, and the revelations that have been coming out of the Online Records of the old Scottish Parliament have made it clear just how dishonestly and illegally Westminster has been and still is shafting us. I think you now know this, and it scares you, and that is why you are going out of your way to rubbish any and all of that ‘ancient hoary guff’ as you like to call it.
Well, you are right to be afraid, because one way or another that guff is going to bring the Union down.
RE: A Scot Abroad
He has implied at being present at concentration camps in Serbia that were proven to be western media lies. I don’t mind what his position is on any single thing but this makes him a liar.
@John Main
I’ve found it interesting to watch your stance on certain subjects. I agree with you the Indy folk have supported exactly what we have now, it was built on their naivety and determination to trust people who were clearly lying to them, worse they continued to vote for a party that any man of principle could not have brought himself to support and expected something good to come out of it.
However I want to ask you – what/who in your mind is currently the main threat to the health and prosperity to you and yours, as you see it?
I often read Wings Over Scotland to try to get a feel for the Scottish mood for independence.
As an Englishman living down south I have no skin in your game. Frankly I thought you would vote for independence in 2014 and would just be joining the EU as the rest of the UK left.
Not being a Scot it may be wrong to judge, but a few posters come across as the nutter you hope to avoid on the bus. Far more people tend to read rather than comment. Do you think you are persuading them of your cause? At some stage you need to persuade a majority of whatever you define a Scot to be at that time.
Was excellent to see Alex Salmond on BBC question time.
Quite why the BBC allowed him to come out of cold storage to appear on UK wide television is a question. A rush of impartiality to the head of the best broadcasting corporation in the world or a cynical attempt to try and split the SNP.
But aside of the BBC machinations it was excellent to see Alex Salmond out of media lock down. He’s Alba just now but things change The independence movement, the support for independence has, as Alex rightly says, not gone down, whereas the SNP support has.
And let us remember too that with independence voting sitting at around 50% this figure is without any campaign whatsoever. At the start of the campaign before the referendum independence support was around 28% whereas by the time of the referendum it was 45%.
What potential then where without a campaign the base is now sitting around 50%.
And so, with ALBA and the other groups on the rise the SNP will either be swept away and replaced or it will be replaced. Independence has not gone away. Only the SNP is going away and it is only residual support from voters, who in the absence of an alternative, that is masking the polls to suggest that the SNP have anything like the thirty something percent that they suggest the SNP has.
As I say, the demand for independence has not gone away. Only the SNP is going away.
Xaracen,
your calling for some form of undefined UDI / walking away from the union is just modern guff. It ain’t going to happen. So go back to the laws, and work out how to work within them.
Joe,
I have been to Keraterm, Omarska and Trnopolje. While they were still operational. I was there as a UN Observer. They weren’t western lies. By coincidence, 5 years later, we launched a NATO operation to capture Simo Drljaca, the ex-Chief of Police in Prijedor, the regional town in the area, and the man who had imprisoned and tortured most of those in the camps. He’d been indicted by the Hague for war crimes. He reached for his pistol when confronted, and unsurprisingly had about 30 rounds of ammunition go through his forehead about half a second later. A good and moral end to his life.
If you inadvertently, happen to notice this comment or any of my others, which only get passed by the editor, sometimes, days after the topic has moved on, let me ask you.. Do you think any ‘undecided’ voters, spend their time, scrolling through blogs or forums, to be ‘educated’ by endless dead-end conversations, on the subject of a referendum?
There ain’t such an animal. No matter what any perceived to be ‘troll’ contributes, it matter not twa hoots, to any future poll or indeed, to any future referendum.
Newspaper headlines, the evening news, still the be all and end all, as far as the general public is concerned.
To try to prevent any unionist conversation, on here, would make the comment section a tad dull. A bit more humour please.
In two days, tomorrow will be yesterday, that’s when you will see this comment, if at all.
@ASA (4.55) –
It’s very easy to ignore your vainglorious boring rubbish but your response to Galloway Lass was appalling.
Please, do the decent thing and apologise.
@Joe
It’s complicated!
The existential risk to us all lies in reality denial. Reality can be divided into different categories, for example, physical reality, the reality of human nature. Here are some examples of reality denial that underpin many of the problems we see:
Men and women are identical in all respects.
Equality of outcomes is as important as equality of opportunity.
All cultures are equally admirable.
Diversity is always more successful and advantageous than uniformity.
I could give examples, but frankly, they are unnecessary.
You will see that each of the shibboleths I list above has pressure groups and powerful, loud individuals constantly screaming they are true and no-platforming anybody who disagrees.
Yet the remarkable fact is that every one of these shibboleths would have been self-evident balderdash to our grandparents.
Were our grandparents really so ignorant, bigoted and blind? Or is it us who have been led astray?
As the man said, it is possible to ignore reality for quite a long time, but ultimately, reality won’t ignore you.
From a pragmatic, political viewpoint, we have been heading in this wrong direction for a generation. It is reasonable to assume that in the absence of catastrophe, it would take a generation to retrace our steps.
But we can all see the potential catastrophes that are piling up. Only a brave man will bet that none of these will come to pass. When the shit hits the fan, humans very quickly revert back to the basics of reality, in physics, biology and in social behaviour. It’s about food, shelter and security and the employment of the processes that maximise these. Everything else is binned.
That’s another shibboleth! A true one this time.
@IB 10:07
Consistency is key. You either demand that the poster of every insulting post apologises, or you keep shtum.
Your selective outrage suggests that you are content for posters you disagree with to be insulted and pilloried with impunity.
Not a good look.
Obviously you have otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
I don’t have a problem with nutters on the bus but I definitely have a problem with arrogant Englishmen I go out of my way to avoid them because you just end up being accused of being anti-English when all you are is anti-arrogance.
If you go back and read the 2014 Independence referendum franchise you will see who is defined as a Scot.
I expect if we are ever allowed to vote again the franchise will be pretty much the same.
Do you have any views on the Westminster government denying Scots the right to hold a independence referendum?
Why do you as an Englishman think they are so keen to hang on to Scotland?
“.. a word this site does not use lightly and has only ever uttered once before in its eleven and a half years – ("Tractor" - Ed)s.”
Yes, postcolonial theory tells us that ‘the nationalist parties will to break colonialism is linked with another quite different will: that of coming to a friendly agreement with it’ (Fanon). It also suggests that this ‘treason is not national, it is social’. In any event the task now is ‘to bring the people to maturity’, and for them to better understand what independence means and why it is urgent and necessary: https://salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
Newly created bona fide independence parties and organisations with ‘leaders of a high intellectual level’ (i.e. Alex Salmond, Sara Salyers/Salvo etc) should perhaps issue a deadline for SNP MPs/MSPs to move away from the latter’s ‘mouth-wash, word-spinning, blather and fruitless agitation’, beyond which they will not be accepted.
Much of the ‘decolonization template’ is explained in my book Doun-Hauden and in the related journal article, see page 15 under heading of ‘Colonialism’ here: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
@A Scot Abroad
More lies and see no point in reading anything you write.
As a thought exercise for anyone else – if your goal is to exterminate people why not take groups of them to the woods/mountains and shoot them through the head?
Why would you build camps complete with guard posts, facilities for the guards including eating, waste, washing etc and also similar facilities for the inmates simply to starve or torture them to death?
Not only that why would you do that and then invite the media of the powers who want an excuse to attack you in to see you slowly murder these people?
It’s as patently ridiculous as the story of Assad inviting in UN weapons inspectors while making sure to attack civilians with chemical weapons just a few miles away at the same time the inspectors were there.
Also – nobody aims at the forehead, it’s the body mass that gets targeted for obvious reasons. FFS this is so ridiculous I’m actually cringing slightly.
Ending comms with this utter clown now.
Alf Baird
I constantly struggle with your mix and match approach to colonised, colonialism and post-colonialism.
Seems clear enough to me that if Scotland is a colony, then we are colonised. We won’t be de-colonised until after Indy, assuming we refrain from permitting re-colonisation by Brussels.
Only after Indy and decolonisation, will considerations of post-colonial theory apply. Yet you constantly write as if post-colonial theory applies now.
Why?
To everyone apart from Joe, who declares that he won’t read this,
Keraterm, Omarska and Trnopolje were real camps, and not figments of the western imagination. There is bounteous evidence online. Why Joe, who probably hasn’t travelled further than his mother’s door, seeks to deny them is up to him.
Are you one of these nutters that John Peters is referring to.
What makes you think being a ‘Scot’ living in England makes you special? Everyone it seems has a right to an opinion on Scotland’s future.
The Pope, President of US, The Queen, Macron, Rajoy, David Bowie, Shrek etc etc etc
The UK Gov searched the globe for opinions on Scotland’s future. They even asked Vladimir P but he gave the wrong answer. Macron was also a bit of a disappointment he said.
Vive L’Écosse Libre!
@John Main
To be honest I was quite surprised at the length of that reply given that you haven’t really managed to finger any actual entity and instead have focused on concepts.
That’s interesting. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but there will be readers who will take this apparent inability to be more precise as a sign that you are aware of what you write, or don’t write, so as to avoid undermining previous arguments you have recently made.
For me it’s pretty easy. Im not going to go deep because my comment will just get deleted again. But to keep it at a schoolboy level the primary threat we face in the West is from the coordination of our own governments, corporate world, academia, media and a plethora of miscellaneous institutions such as the arts, music etc. This coordination can be seen in real time with the perfect example being Covid and the so-called ‘covid response’, the lowering of our borders and the mass importation of foreign peoples while we are slowly displaced, or the pushing of transgender ideology in all Western countries all at the same time.
Again, I’ll keep it short but there are more examples.
The source of this (keeping it to a schoolboy level again for PR purposes) is from within our ‘own’ elite. This should be blatantly obvious.
Given that the above is so clear, I utterly fail to understand why anyone would take the word of our political and media apparatus about who our enemies are, or allow them to tell us what their aims are and what is even actually going on.
As for foreign policy in just the last 20 years Western peoples have been provably lied to in order to justify the most egregious actions of our obviously captured criminal governments and national institutions. Why would anyone approach current events as if the above was not blatantly true?
But you seem to do just that and to be polite I find it difficult to reconcile.
@Ruby
My view is that withdrawal from the EU is a sufficient reason to ignore the once in a generation proviso. So, yes, I do think the UK should allow another referendum.
I expect the UK is keen to hang on to Scotland in the same way the EU was keen to hang on to the UK. No group of politicians like to lose power.
Joe
Mountains of evidence about the favoured Soviet execution method for dissidents, trouble makers, agitators, counter revolutionaries, priests, intellectuals, etc etc.
Bullet in the back of the head, point blank range, from a handgun.
The Russtis had a slang term for it. I believe it was called a 50 kopeck sentence, 50 kopecks being the price of a handgun cartridge.
Intriguingly, although Russtiland has diversified how it now terminates dissidents, trouble makers, etc etc, Beloruss retains the state-sanctioned bullet in the back of the head sentence for capital crimes.
I don’t want anybody to claim I am dissing either country here. I have some support for the death penalty, in conjunction with an impartial judiciary, funded forensics and police, jury trials and robust appeals procedures. If all of these conditions are met, then I think a bullet in the back of the head is as humane and cost effective method of execution as any.
Never mind EFTA or the Anglo controlled EU
Scotland should join the BRICS when we become a sovereign & independent nation,again.
Let’s face it the British Empire/Commonwealth has had it’s 500years
of infamy, the multipolar world awaits us as the ‘rules based’ unipolar world crumbles & dies, anyone know what their actual rules are?
John Main @ 10:39 am
“Only after Indy and decolonisation, will considerations of post-colonial theory apply.”
Not so. Postcolonial theory is ‘anti-colonial’ literature which helps an oppressed group to understand the colonial relationship which has “chained the colonizer and the colonized into an implacable dependence, molded their respective characters and dictated their conduct” (Albert Memmi).
First we have to understand this relationship before we can start to move “inexorably to the decomposition of this dependence”. If we do not first understand our (colonial) ‘condition’ how would we otherwise be able to determine its treatment (liberation)?
Possibly O/T but hopefully the greens will take up AUOB offer to speak at the Stirling rally despite the letter’s slightly angry undertones (yes movement expects v yes movement would be honoured grovel, grovel, etc being in potential breach of the code of conduct imposed by their coalition partner as a pre-condition of engagement with non conservatives).
As an extension to such a good idea, could there be merit in inviting D Ross to explain in better detail why now is not the time, and A Sarwar to put the case for the time being never, and insisting that whichever champion Humza sends (Nicola?) is obliged to share the platform with the holder of the contrary view they support most in event they refuse to give Alex Salmond a big hug in public.
Thank you John. It always interesting to hear what English voters think about their government’s treatment of Scotland.
It looks like we are nothing more than a colony.
Have Scottish voters been colonised by the SNP?
John Peters says:
22 May, 2023 at 10:54 am
@Ruby
My view is that withdrawal from the EU is a sufficient reason to ignore the once in a generation proviso.
What proviso was that then?
Joe
Ideas and concepts come first, agents and actions come after.
The thought is non-specific gender parent to the deed, as we are now taught to say.
I am not remotely concerned about being caught out in inconsistent posts. I am trying to learn stuff on here. Feel free to point out where I contradict myself.
Incidentally, as you mention Covid, I concluded that the Covid response was a perfect example of the equality of outcomes mantra in action. Covid was and is disproportionally dangerous to a minority of the population. Yet, long after that was clear, most people continued to insist that we should all be equally and adversely penalised by being locked up. Even those people who stood in no measurable risk whatsoever – the young and healthy.
As for mass importation of foreigners and gender woo woo, wilful blindness to the obvious disadvantages of some cultures when compared to others, and a fundamental refusal to acknowledge sex-based differences, underpins these.
Sure, blame our elites. Who votes them into place though?
You see it often enough, even on here, even from posters who claim to have opened their eyes and seen the light.
Blatant reality denial.
Ruby,
I’m at least as Scottish as you are. Quite possibly more so.
You don’t get to define who is, or isn’t, Scottish.
The rise of ALBA, a counter weight to SNP’s demise, the quicker SNP falls, the better!
On the way down, SNP might actually, find a new set of balls and collaborate with ALBA, to form an effective alliance, within a reasonable timeframe.
The next defection to ALBA, will start a stampede. The dust won’t get a chance to settle, until new Indy policy is presented to the electorate.
Joe,
Not to wee, and not to stupid you see the bigger picture 😉
“…calling for some form of undefined UDI / walking away from the union is just modern guff. It ain’t going to happen. So go back to the laws, and work out how to work within them.”
Nah, that’s just your modern guff, and that of your unionist overseers, and we see right through it. Not all those laws are relevant, and many of those that you might consider are relevant may well not carry the authority you think they do, as I’ve explained more than once in the past, here and elsewhere.
Have a look at the ICJ for the UK government’s report on Kosovo’s independence declaration, it makes for some very interesting reading.
Your homework isn’t done until it’s done, and you haven’t even begun, so that would be a good place to start. I suggest Salvo dot scot next, and Alf Baird’s book Doun-Hauden. Craig Murray’s blog is also an excellent source on such matters, as is Iain Lawson’s blog YoursForScotland.
And something else you’ve overlooked in your enthusiasm to put Scotland and its aspirations down; even if many Scots want the Union to continue, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are entirely happy with the current arrangements of perpetual submission to England’s unwarranted, selfish, and arbitrary rule. If England’s MPs had dealt fairly and honestly with Scotland, and treated her and her MPs with the respect due to a fully equal sovereign partner in the Union, as legally and constitutionally required, there would likely never have been a need for an independence movement in the first place.
They might not want independence, but they may well want some seriously deep reform of Westminster governance, and I doubt any of them can see that ever happening short of a really major rammy.
But it’s way past too late for that now; England has already sown all the seeds of the Union’s demise, nurtured them and watered them, applied as much fertiliser (aka bullshit) as it thought it could get away with, and now Scotland’s Ents are gearing up to kick the Union’s arse into its well-deserved oblivion. It’ll be a grand show. Ah cannae wait!
Xaracen,
you’ll be 500 years in your grave before there’s enough enthusiasm in Scotland to become an independent nation. I hope you won’t get bored during your waiting.
HOT OFF THE PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALBA ARE ALL ABOUT, READ ON: https://www.albaparty.org/where_we_stand
Tip for ALBA representatives: Your next move should be to crowdfund putting all that info into an A5 booklet to be put through every door in Scotland. Introduce the party to the public.
The National’s headline in Stuart’s article above: “YOUSAF PLEDGES TO LAUNCH SUMMER OF INDY”
Will that be the same as the ‘Winter of Discontent’, which the Brit media referred to as “The Summer of Discontent” (1978-79). Where strikes all over the UK brought Callaghan’s Labour Party and their austerity measures crashing to their knees. Clearing the way for the other Tories, the blue ones.
Will Yousaf’s ‘Summer of Indy’ be his reckoning? LOL! Let’s hope his number’s up long before we get a summer. Summer’s don’t exist in Scotland. 😉
Good Lord everyone has a view but some more wacky and tacky than others.
The various ASA posts are like the Duracell bunny banging it’s drum. No body quite like ASA. He’s been there, seen it, done it all. And he’s a Scot too not that you’d guess from his comments.
My guess, if he isn’t just a rastler spouting Britto pish that he was a sojer who maybe did a bit of guard duty in foreign lands. A padlock puller as some pedestrian beat cops used to be called, our man ASA is now an international expert.
Particularly laughed at his disparaging guff about the numbers wanting independence. According to our squaddie on maneuvers there are very few and they’ve got it wrong.
Anyway, folks are free to make their own minds up about the intellectual rigour of our resident guff smith.
And thanks to the Rev for letting this guff through. Maybe
he’s a double agent spouting guff to encourage folks to independence.
Ach, who knows. He’s good for the craic as a comic character. Wonder if he’s been to the moon on his travel?
Being part of a nation is a mixture of many qualities,
Genetics, place, origin, love for your people, respect for your culture, warmth to your neighbour, name, heart and sole.
But we do see many people lack the combination of attributes.
Some will sell their their sole and heart for global esteem and finances.
Their heart and sole thus being bought turns away from his nation to be employed elsewhere.
This is pro Union essay for your enjoyment.
https://www.ippr.org/juncture/unionism-a-very-scottish-idea
It leaves so much out. Scotland’s unique history and culture, centuries of English aggression for example. The fact that pre Union Scotland was not as poor or backward as anglocentric Oxbridge histories enjoy to make out. That pre Union Scotland provided the foundations of post Union Scotland. That «Unionism» derives so much from the fertile brain of Walter Scott’s mawkish sentimentalizing of the noble Highland savage and the God fearing stout Lowlander and all the porridge eating racist spin in between.
Know your place, do not attempt to step outside the box fashioned for you.
Classic!
England is no friend, friends show respect, friends do not tell lies.
Willie,
I haven’t been to the moon. Only a few have, and I think they are all Americans.
Meanwhile, have you got a serious plan for independence? Or are you all guff too?
Xaracen.
And the reason for that disrepect may be that as the UK parliament boost, The Scots were extinguished a long time ago from that treaty.
The treaty that never was enables them to scoff and laugh at Scots, to cause mockery and mirth that the Scots have been fooled for so long,
That they know only England is in that treaty.
That is the reason they treat all of Scotland as if they are Stupid, they own the treaty they are the treaty,
They know Scotland is not in it,
It is not that Scotland is to Stupid to Question this legal error of the treaty,
It is not until recently the obfuscation, the Deceit, the omissions and the colonisation of Scotland came to light,
It has been hidden from the Scots by Westminster and by the Scottish politicians who’s hearts and soles Were paid for. Thus their loyalty to their Country, their nation and the love for their own fellow man become second or third at best,
I personally compare the behaviour over the MacCrone report to their behaviour over the treaty of the union from Westminster,
Westminster has always considered the Scots are best Kept ignorant from the details.
Xaracen.
Does Westminster hold the believe that Scots are to wee, to Stupid because it is based on the mighty pretence that it held Scotland by a great hoax and ruse and fallacious treaty of union.
It takes more than a claim of connection to belong to a nation.
