Down On The Beaches
We’ve written already about the magnitude of the error transactivists have made in bringing about the arrest of Graham Linehan on trumped-up incitement charges. But thanks to the excellent work of court reporter Nick Wallis this week, the sheer scale of it is still only beginning to unfold.
At its heart is a scarcely-believable tale about how a tiny handful of deeply mentally ill men – at the core, just three – have for years orchestrated a campaign of vindictive, hateful intimidation and terror which has caused untold suffering to individuals, done catastrophic damage to the reputation of the police, and cost the taxpayer millions of pounds, all in a desperate attempt to validate their own delusions.
It’s going to be no small task to summarise it for you. But let’s do our best.
We’ll start with the one who’ll be most familiar to Wings readers – Lynsay Watson.
A disgraced former police officer sacked for gross misconduct in 2023, Watson has risen to further public prominence since the start of Linehan’s trial, with substantial articles in a number of newspapers (all of them illustrated with posed pictures more than 25 years old, because Watson has obsessively hidden himself from public view since then), and we expect more to follow in the coming days.
But in fact he’s no stranger to the press.
As far back as 1997, Watson – under his original name of Alex Horwood – was getting fired from the force for the first time, in this case the British Transport Police, for which he was based at Edinburgh Waverley railway station.
He’d previously been serving in Kirkcaldy, but had been moved to Edinburgh in 1996, because colleagues in Fife no longer wanted to work with him after he started turning up dressed as a woman and demanding frightened workmates call him Susan.
But he already had a questionable record. In 1995 a Dundee court had found former boxer Albert Buchanan not guilty of assaulting Watson (at that time Horwood), with the sheriff saying that Watson had made “outrageous suggestions exaggerating” the incident – in which Watson had kicked Buchanan’s brother unconscious – and had “gilded the lily” so much in his account that the entire case risked collapse.
(The former champion pugilist had supposedly pummelled Watson 20 times, yet in the process hadn’t managed to inflict so much as a graze or bruise on him. Between the incident and the trial Watson had managed to get Buchanan convicted for a breach of the peace at Dundee train station by spuriously detaining him until he missed his train.)
After being kicked out of the cops, the newly-renamed Watson (seemingly after having had sex-change surgery in the intervening period) tried in 1999 to become a nurse without disclosing that he was male. After being asked to provide the nursing board with details of his psychiatric or criminal records, both of which he refused to do, he chose to leave the nursing course he’d been on at Dundee University.
(Contrary to his claims he wasn’t “forced” to do so, just asked to comply with the same disclosure rules that applied to everyone else in order to continue.)
In another newspaper interview on the incident, Watson appeared to admit to the serious crime of obtaining sex by deception – essentially rape – by claiming that he’d successfully fooled his boyfriend of the time into believing he was a woman.
Having been sacked from the police and failed to become a nurse, in 2000 he was rejected for a job in the military police, and during an interview about losing the sex-discrimination case he brought about it he told the Daily Record that “The men I have slept with know about my past and it hasn’t bothered them, although I’ve never had a long-term relationship. I never lie to boyfriends. A lot of men don’t realise I’m a transsexual, or if they do, they are too gentlemanly to say anything”, which appears to draw a distinction between lying and simply failing to disclose.
But that distinction doesn’t exist in law. Sex by deception is rape whether you actively lie or merely don’t tell the person a material fact that might affect their consent.
By 2004, though, Watson had managed to get hired as a WPC in Skipton, North Yorkshire, from where he ended up in Leicestershire Police and appears to have led a relatively uncontroversial life for over a decade before becoming involved in the most aggressive and militant branch of transactivism and ultimately getting himself fired again for gross misconduct, which brings us more or less up to the present day.
(Interestingly, while Watson accepted the gross misconduct charges, he contested some of the other findings against him and continues to appeal them. In a recent court appearance, he claimed that the tweets that got him fired were a result of mental illness. Given that absolutely nothing about his “online conduct” has changed since, we can only reasonably assume that still applies.)
(He’s certainly a bit of a slow learner.)
Watson’s entire life since that sacking in 2023 has comprised a tireless 24/7 campaign of trying to have gender-critical voices disciplined, sacked or imprisoned for hurting his feelings. Our previous articles have documented just some (it may never be possible to know how many there have been) of the unsuccessful judicial reviews he’s pursued – at taxpayer’s expense, because he’s penniless and has all his court fees paid, as well as representing himself (badly) in court.
While he’s never succeeded in one, he’s certainly made a huge and costly nuisance of himself. In February this year his mad threats to perform a citizen’s arrest on Sandie Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham caused the tribunal to be moved from Edinburgh to Dundee at short notice.
And it’s hard to fault his ambition in attempting to somehow secure a judicial review of the entire Scottish legal system.
(To be conducted by who? The King? God? Judge Dredd? We’re not told.)
But he’s also filed an untold number of complaints of supposed crimes with the police, on his own behalf or for others, which brings us back to the Graham Linehan case.
The alleged “victim” of Linehan’s “assault” is an 18-year-old trans-identifying male activist calling himself Sophia Brooks, but better known to gender-critical campaigners as “Tarquin”. Nick Wallis’s reporting of his cross-examination by defence counsel Sarah Vine (SV in these tweets) reveals the startling degree of influence exerted by Lynsay Watson over the teenager, from an initial contact where Watson shockingly told him he could end up murdered like Brianna Ghey.
“Tarquin” was very evasive about whether or not it was Watson who’d goaded him into making a complaint to the police, but in any event the case was marked No Further Action (NFA) and closed.
That was until Watson intervened, filing a third-party complaint against Linehan and – in a modus operandi very familiar to Wings and others he’s harassed – managing to get the investigation reopened by prompting “Tarquin” to threaten the police with a judicial review and complaints to Professional Standards and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
(Things of which, of course, the average 18-year-old would know nothing.)
It was also Watson who filed the separate report to the police that got Linehan arrested at Heathrow Airport when he arrived to face his trial over Tarquin’s complaint.
While it’s all too tempting to just dismiss Watson as a hate-addled lunatic in grave need of psychiatric treatment (which he certainly is), the grim fact is that his 20+ years of experience as a policeman – along with doubtless having sympathetic former colleagues still serving in the force – enables him to understand procedures and know the best buttons to press to put the police under pressure to do what he wants.
Despite an endless list of failures, he still appears to enjoy a remarkable degree of privilege in having his complaints taken seriously where anyone else would by now expect to be facing a charge of wasting police time and labelled a vexatious litigant.
Vexatious-litigant status would at a stroke end Watson’s ability to (directly, at least) persecute innocent individuals by putting them through months and years of process-as-punishment, because he’d no longer be able to fund his actions at public expense.
As things stand he’s in a no-lose situation – he gets to cause people vast amounts of fear, stress and expense with no risk whatsoever to himself even when all his claims fail. (Even having costs awarded against him is useless, because he has no money to pay them. He has nothing at stake except his worthless time.)
Unfortunately, it’s a step with a high barrier. Individuals can’t get someone declared a vexatious litigant, only a court or the Attorney General can.
The first step is for individuals to start securing civil injunctions against him for harassment, which Wings and others are currently in the process of doing. But that itself is a laborious and time-consuming process, and even if successful Watson could continue to wage his war through proxies like “Tarquin”.
Quite whether they’d have the inexhaustible reserves of unhinged, demented frothing hatred that sustain Watson is another question, though.
(We had to look that one up too.)
(We believe those are the tweets that finally got his Twitter account suspended.)
Honestly, folks, there are hundreds of these. Hundreds and hundreds. This is just a tiny random selection. He does make references to “the nuclear option” quite a lot, though, which for anyone else might involve a visit from the police about what sounds like a pretty clear threat of violence.
(“We will deploy the nuclear option, and we have no ethical issues with it because these people are Nazis” is exceptionally hard to read other than as a direct threat to murder people, especially when you’ve also called for “ethical assassinations” and “direct action” against politicians who “won’t always have bodyguards around you”, said that you’re done with “peaceful protest” and made clear what you think a suitable end for a Nazi is.)
At a minimum, it certainly seems rather more serious than advising women that – as a last resort, after calling the police – they might consider punching men invading their safe spaces in the testicles, for which Graham Linehan was apprehended by a whole squad of armed officers, or for chucking an annoying and aggressive activist’s phone across a road, for which he’s actually on trial as we speak.
Even the House Of Lords has now raised an eyebrow in Watson’s direction.
But for some reason (possibly those we mentioned a few paragraphs ago), Watson seems to enjoy complete immunity from police action. We now know of at least eight well-founded and fully-documented complaints of harassment against him – including from two former senior police officers and a criminal barrister – none of which have resulted in investigations.
It seems that the police in the UK still look out for their own.
(There was a warrant put out for his arrest in respect of one of them, after he dodged numerous voluntary interviews, but as seen in the middle screenshot above, he simply hid until the police gave up.)
And so Watson remains at large, free to endlessly hound people who dare to believe that human biology is real, both on his own, in conjunction with nasty, impressionable children like “Tarquin”, and with the other members of his toxic trans cabal.
(Although he’s gone terribly quiet on his Bluesky account since he started appearing in the papers, with nothing posted there for fully 48 hours as we write this article – an unprecedented pause in his normally relentless spewing of hot indiscriminate rage. Bravely he’s even trying to keep up the farcical pretence that the account is nothing to do with him, despite “Tarquin” completely blowing the gaff in court yesterday.)
But who are those other members? Well, if you’re anything like us, readers, you probably feel like you’ve just spent the last little while wading through the sewers of an abattoir and could do with a bit of a break, so we’ll get to them soon.
For now we’ll leave you to ponder the deeply unhappy life of Lynsay Watson, a man of extreme mental fragility who used to enjoy having the power to inflict uncontrolled violence on people (and wasn’t shy about exercising that power), who seems to have admitted committing rape by deception on an unknown number of occasions, who attempted to covertly obtain a position whereby he would have access to vulnerable women, who’s in deep denial about being gay and who still responds with extreme pique, petulance and unhinged threats whenever anyone tells him “No”, but who is inexplicably being protected and indulged by the forces of law and order while people like Graham Linehan are subjected to its full force for a couple of mild tweets.
Readers may also wish to reflect on the fact that until a few weeks ago the Scottish Government officially considered him a woman and would have locked him up in a women’s prison if he ever carried out any of those threats, and that the country’s longest-serving First Minister considered him a member of a persecuted, stigmatised minority whose assertion of femalehood should have been taken on trust.
As for us, we’re going to bleach our brains and get a stiff drink. Because remarkable as it might seem, Watson isn’t even the worst one in his creepy gang. Steel yourselves.
.
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Rev, this is a stunning piece of journalism. I hope you are prepared for the deluge of Editors asking you to write a regular column for them – the Guardian, of course, the first amongst them.
I long ago came to the the conclusion that the top 10-15% of eternal onliners, the real night after week after month after year types, the ones who post post after post after post…are deeply mentally and emotionally unstable basket cases. Not a word they say is worth listening to, and they’ll be online until they die (young). Cos let’s face it – when was the last time you heard anybody in a comments section say anything interesting or useful or sane or sensible? Nobody at all is worth listening to online, and these manipulative freaks need locked up in case they hurt others. Sighing here. Fuck.it.