You’re heart and sole must be in it and belong with the people of that nation,
Many have a Scottish ancestry or connection from Ns, to gordon Brown and to those that thought they had sold Scotland in 1707,
But their believe they were Scottish was not a deep abiding believe, their faith could be bought, their nationality is often bought,
Re the Alba mission statement, same old same old, New Scots, diversity is Scotlands strength, oppressed minorities.
Enforced out of control multiculturalism is the main colonisation which is going on across the West.
Alba were the last party I voted for but if it is just going to be the same as the rest then I will not be voting for them again.
Opsec distinctly lacking from our resident ex-squaddie I note.
I do the bare minimum myself, ‘security is hard’ as the old IT saw goes. You’re either a hardened Nonny Mouse (which in itself is just a big klaxon) or you lay back, legs akimbo, and let the webz pump you at will – sitting on the fence, just gets you sair baws.
IT security is much like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – ‘you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out the game’
I don’t doubt Wings ‘subscriber’ lists are well known (for those who want to know these things) but I’ll still occasionally spin up, the odd obfuscator – just y’know, in vain hope it’ll slow the slurp.
Anyhoo, this is a verbose way of saying: ASA – you leak personal info like a Poundshop sieve.
It’s bolting the stable door, but do yourself a favour, and try not to post every single piece of PID you can think of – weans do Opsec better than you.
I’m not caring that much (well, enough to scribble this) but then I’m not the ‘nutter’ who wants to doxx you. This is just the same advice I’d give to anyone, and has nothing to do with you personally.
Of course it could all be so much drivel – which is one obscuring tactic – but then, that is a weakness when relying on the data to make points.
Sometimes it becomes more important for people to be proven right I suppose – which is why classified blueprints leak on game servers, and IT security goes old, and grey by 30.
Keith Brown on GMS this morning, speaking in tongues, getting snarky and waffling generally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19dfR2QTU1M
James Che @ 1:19 pm
“It is not until recently the obfuscation, the Deceit, the omissions and the colonisation of Scotland came to light”
This is a key point James Che. The Scots are only now beginning to understand, through an expanding anti-colonial literature, that they are an oppressed (doun-hauden) people, and that, as with any colonial society, they and our nation will continue to perish unless we are liberated from that oppression.
However, the national party leaders understanding of our condition remains ‘rudimentary’, as is that of the bourgeoisie class and the more ‘pampered elements of the native population’, i.e. groups aye given ‘a bone to gnaw on in the colonial system’. We therefore rely on intellectuals including bloggers and pro-independence groups to explain our oppression.
The only treatment for the ‘colonial condition’ is independence – which explains why the UN Decolonization Committee (C-24) regards self-determination independence as decolonization.
SNP’s new media heidbummer. Who’s this Fraser MacDonald chiel? Cannae find much info on him.
@Anton Decadent
Perhaps you’d be more at home with the BNP or National Front?
Thought I would read the comments on this thread. As is usual, when the article is a few days old, I start from the bottom.
It did not take too long to see the usual 300 year old and colonialism pish from the usual nutters.
Gave up after 2 minutes. Pity, there might have been some gems near the top but I lose the will to proceed when I see the names Che and Baird, amongst others!
Alf Vaird,
what utter nonsense you continue to post about the Scots being oppressed. On the contrary, the Scots have been empowered to seek their fame and fortune in both a peaceful (less 1745) Scotland and abroad in the greatest empire the world has ever seen. And millions have done so. It’s only the miserable, brainless and incompetent Scots who sit back and whine and contrive false nonsense about being colonised by England.
Alex Salmond comments on an Independence Convention
https://www.albaparty.org/on_an_independence_convention.
How I regret Mr Salmond stood down.
@Dorothy Devine 8:22am
I sometimes wonder why some anti independence folk come on to this site to spew their insults. Do they actually think they are doing some good for the ‘unity’ of the UK?
You raise a valid question, Dorothy.
The answer is that those trolls who do nothing more than spew an endless stream of insults, without even the pretence of presenting a sound argument supporting their cause, are attempting to achieve two goals.
The first is simply the disruption of a sensible comments thread where folks are presenting their views in support of independence.
Trolls hate those kinds of threads, because anyone undecided ‘dropping in’ might just be swayed, by a sensible fact-based discussion, in favour of an independent Scotland.
The second is to goad the unsuspecting into a similar invective-filled rant in retaliation.
It’s nothing more than a trap to trick someone into destroying their own, possibly sound, argument in favour of independence by making themselves look a bit mad.
As Dorothy says, those kinds of trolls are easy to spot and should not be given the oxygen of a response.
There are trolls, however, who’s traps are clever and subtle.
They’re not always easy to identify. And often their arguments appear on the surface to be serious attempts at presenting a sound case in favour of the objective they support.
But they seldom are. Because underneath the apparency of a sound argument will be a hate-filled rant lurking in the shadows screaming, “let me out”.
In those cases, if you can’t spot the tricks they use, it’s best to go with your gut-feeling.
Their comments will make you feel a little uneasy in a way you can’t quite identify.
They’re partly designed to make you hesitate mounting a challenge – because who wants to look a fool, right?
The way to expose that species of troll, if you can be bothered, is to calmly chip away at their argument. Ask reasonable questions. Feign incomprehension and politely ask for clarification. Their argument will probably be fallacious in so many ways you’ll get bored counting the errors.
Most will resort to ranting and raving in the end, when they see their argument crumbling under scrutiny.
And any casual observer will instinctively favour your argument, even if it’s tosh, because of the calm and measured approach you have taken in destroying your opponent’s.
To Alf Baird,
I’m sorry about the typo in your name in my post above. It was not intentional. I will always do you the honour of calling you by your proper name, and if my fingers mis-type it on a small phone keyboard, the error is mine alone.
Chas & ASA
Aye, according to postcolonial theory, such ‘denial’ (of oppression) forms an essential aspect of the ‘colonial condition’. That is what enables colonialism, which is often obscured due in part to the processes of ‘cultural assimilation’, ‘to work’. The ‘colonial mindset’ is a psychological condition, efter aw, in which a subordinated people are conditioned to accept their deprivations etc as ‘deserved’.
Stoker says:
22 May, 2023 at 12:38 pm
The National’s headline in Stuart’s article above: “YOUSAF PLEDGES TO LAUNCH SUMMER OF INDY”
Stoker, the National’s just no’ gettin’ it. Whit Yousaf actually said was that he’s gonnae dae a SUMMER COURSE in HINDI, … as a guid-will gesture to ither Scots, like him an’ me an’ mair an’ mair o’ us, wha’s ancestors originally cam frae the Indian sub-continent. An’ a very noble gesture it is, granted the wye Muslims an’ Hindus hae had their wee bits o’ problems ower thonner, i’the past. It’s great – we’ll hae nane o’ thon bigotry here, in Scotlan’.
Just think o’ it, Stoker – We new guys frae the aul’ country (or shud I raither say ‘the aul’ sub-continent’), noo that we’re a Jock Thampsan’s bairns, there’s nae glass ceilin’ fur ony o’ us. An’ the First Meenester’s provin’ it, just by meenesterin’ awa’, up there i’ the Bute Hoose Cloud.
As the hale warld kens, this is a tolerant wee country, an’ if wir ain present-day King Charlie hadnae wheedled it intae his coronation ceremony, inheritet frae thon aul’ blawbag Henrico the VIIIth, thon richtly modified-an’-tweak’t wee royal title o’ Defender o’ the Faiths (Fid. Def.) wid, an shid, hae been Humza’s. An’ – naw! – it disnae mean turnin’ a Deef ear tae a’ the Fibs – juist keep on op’nin’ your ears tae the fibs, an’ let them fin’ the channel that lets them sink deep intae yer hairt … An’ let that channel turn intae an enormous aqueduct, ‘cos you’re gonnae need it, fur there’s a mighty torrent o’ them their fibs cummin’ doon your wye, tick ‘n fast, an’ it just gets bigger and bigger…
Wha’ dae ye think we are, Stoker? I’ll tell ye wha’ we are! We’re the new Normans, y’ken … wha’re noo the new Scots, The modern equivalent o’ a’ thae Bruces an’ Stuarts / Stewards – an’ Boyles an’ Hays an’ Frasers an’ a’ that – wha’ powered (or pour’d) their wye intae oor wee bit hill an’ glen, oor Scotlan’, in the late-11th an’ 12th an’ 13th Centuries.
Whit’s no’ tae like?
This has aye been the land o’ opportunity, an’ it still is. An’ aye been a lan’ o’ reconciliation aussi, an’ it still is! Perfect example o’ this underlying thon heedline we’re talkin’ aboot. Urdu-speakin’ Muslims an’ Hindi-speakin’ Hindus a’ pairt an’ paircel o’ wan big Scottish melting-pot faim’ly (no’ tae say melting-down pot faim’ly)?
An oor ain big Humza daein’ his level best tae set us a’ a marvellous example o a’ this, wi’ him learnin’ the Hindi a’ summer.
Whit’s his press conferences gonnae be like efter that? A hunner per cent mair compreehensible than they are noo, – at least tae Hindi-speakers – that’s fur sure. At least he’ll try an’ no’ mak the kind o’ blunner his wee pal Nik’la went an’ made, dae ye remember it? Thon time when she got a’ upset aboot the Immigration Authorities tryin’ to deport thae poor Sikhs frae Kenmure Street on whit she seem’d tae think wiz their (!) great Feast o’ Eid, tho’ they werenae Mulsims!
Ah weel, we’ll hae nae such confusions goin’ on in Scotlan’, will we? Neverr again!
An’ wha’s that cryin’ oot in the back benches there, sayin’ ‘If ye dinnae ken a Mulsim fae a Sikh, or a Sikh frae a Hindu, an’ a’, how on earth are ye gonnae tell a man frae a wummin or, come tae think o’ it, an erse frae an elbow…?’
Whit kin; o’ question is that? How can ony modern person in this 21st Century ever even think it, never min’ pose it? We’ll need tae get oor man Humza in tae sort that nasty wee equallity-denier oot, an’ shut him up! Or, raither, lock him up – a’the-gither.
Does he no’ ken that insteed o’ thon auld-fashion’t ‘equallity afore the law’ bullsh*t, which we hae richt and proper abolish’t, we noo hae laws to enforce to’al equallity on a’bdy, an’ on a’thing? Does he / she/ it/ they/ who no’ ken theer are nae mair differnces at a’, an’ that’s whit it’s a’ aboot? Nae mair difference a’tween onythin’, or onywan; nae mair difference at a’… They’ve a’ been ditched in the Clyde, and they’re sailin’ doon the Broomielaw!
Aye, an’ Hindi isnae different frae Urdu, or the Gallic frae Scots, or Eenglish fur that matter.
An’ that means Scotlan’ isnae ony different frae Englan’ either, just like (wee hint tae Humza) White isnae different frae ony ither Colour…
So, while Humza gets his gob smacked wi’ Hindi a’ through the summer, the now-traditional welcome message will boom out loud an’ clear frae the Caird Hall in Dundee, on 24th June 2023, the seevn hunner an’ tenth anniversary o’ Bruce’s vict’ry at Bannockburn. Here it is, then, as a foretaste for all those who will pass through the Caird Hall doors on that tumultuous occasion:
‘Come away in. Gimme yer jaikit, an’ I’ll hang it/you up fur you. … Ye’ll hae had yer Indy, … haven’t ye?!’
And the High-Heid-Yin’s welcoming committe won’t tak ‘No’ for an answer. Fur the only answer available will be ‘Yes’. ‘Yes, we’ve wir Indy.’
And you’ll get a mighty slap on the back, or even a big hug: ‘Weel said, Sir. So, frae noo on, you juist forgerr-it! OK? There’s a good chappie!’
Anton Decadent says
At last someone is beginning to realise that Alba are just a wee mini me English political party.
New Scots. A horrible racist anti Scottish term. Of course Alex Salmond did say at one of his wee Alba book meetings that, He would have none of this natavist stuff. So there you go Scots always thought of last always at the bottom of the heap, last in line, never our turn. And we are chastised for trying to promote indigenous Scots.
Aye new Scots. What right has Salmond or any other politician to deny their own people of a decent standard of living. Has he or any of his ilk gone one day without food heat light in their homes.
As a bairn did he or his ilk ever stand in line with two working parents at a food bank.
Nearly one third of Scottish children living in poverty.
Our people need a fair deal and he Salmond is not for giving them that
Aye new Scots. What Alex Salmond and Alba are telling you is this. You people are finished here now, this is their country other peoples children will be born here.
Miserable, brainless, incompetent from SCOT ABROAD, now there is an Anglo mouthful that most in my part of the world, MidEast, would recognize as part of a litany of justification for retaining the colonial status quo.
Fortunately, few paid attention.
The mindset does not belong in the 21st century. The «greatest empire» has been gone a long time ago.
Quite an impressive amount of copium on display over at the WGD but even Paul Kavanagh now appears to be leaning towards a plebiscite election as the path forward and is clinging to the hope the SNP follows – though there’s a tacit admission that it might not.
So, the SNP members-only Independence Convention should be awaited with bated breath. Will the 2300 (max) members shoot themselves in the foot or in the head?
Alf Baird, at 2:49pm.
You are certifiably bonkers. Stop looking for whining problems, and start looking at the good that has come for Scots both home and abroad since 1707. The latter vastly outweighs the former, and of the former, the problems are laid at the feet of those who are fearful and resentful of their own incompetence.
If the SNP has 72,300 members then why has the special conference been book for a venue that only holds a capacity of 2,300. So are the 70,000 members who aren’t Councillors, MSPs or MPs to stand outside.
If you where holding a conference on Independence you would booked something with a bigger seating capacity as your venue.
Alf Baird.
In agreement about the Colonisation of Scotland, although it is possible for for the the UN on de- Colonisation to consider including, that in the case of ( Scotland ) the right and political fight for de- Colonisation is furthered by the Statement from the UK parliament.
that “The parliament of Scotland was extinguished and dissolved” in England” from progressing forward into a parliamentary union that would have resulted in a international treaty.
However this parliamentary union did not continue.
Without doubt that union ended when the Scottish parliament in England ended.
The debate being put forward is that Westminster now Claims in 2023, it was only the English parliament of Westminster that entered the Great British parliament.
This sadly can be confirmed from the past records,
But it also confirms with greater authority and references that Scotland is a Colonised Country, and rather, Scotland and its parliament was extinguished and dissolved early on and prevented from joining in a parliamentary union with Englands Westminster parliament, and thus Scotland never having progressed to that stage of union.
There is no other legal Conclusion. Other than Colonisation.
The UK parliaments claim of Statement in 2023 is a actually a aid and asset to Scotland in confirming it Colonisation by England to the UN.
I have my doubts personally wether the UN will aid Scotland in as, much of the control in it is by the Westminster acting as UK parliament.
From a more logical angle, it could be perceived, To begin with the Scots simply walking away as it is already confirmed by Westminster the Scottish parliament has not been in the Treaty of Union since 1707.
@Stuart MacKay (3.04) –
Hard to imagine that attendance at their convention will even get into four figures.
@Alf Baird 10:25am and 10:58am
“First we have to understand this relationship before we can start to move “inexorably to the decomposition of this dependence”. If we do not first understand our (colonial) ‘condition’ how would we otherwise be able to determine its treatment (liberation)?”
Anyone who thinks Scotland is not, effectively, a colony should read Alf’s paper.
It clearly articulates the true nature of Scotland’s relationship with England in what is euphemistically known as ‘The Union’.
It describes the methods and trickery a colonising power uses to fool and subjugate a people and bend them unquestioningly to its will.
It also describes the psychological effects of colonisation on a colonised people.
And it does not paint a pretty picture.
Of course, Scotland’s subjugation by a numerically superior power is not the standard flavour of colonialism.
No. Scotland is made to suffer a special form of oppression. Alf calls it ‘interior-colonisation’.
It’s all laid out clearly in Alf’s paper.
But it’s not all bad news.
If we Scots lose our battle for independence there’s a consolation prize.
The indigenous Scots will be assigned areas in Scotland just for them.
Let’s call those areas ‘reservations’ and give them the name ‘The(Scottish)Nations’.
They will be designated special areas of deprivation.
Drugs and alcohol will be freely available.
Children of ‘The Nations’ will receive a special kind of education (check out Scotland’s ‘Curriculum for Excellence’. It’s unique in that there is no discernible
‘curriculum’ whatsoever. And let’s not even go to the ‘Excellence’ part).
We already have a ‘reservation’ in development. It’s called Glasgow and the central belt.
And before the unionists on here start shouting and screaming – hyperbole is also a tool widely used in rhetorical argument. So be warned. Don’t make yourselves look like fools.
On second thoughts…knock yourselves out.
“You’ll be 500 years in your grave before there’s enough enthusiasm in Scotland to become an independent nation. I hope you won’t get bored during your waiting.”
Looks like the homework’s not going to happen. 😀
https://archive.is/LWdK7
What will the SNP’s independence convention actually achieve?
SNP MSPs playing the victim card.
They don’t like being asked questions by journalists it appears.
Stop interrupting they say.
More dirty rotten scoundrels elsewhere with Herald quoting some quite violent words directed at Margaret Ferrier from the indy standards commissioner for having left home couple of years back without a runny nose.
Not sure if the SNP code of conduct provides guidelines as to how such tantrums should be countered without causing offence in equal measure, and couldnt find the actual report to verify if herald is at it or not (ie following the pow wow with Alastair Campbell), but, having gotten into the post coughid habit of doing a bit research of my own, thought it worth pointing out that when David Mundell was disciplined for the not dissimilar blatant and dishonest intent when recklessly and selfishly using 2nd class post for Westminster stationary (or some such drivel along lines that he shouldnt be using parliament as a vehicle to communicate with constituents) the potentially extremely well paid commissioner did not get nearly as violent and must presumably be acting with bias (ergo not independent) or incompetence (ergo not qualified for the post) or on someone else’s orders (presumably the bribe did not come from a tory though since Mr Mundell was, nonetheless, disciplined for his alleged faux pas)
https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/complaints-and-investigations/allegations–rectified/rectifications-2023/
Ian Brotherhood says:
22 May, 2023 at 3:25 pm
@Stuart MacKay (3.04) –
Hard to imagine that attendance at their convention will even get into four figures.
I think that will suit them just fine. They don’t want to face the rank and file anymore. A small, manageable number of party sycophants and hangers-on is just what they desire. Standing ovations at the drop of a hat (and not much else). I would leave them to it. Leave them to wallow in their delusions and self-congratulations. If they don’t (re)join the independence movement pronto, they will be left behind. Things are starting to happen IMHO.
Xaracen,
time for you to do some homework. Try to work out which trade blocs or other countries are going to be interested in a Scotland that once crashed into a union because it was bust, and (some) now wants to crash out of a union, but 300 years later, is still bust and has to borrow money off of its big sister just to keep the lights on?
This tweet exemplifies the franchise problem.
No doubt ASA will have something to say about it, as will Alf Baird.
Question: Did this Norwich dude have a vote in 2014? And will he have one next time?
Is it ‘nativist’ to suggest that he, and the many like him, should not be given any say in the future of Scotland?
https://twitter.com/islainthewild/status/1660585629791420416
David Hannah @3 47 ‘victim card’ Do you remember Nick Robinsons comment during the Referendum. He lied outright. It beggars belief that people are so blinded by their hatred of the SNP and their achievements that they are prepared to ignore incontrovertible evidence.
Most imperial colonies were never actually colonized by settlers. Attempts were made to settle Kenya but were too late in development. The French successfully settled Algeria, northern provinces becoming part of metropolitan france, but that was brought to an end by De Gaulle. The Afrikaaners are unique in staying put despite antagonism. The Brits found them useful idiots in controlling «the natives».
Colonizers rely heavily on local cooperation, deprived of that the territory is ungovernable. Social and economic advancement, privilege, status, bribery help in that schmoozing process. Why the British love kings, rajahs, palaces, parades and dressing up.
Summer of Hindi you say Wull.
Brilliant! You can’t go wrong with a bit of Bollywood & a Tandoori Chicken take away 🙂
IB,
you raise an important question on the franchise. I would favour including all Scots (as defined by the SNP’s 2014 criteria for a Scottish passport of one Scottish grandparent) outwith Scotland, but within the UK. But many others will have different views.
It’s a difficult one. Scots by blood? Scots by settlement? Scots by immigration? Who knows?
Scotland has got an ethnically Pakistani FM (and I have no problem with that), so all bets are open. But if he wants himself to have a vote, I’ll be a little upset if he denies other Scots the vote.
Norwich?
Is that where Norfolk Broads is?
Any news about the £150,000 tin hut on Harris?
PS Just in case you didn’t know this I am Scottish.
Stop feeding the SNP farm trolls and 77th Denison dumplings, the more you converse with these anti-independence interlopers such as Chas, John Main and A Scot Abroad etc, the more you let them thrive with their BS comments that are designed solely to undermine anything associated with dissolving this bucket of sewage union.
Ignore them.
Quote from SCOT ABROAD
«time for you to do some homework. Try to work out which trade blocs or other countries are going to be interested in a Scotland that once crashed into a union because it was bust, and (some) now wants to crash out of a union, but 300 years later, is still bust and has to borrow money off of its big sister just to keep the lights on»
The quintessence of the racist, subordinating, too wee, too poor too stupid mentality.
Some Scots are born not to be free.
@Ian Brotherhood 3:56pm
Ian, my current definition of a ‘new Scot’ is a bairn born in Scotland who has at least one parent who is a Scot
I’m reasonably sure that the majority of English folk, or Scots for that matter, who retire to Spain, for example, don’t consider themselves ‘new Spaniards’.
But who knows? Some might.
Being told you are not oppressd, suppressed or colonised.
That like a rapist telling their victim they are not a victim,And we all know that scenario from recent newspapers and reported here.
It is obvious to most here, if the Scots are being denied a section 30, a referendum from another Country, ie, we are suppressing your Choices, we are suppressing your options, we are suppressing your right to self determination even although we threw your Scottish parliament out of the treaty with us three hundred years ago.
That is oppression and that has a distinctly bad taste of a Coloniser whom extinguished the 1707 Scottish parliament from Westminster parliament.
When the threats come that start claiming we are under Englands parliament and under English law while being thrown out of the treaty hundreds of years past then we and the rest of the world are seeing colonialism still alive and kicking in the Westminster parliament.
And anyone suggesting there is no oppression on Scotlands people either needs some help mentally or is being well paid not to see it.
Republicofscotland,
True about troll,
A bit blind if I may be so pertinent, on dissolving the treaty of union,
It was dissolved in 1707, it was extinguished in 1707.
Definitely not! They complain about everything being in Spanish & that there are too many Spanish in Spain.
Replace ‘white’ with ‘Spanish’ in Humza’s ‘rivers of white’ speech and you’ll get the idea.
@Anton Decadent 1:37PM
Aye. I’m struggling with keeping my mouth shut about Alba and Alex Salmond because at this point if people aren’t yet clued up enough to see the warning signs then I don’t know what to say.
Alex Salmond was a household hero when I was growing up, everything was about getting his party as many votes as possible.
Now he is basically another of the club – keeping his policies inside WEF acceptable parameters, which means towing the line on mass immigration and the displacement of Europeans, keeping silent on the covid jab elephant in the room, basically going along with the trans crap and being in line with the climate agenda.
In the current climate not being aware of the danger posed to the future of Scots due to mass migration with the accompanied demonisation of white people by our institutions along with the pathetic civnat ‘stance’ (but not when it comes to other native peoples of the world mind you) rules you out as a serious pundit never mind nationalist politician.
Lets be clear folks, and I know you do not want to accept this, but currently there is no political solution on the table.
Scots have to start learning to support each other as Scots without looking for politicians to do it for them. From this we can build a formidable movement, an actual national movement. Without doing this we become a minority in our own homeland and lose our ability to choose our course forever. It’s that serious.
Im glad you contribute to the discussion Anton Decadent.
Republicofscotland, re your 4:42pm.
Do you only want to exist in an echo-chamber where everybody thinks and says the same as you? Not very smart, if you do.
@Ruby 5:29pm
As usual, Ruby. Your point is well made and succinctly put.
It would be difficult to extract the Scottish parliament from Westminster parliament and the treaty it created
Because it has not been in the Westminster parliament of Great britain since 1707.
You cannot dissolve it now as it was dissolved 300 years sine.
You would be repeating the same process for a second time, that was already done and confirmed for us by Westminster then and now and the 1707 Monarch of the time, namely Queen Anne,
This is why Westminster and politicians of Westminster treat the snp as if they were from the backwoods and lack intellect.
They do not have to be there.
Ruby
Regarding the expensive advertised hut on Harris –
You will no doubt be able to correct me but are there not many abandoned crofts on the islands which could be bought and developed at a fraction of the price.
Republicofscotland.
That leaves just the English Parliament in Westminster since 1707.
Ottomanboi says:
22 May, 2023 at 4:47 pm
Quote from SCOT ABROAD
«…… but 300 years later, is still bust and has to borrow money off of its big sister just to keep the lights on»
The quintessence of the racist, subordinating, too wee, too poor too stupid mentality.
The quintessence of an idiot too… The Ascot Hat has just been freshly telling us how much Scotland has benefitted from the Union, yet by his own admission, we’re still bust after 300 years of “inspirational” London rule. More of that please!…. said NOBODY.
Ascot Hat needs to read the quote from Samual Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were once our countrymen.”
Scotland will not be the poorer for Independence, actually quite the reverse. But yet, even supposing Independence left us all with nothing greater than the dignity of our own Nation to live in, I would take it in a heartbeat.
I would take it and rejoice, that the Curse of Scotland, the treacherous fallacy of the Union, which has robbed and impoverished every one of us, derided our language, culture and heritage, and doomed so many of us to lives of perpetual penury and underachievement, … was finally at an end.
After a 317 year hiatus, the thousand year story of Scotland can continue.
All the terms and conditions of the 1706/1707 Scottish parliament were dissolved and Extinguished with it by the two main culprits.
Westminster and queen Anne.
Hi A Scot Abroad at 3:54 pm.
You typed,
“Try to work out which trade blocs or other countries are going to be interested in a Scotland…”
Scotland would be welcome in EFTA, which has access to the EU countries. A trading block we had access to, before the English-influenced BREXIT.
That do?
You also gibbered,
“… that once crashed into a union because it was bust”
You’ve been told UMPTEEN times – Scotland as a country had next to no national debt prior to the union. A number of nobles got their financial fingers burnt in the Darien Scheme, a scheme that was sabotaged by a collusion of England and Spain.
The Scottish nobles were BRIBED to vote for the union.
This quote is from the link below.
“LORD ROSEBERRY AND THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT.
Scottish Home Rule Association,
Edinburgh, November 25, 1889.
SIR, – Before the echo of Lord Rosebery’s speech dies away, allow me to correct the astounding statement that the Union with England was not brought about by bribery and corruption.
This argument he uses to enhance the claims of Ireland to precedence over Scotland, and thus for his own party ends deliberately falsifies history – a very strange procedure for a patriotic Scottish nobleman!
I give you a list of the parties bribed, and may add that the Court of Session led by the Lord Chancellor was also bribed, the Lords Ordinary getting their salaries raised from £200 a year to £500 a year. – I am, &c.
CHARLES WADDIE, Hon. Sec.
A list of the parties bribed to betray their country:- Earl of Marchmont, £1104. 15s. 7d.; Earl of Cromarty, £300; Lord Preston Hall, £200; Lord Justice-Clerk, £200; Duke of Athole, £1000; Earl of Balcarres, £500; Earl of Dunmore, £200; Lord Anstruther, £300; Mr Stewart of Castle Stewart, £300; Lord Elphington, £200; Lord Fraser, £100; Lord Polwarth, £50; Mr John Campbell, £200; Earl of Findlater, £100; Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, £100; Earl of Glencairn, £100; Earl of Kintore, £200; John Muir, Provost of Ayr, £100; Lord Forbes, £50; Earl of Seafield, £490; Marquis of Tweeddale, £1000; Duke of Roxburghe, £500; Lord Elibank, £50; Lord Banff, £11; Major Cunningham, £100; to the messenger that brought down the Treaty of Union, £60; Sir William Sharp, £300; Patrick Coultrain, £25; Alex. Wedderburn, £75; to the Commissioners for Equipage and Daily Allowance, £12,325.”
– The Scotsman, Tuesday 26th November, 1889.”
https://randomscottishhistory.com/2019/11/26/26th-of-november/
Ian Brotherhood @ 3:56 pm
“the franchise problem”
Independence is first and foremost about the self-determination of ‘a people’. ‘A people’ are usually defined by specific features such as their culture, heritage, traditions, history, language, ethnicity, common suffering, national identity/consciousness, and their will to be ‘a people’.
Where a person currently lives is a separate matter to that of self-determination of ‘peoples’. Many ethnic groups and their descendants around the world have been evicted and/or displaced/replaced by other dominant ethnic groups, which is a common feature of Imperialism, i.e. they are no longer living in their homeland.
Historic and ongoing demographic change affecting Scots involves a clear intent to displace much of the indigenous population, e.g. clearances, state subsidies and policies to move people out and others in, and with education, language and recruitment policies favouring another people and culture/language.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, postcolonial theory tells us that peoples in self-determination conflict are linguistically (and hence ethnically/culturally) divided. In addition, an independence movement depends on the solidarity of the oppressed ethnic group; in our case this is predominantly Scots language speakers.
A Scot Abroad said;
“IB, you raise an important question on the franchise. I would favour including all Scots (as defined by the SNP’s 2014 criteria for a Scottish passport of one Scottish grandparent) outwith Scotland, but within the UK. But many others will have different views.
It’s a difficult one. Scots by blood? Scots by settlement? Scots by immigration? Who knows?”
For an existential constitutional matter like an independence vote, the matter of the sovereignty of the autochthonous Scots is paramount for that franchise, because the sovereignty of Scotland is embodied in its own people; their voting outcome literally engages the very sovereignty of Scotland, and as such it cannot be denied.
The only real question here is whether non-resident Scots still retain their sovereignty, or does it expire after some years, or some distance or both, or not. The converse question is whether long-term non-Scots residents in Scotland can acquire sovereignty? These matters have never been discussed to the best of my knowlege, but sovereignty can neither be set aside nor granted on a whim.
Westminster, take note!
(Sorry, I meant to post this with my last comment.)
A Scot Abroad said;
“Xaracen, time for you to do some homework. Try to work out which trade blocs or other countries are going to be interested in a Scotland that once crashed into a union because it was bust, and (some) now wants to crash out of a union, but 300 years later, is still bust and has to borrow money off of its big sister just to keep the lights on?”
Oh, look; more bogus framing! We’ve had this conversation already, don’t you remember? I already explained this, citing England’s desperate need for Scottish taxes to help it keep on top of their out-of-control national debt created by their endless wars in Europe, making it a key driver for them for the Union. The other key driver for them was preventing Scotland from challenging England’s preference for the succession to the crown on Queen Anne’s death.
They never saw the Union as ‘rescuing’ Scotland, so much as constraining it. Scotland’s key driver was avoiding another English war, and the other was its need to expand trade overseas. Scotland’s Darien venture might have failed anyway, and it wasn’t contemplating military violence to achieve it, but England certainly went well out of its way to sabotage it.
And even if your framing wasn’t bogus, it’s not my job to do. If you want to know those things, do it yourself. Oh, and rather than asking anyone in the UK Government, don’t bother, some of the relevant expertise may exist in the civil service but it doesn’t know who has it, or even if they still work there. UK politicians certainly don’t have that expertise because they always relied on the civil service or the EU to manage these things.
A book recommendation for you; Ian Dunt’s ‘How Westminster Works …and Why It Doesn’t’
Izzie…
“It beggars belief that people are so blinded by their hatred of the SNP”
Not really.
I hate the SNP to the extent that I might well be in need of a four-legged friend in Hi-Viz. I don’t just hate them mind you… I despise them,ore and more by the day.
They have collectively sold out to the trough that is Westminster for a nice salary and expenses in return for stifling any and every opportunity to further the cause of Indy.
They waste time and effort and tax-payer’s cash on minority groups and their hobby horses, just to win brownie points from the wokerati. They f**k up every public service they touch, with few exceptions.
They turn a blind eye to criminality in their own ranks, ignore sexual assaults and inappropriate behaviour, sanction anyone who speaks out, channel funds for dubious purposes, shall I go on? Not forgetting their presiding over the imprisonment of Manny Singh, Craig Murray and who could forget the Salmond stitch up. Sturgeon should get the award for the politician with the greatest working level of amnesia since Richard Nixon.
They’re corrupt, deviant, incompetent lying bastards and the sooner they’re on the dole or in jail or both the better for Scotland.
Indy for Scotland – SNP OUT!
https://archive.is/JenNT
There might be but not at a price locals can afford.
The lack of affordable homes for islanders is believed to be behind an exodus of young people from the Western Isles and a subsequent downturn in the birth rate as well as a barrier to job recruitment.
This year Tavish Scott, chief executive of industry body Salmon Scotland and a former long-standing MSP, called for £10 million of salmon farm rents to be ringfenced for rural housing investment due to the sector’s difficulties in finding employee accommodation.
Why were you asking Scot do you fancy buying one?
@Brian Doonthetoon 5:50pm
“Scotland as a country had next to no national debt prior to the union. A number of nobles got their financial fingers burnt in the Darien Scheme, a scheme that was sabotaged by a collusion of England and Spain.
The Scottish nobles were BRIBED to vote for the union”
Good point, Brian Doonthetoon. If memory serves, those nobles, and others, recovered at least 60% (if not more) of the massive losses they incurred, as part of the bribe.
@ wullie says:22 May, 2023 at 2:56 pm
Nearly one third of Scottish children living in poverty
I always struggle to get my head around statements like that.
Cos we aren’t breeding enough. We Scots that is. Our indigenous population is declining. We are told that the only solution is to import New Scots.
So who are these kids that are living in poverty in Scotland right now?
If many of them are who I think they are, just why should I care?
Of course, it would have been different if I had ever been asked if I wanted mass immigration. And as a committed democrat, even although I would have said No Way, I might have been prepared to accept the majority verdict, if they had said Bring It On (I bet they wouldn’t have though).
But nobody was ever asked.
Ruby
I think Mr Scott’s idea is a good one.
The use of the word “ringfencing” is somewhat ironic though.
I’m not in the market myself – only interested in the preservation of the island way of life.
me @3.50
wow!
Turns out the decision to uphold the original sanction was taken by a whole panel of bias/incompetent/corrupt individuals, including 2 KCs*!
https://order-order.com/2023/05/22/ferrier-loses-commons-suspension-appeal-paving-way-for-by-election/
*doubtless the panel can point to having borrowed words from judgement made in a historically malicious Scottish court, ie in event USA ever gets around to questioning the role of that particular round of the plandemic in the big steal, but I’d have expected far more sophistication (and protection of good parliamentarians) from those associated with the standards committee regardless so, factoring in the possibility that they might ALL have been fooled by the (cough cough) narrative, would lean towards bias (ie racial discrimination) rather than corruption and/or incompetence at this stage.
Managed to catch up with bbcs’s poisonous question time HTAF did that clown OFFORD manage to become a life peer, what a f**king disgrace of a Scotsman
In response to Stokers comment re crowd funding an ALBA leaflet , Alex Salmond ALWAYS talks about creating a STIR within WM to create education and respect for Scotland’s position, when Offord was spouting his imperial pish about having had yir referendum , how about Alex interupting the moron and addressing the audience and SAYING
” TBQH I don’t know whether you support independence or not and you have the right to your views and opinions, but are you not disgusted and outraged that this man and his imperial masters are categorically telling you that you are NOT entitled to make a democratic decision on the future of YOUR country , we citizens of Scotland are the sovereign masters of OUR country and as the CLAIM OF RIGHT emphatically STATES we sovereign Scots have the RIGHT to decide the governance of our country via the CLAIM OF RIGHT which is accepted and agreed to by WM, it is NOT within the rules of WM to DENY Scots access to our DEMOCRATIC SOVEREIGN RIGHTS and I hereby call on the FM of Scotland and the leader of the TRUE Scottish Government to arrange a referendum forthwith and state a date when that referendum WILL take place”
If Alex wants publicity and to upset the snp and the unionists that is what he should do, whether you support or oppose independence NO POLITICIAN or political party should be able to dictate to a NATION and DENY DEMOCRACY
Joe says:
22 May, 2023 at 5:34 pm
@Anton Decadent 1:37PM
The era of the politician is over, none of them from any party has a decent thought in their heads about the indigenous people of Scotland.
In the area where I live there are hundreds of refugees accommodated in local hotels, their children have flooded the local schools and all of a sudden money can be found to assist these children, but money could never be found yo help local kids.
Also.There are quite a few local kids who are in poverty after school go home to a house with no heating no light no food
But hey ho. The refugees go off to their comfy well lit heated hotels plenty of food hot water to wash telly to watch or games on line etc etc etc
Are these the new Scots that Alex and Alba speak of.
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
@Northcode says:22 May, 2023 at 2:37 pm
Your post appears on the surface to be a serious attempt at presenting a sound case in favour of the objective you support
You’re a troll.
But to be serious for a mo, there’s a third kind. He/she signs off his/her posts with a pseudonym chosen because it is one of the most well known troll’s name in current popular culture.
He/she gets enormous delight from broadcasting “I’m a troll, but you lot are too dense to see what is right in front of your nose”.
@Joe
Go to YT and look up Glasgow Gang Armed With Machetes Ambush 16 Year Old In Argyle Street In Broad Daylight. If anyone puts the actual footage up on YT it is immediately deleted but in this there is a link to the footage on Instagram which will show why it is deleted from YT, not what is happening but who is behind it.
Same as the Rev I gave up my membership of the NUJ because one of the Codes Of Conduct is not describing people either being searched for or convicted of even murder if peoples feelings could be hurt by the ethnicity of the assailant, ie, not white.
Re political parties, I cannot see anyone who represents me or my interests, it is globalists across the board, SNP/Greens/Alba/Labour/Lib Dems/Tories. All of them bought and paid for.
Robert kknight @ 612 SNP out Unionist Parties in. Is that what you want!
BREEKS
Scot Abroad is hoisted by his rhetorical petard…Scotland entered the Union broke and would leave it broke, however, many individual Scots made a fortune out of ripping off «the natives» of a variety of imperial territories coz that’s what such territories were for. In the meantime, back home, civil war, clearances, emigration and Balmorality.
I suspect that Scot Abroad would heap praise on any Westminster régime that attempted to cripple an independent Scotland. Similar notions circulate around Catalunya and Québec.
The Union, a happy family of nations.
I’m sure we looked at this a long time ago but it’s surely worth re-examining.
Criteria for Irish citizenship.
I don’t see what’s wrong with these, they seem reasonable.
Imagine how many folk would be eligible to apply for Scottish citizenship? It must be in the millions. (Alf Baird has covered the figures previously – I don’t have them to hand but they are mind-boggling.)
If neither of Mr. Folly Norfolk’s parents or grandparents would’ve been eligible for citizenship then he can’t vote. Simple as. He can keep lording it over the sheep for a fortnight a year up in Harris, aye, but he doesn’t get a vote on the future governance of our country. How anyone could object to that is beyond me.
https://www.dfa.ie/citizenship/#My%20Grandparent%20Was%20Born%20on%20The%20Island%20of%20Ireland.%20Am%20I%20An%20Irish%20Citizen?
O/T
Over at IndyCar, Gordon Ross, reckons over 70000 have signed up to Salvo and Independence.scot.
But they have not been registered, because these sites have been hacked and their registrations have went to many different cloned sites.
He also suggests that ALBA may be a victim of these cloned sites.
Would people be calling for independence if North Sea Oil hadn’t been discovered in the last one-sixth of the agreed 300-year union? In a union isn’t it UK oil, not Scottish oil? Or is the idea of a thriving, independent Scottish economy built on something else? (Please don’t say “renewables”.)
@Ottomanboi says:22 May, 2023 at 6:54 pm
Not for the first time, you have to ditch the harping on about Quebec as if it is relevant to the case of Scottish Indy.
The referenda in Quebec were down to two warring sets of colonists, English speakers and French speakers, squabbling over who would get ultimate control of lands that had been stolen at gunpoint from a third set of people – the original, indigenous inhabitants.