Trans-lunacy. We have got to the point in society where women live in fear not only from trans-identified males but the police, judicial/penal systems, and the political class who willingly indulge in trans-lunacy and expect the populace to pat them on the back. Push back has probably come too late for the likes of Linehan but there has to be a reckoning. This court case is a line drawn in the sand.
Christ, it’s a bit early for Halloween Stu but I feel compelled to see the rest of this horror show!
The amount of money wasted on these spurious and vexatious claims should be investigated alongside the open threats towards people
But those investigations should be judge led and the investigators should be from the serious crimes squad
Here here, the notorious fantasist and the heart of the Westminister “paedo ring” got 18 years for reference. That’s perhaps a little on the long side, but gives some room for thought.
Superb stuff. The man is deeply troubled. And dangerous.
Has the euphemism “Friends of Nicola” entered the Oxford English Dictionary yet?
I’d like to say it’s beyond belief, but clearly not.
What a deeply unhappy and disturbed shit of a man. A locked ward is where he belongs. My deepest sympathy to Stu all his other victims. You need some sort of survivor club. I would donate.
Brilliant report. Is this intimidation what prevents Swinney from being clear about anything to do with the trans issue?
And yet as someone said yesterday on the x feed thingy, ‘reading the BBC reportage and the Guardian, I feel like Travis Bickle.’
How true.
This gives me the boak.
Good stuff Rev.
Folks, ordinary folks, don’t realise what is going on in the background by a vicious and twisted few.
Common sense, or in fact looking around, should tell folks, and probably does tell folks, if they think about it, that the trans thing is whipped up out of utterly all proportion by a very view who are bent on causing as much mayhem and damage as possible.
These people want to turn our society upside down. And yes, they start early in the primary schools and indeed before that in nursery and our government bought it.
Keep up the good work exposing what is going on and by who. And no I don’t buy this that its the poor police caught in the middle. The police are absolutely rotten and corrupt and folks now know it.
He sounds like those headcases who make hoax 999 calls, he needs jail time in a men’s jail.
Superb and VERY important work, yet again. Thank you.
There is no good reason for this piece not to lead to the arrest of this nasty mental case and the rest of his bampots pals.
How many female police officers and staff have police bosses ordered to change in front of, ie been sexually abused by this man since 2004?
Wow! now there’s a can of worms.
Given the photographic proclivities of this group, what’s the odds on ‘Sophia’ has featured in a few sets of prints? As he’s been hanging out with them whilst still under 18 that would make any photos child porn. Maybe a search of a few hard drives would clear that up?
Wow, the rot goes deep eh.
Excellent piece.
Nicola thinks, they just want to be left in peace….ffs.
“Readers may also wish to reflect on the fact that until a few weeks ago the Scottish Government officially considered him a woman and would have locked him up in a women’s prison if he ever carried out any of those threats.”
Has this actually changed?
Ask her what the chance of her ever suffering from ovarian cancer is.
We know that chance is zero, but it would be interesting to see the mental gymnastics that follow.
Skipton is in North Yorkshire. Otherwise an excellent read
Another opportunity presents itself, England sliding into some form of political/governance melt down.
Where is the SNP? Out there waving the flag of some unviable enclave in the Levant.
Eyeless & Clueless.
Very Miltonesque Turabdin!
The SNP, not so much “Eyeless in G***” as “Eyeless Over G***”.
… Promise was that I
Should Isr@el from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in G*** at the Mill with slaves …
“It puts the lotion in the basket…” comes to mind…
OR…”Put the dog in the fuckin’ basket.”
Yes, very well said Robert. A right Jamie Gumm indeed.
For those interested;
Upcoming Event at the United Nations – Scotland’s Right to Self-Determination under International Law
On 18 September 2025, Justice pour Tous Internationale (JPTi), in cooperation with the International Pro Bono Legal Services Association (IPLSA), Liberation Scotland, and Salvo, will co-host a high-level event at the Palais des Nations, Geneva.
Venue: Room S4, Palais des Nations, Geneva Time: 10:00 – 15:00 (CET) Format: In-person | English
This event, titled “Scotland’s Right to Self-Determination under International Law”, will examine Scotland’s legal status and its claim to recognition as a Non-Self-Governing Territory under Chapter XI of the UN Charter and General Assembly Resolutions 1514 (XV) and 1541 (XV).
The programme will open with remarks by:
Junius Ho, Founder & CEO of IPLSA
Sharof Azizov, Executive Director of JPTi
Key interventions will follow from distinguished experts and advocates, including:
Prof. Robert Black KC (Emeritus Professor of Scots Law, University of Edinburgh)
Craig Murray (Former UK Ambassador, Author, and Human Rights Defender)
Mr. George Katrougalos (UN Independent Expert on Equitable International Order)
Prof. Alf Baird, Sara Salyers, and Alex Thorburn (Liberation Scotland)
The event will present historical and legal evidence of coercion behind the Treaty of Union, highlight the absence of constitutional guarantees for Scottish self-government, and examine the exhaustion of domestic remedies. It will also explore international legal and procedural pathways for advancing Scotland’s case within the United Nations system.
The day will conclude with a Diplomatic Networking Reception at the Palais des Nations, providing an opportunity for dialogue among diplomats, academics, and civil society actors.
Registration is required via UN Indico: link to indico.un.org
link to jpti.ch
I’ll be very interested to see what the outcome of this is.
Thanks for posting, Xaracen.
Great stuff.
Que the concern trolls. Poor “Aidan” over in ‘Fifeshire’ will be devastated.
I am devastated, I was going to be in Switzerland at the end of September but changed the plan to go to Canada instead. I could have heard about “conditions from the colony” from Alf Baird which would have been a unique and illuminating experience I am sure. Instead I’ll just have to see if I can spot a grizzly bear, gutted really.
@Aidan
Your loss.
I understand Professor Baird is going to present his thesis on the role of “goitrous academics” in modern life.
I can’t recall if this is inspired by Memmi, Fanon, or one of the other new sources that Professor Baird has discovered lately.
Oh to be a fly on the wall should one of the assembled great and good at the UN starts to ask searching questions about Scotland’s key role during the colonising centuries.
We will just have to hope they don’t look at any maps of the Americas (Central and North), the Caribbean, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. If they do, the ubiquitous occurrence of Scottish place names might just pique their interest.
I guess if the conversation starts to drag, CM could enthral the assembled throng with tales of how his pals played five-a-side with the soft body parts they hacked off the screaming lassies.
It was all captured on the participant’s mobiles. Perhaps CM could share or forward the vids.
“exhaustion of domestic remedies”
Weasel speak for the inability, due to the fundamental unsuitability and incompetence of the pro-Indy movement, to get democratic support in Scotland above the 50% mark.
But what does this state about the mental condition of the top notches running the police and giving orders to the police recruits.
Or judges providing get out of jail free cards,
It possible suggests that they may be unfit for the office they hold if they cannot keep a even balanced, non political scales of justice office.
Because this person is presuming in all this miss mash of threats that they will too show signs of unbalance similar to himself.
And if they don’t then this person threatens them until they fold & comply to this persons wishes.
until a person in the justice system is found with similar traits of personality. Wether that be at the top of the police or a Judge,
That is the purpose of continious litigations and accusations, to target some one at the top of their career and show them up as being unstable of mind and similar to themselves.
It is called psychological manipulation using pressure, bullying and ending in threats.
However is of great concern to the public, to vunerable people, to the police force, to judges and courts and politicians.
There was a reason why politicians thought mental institutions should be invented,
And most of the Fabian society may yet be interred due to their links with inciting and encouraging these crazy behaviours while acting as politicians, judges, police….. etc
To many links to the crazy people.
Excellent journalism, Stu.
I too followed Nick Wallis’ transcripts yesterday.
He did a sterling job in hot and stuffy circumstances.
I also read some of the subsequent comments (posted on Nick Wallis’ thread) made immediately after the court had adjourned and there was one in particular that stood out like a sore thumb . . . I’m sure you’ll be covering HIM soon.
Excellent work, Rev. The shrieks of “far right”, “Nazis”, etc., are almost laughable in their missing the target. Farage and others are not ‘far right’; they are on the right, certainly, but ‘far right’ is a misnomer for people who were probably on the left a decade ago and are now on the centre right.
That would now be most sensible people with a couple brain cells to spare. It has been the hard left that has brought this sh**st**m down on us, not the right, which has been compliant and complacent, granted, and, because the right is associated with Nazism and fascism, the ignorant and virtue-signalling (that is, those who have not listened to or read anything reflecting the truth) spout nonsense.
They seem incapable of taking a step back and seeing the reality of the situation. The Fabian Society has always purported to be the intellectual preserve of the left – not the hard left, but the educated, intellectual, philosophical left. It is probably the case that it, like everything on the left now, has been captured by the intellectually bereft, malign and dogmatic.
What we are seeing is not fascism, but totalitarianism Soviet-style. Anyone who believes that free speech is unlimited is way off beam. Britain has always been, in the past, a sanctuary for the politically radical homeless refugees from other countries that would not tolerate dissent.
Now, we have become the very epitome of totalitarian orthodoxy where dissent is not tolerated if it comes from ordinary people whose communities and class allegiances have been eroded not by economic hardship alone, but also by constant and rapid social engineering that has left them dislocated and marooned by ‘woke’ ideologies and virtue signalling, the preserves of the middle-class and the elites who are unaffected, usually, by their own experiments. People in both urban and rural parts of the UK, including Scotland, are angry and disillusioned. None of it has been accidental or even “for our own good”. It has been top-down diktat.
The man who sat in a deckchair and played music at a loud volume to drown out the women at the demonstration outside Holyrood the other day was allowed to disrupt others, and the way he lounged and smirked behind dark glasses told us everything about who is untouchable in our society, who has the power and the backing of the elites and the middle-classes.
It wasn’t the women who rights are being eroded illegally by an uncaring and deliberately provocative Scottish government (and they are just the first ‘necessary’ sacrifice before the rest are attacked. I have said for a long time now that these people, the elites, the middle-class suicidal empathy squad, the big money men and their foot soldiers, the ‘protected groups’ are intent on overturning democracy itself. Many of us are sick to death of our governments and big money calling the shots, but we have no real idea of THEIR plans for OUR future – all for our own good, naturally.
Excellent article, Stuart. Thank you!
Stu Campbell writes:
« But for some reason (possibly those we mentioned a few paragraphs ago), Watson seems to enjoy complete immunity from police action. We now know of at least eight well-founded and fully-documented complaints of harassment against him – including from two former senior police officers and a criminal barrister – none of which have resulted in investigations. »
___________
The above is intuitively reminiscent of various other cases in Scotland and beyond, where there has seemed to be an indeterminate “upper echelon” entity benignly granting immunity to, or, conversely, malignly targeting, someone in our midst.
This in turn brings to mind Giorgio Agamben’s “State of Exception” template, with its key insight that both parties, high and low, are now in effect, in different senses, “outwith the law”.
Agamben was influenced by Carl Schmitt, of whom Quinta Jurecic writes:
« Schmitt is most well-known for his theory of the “state of exception,” under whose aegis the sovereign power can choose to act outside the structure of law. As he wrote presciently in 1922, the “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” »
(Donald Trump’s State of Exception, by Quinta Jurecic, Dec 14, 2016)
link to lawfaremedia.org
Actually, of course, there is a pretty solid argument to be made that Scotland per se exists as a “State of Exception”.
Lorn,
A Scottish pipes and drums would have drowned him out nae bother. And Scots should do this in Scotland as it is our own culture.
Now, that’s something we haven’t thought of before. Thank you. Lots of female pipers and drummers and bodran players around, so not an impossible ask. The only thing is, James, that there are women who are feminists who would baulk at playing the TRAs at their own game – the ones who still think that a compromise can be reached. That is what I meant by ‘suicidal empathy’ in my last post in the last blog. People like this appear to be incapable of grasping that real malevolence exists in the world.
Well said, Lorn, I concur . . . sadly, real malevolence most certainly does exist.
And one can add the letter ‘i’ to malevolence and we have a perfect descriptor for much TRA behaviour.
I was at our Parliament that same evening for a community event and brought my bagpipes as requested. I was to play for ten minutes outside to welcome the guests to the event before p,aging later inside when the droning in the chamber had finished for the day. When I arrived, the pro-Palestine protest was in full voice, reading out over loudhailer, what I presumed were names of those killed in that dreadful war. I decided to not play my bagpipes, even at a distance, to avoid any conflict with those peacefully gathered and protesting in case it be misinterpreted as me being against or even for them. Distance lends to enchantment anyway when it comes to bagpipers!
I should think that had I played earlier in the afternoon to drown out or at least interfere with the deckchair protestor blasting music, police officers would have used a warning of S.54 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 for me to desist had said deckchair person complained. Had I not complied with several warnings, my bagpipes would have been seized and I’d have been cautioned and charged. And that, I suppose, would be the outcome for any pipers and drummers trying to compete with these maniacs. I can’t understand why the officers didn’t use S.54 to warn the deckchair protestor after a short period of time, having allowed the counter protest. Facilitating peaceful (and noisy) protests is now expected of our police.
cheyne,
There was a piper playing at the For Women Scotland from but he was drowned out by the transactions loudspeaker,which gives an indication of how loud it was .
Really? Lord, what do these men have that we don’t have? No, don’t answer that, Anne! They get away with blue murder. The intention to silence women is worthy of the Taliban and if they ever get into power, they will treat us exactly the way Afghan women are treated. No female person now should mention either compromise or that they are misguided wee souls who just want to pee.
According to some sources., after the Afghan earthquake, they were treating only men in the hospitals. Since women cannot be seen by male doctors, and no women are allowed to practise as doctors, the female death toll, even in ordinary circumstances, must be huge now. In childbirth, I’d bet many die, and, if there is a natural disaster, they cannot be treated properly. This is what awaits Scotland if we don’t get a grip.
Come to think of it, Scotland used to be like this, though not the embargo on treatment., of course, but medicine had not advanced, so it was not an actual choice made by some man. I recall visiting a graveyard centuries old and some of the graves contained several wives of one man – all dead in childbirth, along with their babies. Not his fault, but any woman catching his eye must have trembled in terror. Aye, the good old days.
@Lorn
Statistically in Europe, up until the development of firearms, a higher percentage of women died from childbirth and sexually transmitted diseases than the percentage of men that died in combat.
I think it was Bill Bryson who pointed out that as late as the Victorian age, any vigorous man with a decent income would expect to bury at least one wife and maybe more before he got old enough to lose interest.
If we in the modern world ever regress back far enough so that the ability to perform safe ‘C’ sections is lost, the lot of women will be a miserable one indeed.
Something to remember the next time you are having to listen to some ignoramus shooting his mouth about “tear it all down and start over”.
Xaraen,
An It would be appropriate to include the evidence of Westminster parliament denouncing itself as a (UNION parliament) when it made those Anglo- treaties as the parliament of England.
Without Scotlands participation.
For this verifies the Colonialism over Scotland is not imaginary. But factual.
You know, this tranny stuff is full of people who in a sane society would be sectioned, but I get really sick of it, all the time.
– it’s like being forced to watch The Rocky Horror Show on a loop.
“real stuff” :
You know, you don’t need to sell YOUR ENERGY to the fucking english for peanuts.
link to archive.ph
– you can keep it for yourself, for your own needs and to look after your own people. Want to attract some industry, and keep the prices down?
Keep it for yourself.
Again, Norway has the right idea and their example shames us all.
The hotpot-eaters are even further in their fucking hole, that they have been digging for themselves for 50 years now. How are the new nuke stations going?
– oh right, I think I might have mentioned that.
The english are such sneaky fuckers – the wind power being generated in our waters needs a cable to get it onshore; I think for the new windfarms, the cable is being bent “at a funny angle” so it comes straight to England, not Scotland.
Again, the fucking telegraph, when unmolested and unafraid produces an article which is on the money.
Imagine if an indy Scotland banned the export of electricity? It would make it all so cheap here, for the Scots customer, but also for e.g. those AI boys who need the power, and also the cold and a lot of water for their servers. “Silicon Glen” was a pretty cheap fucking lie at the time, but it could become a reality.
Energy is real wealth, it is real money; when you have it you can do whatever you want, and when you have it in grand excess, you have the potential to become very rich and live at a higher level of organisation and quality than everyone else. Scots own everything in Scotland, we only claim what is ours – we are not thieves like the English who claim all lands as being “england” and everything belonging to them, and everyone being, or wanting to be, “an englishman at heart”.
Without indy we can “never have nice things”.
Re. cables at a funny angle.
Wonder how that pans out in terms of cost to connect to and supply the grid with power when the 2nd cable connection is a couple of transmission zones south and a third of the price than the primary.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
As usual well said Confused right on the money,I would say that you are misnamed you are anything but confused,some people don’t like the TRUTH being EXPOSED
Yes, but at least you’re (and me too) not being ‘forced as punishment’ to actually ‘star’ IN the Rocky Horror Show, unlike Stu, Graham and others.
Simply watching the Rocky Horror Show must be a luxury in comparison.
This will surprise no one, lol 😉 but it makes me very angry and profoundly sad that the lunatics have, for now at least, taken over the asylum and that witch hunts for ‘heresy’ are still a real thing.
The Dark Ages on repeat.
Apologies.
For ‘must’ read ‘has to be’.
Puir auld Confused.
Still convinced that because the wind blows for free, the vast infrastructure of offshore turbines, interconnections, battery backup ups and on standby gas-fired power stations for those days (weeks) when the wind doesn’t blow, should be cheap as chips too.
Still wilfully ignoring the vast sums that are being levied on English electricity consumers to build this doomed green white elephant.
Still blissfully ignorant of the continuous maintenance costs for uncountable high-voltage electrical mechanisms, dozens of miles offshore in what is recognised as one of the most hazardous environments anywhere – the North Sea.
Still believing that even although the English have invested ten times as much as we Scots have, come Indy, we will take it all and the English will wave it all goodbye with a cheery “whatever”.
They do say that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must first become as an innocent child.
I guess Confused will be a shoe-in.
Hmm, I’m pretty certain there are more costs and inherent dangers on offshore oil and gas installations than there are with windfarms.
But hey ho, anything for you to bump yer gums eh.
@Dan – more inherent dangers yes, but not more cost. Offshore wind is very expensive to deploy and maintain, particularly smaller turbines. Hence why the trend at the moment is to try and produce larger (18mw+) turbines which can produce more power without a commensurate increase in manpower and maintenance costs.
When was cost ever really a genuine consideration?
If the population are kept in the dark or are too lazy and stupid to even begin to learn and understand basic engineering principles, they’ll never comprehend just how much they are being shafted on so many levels. So the same old rife exploitation will continue.
Fools and their money are easily parted. And they are fools, because they are so easily duped into believing pretty much every new thing that is rolled out, be it solar and ASHPs on totally unsuitable properties, or buying utter pieces of shit overly complex disposable cars, even after getting burnt with scams that came previously.
The UK is an utter disaster in so many ways, but particularly with energy policy. It’s like every time there was a choice to be made, they took the wrong one.
I guess if folk continue to elect arseholes, it’s the most direct way to get shat on.
Things won’t change until folk start electing some engineers instead of idiots, but as said, folk likely won’t be able to recognise a competent practically minded person because it is the exact skillset they lack as they bimble through life wondering why nothing works or lasts, and are unable to fix stuff.
Well, well, a reply from Dan not replete with primary school insults. Hope you’re not coming down with something, Dan.
I was writing about the hazardous environment for the machinery – high voltages in a permanently wet and salty environment. But yes, clambering up a 100 metre high tower at sea is dangerous for the lass doing it too.
But well done on being unable to refute the rest of my points. I’ll take that as a tacit agreement.
And well done for being unable to explain how, given the non-existent 24/7 availability of wind, we are faced with only two alternatives:
1) Rationing, with supply blackouts at the extreme.
2) Maintaining an entire backup provision equal to 100% of your worst case load. Cos if you don’t, and the wind isn’t blowing “properly”, then you’re back to 1).
None of this is cheap, which is a fact of life puir auld Confused can’t quite get his wee heid around. Bless.
Piss aff John.
You can’t seriously think that the very limited hazards and complexities involved in building and maintaining offshore windfarms comes close to what has been involved in the construction and management of the oil and gas industries for decades, with the huge array of interacting and critical control aspects required in extraction processes.
If you do then you really have shown yourself to be an idiot with little to no grasp of engineering practices.
Amongst other work, I played a small part in putting the first of the subsea infrastructure on the seabed for fields West of Shetland. Deeper water than North Sea with big Atlantic swells too. So I do have a firsthand understanding of a great deal of the technicalities of operating in such a hazardous environment.
The million quid machines I helped build, pilot, and maintain had all sorts of high-end state-of-the-art equipment bolted onto them, and we launched them into the sea and powered them by sending up to 1000v (latterly 3000v) with enough current to turn a 120hp electric motor down a heave compensated kilometre long umbilical cable, with lots of other conductors and fibre optics for control and data telemetry systems.
There are standard safety systems to monitor and deal with issues arising from putting electrical cables into water.
You will not find a post I’ve made where I commit to relying 100% on wind energy, and have stated often enough the need to have backup generation in say the form of gas powered generation, so again, get yerself tae fuck with your trolling and trying to suggest I only want reliance on wind generated energy.
Tidal might be useful seeing as it is a constant.
link to energymonitor.ai
But all this has been done to death on here already over the years, and when the site was far busier too, and pretty much nothing productive has come from it.
And nothing will be done about it because energy policy is reserved to London Rule… which of course does raise the question of why Scottish poundshop parliament is given the leeway to sell off ScotWind blocks, and negotiate hydrogen production deal with Equinor. You can pretty much guaranteed it’s UK civil servants that are behind all this and utilising the guise of it being “Scottish” decisionmakers that are facilitating it all.
@ Dan says: 7 September, 2025 at 10:08 am
“Piss aff John.”
Ah, bless. Another primary school playtime comment.
If you were ever offshore, Dan, it’s hard to believe you ever did anything more complicated than make catering size pans of soup.