It’s just not relevant to Scotland, and I am astonished that so many of the people who have bought into the idea of “Scotland As Colony” can’t adjust their world view to see a humongous great colony like Quebec, when it is staring them in the face.
Even with the Scots that were bribed to join a union, it did not turn out as they expected, for it was in no time at all that the Scottish parliament was dissolved and extinguished by Westminster and Queen Anne,.
Leaving no representatives of a Scottish parliament in Westminsters parliament of Great Britain for the past 300 years.
For any person to suggest those very same people ( the Bribed ones) children and grandchildren and so on were representative of a Scottish dissolved extinguished parliament from the treaty of the union would be living in la la land.
Although if they claim they are, we know where and with whom their national debt lies, England,
I think another sound point never mentioned is the 2014 referendum question, ” Do you want to remain in the union” basically.
We had not or ever have been as a nation yet been asked if we want to join.
These seemly little omissions are gigantic and deceitful omissions to place that question in front of Scots that never voted to join in the first instance.
It is beyond logic,
Westminster parliament ensured it was the only parliament entered into Westminster in 1707 and so became Westminsters self proclaimed Great Britain Parliament without Scotland.
In so doing it dissolved and extinguished all of Scotlands promises made towards a union.
For no charges of Sedition can be raised against a parliament already dissolved,
No challenges can be made in a supreme Court of England that Scotland has walked away without due attention made to the point that Westminster had already ABSOLVED Scotland 1707 parliament from all legal liability by extinguishing it from recognition in Westminster, and thereafter ensuring it was dissolved from Westminster parliament by proclamation.
It is difficult for Westminster to make any legal challenge to Scotland if it walked away, for Westminster excluded 300 years past.
James jones.
Misleading question as there is no union with Scotland.
One wonders what an independent England’s economy will be based once it is free of the burden of all the Scottish baggage…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY2W_Okl9lE
@John Main 6:42pm
That wouldn’t be your pseudonym would it, John?
Seriously, though. In one of your earlier posts @6:33pm are you really saying we shouldn’t care about kids living in poverty just because they might not be indigenous Scots?
Or am I just misunderstanding the point you’re making?
James Jones, @ 7:23pm,
not only that, but it’s a plain fact that since 1707, far more money has been sent north to Scotland from London than has ever come south from Scotland in revenues, including the monies from oil and gas. A vastly greater sum.
Some lunatics like to prattle on about “reparations” for what they misguidedly assert is 300 years of colonialism. As if. Scotland is hugely in debt to our union, but unionists don’t count that cost. The union that has given Scotland great wealth, and offered Scots opportunities across the globe, for three centuries now. And intelligent and far-thinking Scots have taken those opportunities.
The great Britain parliament was to be created out of the parliament of the kingdom of Scotland and the parliament of England,
This did not happen,
The Westminster parliament dissolved and extinguished the parliament of Scotland in Englands Westminster.
There is only one parliament in Westminster since 1707.
Westminster parliament themselves made this statement on their parliament site 2023.
Dan,
Excellent point.
Although by the way it hangs on to the Country of Scotland, one suspects it knows deep down the answer.
If you seriously believe North Sea Oil is all that’s keeping the UK afloat (albeit most of it has filled the coffers of private companies, not the Exchequer) why would you suppose the Union (of course it exists, James Che, most of your posts refer to it) would let it go? It belongs to the Union.
Salvo and Alba have not been hacked.
The only people stealing your Independence money are the SNP.
Disinformation from the former national party of Scotland.
Izzie @6:50 pm
You clearly retain a faith in the SNP. Yet consider that the party has continually been in office for sixteen years. A very long time for an independence seeking party to be the government of its country without having attained the goal.
Within four years of becoming FM Salmond had won a Holyrood majority because of the SNP’s sound and efficient governing combined with strong campaigning for independence. By the following year he had put his name to the Edinburgh Agreement. A narrow indyref defeat was followed by a resurgence of SNP support and 56 MPs at Westminster in May 2015.
That electoral triumph in 2015 was Salmond’s legacy, resulting from his positive leadership. Sturgeon had not been at the helm long enough to have caused that 2015 success.
From then on though she squandered the SNP’s ultra-strong strategic position and was too proud to ask for Salmond’s help and advice. Far from being accorded the totally deserved status of wise elder statesman he was targeted and stitched-up by the insanely narcissistic Sturgeon and her wretched coterie.
The noxious brew of corruption, illegality, personality cult, bad governance and woke fanaticism completely took over the SNP to the extent that it is now merely a nightmarish and grotesque parody of what it once was. Not only incapable of winning freedom, but totally disinclined to do so. A de facto unionist party serving only it’s troughing parliamentarians and special advisors and bullying and sidelining any members who oppose or question what’s happening.
You accuse us all here Izzie of hating the SNP. But it’s the SNP who have to explain their hatreds and less than sane behaviour.
@Anton Decadent
The scale of the double standards we face:
https://twitter.com/MorgothsReview/status/1660413042625052675
Whoever in political circles is not talking about this situation that is being foisted on us is not a friend. Which means we have no friends in political circles.
Morgoth is excellent btw.
@A Scot Abroad
For one who appears to be concerned with accuracy nay pedantry, your ‘plain’ facts would appear to be notional. A bit like the GERS figures.
Follow the audit trail (not published since 1922)
Oh, the head scratching. Oh, the soul searching. Oh, the need for lots and lots of donations and oh, the column inches devoted to the magnum mysterium of how to gain independence.
Pit doon the swords and the claymores. Turns out there’s an old-fashioned technique called cooperation. What’s not to like?
“An Independence Convention must be a broad and inclusive political and civic gathering of the independence movement. To have any impact at all it clearly has to reach beyond any one political party. The SNP is entitled to have its own meetings to sort out its own policy but not to suggest it can represent an entire movement. That much is obvious particularly at a time when backing for the SNP is faltering but independence support is riding high.
The organisations which represent the Independence movement need to come together and declare themselves independent of the internal meetings of any one political party. Meanwhile the independence supporting political parties should co-operate to field one single candidate in each constituency on a joint platform seeking a mandate to negotiate independence. These are the initiatives which would galvanise independence support and strike fear into the heart of the Westminster establishment”.
Alex Salmond, ALBA.
James Che at 7:53 pm
“The great Britain parliament was to be created out of the parliament of the kingdom of Scotland and the parliament of England,
This did not happen,
The Westminster parliament dissolved and extinguished the parliament of Scotland in Englands Westminster.
There is only one parliament in Westminster since 1707.”
That would be the UK Parliament then. I’m still at a loss to understand how the Union of parliaments should have been implemented in your view. Is it the location you object to?
I had occasion to have to discuss the matter of HYDROGEN as the salvation of Scotland, with a staunch (yes, still) SNP member the other day.
HYDROGEN is a a TERRIBLE substance to deal with. In practical terms, Hydrogen is NOT some sort of ‘maiden’s prayer’ to solve the energy problem. Read up about ‘hydrogen embrittlement’ on Wikipædia before saying a word in favour of hydrogen as a widely available fuel.
Never forget this – MAKING the energy is a simple business, and making hydrogen using that energy is easy too. The problem is STORING hydrogen in bulk or even in car-tank sizes, so it can be used WHEN and WHERE it is wanted, especially in trains, buses, and cars. It can be fed into the gas supply system, and boilers will work fine – but wait! What happens when the hydrogen causes cracking of all the metal tanks, pipes and fittings?
Hydrogen liquified, or under high pressure (think about 700 BAR, over TEN THOUSAND pounds per square inch) is a complete NIGHTMARE which is the reason it hasn’t been used commercially as an energy source, ever, and may never be. Better ways of storing energy will appear first.
Remember, all green growing things make combustible materials (wood, hay, straw, leaves, RAPE-SEED OIL, CORN OIL, and so on from nothing more than WATER, carbon dioxide from the air, and sunlight. It is 100% ‘GREEN’.
Somewhere there lies the answer to the “useful energy” issue. We could GROW our energy supplies!
So, if an SNP or Scot Govt Energy expert tells you that Scotland will be a leader in Hydrogen production and supply, just assume it’s another SNP or Scot Govt lie.
Aye, that will be the supposed “equal” union that serves Scots so well, where Scotland is allocated a share of the revenue generated from its resources based on population numbers rather than the entirety of the resources located in our geographic area.
Handy for England too that over the course of the 300 odd year union the Kingdom of England’s population has grown from approximately 5 to 10 times larger than the Kingdom of Scotland.
But a reminder that SCOTLAND WITH ONLY 9% OF THE UK POPULATION HAS:
32% of the land area.
61% of the sea area.
90% of the fresh water.
65% of the natural gas production
96.5% of the crude oil production.
47% of the open cast coal production
81% of the untapped coal reserves
62% of the timber production
46% of the total forest area
92% of the hydro electric production
40% of the wind wave and solar energy production
60% of the fish landings
30% of the beef herd
20% of the sheep herd
9% of the dairy herd
10% of the pig herd
15% if the cereal holdings
20% of the potato holdings
90% of the whisky industry
70% of gin production
Now compare to those stats to England.
ENGLAND WITH 91% OF THE UK POPULATION ONLY HAS:
68% of the land area.
39% of the sea area.
10% of the fresh water.
35% of the natural gas production
3.5% of the crude oil production.
53% of the open cast coal production
19% of the untapped coal reserves
38% of the timber production
54% of the total forest area
8% of the hydro electric production
60% of the wind wave and solar energy production
40% of the fish landings
70% of the beef herd
80% of the sheep herd
91% of the dairy herd
90% of the pig herd
85% if the cereal holdings
80% of the potato holdings
10% of the whisky industry
30% of gin production
Now those resource to population stats look a bit sketchy for England to me…
And talking of population numbers, there’s also more to the population growth disparity than one might think.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/healthy-demographics/
@ Joe
Did you spot my post the other day which mentioned that out of 200 newborn children in my local area, only 20 bairns were born to both Scottish parents.
Without people like John Main and ASA I doubt if I would even read this board. We need to hear a spectrum of opinions and Mr Campbell seems to be allowing them to be heard, that’s why I support him as best I can financially.
Hearing the same stuff about the SNP regurgitated one hundred times in a thread, or great long windy passages on Supposed Scottish ill-treatment at the hands of Unionists can become just a tad boring.
This is a great wee place, moderation is very light compared to Guido or even Unheard, but lighten up a bit we are not oppressed by anyone…….except perhaps ourselves.
David Hannah says:
22 May, 2023 at 8:14 pm
Salvo and Alba have not been hacked.
The only people stealing your Independence money are the SNP.
Disinformation from the former national party of Scotland.
Not sure if this was an answer to my post , but if it is then you have misunderstood what I was saying , or perhaps I did not explain it clearly.
The Indy car guy is suggesting that many Salvo/ Independence.scot and Alba Fake Cloned sites have been set up by the Unionists.
Thus when people try to sign up to Salvo or Alba, they are more than likely to end up on one of the many cloned sites and so unable to register.
Dan, you keep posting those two lists like we’re supposed to be impressed. Meh!
@Dan 8:51pm
Thanks, Dan. Useful info and link.
Don’t know if @Joe read your post about babies born in Scotland, but I did.
In fact I think I might have posted a reply.
Hi Izzie at 6:50 pm.
You pasted,
“Robert kknight @ 612 SNP out Unionist Parties in. Is that what you want!”
No, what we want is pro-independence parties in power in Scotland, and the SNP, by their inactions on independence, have proved that they are NOT pro-independence.
Hi A Scot Abroad at 7:53 pm.
You asserted,
“not only that, but it’s a plain fact that since 1707, far more money has been sent north to Scotland from London than has ever come south from Scotland in revenues, including the monies from oil and gas. A vastly greater sum.”
As someone above pointed out, the UK government stopped giving the figures in 1922, because the surplus from Scotland was beginning to be embarrassing.
So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
James Jones said;
“Would people be calling for independence if North Sea Oil hadn’t been discovered in the last one-sixth of the agreed 300-year union? In a union isn’t it UK oil, not Scottish oil? Or is the idea of a thriving, independent Scottish economy built on something else? (Please don’t say “renewables”.)”
Very probably!
Scotland has been more than paying its way in the Union since at least the late 1800s. Figures published for the years 1900-1921 show Scotland’s contribution to ‘imperial services’ was vastly more than its population share. The govt stopped publishing the figures after 1921 because it was getting to be embarrassing to them. Another one off set of figures in 1953 from a Daily Telegraph reporter showed that annual drains of 20% to 25% of Scotland’s public revenues were going south. So you can park your ‘Scottish oil sparked off the indy movement’ argument right there since Scotland’s oil was many decades in the future.
As for Scotland’s oil being the UK’s oil, that’s simple fraud, because the Union isn’t a single homogenous entity in all sorts of ways, however much Westminster pretends otherwise. The two Kingdoms didn’t merge, they just clipped together, and instead of governing themselves separately as before 1707, they now govern themselves jointly (yeah, right) from one Parliament. The name ‘The United Kingdom’ is just a convenient label for foreign countries to refer to the new joint entity; it has almost no internal meaning.
Many aspects of both kingdoms continued much as before, but with the enormous fleg in the ointment being the perfidious English establishment, whose first, middle and last names are all synonymous with ‘Perfidy’, and which had no intention of playing fair, because they’ve never understood what that even meant. So things quickly went south, starting with our wealth, and that never stopped.
Scotland’s territory still officially belongs to the Scots, and not the Scots monarch, unlike in England’s constitution where all of the territory of the Kingdom of England officially belongs to the king.
Crown ownership as ‘in right of the Crown’ means different things in Scotland and England, which the English establishment knows fine well, but they bank on Jock McBloggs not being all that familiar with that distinction, or indeed many other such distinctions, so they play the bluff that there is no distinction, so somehow Scotland’s mineral wealth, especially petroleum, belongs to the UK Crown, and therefore to the English establishment.
It’s a lie, and an enormous theft worth hundreds of billions of Pounds to Scotland was committed perfectly deliberately by the English establishment that runs the UK. ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil!’ was true, and it still is, and much else is besides.
“(Please don’t say “renewables”.)” They are doing exactly the same thing with renewables! OUR RENEWABLES!
Briandoonthetoon,
I stand by my assertion. You arbitrarily trying to cut off the date at 1922 is pretty embarrassing to you.
@Northcode says:22 May, 2023 at 7:52 pm
No and Yes, respectively.
Cue extreme virtue signalling response …
Right …
About …
Now !!!
Meantime, see post from Dan claiming that around 10% of kids in his area are to both-indigenous parents.
Meaning that 90% are not.
Now, we don’t know what percentage of kids have two non-indigenous parents, and we don’t know where these parents came from, so we don’t know if these parents have any real history of paying into the welfare state going back three generations.
Like I have.
As a Scot who can trace his Scottish ancestry on both sides of the family (without even trying) back to the 19th century, it is my settled opinion that my rights and needs trump those of New Scots.
No matter how photogenic their delightful little kiddies might be.
And even if many ScotGov indicators seem to suggest the opposite.
And even if you intend to try to make a case that they shouldn’t.
Soz.
Xaracen,
who are you going to sell Scotland’s renewables to?
That’s not a trick question, but to answer it intelligently, you need to know a bit about physics, engineering, geography, geographic energy potential, the cost of capital, and markets.
To be fair, Dan maybes should revise his stats.
The untapped coal reserves, for example. Worth diddly squat, as all indications are they will remain untapped forever.
The figures for wind, wave and solar energy production look iffy to me. The disparity in favour of Scotland must have grown considerably. With more ongoing. For example, the proposed Berwick Bank windfarm off East Lothian will generate twice as much electricity as will be needed for all of Scotland’s homes.
Interesting. What are these ‘imperial services’?
@A Scot Abroad
A savvy Scotland would seek to capitalise on its cheap, abundant energy by using it to build markets in energy-intensive manufactured materials.
Aluminum and steel production, for example. The biggest cost is the energy needed.
Mass production of oxygen and hydrogen from water.
Simply exporting the electricity is the least lucrative way of cashing in. The real profits lie in adding value.
My own personal hobby horse is synthetic fuel production. Remarkable to think that all road, air and sea transportation could continue exactly as it is now, but carbon neutral, using synthetic gasoline, kerosene and diesel. The technologies already exist to make these synthetic fuels, but they require copious cheap energy.
Like what Scotland potentially has.
No batteries needed, no environmental destruction, no chaos as everybody scrambles to fit chargers to their houses, and we can tell the Chinese to do one. What’s not to like?
Izzie @6:50
“Robert kknight @ 612 SNP out Unionist Parties in. Is that what you want!”
You’re supporting a Unionist Party by supporting the SNP, FFS!
The SNP is a Devo-Max party who, for Westminster gold, has abandoned Indy for the foreseeable. Don’t just take my word for it. There are 1.2 Million reasons to support that particular fact…
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23475907.stephen-flynn-snp-westminster-group-lose-1-2m/
…for without the annual injection of Westminster £ the SNP is on skid row.
If you want to support an Indy party, there’s ISP, ALBA or SSP. The rest are pro-Union/pro-Devo.
If you can’t see that, then you’re either in denial or it’s you who could make use of a Hi-Viz jacketed Lab yourself.
Hi A Scot Abroad at 10:01 pm.
You asserted,
“I stand by my assertion. You arbitrarily trying to cut off the date at 1922 is pretty embarrassing to you.”
I didn’t “arbitrarily” cut off at 1922 – that was the uk government, that was. How EMBARRASSING for them!
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snp-told-scrap-pointless-unnecessary-30048163
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-slams-alister-jack-after-30046723
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-peddling-fiction-independence-conference-30044723
John Main,
nice to meet you in the comments BTL. I suspect that you and I are on opposite ends of the Indy seesaw, but you’ve a fine way with words and an intelligent approach to debate and data. There’s only a few others on WoS who have the same. It’s mostly fluff, nonsense, and ancient guff that body at all cares about now.
You are correct in your analysis that Scotland’s energy should be used internally as a means of reducing the cost of production, as opposed to exporting it. But the business analysis would look at what rival countries can do: Norway, Denmark, Ireland and even Iceland. Roughly comparable in terms of population and in terms of energy potential. Some hard thinking ahead for Scots.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/scrooge-snp-run-council-ban-30045319
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-hypocritic-luddites-stuck-past-30044046
John Main at 10:37 pm.
“My own personal hobby horse is synthetic fuel production. Remarkable to think that all road, air and sea transportation could continue exactly as it is now, but carbon neutral, using synthetic gasoline, kerosene and diesel. The technologies already exist to make these synthetic fuels, but they require copious cheap energy.
Like what Scotland potentially has.”
Absolutely! Synthetic fuel from microbial action on waste materials in particular while using the existing fuel distribution infrastructure and our advanced internal combustion technology.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-promote-within-replace-murray-30042639
Briandoonthetoon,
It’s merely embarrassing for Scots, because since 1922, the union government discovered welfare benefits and healthcare, and that’s when Scotland started really raking it in on the grounds that Scots were particularly unproductive in relation to England, and were rather sicker and more expensive to treat under the spectacularly useless NHS. The amount of money being sent north after 1922 rather ballooned.
Should there be an iScotland, it would be absolutely buggered, in year 1, by the costs of welfare and the NHS. Because Scotland cannot generate the revenue to pay for those things.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/former-snp-mp-margaret-ferrier-should-do-the-right-thing-and-resign-after-losing-appeal-against-30-day-suspension-for-flouting-covid-rules-anas-sarwar-says-4152192
,
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-appoints-new-media-chief-30041316
,
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/clueless-keith-brown-doubles-down-30040642
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/22/nicola-sturgeon-constituents-not-made-a-speech-snp/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12098265/Nicola-Sturgeon-leaves-Scotland-rubs-shoulders-Sam-Smith-win-LGBT-ally-award.html?ico=topics_pagination_mobile
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/15/sturgeon-calls-for-both-sides-to-take-a-breath-in-trial-reform-row
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/snp-news-brexit-rejoin-eu-labour-hung-parliament-uk-elections
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/10691291/snp-minister-shona-robison-squirms-andrew-miller/
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/10705475/snp-defacto-independence-referendum-jamie-hepburn/
Don’t be a wanker, stop feeding the Trolls.
Wilson McBride, you’re making yourself very easy to ignore. What is it you want to say?
Hi A Scot Abroad at 11:19 pm.
You, once again, gibbered;
“It’s merely embarrassing for Scots, because since 1922, the union government discovered welfare benefits and healthcare, and that’s when Scotland started really raking it in on the grounds that Scots were particularly unproductive in relation to England, and were rather sicker and more expensive to treat under the spectacularly useless NHS. The amount of money being sent north after 1922 rather ballooned.”
With your vast knowledge of all things pertaining to Scotland, you’ll know that the NHS was inspired by a system that had been in place in Scotland since the 1920s, iye?
https://www.electricscotland.com/history/medical/nhs_scotland.htm
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-ferrier-commons-ban-covid-b2343526.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/snp-commons-scottish-labour-scotland-covid-b2343519.html
Aha! Your post came before mine. You just look like you’ve no answers to different views though. Why not engage with the discussion?
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-slams-alister-jack-after-30046723
,
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-independence-campaigners-having-go-30040193
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/humza-yousaf-insists-scottish-independence-30034134
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-mps-spend-more-700k-30014069
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1772760/motorhome-not-insured-snp-scotland-fraud-probe
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/alex-neil-nicola-sturgeon-alex-salmond-government-government-policy-b2339770.html
Brian Doonthetoon says:
22 May, 2023 at 9:47 pm
Hi A Scot Abroad at 7:53 pm.
You asserted,
“not only that, but it’s a plain fact that since 1707, far more money has been sent north to Scotland from London than has ever come south from Scotland in revenues, including the monies from oil and gas. A vastly greater sum.”
As someone above pointed out, the UK government stopped giving the figures in 1922, because the surplus from Scotland was beginning to be embarrassing.
So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Sadly, John Jappy is no longer with us, but his testimony remains…
https://wingsoverscotland.com/on-our-own-two-feet/
Far more persuasive than the gaslighting liar, Ascot Hat.
@Wullie 6:41PM
People need to realise that this is not some over-the-top humanitarian effort while being ignorant of the locals/natives.
It is being conducted by people who hate us and want us gone. Exactly from the same source as the trans/paedophile agenda.
The idea for the ‘great replacement’ can be traced back to the early part of the 20th century.
We are starting to see how a country of intelligent Europeans can ‘suddenly lose their mind’ and begin to think strongly in terms if ethnicity and homeland in a way that would shock them just 10 years previously.
@Dan 8:51PM
Sorry, a few days ago I had limited time so must have missed it. But yes, I find it interesting that such obvious engineered demographic change isn’t seen as a kind of new highland clearance, on a bigger scale, by Scottish pundits who are happy to condemn the historical event but not the one that is unfolding before our eyes.
The standard of trolling has dropped don’t you think?
James Jones (Jimmyjo) is not yet fully-formed. He was taken from his mother too early. He is merely champing his blanket.
A Scot Abroad is beyond parody. Classic Samuel Goldwyn – ‘I’ve made my mind up – don’t confuse me with facts’
@Oneliner says:23 May, 2023 at 6:44 am
I count 5 lines in your post, maybes more, the hyphens complicate things.
Innarestin article on Unherd today: “Boomer Europe Is Dying”. Here’s a wee quote:
“the continent’s willed deindustrialisation in favour of China [has] left it weak and helpless, entirely dependent on the charity and vigour of stronger empires”
The writer is, of course, talking about the EU, that fabled shangri-la that a persistent strand of Wings BTL comment believes is iScotland’s only hope.
Anyways, for those of an open mind, and those who are not still living in 2014, well worth a read.
BTW, the future for the EU and Europe could be good. It has a hell of a lot going for it. But ditching many of its so-called progressive values is a precondition of any significant improvement.
The European politician who best understands this is Macron, and he is on his way out, cos he is trying to tell the French that the world doesn’t owe them a living.
I was just working away listening to an interview with retired Col. Douglas Macgregor on Youtube.
Bakhmut in Russian Hands, Now What? – Col Doug Macgregor
19:52
‘the ideologues who are running the show now, who see themselves as morally superior, they remind me very much of the Bolsheviks in 1917, 18 and 19 who essentially described the world as something that to be ravaged and conquered as soon as possible and raised armies for the purpose of doing so’
The current president of Russia has said something similar.
So to answer anyone who wonders ‘wtf does Bolshevism have to do with it’? Well, it’s the ideological underpinnings of what is going on now – which is what I’ve said on here for years.
This is why when you know the source of the ideology we are being oppressed by you can very accurately predict the next steps.
People talk of ‘red pill’ moments as from the Matrix. But when you see the similarity of the original Bolsheviks, and even Stalins state apparatus, and compare it with government personnel in the US today you are offered the final red pill because once this is understood the history of the 20th century is turned on its head and the world makes a whole lot more sense. It’s just not very pleasant.
Joe @6:15am
I was struck by your observation that we may be living in a new round of clearances (hard to argue against with the Green Lairds). Which raises the questions:
What incentives does the Scottish Government offer Scots to return, particularly with opportunities to broaden and strengthen the economy?
What does the Scottish Government do to give Scots fair access to opportunities in their own country?
If an administration can’t or won’t give the people who voted for them the slightest “leg-up”, also known as investment and developing potential, then they’re not much good for anything.
Here’s your starter for ten. Why is it called “nativism” instead of “self-reliance”?
I like the idea of self reliance Stuart MacKay. The SNP are against self reliance ironically….because they support global capitalism (Andrew Wilson Growth Commission ..say no more) and are very happy to be a colony of England.
If Scots and the rest of humanity are to have a chance we need to develop a self reliant economy…this economy would vale and support individuals, families and communities to develop meaningful and rewarding high skilled jobs…to support their well-being. Not zombie fodder for the corporates.
@Joe says:23 May, 2023 at 8:05 am
TBQH, I can’t quite fathom out just what it is you are trying to say.
Is it possible for you to be a smidge less cryptic?
Two thoughts arose from what you wrote:
1) A certain Austrian chap dispatching somebody to Moscow with instructions to get photos of Stalin’s ears. Is that pertinent?
2) That pesky Soviet dissident chap, the Nobel prize winner who’s name nobody can spell, writing about the Gulag Archipelago. By that he means a myriad of slave camps, containing many millions of slaves, where the inmates are worked to death. Is that happening in the US?
Anyhoo. Good analogy between the Highland Clearances then (Redcoats burning the thatch) and now (indigenous property owners taking the southerner’s copious cash and doing a runner).
Oops – cue pelters for pointing out the latter one!
@John Main
Only one hyphen – you have counted my two dashes as hyphens. I thought you were better than that.
I saw that Col Doug MacGregor interview. I found that comment very interesting also. Because he really knows…
Globalism is communism. A Unipolar world is communism. They simply rebranded it.
They replaced the class war with identity wars / wokeism but it essentially amounts to the same outcome with the same evil wankers seizing power.
This has all come from within, they are trying to break down and destroy our societies as MacGregor says. This an assault and we are in a war.
They want total control to cement in their power, wealth and privilege forever using their army of ‘awoken’ mentalists who as we see are already ratcheting up the violence and insanity.
Arsehole blokes competing in women’s sports and denying them their rightful places on the podium, it is disgusting, and that is the whole point of it. Rapists in women’s prisons… come on. They are rubbing our noses in it.
Wherever identity / woke politics has appeared out of nowhere to dominate is a badge of a country that has been subverted. Anyone espousing woke garbage is an enemy of that country, at best a useful idiot at worst a betrayer. Just look at what Sturgeon is and has done… and she was the wokest of the woke.
The people currently in charge in the US (neocons) and by extension the UK are really dangerous psychos who could not give less of a shit about the lives of ordinary people. In fact they actively despise us. We are fodder to them.
This is what everything is about right now. This is the real war that is being waged. And the people who have power in the US have put us on the wrong side of that war.
Ordinary Americans and Europeans are completely opposed to all of what is being done in their name. Our politicians are following a completely different agenda to what we want and have been for a long time. It does not matter which party you vote for. Just as it does not matter which newspaper you buy or which news channel you watch… all saying the same thing, lies.
@Stuart Mackay
Well I suppose to most on here that’s a rhetorical question.
But it needs to be noticed and understood by a wider audience of Scots for us to take the next logical step.
About 80% of people will simply outsource their thinking to perceived authority, regardless of what demonstrable reality suggests. That leaves just 20% of us to make a difference.
The idea of the spearhead or the vanguard has to be adopted by we who see it. We are on our own. We can’t expect agreement or even respect from anyone outside of our group, we cannot even expect the bulk of our people to agree at first, but we have to be firm and resolute and the people will one by one turn to us for answers and a way forward which they will slowly realise is not offered by our political system.
@John Main
Less cryptic? If I’m less cryptic about this you won’t get to read it because my comment will be deleted.
As an aside – if you are really here to learn, as you stated in a previous comment I’d drop your snark because uninformed sarcasm simply makes you look like a fool.
I am a member of Alba and greatly admire Alec Salmond but I don’t understand how he didn’t foresee the sturgeon’s corruption of the SNP.
ASA,
“Should there be an iScotland, it would be absolutely buggered, in year 1, by the costs of welfare and the NHS. Because Scotland cannot generate the revenue to pay for those things.”
You seem to be under the impression that the UK is not in monumental debt that will never be addressed properly.
Do you understand what hypocrisy means?
Not only that, you argue that Scotland is a massive financial burden to the rest of the UK (aka England), yet endorse this enormous millstone to be forced on the good people of England.
Do you understand what illogical means?
ASA, your rationalisation is possessed by the intuition of a toddler.
Is there any chance you could up your game on why the People of Scotland should not make our own decisions?
Prophesying that we will be in a bigger mess financially than we currently are in the here and now is a pitiful effort of somebody who doesn’t understand that the UK’s debt is in grave danger of running out of zeros to write it down.
Perhaps your big sister can explain it to you?
@Mac
I would like to point out that our current financial/economic system are the drivers of this. In fact the banking houses are probably the root of it all.
Most people who have friendly stance towards communism or socialism are coming from a place of well meaning, what has to be understood is that communisms roots is the same as debt based capitalism and its purpose is the same – the overthrow of our civilisation and the centralisation of assets into a few hands.
Ordinary people (even wealthier people) arguing capitalism vs communism are missing the point.
Is Scot abroad sensible Dave in a different shift??
A Scot Abroad said;
“Briandoonthetoon,
I stand by my assertion. You arbitrarily trying to cut off the date at 1922 is pretty embarrassing to you.”
BDTT doesn’t need any help from me, but Ascot, you are an abusive arse! It was the UK government that applied that cut off, not BDTT, and you know that to be true, so that makes you also a liar! If you seriously believe otherwise then you are also an idiot!
You should be thoroughly embarrassed and deeply ashamed by all these things! You are clearly the epitomy of the English establishment you obviously present as. You represent those shysters perfectly.
“Xaracen,
who are you going to sell Scotland’s renewables to?
That’s not a trick question, but to answer it intelligently, you need to know a bit about physics, engineering, geography, geographic energy potential, the cost of capital, and markets.”
That is a trick question, just like you. I’m not selling anything to anyone, you arse, liar, idiot.
I already know a bit about physics, engineering, geography, geographic energy potential, the cost of capital, and markets. But I’m not an expert in any of these, and neither are you.
I also know a bit about history, constitutions, and sovereignty, as well as a bit about Acts and Treaties, not to mention the epistemic importance of properly collected and evaluated evidence, the structures of formal logic, and the many ways false arguments can be constructed, and how to expose their falsehoods, and I know lots of other things. Why, I even have a dictionary I can look up when I get stuck on a word.
I’m not an expert in any of these, but that doesn’t automatically make me ignorant and useless, and you an expert, and it doesn’t automatically make me wrong, and you right.
And, clearly unlike you, I also have high regard for honesty and integrity, as well as respect for others, and I consider respect is due by default until it is shown to be a mistake. You have proven yourself to be one of those mistakes, so I now treat you with distrust, suspicion, and disdain. Congratulations, you earned them.
Why do you think indigenous property owners are doing that and why are southerners with copious cash buying up run down property in Scotland?
Someone bought the Tin House on Harris in 2021 for £151,000 after a bidding war.
He/she now wants to sell it.
Relax John Main nobody is expecting anything other than some snide remark from you.
Money! Money! Money!
https://archive.ph/c7MMa
Dirty rotten scoundrels, indeed.
As the honest people of Egypt say, kifaya! enough!
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/0/6724/Business/Mohamed-Mansour-A-tarnished-captain-of-industry.aspx
McDuff, none of us had a Crystal Ball regarding Sturgeon , thats why 12k turned up at the Hydro in late 2024 for her Coronation, many hundreds of SNP members like myself leaving a very good RISE Conference across the road at the Armadillo to do so.
At the time , i though the timing of her Coronation was strange but convinced myself it was the only date they could get, now I think it was the first of many measures to split the Yes Movement.
I remind you 12k turned up at the Hydro, to call Mr Salmonds judgement into question is in my opinion wrong, unless you have an other agenda, I trust very few these days , Mr Salmond, Stewart Campbell and Craig Murray to name a few plus others I know and have known for years.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/dirty-rotten-scoundrels/comment-page-1/#comment-2761956
There’s a lot about this very angry poster who reminds me of Andy Ellis.
Larry Johnson is also worth a read Joe if you have not already.
He makes some interesting points about why the Chinese economy is beating the West. They have central planners who act generally speaking in the interest of the Chinese people.
We in the west also have central planners but they come in the form of Wall Street and the City.
Unlike the Chinese central planners these dogs only act in their own self interest. These are the folks that drove the exportation of countless western factories to China in the 90’s and 00’s to make more money.
@Ruby says:23 May, 2023 at 9:51 am
FFS, why can’t you just scroll on by?
Or post something about everybody being allowed to speak in the new Scotland.
Or awa an shite.
At least one of these must be within your competence.
(Apologies I screwed up the email again so please delete the one in moderation)
Larry Johnson is also worth a read Joe if you have not already.
He makes some interesting points about why the Chinese economy is beating the West. They have central planners who act generally speaking in the interest of the Chinese people.
We in the west also have central planners but they come in the form of Wall Street and the City.
Unlike the Chinese central planners these dogs only act in their own self interest. These are the folks that drove the exportation of countless western factories to China in the 90’s and 00’s to make more money.
Did it not all start when he dared to suggest that having her husband as CEO was a very bad idea.
She absolutely flipped and said to herself
‘Right pal you’ll see if your dream will never die I’ll make it into your worst nightmare’
Hell hath no fury!
Any further news about her sister asking for prayers?
@Joe says:23 May, 2023 at 9:21 am
Less cryptic? If I’m less cryptic about this you won’t get to read it because my comment will be deleted
So we’re stuck? Your information, possibly valuable, possibly critical, possibly mince, can’t be communicated?
Here’s what I think. The lack of ability to communicate a message should be laid at the writer’s door, not the reader’s.
RUBY
The post link to SCOT ABROAD & JOHN MAIN refers to energy in Nordic countries. Norway is currently struggling with significant hydro generated energy problem, depletion of water supply.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/norway-presents-plan-linking-power-exports-water-reservoir-levels-2023-01-27/
Wilson McBride once again brightening up the forum with lots of Pantone 300
The links are useless because they are all behind a paywall but still they do add a nice bit of colour.
Cheers Wilson.
Notwithstanding the serious questions surrounding ownership and motive of the standards commission and its appeal panel one silver lining to the ongoing vilification of Margaret Ferrier might lie in its potential exposure of the mugs lined up to (volunteer to !!) take blame for the covid narrative in the long run – first when opportunist members of parliament vote on whether to throw a fellow member, and otherwise innocent victim of the perverted charade, under the bus over it – and second when members of the public are encouraged to put their own names and addresses on a recall petition that will remain available for inspection long after any crooks from far far away are forgotten.
Oh dear John Main is very angry and being abusive again.
What is that phrase again about “not liking it up ‘em”?
He’s ragin’. Air Punch emoji!
Further Mohammad Mansour and his 5million «gift» to the Nationalist party of England aka Conservative party, he will expect «favours» beyond just being party fund raiser. . That is how things are done in the MidEast. Sunak will know that. Lord Mansour of Alexandria would be a token start.
All makes the Murrell thing look very small beer.
@Mac says:23 May, 2023 at 10:08 am
act generally speaking in the interest of the Chinese people
drove the exportation of countless western factories to China in the 90’s and 00’s
What drove the export of industry overseas was western workers pricing themselves out of jobs, and western virtue-signallers being happy to enjoy clean air, clean water, and other environmental gains while the Chinese turned their environment to smog and dust.
That’s why, long before Covid, Chinese city dwellers wore face masks every time they went outdoors. And why Chinese workers, often technically kids in western eyes, commit suicide due to factory production line pressures.
Arguable if that is generally speaking in the interest of the Chinese people. Maybes for the next generation, yes.
But for all the people? Intriguing that when President Xi assembles his Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, around 80 of the delegates are reckoned to be billionaires.
That’s in pounds or dollars, doesn’t matter.
Makes Sunak look like a pauper.
John Main
Redcoats torching black houses? I think you need to read up on the clearances. In the case of the Duke of Sutherland, everything was sold as “improvements”. Much like the administrators in Edinburgh allowing the sale of large tracts of land for “green-friendly” schemes. The net result is the same – the concentration of assets for the benefit of the few. The sale of property to white settlers as second homes also has the same effect – the turfing out of the natives. However now it’s done with money instead of the factor and his heavies.
@John Main
Best avoid my posts from now on John. I have had several posts like this deleted for being more specific and explanatory. I just can’t post the details. It’s that simple.
If you wish to take that as my inability to communicate then I’m happy with that because from where I am sitting one thing describes your contributions here – disingenuous.
I can’t say I have much motivation in wasting minutes and key strokes on that.
Ruby
Why are indigenous property owners (in the islands) selling up?
/
I would be interested in your answer.
My answer, for what it’s worth, is that job opportunities have dried up and this has gathered momentum with the growing exodus of people.
It is now the job of government to either directly invest or encourage business through incentives.
On a side-note, how viable is farming in the islands and the highlands more broadly? Surely farming methods and strategies can be matched to the prevailing terrain.
I can’t help but think that devoting large tracts of land to sporting estates is a waste and contributes to the general exodus.
The SNP became a career ladder where the managerial yolk of pleasing your emloyers in lieu of future promotion has replaced any sense of service or cause.
(This is the reason for a lot of what passes for leadership these days!)
Independence will need to come up from the ground. Our warrior- politicians will follow the votes and join afterwards. We are the leaders now!
@ John Main
What synthetic fuel production were you supportive of as there are many different types?
I’m guessing it won’t be the one derived from coal as you suggested Scottish coal was worthless.
I’ve previously mentioned that ethanol can be produced from the waste whey byproduct created in the dairy industry which is a process more with what James Jones was describing.
Plus also touched on the subject that waste plastic has a similar calorific value to the fossil derived fuels we are paying a fortune for, but so many still throw plastic away as it’s worthless…
Of course if folk are still going to continue buying loads of imported cheap low quality disposable tat transported here from far flung lands by massive bulk container ships, then Scotland being carbon neutral is a bit of a misnomer.
Ruby
Another thought.
Why not hypothecate the revenue generated through the wind farms as investment in the areas in which they are situated?
This would lead to large flows of capital into the Highlands and Islands and encourage folk to stay and others to return
( You will notice I used hypothecate and not ringfenced)
@Joe says:23 May, 2023 at 10:48 am
disingenuous
I write what I think. It’s also what I would say, although as most people are staunchly apolitical, I tend to keep it zipped.
Cos most people don’t want to know.
To me, that’s the very opposite of disingenuous.
But, as I just wrote that a failure of comprehension is the writer’s fault, not the reader’s, I will accept my bad.
Note to self – must try harder.
John Main
Redcoats torching black houses? I think you need to read up on the
clearances. In the case of the Duke of Sutherland, everything was sold as “improvements”, even to the people being forcibly removed whether it was through physical force or financial violence through crippling rents.
The process remains the same today, though now the improvements are sold by the gentrified classes in Edinburgh on their environmental benefits. The net result is the same – the concentration of assets for the benefit of the few.