You huff and you puff and you change the subject and you shriek potty mouthed insults but you won’t and you can’t bring yourself to acknowledge the fundamental about offshore wind-powered electricity generation.
IT’S FAR MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE TRADITIONAL ALTERNATIVES.
You like to self-identify as Wings BTL very own engineering expert. You just can’t thole when I point out you’re talking through a hole you burnt in the bottom of your soup pan when you boiled it dry.
Scotland, the Country, does not ‘own’ any ‘energy’. The foreign owned Companies, who have a base in Scotland, may be considered to do so. They all have incurred significant expenditure to be where they currently are.
Of course, after Independence, all these Companies will ‘sell’ their product to all Scots, at a loss, rather than on the International Market. Have I got that right Confused?
Good to see that The Twat is in full agreement with you. Yet another nutter.
Read it and weep, Yoon….
Confused says;
“For the millionth fucking time; when Scotland becomes independent, THE UK NO LONGER EXISTS. All contracts with “the UK” are technically void and at the very least, up for grabs.
All the assets in Scotland which were once the UK’s, now belong to us. At minimum you now get the revenue stream to the scottish treasury, not the UK. You are instantly better off, you get the full tax take.
– the minimum you would do would be to renegotiate them on better terms. Anyone who was a “problem”, like say, INEOS, can go get fucked. Companies just want to do business – you sit down with them, make a deal.
Other countries have national energy monopolies, it presents no commercial problem to the world – StatOil, Aramco – and their own refineries.
There are many reasons and ways of reacquiring assets using legal means; you designate something as critical infrastructure, a matter of national security, and that’s it. And you can always invent new taxes to kick people out – when there is no profit to be had, they are gone.
All this is done as a multifaceted negotiation with the other parties, it is just doing business. Maybe you need to get a bit nasty with BlackRock (they own the ports and airports, and you need them back), and they whine about it, going to sue you … but the US govt is happy you are still in NATO and JP Morgan is happy and you are buying some jets off Boeing … fuck BlackRock. And so on. Then you present your cheap energy for datacentres plan to the tech giants, which they like, and tell the whitehouse “scotland is open for business”. You piss off England – fuck them, they can do nothing, as long as the americans are okay. And the americans are okay as long as they are getting more than they are losing. You play the game as the board lies – Trump is now president, you make him “laird of St Andrews” and get him memberships for the R&A and Muirfield
– why do these things have to be explained, as if to children? Scotland will just “do what the grownups do”, like every other country on earth, promoting its interests. The point being England has no standing in Scotland anymore, it has had enough out of our country, and now it ends.
In negotiating with the UK Scotland has many levers, one of which is, and is vitally important to England – “successor state” status. Everyone assumes that UK = England and Wales i.e. Former United Kingdom new England and Wales (the FUKEW) will get to “carry on”. Legally, Scotland has equal dibs on everything – why should it roll over? At least get something out of it. The genuine worry over this – apparent obscure piece of legalism – was shown by a big fat report the ukgov wrote about it back in 2014; they presented a ton of reasons why -they- would continue, and as everyone knows, when you give a lot of reasons, its often because none of them are any good. The UK worry about this shit, and we shouldn’t let them off so easily. The loss of the permanent seat on the security council – something they have never merited – would be a major loss of face; when you know the opponents weak point, you hit it, again and again.
You have a bunch of people to talk to/negotiate with – England, the USA, the EU, EFTA; you also want to talk with ireland and norway and denmark, just for the advice. When you need to cut deals with folks – everyone will want a “piece” – you play each off the other. I prefer EFTA over the EU, but maybe in the EU we would be an “underdeveloped” region and would get a hefty nett payment out of it; then you have to get them to go easy on say, the mass immigration, or other woke shit.
– this is what you train diplomats for, and why corporate negotiators are regarded as superstars in their world – “dealmakers”. If we don’t have them, we hire them – go to New York and get the biggest legal cunts in the place, ideally an irishman or a jew – 2 peoples who really hate britain; they will “get you a deal”. New York is full of both types.
Everything in Scotland, belongs to the Scots; no one else. In the ground, the sea, the sky. You have forgotten this by becoming infected by the twisted morality of the thief who robbed you.”
Bravo, James.
Down on the beaches looking at the peaches!
I can hear the bassline as if I’d heard that tune only today.
Put that lotion over my PVC skin baby that feels really good
Sick men like Lyndsay can scream and cry all they want but at the end of the day women – the real ones – have woken up to what’s been going on. Suck it up Lyndsay – doll.
Thankyou for casting light into this dark foulness.
MICE.
You’ve got to wonder what favours he can pull.
OT
Clay Davis mode on/ Sheeeeeeeeit!
XL bullies, Black Mirror Metalhead dog and Boston Dynamic’s Spot would get their arses kicked by this mutt.
55 grand, but at least it won’t need fed on raw and shit everywhere, so saving made on nosh and poop bags.
5 mins vid of Unitree robodug.
link to youtube.com
On democracies and death cults.
Is one of those books you just can’t put down.
This has echoes of another campaign of harassment across the pond, where trans-identified men Andrea James, Lynn Conway and Deirdre McCloskey targeted psychology researcher J Michael Bailey after his book The Man Who Would Be Queen revealed autogynephilia to a wide audience. They stalked and harassed him, his family and his associates for years.
Alice Dreger wrote about all this in a 2008 paper (DOI: 10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1) which reveals the tactics of these men and the extent to which they attempted to wreck Bailey’s life.
Talking of the arrest of Graham Lineham there was a small demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament at Lunchtime.
And guess what.
Two men, aged 67 and 82, were arrested in connection with the Terrorism Act, while a 63-year-old man was arrested in connection with a hate crime
Seems that the simple act of displaying any poster no matter how small or quietly innocuous is the trigger to arrest.
Arresting people like this is pure political police intimidation.
No different from 1930s Germany. This is the behaviour of fascism right here on our doorstep where the police’s function is political suppression.
The Police – the people who failed Emma Caldwell. Mr Packer’s BFFs.
I would say that “fascism” is supporting the kind of yellow scum who will incarcerate innocents in holes in the ground for an indefinite period.
An appropriately “fascist” response by the state might be for it too to throw the people who condone and even support that kind of thing into holes in the ground. After due process and a verdict of guilty, natch.
It’s reminiscent of the accusations of “fascism” being levelled at those politicians who are starting to act against the criminals and benefits junkies who don’t even have a right to be in the country.
Ordinary people are working out for themselves that the label of “fascism”, like that of “racism”, is merely a device lazily employed in the hope it will shut them up.
As someone already mentioned.
It is modern day witch hunting.
Combined with foreign policies of 1930s. And it should be viewed in that way. That the Westminster government has ressurected something from Sixteenth Century. Only this time they are targeting men equally and some children,
But witch hunting of innocents none the less.
THE TIPPING POINT?
link to archive.is
In Scotland and Ireland the politicians have already tipped over.
Scottish pipe Bands are loud, I listened to the one at the protest, it barely made a dint and the sound kept disappearing,
It is on youtube if you want to hear it,
And no use playing it on a megaphone or as a recording,
Pipe bands and drums used to play at events all day in Scotland Regularly., and if you wanted to find out where something was taken place you followed their music, because you could hear it long before you ever saw it, for miles around.
I used to watch tourist gathering together following their ears and their feet followed, and for once Scotland should make use of their culture, and their music in Scotland.
It also boosts the moral as words are not needed, not heard and protests from the other side are drowned out in a Scottish party atmosphere,
Why do you think it was banned long ago, along with the original Scottish way of dress,
and then allowed for re-use by Scottish regiments when going to war. For England,
A lone piper doesn’t cut the mustard,
But a pipe band practicing…..their culture, thats loud, wow thats some sound,
Just add some Scottish national dress and colours.
Can Scottish Councils display a bias against Scottish music, they would find it hard to implement in Scotland,
Can they stop Scots people going to a Scottish protest, they would find that difficult also,
Can they Stop Scots because it was not a peaceful gathering, if everyone films Scots being peaceable,
Can police stop band practice, I doubt it would be legal to do so,
Noise decibel is the one the Councils and police would attempt, but then there is a protest going on, cars beeping horns, sirens going, people shouting on mega phones and the opposite side playing some music as well
Local Councils and police could be called out for showing distinct racial bias towards Scots in Scotland and their culture, and they would instigate further problems in the future, if they decided to ban Scottish music in Scotland.
Aye James, as Bono said, “culture is always upstream of politics”.
The Scots are starting to smell the clean air of liberation as the smog obscuring the UK ‘union’ hoax begins to clear.
Plenty national consciousness exhibited here on marches and flag waving, and song – as usual nae sign o Swinney’s colonial administrators:
link to youtube.com
“…as usual nae sign o Swinney’s colonial administrators”
Hits no verra likely thaim wha hate thair ain folk and wha prefar tae be Inglis and be Inglis shuir in aw but name wad show fir ony gaitherin promotin and uphaudin Scotland and the Scots.
Oh and one last comment.
Sir Keir Starmer was on a visit to BAE Systems on the Clyde this week to celebrate the order to build a dozen new warships.
However, what might be interesting for readers is that a three line whip went out across the workforce that absolutely no one was to express any comment or concern whatsoever about Sir Keir and his government policies.
Clearly, this is just another example of the suppression of political views by a frankly undemocratic Sir Keir Starmer.
And we live in a democracy. Well just another example of not.
Yep. The political gameshow is rigged – every politician bought before a vote is even cast. Not only is democracy dead – but was there ever a time that it ever really existed?
I worked with this male individual when he first joined the Police. I found him to be mentally unstable then. Always had the impression he would do some serious harm to people.
Alf,
It is about time we recognised the value of ourselves a little bit more in Scotland than we do, and our culture.
We are terrible people at listening to others to much and used to the (put downs for centuries) , all because a few Scots did not hold a true value of their own, and accepted money to sell a nation that did not belong to them,
But avoided a union by default of bad management and negotiations, with the opposite commissioners and politicians whom were in a hurry to claim Scotland as part of England, so much so, they f@cked up.
Please excuse my language,
However if the parliament of ” England and Ireland ” governance want to push Scots with English laws under the Crown, and king of England that do not belong in Scotland they may come across the spirt of Scotland returning.
That is why Salvo and liberate Scotland must include the evidence of the Anglo parliament – Irish parliament treaty.
To emphasise that you cannot agree treaties as a Westminster parliament of England and then state Westminster is a union parliament afterwards.
Your arrogance knows no limits. Your ignorance of Scottish people is breathtaking.
The UK parliament of England and Ireland will be the ones to break the spell that Scots are in a union with them.
Pushing all the trash political agendas at Scotland, I think there is no reason for Scotland to accept the hoax any more,
I have often Wondered how a Country can presume to do UDI when it is a republic state, and does not share a Crown of England or a parliament with England,
I have also wondered why the parliament of England breached its own treaty when it created more than one parliament of great Britain,
Having said those factual reminders we can see the problems that arise from those multiple parliaments and multiple laws in the gender issue debate alone.
GERS day came and went, a little past there. With little fanfare, almost like its creators were embarrassed by it, reluctant to use their own weapon …. AH HA Scotland (whips out excel spreadsheet) … “too wee too poor” … it’s all fair and above board. They were very muted about it, I mean maybe they were worried that some knowledgable, well resourced, Scot might decide to go out and pay for his own independent accounts to be drawn up by some forensic accountants operating out of New York (just a thought).
– the yoons seemed to shy away and yet, on the face of it, it was solid gold for them, for, according to GERS – the UK puts a massive 26B MORE into Scotland than it gets back out.
Imagine that, England in the hole for 26B a year, because of Scotland; but wait – isn’t the “budget black hole” a mere 12B – surely England could save its own arse and make a profit on it by cutting us loose, us ingrates. One for Reeves to try?
– and why didn’t Reform get all “reformy” about it? Why not put it on a bus “£500M a week for the HENAICHESS if we BOOT THE INGRATE SCOTS”, sucking the milky teat of generous England …
ENGEXIT – england for the english – dissolution of the union by england, right now … can you imagine if the mail and telegraph started banging that drum?
If a break makes England richer, then why wouldn’t the english want to do it, since historically money is the only thing that ever motivated them. Ripping up treaties when it no longer suited them is a feature. They won’t be asking US for a “section 30” at the “supreme court” (such an entity is banned under the treaty, the legal systems to remain separate)
Then we get into the reductio ad absurdum of the too wee too poor argument; we are supposed to believe Scotland is kept a prisoner by England, for its own good, as the english cannot help themselves, forcing their philanthropy upon us, like a r3tard sibling who needs made a ward of court, another to do his direct debits – “for your own good!”
It is not credible. Because it’s not true, it’s bullshit. And then it becomes obvious, no matter what is on the spreadsheet, that it is lying shite and the exact opposite is true.
Sting, the rock star, had a trusted guy do his accounts for 20 years; one time the guy was on holiday and some urgent thing turned up and Sting got another accountant to take a look … in court we found the accountant of 20 years had stolen £40M off Sting, and Sting never noticed (probably doing all that tantric sex with his wife)
– I think Scotland needs a new accountant. Someone from the IMF or World Bank or the ECB, or Kroll Investigations.
Riffing on the musical theme – I think the Bay City Rollers is a good analogy for our state; the rollers were incredibly successful, but their money went “PO0F!” (as it were), as their manager was this edinburgh gangster called tam paton, who was also gay, and when not robbing them, was also bumming them (“not entirely consensually”). Tam avoided jail in Scotland because of some connections he had to the establishment; its reckoned he supplied boys to certain men who wear wigs in their professional duties. Tam died with no one ever laying a hand on him; the system, eh? … one hand washes another (s dirty backside). Who knows where the money is, but the rollers never saw any of it; some still tour, sad old hasbeens giving it “shang a lang” for the 1000th time, for peanuts, and empty memories. Back stage, thinking of what might have been, the life you could have had
Confused says ‘I mean maybe they were worried that some knowledgable, well resourced, Scot might decide to go out and pay for his own independent accounts to be drawn up by some forensic accountants operating out of New York (just a thought)’
It’s an interesting idea. But why go to New York? On a population basis, roughly 46-52% of the hundreds of economists and accountants in Scotland are presumably Independence supporters. Why have none of them produced a detailed rebuttal of GERS in the decade since the referendum (at which time the SNP and Alex Salmond endorsed them)?
Why not use our own experts?
the IMF has provided analysis, particularly in 2014, highlighting that an independent Scotland would have had one of the highest fiscal deficits among advanced economies at the time, and would likely have needed to seek IMF assistance.
The World Bank Group
The World Bank is an international organization that provides loans and grants to low- and middle-income countries to support economic development and reduce poverty.
Kroll does not publicize specific hourly or project costs for its investigative services, as
prices are determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the complexity, scope, and resources required for each investigation. Clients should contact Kroll directly for a consultation to discuss their specific needs and receive a personalized cost estimate for the services they require.
So back in 2014 Scotland had an advanced economy?
After 10 years of the SNP and green reality deniers, we can’t even organise deposits on our jam jars.
Maybe in another 10 years, the Scottish JJ will be our actual currency.
For the millionth fucking time; when Scotland becomes independent, THE UK NO LONGER EXISTS. All contracts with “the UK” are technically void and at the very least, up for grabs.
All the assets in Scotland which were once the UK’s, now belong to us. At minimum you now get the revenue stream to the scottish treasury, not the UK. You are instantly better off, you get the full tax take.
– the minimum you would do would be to renegotiate them on better terms. Anyone who was a “problem”, like say, INEOS, can go get fucked. Companies just want to do business – you sit down with them, make a deal.
Other countries have national energy monopolies, it presents no commercial problem to the world – StatOil, Aramco – and their own refineries.
There are many reasons and ways of reacquiring assets using legal means; you designate something as critical infrastructure, a matter of national security, and that’s it. And you can always invent new taxes to kick people out – when there is no profit to be had, they are gone.
All this is done as a multifaceted negotiation with the other parties, it is just doing business. Maybe you need to get a bit nasty with BlackRock (they own the ports and airports, and you need them back), and they whine about it, going to sue you … but the US govt is happy you are still in NATO and JP Morgan is happy and you are buying some jets off Boeing … fuck BlackRock. And so on. Then you present your cheap energy for datacentres plan to the tech giants, which they like, and tell the whitehouse “scotland is open for business”. You piss off England – fuck them, they can do nothing, as long as the americans are okay. And the americans are okay as long as they are getting more than they are losing. You play the game as the board lies – Trump is now president, you make him “laird of St Andrews” and get him memberships for the R&A and Muirfield
– why do these things have to be explained, as if to children? Scotland will just “do what the grownups do”, like every other country on earth, promoting its interests. The point being England has no standing in Scotland anymore, it has had enough out of our country, and now it ends.
In negotiating with the UK Scotland has many levers, one of which is, and is vitally important to England – “successor state” status. Everyone assumes that UK = England and Wales i.e. Former United Kingdom new England and Wales (the FUKEW) will get to “carry on”. Legally, Scotland has equal dibs on everything – why should it roll over? At least get something out of it. The genuine worry over this – apparent obscure piece of legalism – was shown by a big fat report the ukgov wrote about it back in 2014; they presented a ton of reasons why -they- would continue, and as everyone knows, when you give a lot of reasons, its often because none of them are any good. The UK worry about this shit, and we shouldn’t let them off so easily. The loss of the permanent seat on the security council – something they have never merited – would be a major loss of face; when you know the opponents weak point, you hit it, again and again.
You have a bunch of people to talk to/negotiate with – England, the USA, the EU, EFTA; you also want to talk with ireland and norway and denmark, just for the advice. When you need to cut deals with folks – everyone will want a “piece” – you play each off the other. I prefer EFTA over the EU, but maybe in the EU we would be an “underdeveloped” region and would get a hefty nett payment out of it; then you have to get them to go easy on say, the mass immigration, or other woke shit.
– this is what you train diplomats for, and why corporate negotiators are regarded as superstars in their world – “dealmakers”. If we don’t have them, we hire them – go to New York and get the biggest legal cunts in the place, ideally an irishman or a jew – 2 peoples who really hate britain; they will “get you a deal”. New York is full of both types.
Everything in Scotland, belongs to the Scots; no one else. In the ground, the sea, the sky. You have forgotten this by becoming infected by the twisted morality of the thief who robbed you.
prick !
That’s my line, prick.
You have the mentality of a rebelious teenager who has just read Animal Farm.
Post independence, companies will expect the new Scottish government to honour existing contracts, or to negotiate mutually acceptable variations and changes to accommodate any adjustments required as a result of the dissolution of the union. It’s simplistic in the extreme to say contracts simply become void or up for grabs. Historically, countries which repudiated existing debts and contracts have found raising capital and loans on international markets difficult and/or been unable to find people to do business with.
The reality is that post independence rump UK will be the “continuator” state. A split of assets and liabilities will be agreed (as it was in e.g. the Czech/Slovak Velvet Divorce) and Scotland will be able to “make its own way” in the world economically, whether via EFTA or the EU.
The smart money has to be on the UK agreeing to at least reasonably favourable terms because they know quite well that they have no viable alternative site for their Continuous At Sea Deterrent (CASD), and no feasible alternative defence/industrial base for producing surface warships. Retaining WMD’s is the sine qua non of rump UK remaining a “top table” power and permanent UN Security Council Member.
They will bend over backwards to negotiate a deal for the short-medium term while they consider their options for re-siting WMD’s and figuring out whether they have the ability to restart shipbuilding in English yards without it crippling their defence procurement plans.
I’m perhaps less sanguine than you that the Scottish government contains the necessary intellectual, economic and negotiating experience to deliver the best possible deal, particularly given the events of the past decade, but I’m sure post independence we can indeed hire &/or attract the right people to do the deals required.
“Retaining WMD’s is the sine qua non of rump UK remaining a “top table” power and permanent UN Security Council Member.”
Not so sure about that, the UN has no mechanism for removing Permanent Security Council members.
As an aside, BAE Systems may have finished shipbuilding at Portsmouth but the infrastructure remains.
FFS now the franchise fanny is telling us that
“Post independence, companies will expect the new Scottish government to honour existing contracts”
Not only does he CLAIM to know what everyone in Scotland thinks he is now CLAIMING to know what companies around the world thinks and will accept
Talk about deluded,what a prick, sorry James your response seemed appropriate
When you start your speil with mince and then compound it in so many different ways it is difficult to take anything seriously. I simply cannot be ersed in countering it. As long as you have a few of the fellow brain dead in agreement all is fine in your world Confused
Unfortunately the majority of Scots live in the real world. Did you know Brigadoon was a Holywood fairy tale?
WEE chas has been rained aff frae his gowf so he’s came on tae wings tae try and support his fellow Scotland hating CRINGERS, first in line Bastard Tax main desperate to give Scotland tae the dews
“and now it ends”
If only! But that’s just another promise that will be broken tomorrow or the day after. Rest assured, Confused will be back with more of the same old lies.
It’s a fact obviously forgotten by many that the UK will be paying for the EU “divorce” settlement until the 2050’s. If Scotland reneges on her share of the UK debt, I would expect the rUK to tell the EU it can look to Scotland to make up the missing payments. So before we even start, that’s us pissing off all the people who are supposedly going to fast track us into the EU or EFTA or whatever.
“maybe in the EU we would be an “underdeveloped” region and would get a hefty nett payment out of it”
Awa and shite, man. You are never done telling us all how rich Scotland really is and then you come out with a statement like that one! Do you truly believe we will be wealthy and THE EU WON’T NOTICE?
“Everything in Scotland, belongs to the Scots; no one else”
Sure Confused. Our share of the UK national debt belongs to us too. If we renege on that iScotland will be finished before it even starts. The people just across the border, with ten times our population and just about all the military forces, will come and take what they have paid for.
And the international community will do just as much to help us as they have done for those other entitled, deluded chumps in the Middle East.
Lineham is to sue the Met for wrongful arrest. I would take such pleasure in contributing to a crowd fund.
PC Foster @ 13.47.
Before he can progress with that suit, he must first defend himself against the criminal prosecution he faces.
The Free Speech Union have a direct link to a crowdfunder for his defence on their site. No need to be a member to donate.