The sale of property also has the same effect, though it’s more insidious as it’s done with cash rather than by the factor and his heavies. Your displacing economically active individuals who could start families with retirees, making it even harder for others to sustain themselves and triggering more depopulation.
Very little is being done to undo to the damage of the scorched earth policies pursued over the past hundred years. Indeed the likes of the highly protected marine areas is just more of the same.
(I used a verboten phrase in the previous version of this and it fell into moderation so a similar version might emerge).
SCOT
Think of most of Scotland as the equivalent of desert. The appliance of intelligence, technical skill and imagination may turn desert into product terrain. Israel is a case in point. The old ways were subsistance, they should be harvested for folk knowledge which may be applied to better usage of the gifts and opportunities nature provides.
Shelter from wind is part of the folk knowledge. Shelter raises temperature.
Icelanders produce tropical products under structural shelter. An extreme case but an example of daring to try, something lacking in a government mindset prone to listening to what you cannot do than what you can.
The expansive «Gàidhealtachd» was neglected by the urban lowland centric Sturgeon régime.
These regions ought to have their own autonomy too.
You’ll have had your post moderated for using a banned word not for being more specific and explanatory.
@Ruby says:23 May, 2023 at 10:32 am
What is that phrase again about “not liking it up ‘em”?
I know that phrase! My stock answer is “awa an shite then”.
Works a treat. The sufferer always feels much better after.
You’re welcome.
@John Main 22nd May 10:02
Thanks for clarifying your post. @ 22nd May 6:42pm
Just so you know, I wasn’t trying to suggest you are a hard-hearted monster. I was genuinely unsure if I’d understood your argument correctly, and it seems that I hadn’t.
Also, I believe that logic and emotion are incompatible and that it’s impossible to debate the logic of an argument if emotion is part of the equation. I think virtue signalling is some kind of strange emotional response, so you won’t be getting any of that from me. It’s not my thing.
If I’m right, correct me if I’m wrong, the crux of your argument is this:
I’ve applied a logical test to your argument (after reframing it slightly and defining its terms) and I don’t believe it is fallacious. Which means I have no choice but to agree with your assertion.
How we, as a society with limited resources, deal with it on a humanitarian level is another question.
‘You’ll have had your post moderated for using a banned word not for being more specific and explanatory.’
No, I’m talking about avoiding moderation but being physically deleted.
STEWART MACKAY
There is a fatalistic streak in Scots. I recognize the symptoms from my own heritage.
It serves only one purpose, keeping those who suffer from the condition in their place e.g Unionism and its subordinating myths.
It has no place in a «looking to the future» Scottish political order.
@Dan 11:00
The aviation industry has been pioneering development of synthetic kerosene. It is not made from any fossil (unsustainable) feedstock. Plenty of info online.
Regarding extension into gasoline and diesel. It would have the huge advantage that the vast investment in distribution, storage, usage, etc of these commodities would be retained. Plus individual’s and company’s investments in their vehicles. Plus the huge numbers of trained and experienced personnel who know this technology inside out.
Yeah, biowaste can be an input. But for the existing chemical industry, the sustainable holy grail is ammonia production, which needs nitrogen (from the air) and hydrogen (from electrolysed water). Infinite availability of both, needing just cheap, clean electricity to produce.
Much less pollution too from ICEs using synthetic fuels. No sulphur or other trace contaminants to deal with.
Reading about how Germany, which is Europe’s auto manufacturing powerhouse, is waking up to the fact that by throwing away over a century of ICE expertise, it will be throwing away hundreds of thousands of jobs.
I too am an admirer of Alec Salmond but he is tainted in many people’s eyes. I also think that if he had any concrete proof about alleged SNP involvement in his downfall he would be shouting it from the rooftops. IMO it is either a conspiracy theory on steroids or he doesn’t want to harm the SNP and by definition the cause. So why are you people on here doing the Unionists job?
Izzie
Salmond is only tainted because of the hatchet job done on him.
It is a wonder that the lies told in court have not been further investigated.
People claiming they were in one place when in fact they were somewhere else.
Emails read out in Parliament detailing the desire of top civil servants and party managers to go after Salmond.
And what was his crime…..
He wanted and wants Scottish independence.
We are all guilty as charged
@Stuart MacKay says:23 May, 2023 at 11:11 am
Jordan Peterson (who hails from northern Alberta), has written about the declining productive populations of the northern Canadian towns and settlements.
I guess the USA sees the same thing, which is why there are so many programs bigging up Alaska.
I was struck by the fact that 150 years ago, people, including many Scots, embarked on risky voyages, followed by endless treks over thousands of miles, to carve out these settlements from the wilderness.
Then they lived through the cold, dark winters off their own resources, with no electricity, no internet, no medical evacuation helicopters, no Amazon.
Yet with all of these things, their modern descendants still flee to easier lives.
I have no answer, other than to speculate that if (when?) the conditions of 150 years ago are re-introduced, the attraction of these remote, self-sufficient places may start to rise once again.
But nobody wants a return to these conditions, and rightly so.
I am told i may trace my ancestry back to ancient Assyria, ok fine, if that excites, but it has little bearing on the current political status/future of my «ethnicity» and cultures in a world that couldn’t give a damn.
Scots going in for ancestry tracing to prove their «Scottishness» for whatever reason, similarly. The now is the active material of the future.
The single most important thing you need to understand about our politics is that we’re ruled by evil people who hate you.
James jone,
James jones, 7: 51 pm.
The UK parliament is fallacy.
I realise do not understand,
The the kingdom and parliament of Scotland and the kingdom and Westminster parliament of England were supposed to join together to create one parliament, that being the parliament of Great Britain.
Englands Westminster parliament cancelled the Scottish kingdom and parliament out of the treaty of unions by extinguishing the Scottish parliament in 1707.
Queen Anne then dissolved the Scottish parliament in Westminster by Proclamation.
Are you with me so far.
At this point now there is only one parliament left in Westminster, “The Parliament of Westminster”
So far NO “union” of either kingdom parliaments. As one just cancelled by the other one out, dissolved and extinguished it from the treaty,.
Next we will consider the position of Englands old Westminster parliament aid its position.
The Monarch, Queen Anne in Westminster’s old English parliament transferred those sitting of the English parliament as members into the newly named parliament of Great Britain by proclamation in Westminster without elections taken place.
The third session of Queen Anne’s parliament (English Westminster parliament completed in 1708) this being the English law that was passed in 1694 under the Triennial Act.
Following so far.
The English old Westminster parliament was transferred into the new name parliament of Great Britain.
Except it was simply fallacious as the parliament of Great Britain as the parliament of the Scottish kingdom was Extinguished and dissolved from it being “the” Great British parliament.
Still with me.
The kingdom of Englands old Westminster parliament is the only parliament in the newly named Great British parliament.
Thus, NO treaty of union between the “two kingdoms” parliaments progressed any further than 1707.
Scotlands kingdom and parliament were not, and are still not sitting in Westminster as a union with Englands parliament of Great Britain.
As a result there is No United kingdoms of Great Britain that includes Scotlands Kingdom and parliament to this day.
The old English parliament still in The Westminster parliament building and with the same members and into their third session of Queen Annes parliament under the 1694 Triennial Act of The old English parliament of Westminster transferred themselves into the newly self declared name of the parliament of Great Britain ,
Only one kingdom and their parliament entered into the Great Britain parliament, Englands.
Logically, legally, it takes two to tango.
And Englands Westminster still holds a treaty of union that never prevailed further than 1707 with its self.
For Scotland is not in it since that date.
This is Westminsters Blatant statement on the UK, (ha ha) parliament site in 2023 mocking the Scots and Scotland for being so slow witted.
It is no wonder they smile and laugh when they refuse Scottish people self determination or a referendum,
A new ex
There is No treaty of union between the kingdom parliaments, thus No UK, thus No Supreme Court of The UK,
There is No such legal hold on Scotland from the Scotland act from the UK.
There is No agreement on the Monarchy.
In reverse,
There is NO UK.
Because
There is No treaty between the two kingdoms and parliaments
There is No Parliament of Great Britain other than England’s exaggeration.
Because
Scotland has not been in it since 1707.
There is just the old English parliament in these names for Westminster. It has and is a fallacious treaty predicated upon Scotland
Izzie do try and keep up, Salmonds lawyers made a complaint to the Policea a year past March regarding aledged Pwrjury, therefore it is a live police Investigation and he therefore cannot comment on it.
Scotland has not been in the treaty since 1707.
It was not a decision taken or made by Scotland.
It was a decision taken and made by the Westminster English parliament and the Monarch in 1707.
Westminster, nor its laws have any bearing on Scotland since Westminster parliament and the Monarch took the decision to eliminate Scotlands parliament and kingdom from the treaty of union.
Dizzie…
“So why are you people on here doing the Unionists job?”
Genuine question…
Do you suffer from a mental impairment or cognitive deficiency by any chance?
Re China, look up which group made up 85-90% of those who were allowed to remain when Mao expelled foreigners. They were in at least three ministerial positions of his government, Health, Propaganda and Attribution. Those three came from three different countries but shared the same ethnic background. Those who went into the civil service and/or business were the middle men when China opened for business with the West, companies such as Microsoft which were also owned by people from the same ethnic background.
In the UK the last time a survey was taken, mid to late 1990’s, it turned out that over ninety percent of people from that ethnic background who live in the UK had either visited or lived and worked in Israel at least once. With regard to surveys, it was announced last year that the ethnic makeup results of censuses taken in the UK will no longer be made public.
Re the current conflict, look up the governments of U and USA and the massive over representation within. With regard to our own governments across the West which have clearly turned on us the same over representation occurs. Why do our governments/political parties hate us and who are they acting on behalf of?
Look up people like Noel Ignatiev and Susan Sontag who saw white people as literally a cancer on the Earth.
Izzie, you are an annoying troll who keeps posting the same old utter twaddle, regardless of the facts. I shouldn’t waste my time pointing out the obvious to you, but, just for the record: Alex Salmond has evidence of the conspiracy against him which he was not allowed to present at his trial, as the judge disallowed it in order to diminish his chances of proving his innocence, apparently for political reasons. Nevertheless, the jury found him innocent. The identities of his accusers are protected. This is grossly unjust. They lied in court and ruined a good man’s reputation and they do not deserve anonymity. Indeed, I would say they deserve a long spell in jail. I’m sure you’re perfectly aware of all of this, yet you keep posting the same old nonsense.
As for the SNP, they are dead. Finished. They have done nothing since 2014 to advance the cause of independence (quite the opposite), and they have introduced numerous policies for which there is no popular demand or support. Even if they were in some way better than Labour, the Liberals or the Tories, why should we continue to vote for a party that is content to sit in Westminster on fat salaries and lavish expenses and achieve the square root of F.A.? Nobody who truly believes in independence is going to vote for them again.
Independence for Scotland seems a bit Little Red Hen – ‘Who will help me bake this bread?’
No-one is that bothered about working for it, but aparently about half would turn out and vote Indy in a referendum (or other election ballot) if it was handed to them.
Until then, it’s just on with life as usual, and the arguments we enjoy are all so much drivel.
I fully believe the same can be said for most of the the opposite side – there might be a bit of wailing, and gnashing of teeth if they woke up to an Independent Scotland , but they wouldn’t be that bothered either – better things to do, like get on with life.
‘Activists and political parties – that’s who should do the heavy lifting, can’t be arsed, not my job – wake me when it’s time to mark my cross’. Does anyone really want to argue that’s not the case for the majority in Scotland, on either side?
OK, historically we don’t tend to erect barricades, turn over polis motors, and reach for the molotovs because the price of milk went up (unlike Johnny Foreigner) but something stirs the congealing blood on occasion – what is it?
Well, we know Brexit was a one trick pony show: ‘Wur Sovrendee – the aforementioned Johnny Foreigner Bad’
There are those who will happily inform, that their vote was calculated after much serious introspection of global geo-politics, and the minutiae of economic policy – aye right, you’re the minority – mostly it was ‘Johnny Foreigner Bad’
What about Great Britain & the Union? That one wasn’t difficult – the clue is in the name – Great. we’re Great Britain, and Empire n’ shit, The Union – Team GB, Two World Wars, and also – bugger Johnny Foreigner while we’re at it.
So, what do we have for Scotland, is there a simple message, an emotional message, no great thought required (yeah, yeah, you’re an exception) – and it’s cigars all round?
What’s the message, there isn’t one is there, or is there? Buggered if I know – It’s surely not: ‘Indy Scotland! We’ll be a bit less shit than England’
Maybe it is also “Wur sovrendee” and why not? That was Westminsters core cry for Brexit (even if the plebs read it as ‘Johnny Foreigner Bad!) It seems to be the one gaining traction here, however much some may cry — “Ancient Guff!’
Even if it was that, apparently we can’t be appealing to simple emotional propaganda to sell an Independent Scotland – not allowed – we must have a fully detailed white paper, peer reviewed and filed under B.
Why, and says who? No-one else does it, no-one else did it.
The majority don’t give a shit about any of the minutiae, they don’t give a shit about the ramifications of Brexit, they don’t give a shit about the debt of the UK, they don’t give a shit about an Independent Scotland’s currency – because its all so much complicated bollox, and no-one has time for that – someone else sort it out.
‘You’ll not get the BBC, or your pension!” That’ll be a NO for me then… next.
They want a simple idea, and an emotional one – that way brains have no need to be engaged, and they can get on with life – they’re helping no fucker bake any bread.
As for ‘Pebiscite elections, UDI’s, and the ‘risible retort: ‘But the International Community™!’ – does anyone think the majority of good people in England would be remotely interested in what ‘thu internashunal communidee’ thinks about anything?
The International Community™ were wailing and gnashing their teeth about Brexit, and voters said ‘Don’t care, fuck off – if there’s a problem sort it – not our job’
Legal frameworks had to be put in place to accomodate Brexit afterwards – not before. Perhaps someone can point out where the UK followed the letter of “The Law” and binding treaties when it came to buggering off?
*Spoilers – it didn’t, hasn’t, and still isn’t, and International Community ™ pencils are being gnawed to the bone trying to fix it.
Scotland could be independent, any way it wishes, and England could put another Alien Act in place in the huff – because ‘Thu Roolz’ – but it could do that whether Scotland exited ‘entirely within the ‘Legal Framework™’ or not.
England/rUK won’t do that, because it won’t have to; they’ll be straight over the border, and controlling industry (and anything else they haven’t already got their hands on) before anyone else does – because frankly, a newly minted Independent state (however it came about) is a free for all, and deil tak the hindmost.
That’s “How will England support itself without Scotland’s resources?” answered. Next.
It’s in those raging heady days, that new treaties, and terms are knocked up, and bargains, and counter offers flow from everybody and their dug, especially the ‘International Community™’
When the dust settles, Scotland will still be foreign owned – just that we will be an Independent country, with an outside chance that investment will be inward, not outward, as the new Robber Barons carve up wee fiefdoms.
Ooh Ooh how weak you are to have lost your territory rUK! – ‘Nah, mate its well sorted’
So then, where does all that leave the emotional message to get more voters on board for Indy?
“Scotland – bugger all will change!”
Or: “New Scotland, New Owners – You! – Get some quick before it’s all away!”
The cringe is strong in Scotland, but the mitts are greedy. Greed is an emotion, and we keep hearing “Show us the money” well then, show them – promise any old shite – it worked for the No vote and Brexit didn’t it? Scrawl it on a Motorhome:
“Scotland! Where ye’ll all get a piece of the action! [terms and conditions apply]
Failing that put the shiters up them – fear is a known emotional winner – as we well know.
“Vote Indy, or Scotland will be abolished – they have secret plans!”
“Vote Indy – they’re after your bus pass!”
If someone can come up with better, I’m all ears – God knows we need something, I’m sick of kneading bread.
Stewart MacKay @11.11
Tacking onto your point …….
regarding the colonisation by Scots of the then remote parts of Canada.
Many of these Scots came from small villages on the islands which are now no longer populated. The only thing that remains is the name on a map and it’s reincarnation in Canada.
Why have you never mentioned this before?
Such nonsense. It’s all just semantics. What’s in a name?
John Main @12:24pm
Of course they’re bigging up Alaska. The farmland around those small towns in the prairie states which are currently hanging on by their fingernails is needed by the likes of Bill Gates.
Iain Mhor.
And where does all that have any relevance, if Scotland was dissolved and etinguished from the treaty in 1707.
Scotland owned even after independence from Westminster.
Thats an easy answer.
All the licences were and are under Westminster legislation and Statues.
Those licences would not apply they would automatically be invalid.
Anything registered under the UK and the Great Britain parliament of Westminster without Scotland being in the treaty or the treaty prevailing into a union of kingdoms and Parliamentary union died in 1707.
Then information that has been covertly concealed and omitted to past records ( hence unionists screaming do not bother looking to closely at the old treaty) is very difficult for Scotland to digest.
It beggers belief that Scotland and its people have been deliberately kept in the dark for hundreds of years,
Although Westminster parliament had recognised its error in dissolving the treaty of union many moons ago. I am sure.
However it has been impossible for them to contain themselves any longer that they tricked Scotland into believing they were treaty,
For now the UK parliament boasts on its parliamentary site in 2023 that Scotland and its parliament were extinguished in 1707.
The problem is that in that boast on their site in 2023 the whole world can read it. And have, And therefore will know that the two Parliaments did not unite into a treaty to become one parliament of Great Britain,
It is just the old English parliament sitting in the Great British parliament at Westminster.
Talk about sh..ting in your own nest…. and bungling a second error over the treaty.
That is why it is important that everyone takes and makes a copy of that statement.
A dissolved and extinguished Scottish parliament and kingdom in England under English laws cannot even be subsumed by them. A legal impossibility.
So that leaves Scotland as it was.
A Country, a nation and independent since 1707.
For anyone interested this is how I reframed @John Main’s assertion.
A card game metaphor is used to express his argument. Which is fine when speaking figuratively. But let’s turn this assertion into a kind of word equation so that we can test its logic.
Now we have to give some definition to the various terms used in this statement, which we will now treat as a formal argument.
First of all let’s give a definition of an indigenous people generally and not specifically for the Scottish people. There are a few but let’s use this one for this purpose:
I then gave definitions to these terms used in the formal argument.
Indigenous Scot
Non-Indigenous Scot (New Scot – I do not like this term)
Scottish Resources
Prior and Superior Claim
Rights
Needs
I then input the definitions given to these terms and loaded them into my “Have Fun with Fallacies” software (written using IF…ELSE statements) and out popped the answer.
And the answer was that @John Main’s argument was not only true for him, it was also true for the whole Scottish independence debate.
Not only that, the software programme suggested that Scotland should immediately declare independence and begin the process of de-colonisation.
I swear to God, folks. My “Have Fun with Fallacies” software looks like it has attained sentience, and reached a level of intellectual reasoning far far beyond your average unionists.
I might have posted these links before, I’m not sure. But here they are again just in case:
Alf Baird’s Paper: The Socio-Political Determinants of Scottish Independence
Alf Baird’s Paper:Summarised version
Alf’s Book – Doun-Hauden-Socio-Political-Determinants-Scottish-Independence(Kindle version)
The Plundering of Scotland
The author is of course correct to say that sensible people accept political reality. It is beyond ironic, therefore, that he completely misses the ultimate political reality in Scotland: the majority of voters are against independence.
Northcode,
IF there is the polling probability (>50%) of a majority supporting independence, and IF that probability is sustained at >50% for over 365 days, THEN petition Westminster for a S30 referendum, ELSE keep quiet.
You’d need to upgrade your software to AI standards if Westminster keeps refusing a referendum on the basis outlined above, because there would be some pretty circular arguments that if let running would ultimately fry the circuits.
So, how about talking about what might increase the majority to over 50% in the polling?
James Jones.
The virus and lockdowns curtailed everything, and boredom set in.
So I started browsing through Westminster parliamentary records.
One piece of legislation led to another and list were provided of meetings with the House of Lords and the House of Commons, it also provided speeches that were made by both houses dating back as far as the tender of the union.
If it were not for the virus and lockdowns Scots would be none the wiser to the fact that that they were dissolved and extinguished from the treaty of union in 1707 by Westminster parliament and Queen Anne.
The fact I was researching another issue that linked to all these other Westminster records was accidental.