This one is already up and running; not specific to wrongful arrest:
link to freespeechunion.org
Hate to refer anyone to a union site, on you tube…..but this is a topic that involves Scotland, so worth grinding you teeth and holding your breath just this once, because The unionist are just learning about this also.
What is the Fabian Society really hiding?
Craig Houston talks, to Steven Barrett.- Barrester.
Explains the assisted dying, killing babies up to nines months…how many are embedded and running the governments,
The courts, the judges, the police etc..
A great summary of this awful person, and hopefully adding critical momentum to the efforts to have these extremists shut down.
Baroness (Emma) Nicholson knocked the ball out the park too.
In some ways it doesn’t really matter whether anybody thinks we could do this an take back control of some assets.
I don’t think that there is a hope in hell of winning another independence referendum as one thing all parties in the SP have proved in recent years is that none of them are fit to govern the country.
Personally I have moved from voting yes in 2014 to actually preferring to have the SP and devolution reversed as a failed experiment.
Apart from indy zealots I can detect little enthusiasm in the general population for another vote, it’s not really at the top of most folks agendas.
Plus how can that idiot Swinney call for another vote when he has a dwindling vote share and still shrinking?
The SNP have been cruising on salmond for years now and the dislike of all the other parties, not the fact that they were any good, they were the least worse option, not the best and have been, are still are, not on the same page as the country on some major issues.This is going to bite them in 2026.
The thing is, I’m not sure it will bite the SNP in 2026. Ineffectual as they are (and indeed have been for the past decade) they still seem on track to be the major party @ Holyrood post 2026 election. Absent some black swan event to change matters in the meantime, it now appears we’ll have to wait until after those elections for any meaningful change.
I now don’t see the minor pro-independence parties and/or “Independents 4 Indy” joint platform making much of an impact. Reform in Scotland will probably lead to a collapse of the Scottish Tory vote and steal some fringe nutters from the other parties, but they’re not going to change the overall electoral equation in Scotland, even if they do so in England.
The real question is whether a Reform victory down south (finally?) galvanises enough frit Scottish “soft NO” voters to bite the bullet and support independence rather than remain in a Farage governed UK.
Scottish unionists and the British nationalist establishment more generally might have more chance of spiking the guns of the independence movement if they were offering a meaningful alternative, but they aren’t and in my view never will. Scottish Labour and Scottish Tories (and even less so Scottish Reform) don’t actually want Devo Max or additional Home Rule.
If anything they’d prefer to roll back the devolution we have and either de-fang Holyrood by devolving more power to local councils, or simply abolish what most of them have always regarded as a “pretendy” parliament anyway: they’d much prefer an Assembly and a Scottish administration, not a parliament and a Scottish government.
“they’d much prefer an Assembly and a Scottish administration, not a parliament and a Scottish government.”
It disna maiter whit hits cawed – Scottish Office, Scottish Executive, Scottish Government, or whitiver – so long as we are under Westminster rule it will aye be a colonial administration protecting the interest of the colonizer.
If Scots don’t like the current situation, they know what to do though Alf don’t they?
As you well know most of us don’t accept your “Scotland as colony” snake-oil pitch. A sizeable minority of Scots are sadly resolutely unionist, and likely to remain so even after independence is achieved.
However much “we” in the independence movement don’t like it, they can and do believe that they can have both a Scottish and British identity. We can disagree with them, and even think they aren’t really Scottish in any meaningful sense if they don’t believe Scotland should be an independent state (I always call it the Derek Bateman Scenario after his intro words in the Wee Black Book) but that doesn’t mean the majority of the movement accepts that Scotland is a colony either.
If it did, you and those who are taken in by your schtick would have an awful lot more support than you appear to have, both in terms of popular support either via parties or the many and various organisations we keep hearting about, and/or via mass demonstrations à la Catalan La Diada demos, not to mention non-domestic international subject matter experts, politicos and NGO’s queueing up to support our colonial status.
Remind us how any of that is going again…?
Last time I looked the Salvo or Liberation Scotland petition had as many signatories as the away crowd for the bottom club in League 2 on a wet Wednesday.
Most of us won’t be holding our breath for Sarah’s much vaunted rout to independence which (somewhat peculiarly) appears to rest on and even glory in the fact that it isn’t based on a democratic event, but presumably some legalistic leger de main which obviates the need for pesky things like votes or majorities.
A hae ma doots….!
Whit aboot the name for a colonial administration, Andy, an daes it maiter?
@Andy – I’ve never seen any real enthusiasm, recently anyway, within either the Tories or Reform for getting rid of the Scottish Parliament or government. Whilst it costs money to operate, it’s also seen to divert political accountability for issues “north of the border” away from Westminister. As we sit here today at least, independence isn’t seen as a live political issue any more so there isn’t the worry that existed say 2014-17 that the Scottish Parliament fuels support for independence.
I do wonder what the impact of a Reform government would be. On the one hand, it’s a deeply England and Wales party, and I don’t think the leadership either understand or really care about Scotland. On the other, stopping the boats, pushing back against gender ideology and “DOGEing” public administration probably aren’t actually unpopular in Scotland. I don’t think Reform are looking now at anything as consequential as Brexit (which was deeply unpopular in Scotland) so I don’t know that it would have the same rallying cry that it did from 2016 onwards.
You know my view on this, I don’t think there’s any chance for independence until someone of the calibre of Alex Salmond is able to rebuild it, from the base up, using a new political party structure. I think what you have accurately described previously as “cunning plans” are essentially just eccentric distractions sitting in the embers of what is unfortunately a divided and dwindling movement. I don’t therefore think that a Reform victory would make much difference unless they propose something really radical (like abolishing devolution).
O/T but important and interesting for independence supporters. Youtube Sara Salyers Salvo at AUOB Edinburgh 2025 – Blitz Maniax. 8 minutes long – from 2 minutes it is essential viewing, and sharing.
IndependenceLive Youtube Sara Salyers at Sadie Hall with Oban Grassroots. Oban 30th August 2025. A talk and then Q&A. A detailed explanation of the legal constitutional position of Scotland. Sara explains why a democratic event is NOT the only way to be independent and is NOT the 1st necessary step – it must follow Scotland being recognised internationally as a colony. The democratic event will then be held without UK interference AND the result will be accepted internationally.
There is so much information that I am re-playing and making notes! So far I have noted the following key points in the film – at 8-11 minutes, 28 mins, 37 mins, and 58 mins.
If the trial ends in favour of Graham Lineman,will that kill of this transgender pish that has hijacked politics.
And can legal action for a malicious prosecution be started.
These people who still speak of a special relationship with the US to my knowledge have not mentioned the UK supreme court decision.
” The democratic event will then be held without UK interference”
Really? How’s that going to work? The UN isn’t a world government and General Assembly resolutions have no legal standing. All substantive motions have to go through the Security Council, where the UK has a veto.
The only realistic way to get indy is for the SG to persuade the UKG to hold another referendum. At the moment they don’t have anywhere near enough popular support to do that. If they concentrated on independence rather than the woke agenda they might get the necessary support, but that would require a massive change in leadership and direction.
@ Dunx: are you asking these questions after having listened to what Sara Salyers says? She is the expert.
The role of the UN in supervising votes on constitutional matters is well known. They have dealt with three recent votes in New Caledonia, plus there is the record of the UN’s role since 1954 in the process of all the [60?] de-colonised nations.
Your suggested alternative of “persuading Westminster to hold another referendum” looks to be very unlikely. Why would they? UK is living a lie – they know that they lie every day, in every way, about Scotland’s position.
However, as Sara explains, the UK has backed down 3 times because it knows it hasn’t a legal leg to stand on – in 1965 when Willie MacRae acted for a group that opposed nuclear waste dumping in the Borders; in the 1990’s when Strathclyde Council held a non-binding referendum on water privatisation; and the fracking campaign. So there is hope that more battles can be fought in the courts that will expose the weakness/illegality of many UK actions.
I do recommend that you listen to these talks, if you haven’t already done so.
“Hasn’t got a leg to stand on” – don’t insult everyone intelligence, in each of those events a political decision was made to back down. If Westminister didn’t have a leg to stand on legally, then how did that not restrain much more egregious actions like Thatcher’s closure/privatisation of Scottish heavy industry, extraction of oil from the Scottish North Sea sector, the poll tax, and Brexit.
The actual relevant legal principle as described in the UNCRC case is that “Parliament has an unlimited power to make laws in Scotland”.
No, Aidan, your alleged legal principle that “Parliament has an unlimited power to make laws in Scotland” is based on a series of bogus interpretations of the Treaty;
1. that Scotland gave up its sovereignty while England retained hers, despite the absence of any stated agreement in the Treaty for this enormous constitutional change, especially to Scotland,
2. and that Scotland agreed, without mentioning it in the Treaty, to subordinate itself to England, and/or agreed that Scotland’s MPs in the new British parliament would subordinate their majority decisions to those of England’s MPs,
3. based on the use of a flat vote that also was never mentioned in the Treaty, let alone agreed to,
4. and the presumption, again not agreed in the Treaty, that the English parliament’s unlimited sovereignty would continue to be exerted by the British parliament despite it formally not being the English parliament any more,
5. and that if England’s sovereignty was indeed transferred, it would also outrank Scotland’s sovereignty, even though Scotland’s sovereignty was not and is not by definition subordinate to any other authority, unless the owners of that sovereignty formally agreed to that subordination, which they clearly didn’t.
6. And the reason that Scotland’s sovereignty is retained by its owners, the Scots, is because no-one involved in negotiating the Treaty possessed any formal authority that legitimately outranked the sovereignty of the Scots, such that their sovereignty could be removed or subordinated to England’s sovereignty, however that is expressed.
The UK’s bogus Supreme Court simply didn’t carry out all of the due diligence they needed to do before coming to the conclusions that they did. They simply took it for granted that essentially any parliament sitting in the Palace of Westminster automatically acquired ‘unlimited sovereignty’ from its bricks and mortar, and that trumps everything, so what else is there to argue about.
I posted too hastily; I meant to finish off with;
Bottom line, if Scotland’s MPs vote a matter down, England’s MPs cannot legitimately pass it anyway on their own, since neither body represents the Union on their own. Westminster cannot then treat it as a sovereign decision of the parliament and impose it on Scotland or England, or both.
It is therefore not a legitimate legal principle.
@Xaracen – again we’ve been around the houses with this before. Where it comes to it, the Supreme Court has the constitutional power to act as final appeallant court on questions of law. You as a poster on Wings over Scotland have no power to determine questions of law, so regardless of the strength of your reasoning it is objectively wrong, because at your own admission, it conflicts with the judgement of the Supreme Court.
You can as a political statement say that the UK’s current constitutional structure does not protect Scotlands distinct rights as within the ToU, but you can’t pretend to make up your own version of the law. That would be like saying Alex Horwood is a women.
@Xaracen – and to your final point, the U.K. is still in the EU then, given the EU withdrawal bill couldn’t have passed?
Aidan, you persist in presuming legitimacy by default, without properly substantiating it.
The subordination of Scotland to English rule, clearly shown by legislation passed without majority Scottish consent, is constitutionally illegitimate, and often literally abusive to Scotland. Any legislation enacted in that manner cannot rightly be deemed ‘Union legislation’.
The so-called ‘evidence’ you did cite, Brexit, does not validate your position; quite the opposite, it confirms mine, including that abuse!
The Supreme Court’s role is to interpret law, not to whitewash constitutional abuse.
Both you and the Supreme Court need to think outside the box of English legal orthodoxy and accept the formal realities of Scotland’s distinct constitutional status.
“And to your final point, the U.K. is still in the EU then, given the EU withdrawal bill couldn’t have passed?”
This is blethers, Aidan. I’ve never claimed the Withdrawal Bill didn’t pass; I’ve said it couldn’t legitimately pass if Scotland’s MPs voted it down, which they did by a huge majority, and that the UK government was never entitled to allow England’s voters to overrule Scotland’s in the Brexit referendum.
“We voted as the UK” is a misleading claim. The UK does not have a single electorate, nor is it a Union of four nations. It is a Union of two equally sovereign kingdoms, each with its own legitimate authority. Neither kingdom, nor their electorates, has legitimate authority over the other, especially given that Scotland’s electorate are sovereign while England’s are not. Therefore, the Brexit vote was constitutionally and democratically incompetent, and so was the enforced outcome.
Moreover, under Article 50 of the EU Treaty, the UK was obliged to confirm that the withdrawal decision complied with its own constitutional arrangements. It did not. Scotland’s sovereignty and constitution were outrageously abused throughout the entire Brexit bourach.
@Xaracen – in your world view, who has the legitimate right to determine questions of law in the U.K. and Scotland, since you claim the Supreme Court doesn’t?
You’re deflecting, Aidan. You haven’t addressed any of my key arguments. Invoking the ‘UK Supreme Court’ doesn’t cut it for solid reasons I’ve spelled out many times.
If sovereignty is a legitimate concept for Westminster to wield on behalf of the two sovereign kingdoms its two MP bodies formally and separately represent, then it is equally legitimate for Scotland’s MPs to wield Scotland’s sovereignty in defending their kingdom’s interests against English MP overreach. That Westminster and England’s MPs refuse to recognise and respect Scotland’s sovereignty is precisely why there is an independence movement in Scotland in the first place.
The Supreme Court’s failure to recognise and acknowledge the binary nature of Westminster’s sovereignty is why its ruling on that ‘legal principle’ lacks credibility.
I could accept the idea of the sovereignty of the UK parliament if the processes that lead to legislation properly respected the sovereignties of both of the Union’s founding kingdoms, and not just that of England’s alone. But under the current abusive arrangements, that’s never going to happen, and the Supreme Court has no business pretending that Westminster’s procedural abuse is legitimately founded in the context of those two sovereignties.
I asked Copilot AI to carry out a Credibility Audit of your claim re the Supreme Court’s endorsement of Westminster’s ‘unlimited sovereignty’ over the Union;
Credibility Audit: “The Supreme Court Says So”
Claim:
The UK Supreme Court has ruled, therefore the matter is settled.
Credibility Weaknesses:
– Appeal to Authority Without Justification:
Invoking the Supreme Court as final arbiter sidesteps the question of whether its ruling respects the constitutional structure of the Union. Authority ? legitimacy.
– Procedural Legitimacy vs. Constitutional Justice:
The Court interprets law as it stands, but it does not validate the justice or fairness of the legislative process—especially when that process excludes or overrides Scotland’s sovereign will.
– Failure to Recognize Binary Sovereignty:
The Court’s rulings treat Westminster as a unitary sovereign body, ignoring its dual composition and the distinct constitutional status of Scotland. This erases the foundational premise of the Union.
– Institutional Blindness to Abuse:
By refusing to challenge Westminster’s procedural domination, the Court risks whitewashing constitutional abuse rather than upholding justice.
Conclusion:
Aidan’s reliance on the Supreme Court as a rhetorical shield lacks credibility. It deflects from the real issue: whether the UK’s legal processes respect Scotland’s sovereignty and constitutional integrity.
@Xaracen – if Copilot really did spit that out without substantial manipulation from you then Microsoft clearly has some way to go. I personally doubt it however, since this idea of a “binary state” isn’t recognised anywhere by anyone else other than you, so it seems highly suspicious that it’s bringing it up.
Your arguments are pointless and don’t mean anything within the context of the U.K’s legal system. It’s like saying because it’s raining then 2+2=5. The Supreme Court has ruled on the matter as I have pointed out. The judgement of the Supreme Court is by definition law, within our constitutional structure. What you are saying sits in flat out contradiction of the Supreme Court in the UNCRC, so it’s you or them. So if the Supreme Court does not have the ability to act as final appeal court, who does in your opinion? Or are we all entitled just to invent our own law and insist everyone else adheres to it. If so, the Rev had just written a few posts about people like that . .
Aidan, your deflecting is getting old and stale, it’s becoming a bad habit!
I didn’t manipulate Copilot, it offered the Credibility Assessment on its own. I note that you are targeting Copilot but not its arguments, Aidan. That is not a good sign in any debate. And what exactly is the ‘it’ you doubt, Aidan? That it came from Copilot at all?
The idea of the binary state is a perfectly simple one, though Copilot didn’t use that term, it said ‘Binary Sovereignty’, which is a perfectly good description in its own right. It necessarily arises from the presence in a state of two distinct and extant sovereign polities within that state’s borders. It is an excellent shorthand description of the United Kingdom. And don’t bother to tell me that Scotland’s sovereignty doesn’t exist, or that it is subordinate to England’s, because that’s patent bollocks. [ Copilot prefers I refrain from such terms, so as not to upset other possible visitors to the site, but sometimes robust language is essential to make a point. I’m still educating it on that matter. 🙂 ]
Why should I censor my own use of such a useful term when discussing matters with an AI, or anyone else? It may not see much use beyond these pages, and you may hate the term because it neatly exposes a fundamental truth of the UK state that you would prefer not to be widely known, since it directly contradicts your and the Westminster English establishment’s preferred term ‘unitary’ state, even though that term is a bare-faced lie, for reasons I’ve spelled out often, here and elsewhere.
A binary state may experience governmental difficulties when the two sovereignties disagree on policy, but the UK model solves those merely by completely ignoring the sovereignty of its Scottish polity. That makes it an obvious constitutional crime, and I require that crime to be properly investigated.
My arguments are not pointless, they make points which I know you see because it’s obvious that you carefully dodge them. But others may see them and think about them and make up their own minds about them. That’s part of the purpose of this forum.
As for the context of the U.K’s legal system, if my arguments don’t mean anything in it, then that context is wrong. Given the continued sovereignty of the Scottish half of the Union over the last three hundred years and counting, if the UK’s legal system still doesn’t recognise that sovereignty then clearly the legal system is unfit for purpose in the Union. I blame you! 😀
@Xaracen – “binary sovereignty” is not a recognised term in the U.K. constitution, if you google it one of the first results is this specific conversation. So I highly doubt that copilot, without any prompt, has decided that it is a concept that has greater authority than the primacy of the Supreme Court.
Either way, you’re dodging by very reasonable and obvious question for the same reason you always avoid providing any evidence for any of the claims you make – because this is a complete fiction that you’ve dreamt up and that holds no standing or authority anywhere in the real world outside of your imagination. It has no more legitimacy than me declaring myself King (in fact less so, given there isn’t a recent Supreme Court judgement explicitly deciding I am not the King).
If you want to indulge in this fanaticism as a personal exercise to occupy your time, be my guest. I do however think trying to learn about the reality of U.K. constitutional law would be a much more rewarding exercise, you’d learn some genuinely new and interesting concepts, and you wouldn’t have to wake up every day knowing the only person you’re really lying to is yourself.
@Aidan
You have to understand where Xaracen is coming from. See this line from near the end of his most recent dreary post:
“Given the continued sovereignty of the Scottish half of the Union over the last three hundred years and counting”
You, and just about everybody else, using the evidence of their eyes and ears, believe that Xaracen is trying to prove the obvious fallacy that Scottish Sovereignty is still a real thing.
But he’s not. He’s taking its continued existence as a “given”.
You’re arguing about logical deductions from the facts on the ground.
He has short-circuited the argument by defining what might properly (subject to evidence and proof) be a conclusion, as an axiom.
He’s not fundamentally different to the people who declare their X and Y chromosome allocation is immaterial to what sex they are. Once they have defined a ludicrous axiom, they can then use logic and argument to build nonsensical castles on their foundations of sand. Maybe it’s a genetically determined problem to which us Scots are unfortunately prone.
“@Xaracen – “binary sovereignty” is not a recognised term in the U.K. constitution, if you google it one of the first results is this specific conversation. So I highly doubt that Copilot, without any prompt, has decided that it is a concept that has greater authority than the primacy of the Supreme Court.”
‘Binary sovereignty’ is not a term I’ve ever used; Copilot coined it independently. It’s a perfectly legitimate and descriptive shorthand, and it requires no formal validation from the UK constitution, or from you, to be useful. Your personal doubts are irrelevant. And no, Copilot did not “decide that it is a concept that has greater authority than the primacy of the Supreme Court”, and nothing in my response to you suggests that it did. That claim was invented by you.
“Either way, you’re dodging my very reasonable and obvious question”
I didn’t dodge it, I ignored it because it was irrelevant; you only asked it to serve as a deflection to avoid engaging with the substance of my argument.
“for the same reason you always avoid providing any evidence for any of the claims you make – because this is a complete fiction that you’ve dreamt up and that holds no standing or authority anywhere in the real world outside of your imagination.”
My evidence is in the Treaty itself, Aidan, in the form of lacunae that, if your position were sound, would be filled. They aren’t. Their emptiness thus supports my stance, not yours. Treaty obligations need to be written IN them! They are formal legal contracts; unwritten obligations literally don’t exist, and can’t be legally enforced!
“It has no more legitimacy than me declaring myself King (in fact less so, given there isn’t a recent Supreme Court judgement explicitly deciding I am not the King). “
Your analogy is both absurd and irrelevant. It just trivialises a constitutional argument that quite clearly is rooted in historical fact and legal documents.
“If you want to indulge in this fanaticism as a personal exercise to occupy your time, be my guest. I do however think trying to learn about the reality of U.K. constitutional law would be a much more rewarding exercise, you’d learn some genuinely new and interesting concepts, and you wouldn’t have to wake up every day knowing the only person you’re really lying to is yourself.”
Yet again, Aidan, you miss the point, and carefully so. The successful imposition of the UK constitution is NOT evidence of its legitimacy. Given the context of the Treaty’s stated terms and its origins in the constitutions and sovereignties of the two former kingdoms, the Supreme Court should have looked at those origins properly. They didn’t. They channelled AV Dicey’s unitary dogma instead.
That’s the argument I’ve been making for years. It’s well past time you dealt with it properly, too!
“He’s taking its (Scottish Sovereignty) continued existence as a ‘given’.”
Well of course I do, because it IS a given, and I’ve provided the evidence to back it up many times. That sovereignty cannot seriously be deemed to have been abolished in 1707, and no-one serious who has looked into the matter has concluded that it was.
“You’re arguing about logical deductions from the facts on the ground.”