The global pandemic may have been the biggest asset to Scotland.
And those records are available to anyone here with the curiousity to see if its true.
It never occurred to Scots or Scotland that it had been extinguished and dissolved from the treaty of union in 1707, Why would it?
Mark.
Officially noted from Westminster parliament records Scotland has retained its previous independence due to Westminster excluding and kicking Scotlands kingdom and parliament out of the treaty of union since 1707.
Whats to vote for?
@A Scot Abroad 3:00pm
I see what you did with the IF…ELSE thing there, ASA. It was actually quite clever and made me chuckle a bit.
I hear what you’re saying, but S30 is pointless. So, I’m not going to bother with that.
Totally up for a chat about what might increase the majority to over 50% in the polling.
Any ideas?
The «recipe» to make Independent Scotland is no secret. Most states in the UN know the ingredients. What they also know is that it does require a very skilled baker, prepared to get to the ingredients first before the lesser skilled make a mess.
Some of the ingredients, tasted separately, might be «challenging» but combined with requisite technique satisfies.
As with most things it’s all in the prep. the timing and being prepared to get started.
The latter point is where the weak, the meek and the «Casandras» may kill the plan.
Mark.
I hope you are not missing the political reality that Scotlands 1707 parliament was dissolved and extinguished from a treaty of union with Westminster parliament by Westminster parliament.
The political and legal position is that Scotland has not been in a union with England since 1707,
It politically is stupid for Scotland to hold vote to come out of a union it is not in,
Headline in today’s Herald:
“Top lawyer joins criticism of Scottish Government jury-less rape pilot”
Who is this “top lawyer”? Aamar Anwar!
Even by the Herald’s barrel scraping standards, this is hilarious.
Northcode,
It’s a long while since I’ve done any coding. Most of what I do these days is just writing a few Excel macros at the back end of spreadsheets, which is very low end. I did once however spin out a pure software business (with some extremely talented engineers) from a company that I was brought in to manage after the death of the founder, who hadn’t made a succession plan before crashing his car into a tree.
As to increasing to >50%, I’d start with an iScotland Forum (digital, with public input using only verified identities and published under real names) where the only topics of debate are what policies an iScotland would need in place to deal with the realities of life, such as currency, central bank, trade arrangements, relations with Europe, health matters, education and so on. It could be financed by indy-minded people, but would have to be transparent about the sources of funding, and the financing could employ a group of researchers and analysts, much as the House of Commons Library does.
That should start public interest, and you never know, give people some confidence that an iScotland had a serious plan for making its way in the world, and that they could vote for that outcome. At the moment, nobody is making a serious case: it’s all just an argument about methods by which Scotland could become independent.
Is it possible to demonstrate that Scotland ever legally existed if you put all the amalgamating processes to the same legal scrutiny as the Act of Union?
Che is at it again.
About as well liked and respected as a shit on an ice cream cone.
Support the Revolution ,reduce British influence in Scotland. Four years ago I stopped paying the licence tax. I am amazed that the Capita enforcers have never been at my door and restrict themselves to a monthly warning letter.Yes the pandemic complicated their task for a while. I wonder if BBC secretcy conceals significant non payment of the tax.
So, now the SNP leadership are just stalling. You see, an election must happen by January 2025, so it is likely within 18 months. Of course, as we all know, once you get within the last 12 months of that, ALL political talk will focus on the coming election, so then the SNP leadership will say, ‘oh look, an election is coming soon, so really we cannot go for indy until that is over – so….WE NEED A NEW MANDATE.
Of course they will promise that if you foolishly vote SNP, they will (in intentionally vague terms) pursue independence.
This is what Sturgeon has done for the last eight years. Promise indy, then as soon as re-elected, make excuses and do nothing. And the gullible in the SNP membership just keep on coming back for more.
So all the talk of an indy ‘campaign’ by the SNP this summer, is their BIG distraction – just enough they think, to keep the gullible supporting them. Come January next year, all talk will be of the next UK general election.
The SNP are a bunch of lying frauds. It is that simple.
Vote for the ALBA party if you actually want independence.
https://www.albaparty.org/
Ahh Chas one of the ones who would rather the Scots did not speak of the treaty union, but at the same time considers the union exists.
But has found no opposing argument or evidence that Scotlands parliament and its kingdom have been in the treaty since 1707,
Shut up james Che, stop drawing peoples attention to the shussh thing.
That right Chas attack the person not the subject, keep deflecting.
“How to make Scotland independent?” is not my first question. My first question is “How to make Scotland environmentally sustainable” John Main’s first question seems to me to be “How to make Scotland richer?”. Breeks’ looks like “How to make Scots proud?”. We each have a substantial home tribe.
So the question “How to make independence the primary objective of a Scottish (or even Scots) majority?” is not answerable yet in constitutional terms. I understand it is put first by old hands who are trying to avoid the “What happens after?” debate because, between my tribe and John’s, we fight, coming from opposite sides of the jobs vs ecology debate. The White Paper” last time may have sown more doubt than resolve.
Given the choice I’ll always vote for independence. But if the choice is not really on offer I’ll continue, with many others, searching for practical measures to navigate our country into what is the most precarious time in human (and all the other critters) history. Younger folk will be pulling it through. They will need all the wisdom humans have accumulated and the sort of courage and faith we have let slide.
Sustainable kerosene: not straightforward (see P2/3)
https://platformduurzamebiobrandstoffen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2021_E4tech_Decarbonisation-potential-synthetic-kerosine.pdf
The answer is in the soil
You get 40 allotments to the hectare (10,000sqm/250sqm), roughly, each capable of providing a household with its veg for most of the year. One able person can do the work required without machines or poisons if they wish.
A hectare or arable land is less than £10,000 so the allotment’s value would be something like £250, for a forever foodbank (nutrient cycles would need to be addressed…). Scotland has 625,000 hectares of arable land, enough for (625,000X40)=25 MILLION ALLOTMENTS. we only have 2.5 million households.
There is plenty room to self-build homes on the arable landscape too, and still have enough left for growing all the meat and cereal we can eat.
Anyone who says we can’t be self-sufficient in food and shelter is taking the piss (or misinformed, or stupid).
Anyone who says we have to spend our lives in debt, they too are “at it”.
Anyone who says building dwellings on the arable landscape would be environmentally destructive knows little about what the CAP and the agrochemical industry did to nature these last 50 years.
Just getting a start of 100,000 households will take legal and political acumen, and opportunity, which might be easier to come by in an independent country.
More waste of public money https://www.aberdeenperformingarts.com/whats-on/queer-zinemaking-with-fiona-robertson/
@Iain mhor says:23 May, 2023 at 1:20 pm
That’s a lot of post, but then it contains a lot of sense.
They want a simple idea, and an emotional one – that way brains have no need to be engaged, and they can get on with life – they’re helping no fucker bake any bread
Search no more, Iain. I have the simple idea you need, in fact, not only have I had it for some considerable time, I have frequently publicised it on here:
Show Us The Fucking Money!
There you go Iain, all that is needed to stampede us Scots into voting for Indy. Just show us the fucking money, and you can stop kneading your bread.
Oh, and one correction, if I may. I love Johnny Foreigner, all sizes, shapes, colours and creeds, when he stays in his own place. I only hate him when he comes here. And that seems fair enough to me. Johnny Foreigner takes great exception when people like me go to his country to live/work/breed or whatever. We get called colonists and colonialists and Johnny Foreigner loses no time in throwing us out, dead or alive.
So that was enough to make me vote for Brexit.
So I was lied to, and now there are more Johnny Foreigners than ever?
Not seeing that as being my fault. Soz.
Everybody on here has been lied to by somebody in power, so I can’t be singled out for blame.
It goes without saying when some ynion tells you don’t talk about the treaty or look to closely. It is their fear of what you may discover that provides the instinctive deflect response from them,
Distract and personal attacks regarding this subject matter usually implies the opposite,
That the target is not far from the truth.
The treason Act 1708 is a interesting subject,
A good portion of Westminster parliament thought it might breach the treaty of union, changing Scots law so soon,
but after a few nods and winks they were convinced it had no effect on the supposed treaty if the English Westminster parliament until 1708 changed Scots law after Scotland had been extinguished from the treaty of union.
It also did not wish to bring to the attention of Scotland that only the Englands parliament was running the Great Britain parliament.
The voices became subdued and the protest became whispers, and the Act passed that breached the non binding to Scotland treaty of union.
But the speeches against the 1708 Treason Act being introduced by Westminster and in Westminster to Scotland , the house itself suggested that the treason act did not preserve Scots law as it had promised in the treaty,
But voices are hushed when it was discovered early on that Scotland was not in the treaty.
It would have been an interesting discussion Scot but it seems folk here prefer to talk about Alaska.
@fruitella the hun says:23 May, 2023 at 5:10 pm
Some interesting stuff in your post.
I start from what I know to be the stereotypical indigenous Scottish characteristic. We’re grippy and tight as fuck. As somebody once said, the only nation to turn a vice (thrift) into a virtue.
So, acknowledging that, I believe that the route to Indy via our sporrans chimes with more Scots than the other routes you name.
Scotland’s pride? FFS, we just fraudulently elected Yousaf as FM, and there’s barely a peep of protest! Scotland’s shame far more evident than pride.
Scotland’s environmental sustainability? Soz, but not really seeing it as a factor for many Scots. Maybes I’ve spent too much of my life wading through ankle-deep litter.
But, as many have said before. Indy needs support from most constituencies of Scots. The proud and environmentally sustainable Scots need to be brought onside with those who are interested only in the moolah.
I still think the focus should be mostly on the moolah though!
Hi Ruby
People preferring to talk about Alaska rather than talking about improving the lot of the Highlands and Islands
/
It was ever thus.
Cherrybank 4.31pm.
A few years ago I had a Capita agent come to my door . He seemed to be amazed when I refused him entry into my home. He tried the tactic that he could bring a police officer and force his way in. When I stood my ground he seemed to get confused and eventually left. I haven’t heard from them since.
Well thought out,
And evidence shows that when the population of Scotland was much higher with many villages before the highland clearances and prior to the new land enclosure acts the population did survive.
This can now be aided with modern knowledge of sustainability.
However the global warming scare mongering does little to help any sustainability. By governments buying up all the agriculture land and dispersing it among their friends, family and landed gentry.
The deforesting of trees is dangerous on such a large scale as the Corporation do. There have been trees growing on the planet in abundance for millions of years as fossil records show, they did not harm the atmosphere, they enhanced it.
Global warming has happened many time on earth when humans were not even here,
As has cooling.
Sustainability for Scotland I am in favour of, and I believe Dan thinks along the same lines.
Extremism in the Global warming mantra however goes in the opposite direction and only a selected few benefit.
The land is for all Scots,
Not for experimental bears bison and wolves, where large areas are cordoned of and the landed gentry own the rest as park lands. Or registered charities.
Maybe they want to talk about Alaska in the hope nobody spots that they don’t know what they are talking about.
John Main makes out everyone is leaving the islands because they are all big softies and that life in the city is easier.
He doesn’t explain why someone from the city would fork out £151,000 for a tin hut on a Scottish island.
@fruitella the hun 5:10pm
I really like your idea for breaking people out of the cities and suburbia, and giving them a chance to enjoy healthier, happier, and more productive lives.
And not just simply exist.
Think of how small networked communities would thrive in such an environment. And it wouldn’t be like the old days where working the land was all hard graft and struggle.
Because the whole infrastructure could be supported by the clever use of the technology we have in the 21st century.
And on top of that, it’s a much more environmentally sustainable model than what we have now.
Good post from you, too, @James Che.
James Che,
I have no idea what you’re talking about, can you post a list of sources of these vital documents you go on about please.?
John Main is completely nuts.
He voted for Brexit in order to prevent Johnny Foreigner from former British colonies coming here.
John Main is completely nuts.
His independence campaign will be all about ‘showing them the money’
No voters will say thank you very much but we’ve got loads of money we don’t need to vote YES.
Anything else to offer?
@ James Che 2:01pm
I can only counter you question, by asking what your point was, and where your reply was relevant to what I was saying?
I mentioned that most don’t appear to particularly care about these things.
That if they did (and it does seem to be gaining slight traction) then perhaps “Wur Sovrendee” may be a legitimate course of dialogue for Scotland – much as Westminster gret about theirs during Brexit.
I mentioned that any course to claiming Independence is open to Scotland (whether within the UK’s ‘legal framework’, or not) up to and including ignoring any treaty – real, imagined, or debatable.
I mentioned that the UK has never had an issue trampling treaties – if it’s legitimate for them, its legitimate for us.
I mentioned that UK treaty breaking didn’t send the ‘International Community™ into paroxysms of vengeance, but accomodation.
I acknowledged that rUK could still act vengefully if they took the huff (even if we removed ourselves ‘legitimately’ in the eyes of everyone, and their dug) but that they may well come to terms, and why they might.
I mentioned all this and more, and it seemed relevant to me.
What’s your point? You keep shoving your theories (and I do have some small academic regard for some of them) how would you lever them to restore Scotland to Nationhood?
If as you appear to aver, Scotland has always been an Independent Nation – no valid treaty binds us (or maybe it’s Scotland doesn’t exist anymore, I’m never quite sure) How would you convince the majority of Scots of that fact; esoecially in the face of the blatantly de-facto opposite situation they are in – what should the electorate do with such information?
A Movement isn’t a Movement unless it has a direction, or destination -otherwise it’s a Stationary.
What direction should we take armed with your insight, where do we go, and more importantly, why should anyone follow?
I’m at loss just now, but I’m not beaten – much like supporting our National team “it’s the hope that kills ye” but we still do it.
So give us something to follow, and make it simple, because simple is what an electorate understands.
I’m genuinely all ears for novelty.
I mean the best I could come up with was a pathetic slogan like ‘New Scotland, New Owners – You” – so it’s a very low bar to clear – go for it.
@Scot says:23 May, 2023 at 5:58 pm
People preferring to talk about Alaska rather than talking about improving the lot of the Highlands and Islands
I wasn’t going to bother replying but then Ruby chipped in with her half farthing worth (1/1920 of a pound, in old money).
There are a number of series on Freeview, covering Alaskan and Far Northern prospecting, fishing, homesteading, building, and just the general difficulties of living in a remote and hostile environment.
They grow awareness of these locations, and educate city dwellers on how these communities work.
They engage the interest of viewers, and I don’t doubt they encourage visitors and tourism, thus assisting the remote economies.
They build sympathy and support in viewers, and I don’t doubt they help to sway taxpayers, who are overwhelmingly urban, to stump up more financial support for these remote regions.
On the debit side, they may encourage rich urbanites to sell up and buy remote holdings for a song.
I maintain that on balance, a popular, informative, scenic, interesting series about remote Scottish crofters, fishermen, ferry crew, shepherds, etc etc would be positive for rural Scotland. Identifying local characters, following their daily lives, celebrating their successes, sympathising with their troubles.
So there you go, Scot. An explanation of why talking about Alaska is relevant to improving the lot of the Highlands and Islands.
Shucks, you’re embarrassing me. Really, I don’t need any thanks. You’re welcome.
John Main is completely nuts!
Did anyone ever get an answer from him regarding his protest against the fraudulent election of Humza Yousaf?
John Main is completely nuts!
He believes all Scots are tight & no doubt that we all have red hair, wear CU Jimmy hats, eat haggis, deep fried mars bars & drink Buckfast.
John Main is completely nuts
He reckons if you watch programmes about Alaska on Freeview you’ll get a better understanding of what it’s like on the Isle of Harris.
John Main is completely nuts
He claims nobody in Scotland is interested in the environment He knows this because down his way folk are dropping litter in the street.
@Ruby 7:18pm
Ruby, the way he talks about the Scots is beyond insult. I don’t think he is in any way imaginable, a Scot.
The bottle return scheme CEO getting paid £300,000. They must have known they didn’t have the power to implement it before the massive scale fraud took place.
Then lorna slater threatened Scottish business to sign up or not trade.
Now she says the Tories will have to pay the compensation. She should be in jail along with Nicola and Pete.
How much money is this going to cost?
Lorna Slater is highly intelligent but lacks emotional intelligence. I’ve thought it. And I’ll say it.
She can’t empathise with Scotland. It’s no wonder she thinks men can be women. It’s an autism thing gender.
She can’t empathise with hard pressed Scots. Her bottle scheme was insane.
She can’t empathise with women.
She can’t empathise with the island communities with the highland clearances fishing ban.
She can’t empathise with the communters of Glasgow who don’t want the M8 motorway turned into a green emission zone.
The greens are insane. Full of people that look at life through a different lense. They just don’t get it. They don’t get working people’s needs.
Sadly, notRev, you are now the provider of idiot-fodder. You cannot seriously believe that you, or Alba, or the antivaxxers and English-hating clowns that are your acolytes, or ALBA the 3% party, are more likely to succeed in achieving independence.
Your acolytes are a rabble – the best argument AGAINST independence I know – but you should know better.
Tobydog.
The tecnology of my old Ipad is limited to post computerised links.
However I have provided manual links and reference to the sources many times on here in Wings,
You will be able to find most not so far back, alternatively I presume you will find them from archive,
I hope that helps,
Lorna Slater has the logical intelligence to understand climate models and the inferences they make, but not the emotional intelligence to spot that it is cherry picked, exaggerated, naïve garbage promoted by fraudulent, second rate scientific quacks.
And it is hammering Scots.
DMcV,
You’re not nuts and don’t listen to anyone that says you are.
I can tell that you are in the know regarding these antivaxxers, and I’m with you all the way.
Perhaps you can explain something to me because I’m completely stumped and you come across as somebody that knows what’s what. See all those people that refused to get the amazing vaccinations and the eleventeen boosters, how come they’re not all dead? Maybe it’s just a matter of time.
I just can’t work it out, it’s almost as if they didn’t need them but that can’t be right because look at you, you got the vaccinations and any boosters going and you’re definitely not as mad as a hatter. Obviously they’ll pay for not getting the magic vax, anyway, more for us, eh.
P.S. I’m looking forward to my rabies shot, you’re probably ahead of the curve there too. That’ll be another shot these antivaxxers think they don’t need, there’s just no helping some people.
Iain Mhor.
A confusing mess I agree, that greed is the only thing that will never expire or have a sell a buy date,
I am not immune to England parliament/government acting aggressively to Scotland in retaliation. Physically or politically, it has done this in history before, it has behaved like this to many Countries around the world.
And is still doing so today in other places out of sight indirectly.
The old empire is standing on old legs, in fact my impression is that the old empire is pretty much Colonised by America nowadays.
But the despair and confusion comes across in your post is sad.
We Do not do this, We do not do that, in case this happens or that happens or for the repercussion from the bully.
Fear forms a hold, it holds humans and nations back, it holds humanity back and provides ultimate control to big Corporations and dictator governments.
You’re and our life’s will become smaller and to a point of no existence.
I replied to you as a additional thought provoking alternative which is based on history recorded officially.
If the records are a lie at Westminster Hansard and are falsified by Westminster in Hansard that must be taken up with them,
I simply point a direction and link for/ of information like many others here do to read for yourself.
As to independence for Scotland it is up to the people not the politicians, the politician are followers when confronted.
And many people are beginning to realise the truth regards the treaty of union, other Scots talk to me about this elsewhere whom do not post on Wings.
Scots are beginning to catch on that We cannot be in a treaty of union and yet dissolved and extinguished from that treaty at one and the same time,
The more that hear about it, the more will ask questions, and then question the very status quo.
Independence first, most things can be run temporally on the system we have now for a short period.
Although our own banking system and currency seem the most imperitive for a efficient start.
All the rest will be achieved one day at a time. Rome was not built in a day. And neither will Scotland be.
Many other Countries are beginning and have begun to fight to regain their nation ship status, not just Scotland,
In fact many wish to break away from the old empire and going through thebprocess now
One thing at a time, One day at a time, otherwise we are to confused to achieve anything towaeds our dreams.
Informing Scotland of their true position is step one.
Northcode.
Cheers,
Actually that was how I was raised, even without electricity. On a small croft, working in the forestry with horses on the hills of Scotland no, not tractors,
I Would be going back to my roots, ha ha.
https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1661043023525056515?cxt=HHwWhsDQ3Yn1mo0uAAAA
Oh can’t wait to see this. Well done to that Neale Hanvey. That billboard Chris will make the crazy goings on of the Scottish Government over gender his north America.
Scotland can lead the way in standing up for sex based rights and female only spaces.
The government could not be more out of tune with the public if they tried.
That billboard Chris will raise the case of gender and take it to North America. Canada has gone so woke. Guys like Jordan Peterson stood up against it. Now Edinburgh University is Scotland’s ground zero.
But the fightback for women’s rights is on. And Scotland is leading the way.
Ian smith,
Aye and the climate change models are very selective for the purpose of propaganda and fear mongering.
Global warming is caused by human being,
Tell that to the small ice age populations.
Ian have you ever watched George Carlin, saving the planet.
Hi DMcV at 8:15 pm.
You have, obviously, not been reading WOS since 2011.
The twaddle you come out with in your first(?) comment, marks you as the archetypical troll.
@James Che 9:30pm
No problem, James.
Actually, your post of @9:19 was a good one, too.
I pretty much always enjoy reading your posts.
James Che,
rather than posting endless dumps on WoS of your interpretation of ancient Scots guff, why don’t you print them off into 57,000 volumes of densely packed text and cart them off to an advocate to see if he or she can make a case of them to raise in the Court of Session? You know, actually do something, instead of just dribbling on interminably.
@A Scot Abroad 10:04pm
Now now, ASA. Steady. I like James’s interpretation of ancient Scots guff, as you call it.
Just remembered. I have an earlier post of yours I’ve yet to reply to.
Might be tomorrow before I get around to it, though. but I will.
James Che says: 23 May, 2023 at 9:38 pm
Sturgeon has made a few interviews about the non-jury rape trials proposal where she inferred that lawyers opposed to this are not doing so because of professional concerns but because of their personal biases.
That works both ways. If Scottish lawyers are not being professional and unbiased then can’t the same be argued with these climate change scientists who tell who the world is doomed?
TBH though, the thought has occurred to me that we hear all this talk about scientists being united in saying that climate change predictions is real and a danger to human kind but I wonder if the same consensus is among unemployed scientists?
We all know the score where science like every other part of society has been commoditized and if anyone in the science community wants to continue to work, they have to toe the line publicly despite what they think in private.
While I say this, I do actually agree with a lot of what those in favour in climate change want where we consume less, waste less and wean ourselves off fossil fuels. However, I am becoming increasingly disheartened about the way they are going about it and the increasingly unbelievable pronouncements of chaos that can only be diverted if we follow some course that seems to be only affecting the rest of us and the rich are excluded from it.
Much like this Trans issue, this is another issue that most of the independence movement who are naturally sympathetic towards equality and the climate need shouldn’t be involved in but have to in order to put a brake on it so our society doesn’t become further damaged than it is now.
It is just so pissing to have to scroll past not just the troll but also those stupid enough to respond
“…dribbling on interminably…”
Well, you’d know all about that.
DNFTT
Derek,
I think that it’s not in doubt, and that the posted evidence is abundant, that there’s been some pretty interminable trolling by James Che for a very long time. He’s got this weird view about stuff, and he posts it again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, and yet again, again. And then he will do the same again tomorrow.
What a disgrace nicola sturgeon is to her own country!
Trolls and arguing with trolls!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUdbZ9QY5VU
Breastplate @ 8.59
LOL .
Aye all those millions of black swan * anti-vaxxers * who – incredibly – never died despite declining the invitation to get jagged with an * experimental * cocktail of chemicals the manufacturers and vast profit reapers assured us was 100% the business ( er….it was ) .
Apparently this wonderstuff saved the lives of 100,000,000,000,003 people and of that not insignificant number only that anomalous 3 suffered any kind of adverse reaction ; and that was probably down to them being a bit , well , transphobic .
These new vaccines really are miraculous . There are cases of people who actually died from the deadliest desease EVAH …ie Covid-On-The-Death-Certificate , and were brought back to life by the timely administration of a Fauci Formula injection .
Truly , these wonderful substances should be called Lazarus Vaccines : Lazvax for short .
https://archive.is/l4bsz
It’s all just a game of see who gets on the gravy train.
None of these politicians give a shit about Scotland.
What does it matter how many politicians we send to Westminster?
International recognition would flood to Scotland, in receipt of a majority vote for immediate pronouncement to end the Union. Whether that vote is by General Election, makes no difference, validation within the margin of votes, for the above manifesto to restore sovereignty to Holyrood.
‘The Nutter from Norwich’ has been reduced to attacking James Che.
I think we might be seeing the beginning of the end of the troll who calls himself ‘A Scot Abroad’
He’ll be skulking off soon with his tail between his legs having been totally defeated.
Could I borrow something off topic for a moment that may help some others financially?
I recently heard of a bonus £100 windfall for Nationwide BS members.
Great I thought having retained a current account with them for 50 years.
I have had a mortgage, savings acoounts and ISA’s with them over the years and at times with
substantial sums in them.
Nearing retirement I shopped around for competitive savings from banks and there are rates miles better than things NBS say are loyalty rates.
I have other current accounts that pay 3.3% interest verses Zero with NBS.
My late father opened the account for me as a school kid so for that reason my salary gets paid in and transferred leaving £1000 emergency fund for me.
The terms of the bonus, made due to record breaking profits, say that you must have their current account and a second savings or mortgage account to qualify.
Therefore my 50 years of loyalty is worth Zero bonus.
The Board is packed with millionaires who make the most difficult decisions such as only paying their savers a tiny fraction of the recent 12 Bank of England rate rises.
Although, as they say they don’t have shareholders to satisfy they more than make up for that with bonuses for the Board.
This could and should be one of the great PR disasters ever if their members take appropriate action.
I will now open an NBS savings account with £100.
It too late to qualify for this bonus but it will continue my 50 year relationship as a member.
If the members can demand a vote to float the NBS on the stock market, long term members could each make thousands of pounds.
The Board were cute enough some years ago to notify new members that they could not vote or benefit from such actions but nothing would change them either.
I’m a big Martin Lewis fan and he advises me that by transferring a current account to Nat West Bank they will pay me a £200 bonus and give my circumstances a couple of pounds bonus each month.
There are a couple of issues that may not suit everyone such as using an app and making one payment in of £1250 but please see the safe hands of money saving expert for full details.
Nothing to stop you moving that account next year for another £200 as loyalty and morality are just words used my their PR departments to keep the wool over your eyes.
My apologies to those not affected or uninterested.
The 2014 referendum ballot paper is redundant. It’s no longer a question of “should”. Future GE mandate..
Pronouncement of restored sovereignty.
The result simply validated, by formal communication from the international community.
https://archive.is/h05w9
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
For Humza Yousaf, however, the risk is this process will happen the other way round. The road to being ignored begins with victory and passes through ridicule. At the weekend the first minister promised that this summer, like every summer before it, would be a season of independence.
That is funny and very true.
First you win, then they fight you, then they laugh at you and then they ignore you.
Hands up anyone who isn’t just ignoring Humza?
Obviously not John Main he’s out there protesting on a daily basis against his fraudulent election.
Whenever a journalist asks the question.. “What if Westminster refuses to recognise the result?”
The answer should be.. “The international community has the final say, on recognition of Scottish independence. In the end, Westminster would require to come to the negotiation table”.
A General Election mandate, to immediately restore sovereignty, a valid solution.
It is clear to me that John Main is actually English.
@James Che, your arguments are on the level of those who tried to use ancient charters to avoid covid restrictions. Too much legal stuff has flowed under the bridge for those tactics to work. Way back, things were decided by kings or queens and their supporters. There is no treaty where the people of any part of England decided to be English. We ended up there by default. However Scotland has had a democratic vote to be in the UK and voted to be in the Union. In due time it will be reasonable to have another referendum but this continuous nagging for a rerun is unfair to both sides of the border. To force a departure would not go down well internationally. The World accepted Crimea should leave Ukraine on the back of a dodgy political election and look how that has turned out.
Scotland’s chosen party for leading you out of the UK has not covered itself with glory. It seems as incompetent and muddled as Westminster versions. Not exactly selling independence are they? Do the people of Scotland want them as the sole leadership of the country?
Effijy 08:17 “If the members can demand a vote to float the NBS on the stock market, long term members could each make thousands of pounds.”
It was this privatising carpetbagging policy of Mrs Thatcher that caused the selling off of public utilites (things the public already owned) such as gas, electricity, BT, Royal Mail and so on. Everything was and is for sale. A deluded public eagerly bought shares and down the line most shares were sold for a profit to outside and often foreign conglomerates eagerly waiting to scoop up. End result, no control of fundamental infrastructure so do not complain about the prices they charge. They exist only to make as much profit as they can for shareholders.
As to the remaining mutuals like Nationwide Building Society, Yorkshire Building Society – they resisted the temptation to privatise most others converted from mutuals to private companies were merged into others. Remember the Woolwich, Abbey National, National Provicial, Dunfermline Building Society and hundreds of others – all gone.
Short term gain for guaranteed long term pain.
The trolls that have infected this site recently are obviously enjoying themselves hugely. So why do people who are upset by them always respond to them. Why does anyone even read their comments. Scroll past as I do and they’ll eventually go away for they hate to be ignored.
This is a great edit of Alex Salmond’s speech at Calton Hill, Sep 21st 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb1AUPFG6cE
I see the pitchforks are out. Drive away the non-believers and call them English.
@A Scot Abroad 23rd May4:16pm
You know my views by now, I think.
My feeling is that we’re way beyond that kind of forum for most independence supporters, and most Scots for that matter.
We’re beyond referendums and S30 orders and just talking to Westminster in general.
Westminster has shown its hand time after time. And its hand always has five aces in it.
Indigenous Scots are waking up from their ’empire’ induced sleep, and are beginning to see through bleary eyes the reality of the ‘Scottish Parliament’.
That it is no more than a Colonial HQ, or the Scottish Colonial Administration Service (SCAS), as I call it.
I’m sorry, @A Scot Abroad. The jig is up and Scotland is lost to ‘The Union’. It was lost a long time ago.
If only Westminster, and England, had been better partners in a true partnership of equals. But empire and all that. Why be friends when we can just take what we want. Who needs friends anyway, we’re British, by God.
The dying egregore that is the tattered remains of the British Empire is rasping out its final breath.
Over the last 100 years it’s adherents have abandoned it. Leaving ,one by one, to navigate their own fates.
And not one of those former colonies has even once glanced back in regret at leaving what was for many many years their torment.
To think the British Empire once ruled over 24% of the Earth’s entire land mass. And held tightly in its grip the lives of almost half a billion inhabitants of our world.
But when empires begin to die, they die quickly. And the British Empire is no different.
No. I’m afraid there is no hope for the ‘Union’, but still, perhaps, a chance for Scotland.
Poor Scotland. Limping, battered and bruised, from under the shadow of a once global oppressor. Scotland, the first of its victims. Scotland, the last of its victims. Scotland, the land of the brave.
But Scotland will recover itself, and walk tall in the world once more.
And will it look back over its shoulder in sadness and regret, and mourn the end of what was once ‘The Union’?
Anyone care to take a guess?
PacMan.
Every where is upside down, the wrong way round, in Scotland, in England. And around the world.
It takes a lot of imagination to suppose that so many leaders have all turned dumb and mean all at the same by chance,
There are puppeteers pulling and funding most governments strings and far away from the people we vote for.
The politicians at our level are paper politicians, they crumble, and fold at first sign of a challenge or at the flash of fast bucks
They all know jury-less trials are against the welfare of all people,
They all know the difference between sexes,
They all know that locking people down to 15 min Cities and restricting people from traveling to maybe see relative, from going to work, to going shopping. Is wrong.
Restricting the freedom of speech.
Are all crimes against humanity,
We know are all aware the world leader are deliberately messing with human right, our planet and societies structures,
It is up the the people not to give in at the first hurdle, otherwise humanity has very little chance of survival.
David Hannah says:
23 May, 2023 at 7:59 pm
They must have known they didn’t have the power to implement it before the massive scale fraud took place.
How much money is this going to cost?
———————-
£1bn
Pat Blake,
You will be very popular with your comment, telling Scots to suck it up because it happened a long time ago,
That is akin to saying jury-less trial are great, if you have been wronged.
It also smacks of hypocracy if you tell slaves not to bother fighting for their rights as individual nations because they and their ancestors became slaves so long ago.
Way to go forward for humanity.
“Rab C Nesbitt says:
22 May, 2023 at 2:15 pm
@Anton Decadent
Perhaps you’d be more at home with the BNP or National Front?”
Because I pointed out that the Alba mission statement is full of praise for New Scots, diversity and perceived oppression of Roma in Scotland? Go look up the conviction for Modern Day Slavery in Govanhill.
Anyone who sees that white gentiles are to be left pissing into the wind when it comes to political representation regardless of the party is to be smeared as a fascist but, same as the race and transphobic cards, it is losing its power due to being overplayed.
@Pat Blake 9:13am
I think you’ll find that the SNP is Westminster’s chosen party for keeping Scotland , IN, the UK.
Recent shenanigans more than prove the SNP is a mere tool used by Westminster in its desperate attempt to ‘save’ the ‘Union’.
@ Northcode. A lot of Brits think that all main parties are puppets for the WEF but it doesn’t make it true. Parties in power are tied by laws, irrespective of what the people who voted for them might want. Changing those laws takes time.
Northcode at 12:37 pm
“I think you’ll find that the SNP is Westminster’s chosen party for keeping Scotland , IN, the UK”
This again? When will some Scots take responsibility for their own elected government’s mess instead of just hating the English?
@ James Che. Old laws become irrelevant when news ones replace them. You can override those new laws but you do so by breaking the law. Other countries will respond to that behaviour. Many old English and Scottish laws were swept away by joining the EU. We retain most of the EU laws, even though we’ve left. We didn’t become a blank sheet legally.
@James Jones 12:55pm
I don’t hate the English, James.
And if it comes across that way sometimes then I apologise. Passions can flare occasionally, and rash words can be said in a heated argument.
I don’t hate anyone.
I’ve worked with many many English folk and I can honestly say there can only be a handful I haven’t taken to. And that wasn’t because they disagreed with my views on Scottish independence. It was because they were dicks.
You probably won’t believe this, but I like the English (well, most of them. I’m not too sure about @John Main).
My beef isn’t with your average English man or woman, it’s with an establishment that seeks to oppress the Scots and nick all their stuff.
The English as a people are also victims of the very same establishment.
Look at Brexit. Who wanted that?
The majority of English folks didn’t, but they got it anyway.
I would be overjoyed to see an Independent Scotland thrive alongside an independent and prosperous England. Both of us good pals and neighbours.
And when I bang on about the British Empire check out the definition of an egregore.
Because everyone, apart from a handful of psychos, were the victims of that great and noble enterprise – even the people of England.
So, come on England, reclaim your identity, I truly miss it, and fight for your independence too
And in the end we might all be better off.
Northcode, you should read some right leaning, Brexit supporting comment sites. They sound just like you, only on top of the ‘establishment that seeks to oppress the [people] and nick all their stuff’, there’s the WEF, the EU, the LibLabCon one party government, which also wants to ‘oppress the [people] and nick all their stuff.’ How would an independent Scotland be different? Especially if it joined the EU? Brexit IS England’s independence attempt. That it’s harder and less rewarding than some people expected is no surprise. It’s not as bad as some claimed either. In or out of unions, life will always be tough and less that we’d hope for.
Northcode,
I haven’t seen a majority for independence. Until I do, all of this is not proven, and Scotland remains a part of this great Union.
@Pat Blake 2:13pm
To paraphrase the great Humphrey Bogart:
I didn’t say that leaving the EU was a mistake for England.
Could be that it was exactly the right move for England in its ‘struggle’ for independence.
I said that the majority of England’s people, apparently, didn’t want to leave, whether they were right or not.
And anyway it was just an example – maybe a poor one.
And cheer up, Pat.
In the words of Edgar Allan Poe: ” All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Hi A Scot Abroad at 2:28 pm.
You typed,
“I haven’t seen a majority for independence. Until I do, all of this is not proven, and Scotland remains a part of this great Union.”
This quote is from the link below –
The poll still finds a small lead for Yes overall. Among those with a voting intention and very likely to vote, 53% said they would vote Yes in an immediate referendum, while 47% said they would vote No.
In recent years, support for independence has been very closely correlated with electoral support for the SNP.
But there are signs that more 2014 Yes voters are beginning to consider voting for parties other than the SNP.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/ipsos-stv-poll-snp-support-falls-in-wake-of-nicola-sturgeon-resignation-and-police-finance-probe
Northcode says:
24 May, 2023 at 1:56 pm
My beef isn’t with your average English man or woman, it’s with an establishment that seeks to oppress the Scots and nick all their stuff.
What’s been taken?
@Northcode says:24 May, 2023 at 1:56 pm
Look at Brexit. Who wanted that?
The majority of English folks didn’t, but they got it anyway.
Knock out comment of this thread.
Apologies to all reality dwellers who have had to trawl through the best part of 500 comments to get to it.
But isn’t it worth it? It’s a 100 carat, flawless diamond of a comment.
Read it and weep, folks. You don’t get comments of this pedigree every day.
How is Northcode going to follow this? All of the remainder of his life ahead, and everything he posts hereafter is going to be ranked against this.
Has he resurrected that silly old Remain argument whereby anyone that didn’t bother to vote at all is somehow deemed an EU-phile? Or perhaps that all the OAPs have since died leaving a young population of hard-done-by Remainers. Desperation, that.
@John Main 5:41pm
My post @1:58pm
My mistake. Sorry all.
Good spot, @John Main. Thanks
Highlander @ 5:11pm
“What’s been taken?”
Responsibility, accountability, self respect, powers, oil, fish, water, electricity, fondue set, cuddly toy, taken prisoner, taken to the cleaners, taken to wars, taken out of the EU….
It might be quicker to list the things we still have like…eh..
ASA @ 2:28pm,
“I haven’t seen a majority for independence. Until I do, all of this is not proven, and Scotland remains a part of this great Union.”
This isn’t a Union, it’s a hostage situation.
@Breastplate 7:05pm
…and ma coat at a ceilidh, tae.
@Effijy says
I have two things to say to you.
1. Learn how a MUTUAL works. Then you will realise how absurd your complaint about what Nationwide has done is.
2. Nationwide along with the Skipton put clauses into their terms of joining decades ago so that if the members were ever such effing morons that they voted to demutualise, THEY WOULD GET NOTHING! All “windfalls” would go into the company’s own charitable trust.
This was in order to deter the carpetbaggers who got millions of tabloid reading clowns to be bribed with what was their own money in the first place and soon found out their demutualisation “windfall” bonus was worth the sum total of fk all.
“I’m a big Martin Lewis fan …”
Explains everything.
“… and he advises me that by transferring a current account to Nat West Bank they will pay me a £200 bonus and give my circumstances a couple of pounds bonus each month.
Wait for it …
“There are a couple of issues that may not suit everyone such as using an app and making one payment in of £1250”.
BINGO! One payment in of £1250. And how long does this have to stay in? And what is the minimum amount you can have in your account, what minimum needs to be paid in, etc, etc.
There is no such thing in life as free money. There is always, ALWAYS a T&C Applies catch – especially with non-mutuals. If you haven’t learned that by now, God help you.
@ Northcode says:24 May, 2023 at 6:52 pm
My mistake. Sorry all
Nah.
You were writing about England. You meant the English. The context is clear.
Time for you to channel your inner Hatuey.
Disappear and re-invent yourself with a new pseudonym. Hope nobody notices or cares.
You can defo be confident of the latter.
Look on the bright side. You can post all the same guff over again, and hurl all the same, old, tired and unimaginative insults.
Breastplate at 7:08 pm
“This isn’t a Union, it’s a hostage situation.”
Ha ha! Go on, say ‘colony’ and ‘imprisonment’ for me. Hilarious!
“What’s been taken?”
Sense of reality?
Sorry to break into Northcodes’ creative writing class, but Johnmain is obviously attracted to you and I think you should arrange a date (preferably offline).
AScotAbroad is aware of your sexual attraction, and having been Monty’s Batman, is jealous.
Beware.