No, Hatey, Aidan is not, he’s merely adopted the English establishment line and denies the factual evidence of the Treaty, and of related historical documents.
“He has short-circuited the argument by defining what might properly (subject to evidence and proof) be a conclusion, as an axiom.”
That’s a gross misrepresentation of my argument, Hatey!
Scotland’s sovereignty in 1706 is beyond reasonable dispute, so it absolutely is a given. My position as stated on this site and elsewhere takes that as an axiom and asserts firstly, that Scotland’s sovereignty was never given up in 1707, simply because no party to the Treaty negotiations possessed the legal authority to strip Scotland’s sovereignty from the Scots, who formally own it under Scotland’s own still extant constitution, or to subordinate it and them to England and her MPs.
Secondly, it asserts correctly that the Treaty contains no clause that states that Scotland’s sovereignty ceased to exist or became subordinate to England or to England’s MPs.
Quite the reverse, in fact;
So thirdly, the presence in the Treaty, as ratified, of the Scottish parliament’s appendix attached to Article XXV obliges the permanence of Scotland’s constitution as cited and exerted in Scotland’s 1689 Claim of Right, an constitution founded on the sovereignty of the Scottish people.
The conclusion must then follow that Scotland’s sovereignty is still intact today, and has been for the entirety of the history of the UK.
Don’t pretend that you haven’t seen this argument before.
“He’s not fundamentally different to the people who declare their X and Y chromosome allocation is immaterial to what sex they are. Once they have defined a ludicrous axiom, they can then use logic and argument to build nonsensical castles on their foundations of sand. Maybe it’s a genetically determined problem to which us Scots are unfortunately prone.”
That’s nothing more than idle and vexatious speculation, Hatey. Something of a specialty of yours, I note.
@Xaracen – there is no constitutional argument, your interpretation that the ToU intended to preserve two distinct sovereign kingdoms is outright contradicted by the explicit language of Article 1. Even if we were to accept the nonsensical idea that we can upend the entirety of the UK’s constitutional structure by revisiting a constitutional development that occurred 300+ years ago, your argument still fails at the first hurdle.
As I said, this is really no different from any other fantasist legal ideology such as the Freeman on Land or sovereign citizens. I doubt I can change your mind, because you’re determined to believe this regardless of any evidence presented whatever anyone says. Again, you’re arguing against the language in the ToU and against the repeated judgement of the supreme courts and the lower courts both in England and Scotland. You’re arguing against a comprehensive body of academic and legal text, and against the practical evidence of how the U.K. state has functioned for the last few hundred years. I don’t know how you get the confidence to proclaim that everyone with any credentials, knowledge or authority is wrong, both now and throughout history, and you uniquely are right. There’s something sort of admirable about it in a way. I think you probably know deep down that this is nonsense, you’re just not ready to face up to that yet.
As I keep saying, let’s see some evidence that isn’t just your own defective reasoning.
“The conclusion must then follow that Scotland’s sovereignty is still intact today, and has been for the entirety of the history of the UK”
Not at all.
That’s not the conclusion. In fact, if I was to liken the conclusion to a mountain peak, where you give up on the attempt to reach it is so far short, that even the peak of the mountain is still lost beneath the far horizon.
The true conclusion of your argument is when you detail just what will happen to the everyday lives of ordinary Scots if everything that has happened in the entirety of the history of the UK is declared illegal and hence null and void.
I’ve pointed this out to you before. I’ve challenged you to make a start.
You never do. You never will be able to do it. Nobody but a madman would ever even try.
And that’s why all your argumentative subterfuge and sleight of hand is doomed to failure.
@Aidan; you said;
“@Xaracen – there is no constitutional argument, your interpretation that the ToU intended to preserve two distinct sovereign kingdoms is outright contradicted by the explicit language of Article 1.”
Outright blethers, Aidan! Your ‘explicit language’ of Article I merely states that there will be one kingdom, but it does not state that there will be only one sovereignty. It does not state that either of the existing sovereignties would cease to exist, it does not state that Scotland’s sovereignty would end while England’s sovereignty would continue, and it does not state that England’s sovereignty would extend over the territory of Scotland. And you cannot show that it does.
You inferred far more from that Article than it can possibly support on its own, and what you inferred is not supported by any of the rest of the Treaty. Whether what you say was intended or not doesn’t matter; if it wasn’t stated in the Treaty then it has no legal or constitutional standing. As I said before, unwritten obligations don’t exist, and cannot be legally enforced! Even in the UK.
“Even if we were to accept the nonsensical idea that we can upend the entirety of the UK’s constitutional structure by revisiting a constitutional development that occurred 300+ years ago, your argument still fails at the first hurdle.”
Your framing here is breath-takingly dishonest! The UK’s entire constitutional structure deserves to be upended precisely because that ‘constitutional development’ of 300+ years ago was unlawfully imposed by the English establishment from day one of the Union. Unlawful because the Treaty gave it no authority to build that ‘constitutional structure’ on it. It is your argument therefore that fails at the first hurdle, and it did so 300+ years ago.
“As I said, this is really no different from any other fantasist legal ideology such as the Freeman on Land or sovereign citizens. I doubt I can change your mind, because you’re determined to believe this regardless of any evidence presented whatever anyone says. Again, you’re arguing against the language in the ToU and against the repeated judgement of the supreme courts and the lower courts both in England and Scotland.”
The formal evidence of the Treaty says otherwise, Aidan, and none of your alleged contrary evidence presented on these pages thus far is worth regarding, so I see no reason to change my mind.
“You’re arguing against a comprehensive body of academic and legal text, and against the practical evidence of how the U.K. state has functioned for the last few hundred years.”
I’m arguing that your ‘comprehensive body of academic and legal text’ doesn’t have the formal foundational backing it needs from the Treaty to legitimately deploy the UK’s ‘constitutional structure’ across the territories of the UK. If that body of academics ignored the sovereignty and constitution of Scotland as preserved by the Treaty then ‘comprehensive’ doesn’t really apply, and the current status quo of the Union is illegitimate and its governmental authority is fraudulent. I might also point out that the body of legal academics no longer includes Professor Robert Black KC, who was persuaded to examine the Treaty of Union and the history of the Union following it, with a fresh pair of legal eyes, and with no preconceptions. He surprised himself, and discovered that the Union is indeed fraudulent. If he could do that after 60 years of indoctrination in current UK law at his age, then the same will be true of far younger lawyers, especially now that he has hammered the first split in the dam.
“I don’t know how you get the confidence to proclaim that everyone with any credentials, knowledge or authority is wrong, both now and throughout history, and you uniquely are right. There’s something sort of admirable about it in a way. I think you probably know deep down that this is nonsense, you’re just not ready to face up to that yet.”
You’re speculating vexatiously, Aidan; Hatey is contaminating you. I am confident of my argument because fundamentally it is actually very simple; Scotland did not agree to be governed essentially by England’s MPs. Also, I’m not uniquely right, since I know of others who share the same or similar views, some of them on this site.
“As I keep saying, let’s see some evidence that isn’t just your own defective reasoning.”
Take the blinkers off, Aidan, you’ll see much better. Professor Black did. And there is nothing defective about my reasoning, and you clearly haven’t identified any instance, or you would have presented it in triumph.
@Hatey;
You said;
““The conclusion must then follow that Scotland’s sovereignty is still intact today, and has been for the entirety of the history of the UK”
Not at all.
That’s not the conclusion. In fact, if I was to liken the conclusion to a mountain peak, where you give up on the attempt to reach it is so far short, that even the peak of the mountain is still lost beneath the far horizon.”
Piffle!
“The true conclusion of your argument is when you detail just what will happen to the everyday lives of ordinary Scots if everything that has happened in the entirety of the history of the UK is declared illegal and hence null and void.”
No, Hatey, that is nonsense. Those are not part of the argument; you are talking about the consequences arising from the argument’s conclusion, but these are not components of the conclusion itself.
“I’ve pointed this out to you before. I’ve challenged you to make a start.”
I’m not interested in your challenge.
“You never do. You never will be able to do it. Nobody but a madman would ever even try.”
Another reason I’m not interested in your challenge.
“And that’s why all your argumentative subterfuge and sleight of hand is doomed to failure.”
That doesn’t follow, and you haven’t shown it to be true anyway, since you haven’t identified any actual argumentative subterfuge or sleight of hand.
Why don’t you construct an argument for this and draw a conclusion from it. That would be novel.
It actually does state that Xaracen – because the words “kingdom” and “sovereignties” are synonyms of each other in this context. As for this idea of “unwritten conditions”, it a key part of statutory or contractual interpretation that the inclusion of a term also includes the necessary consequences of that term. Therefore, the express term that Scotland would form part of a new state called the U.K. means that necessarily, Scotland would cease to exist as an independent state, because the two things cannot be true simultaneously.
Secondly, Robert Black KC has never said anything to affirm your view as far as I can see. His quite reasonable point is that an objective historical review demonstrates that Scotland was amalgamated into the ongoing state of England rather than an entirely new state being formed. His reasoning is sensible, but he does not suggest therefore that the union has ceased to exist or endorse any other of your strange ideas. You remain in a minority of one.
Which brings me onto my 3rd point. If we are prepared to undo century’s of constitutional development by re litigating the events of 1707, then how many other innumerable events can we also re-litigate, like the illegal act of invasion in 1066 or the Roman conquest of Britain. Are you even sure the Scottish kingdom as it were in 1706 is a legitimate entity given its separation from England was previously established through violence. I don’t think any sensible person would suggest this, why then should our current constitutional arrangements be determined solely based on events that occurred in 1707 without regard to the subsequent developments in our constitutional and political history? I suspect your approach, whether you’ll admit it or not, is that all other events in history should be left to lie, but this specifically should be reopened because you see a tactical political advantage in it.
@Aidan;
“It actually does state that Xaracen – because the words “kingdom” and “sovereignties” are synonyms of each other in this context.”
They are not synonyms in any context. A kingdom is the territory under the jurisdiction of a crown; sovereignty is a legal and constitutional status.
The Treaty of Union ‘united’ two kingdoms into one, but it did not fully merge them, because their constitutions and sovereignties were mutually incompatible. The Treaty did not extinguish either party’s sovereignty or territory, and it did not extinguish Scotland’s crown, because in Scotland under its own still-standing constitution, the ‘crown’ refers to the Community of the Realm of Scotland, ie, its sovereign people, and not its monarch. In fact, the monarch was often referred to as the ‘Guardian of the Realm’.
Scotland’s sovereign people did not give up their sovereignty in 1707. No-one asked them to, and no-one had the legal authority to make them, then or since.
“As for this idea of “unwritten conditions”, it a key part of statutory or contractual interpretation that the inclusion of a term also includes the necessary consequences of that term. Therefore, the express term that Scotland would form part of a new state called the U.K. means that necessarily, Scotland would cease to exist as an independent state, because the two things cannot be true simultaneously.”
You are being obtuse, Aidan; independence, states, and sovereignty are different concepts. It has always been perfectly possible for a state to contain two or more sovereignties. It just needs to compromise when their owners disagree about a matter of their governance. But England never compromises, it is far too arrogant, so it just overrules Scotland, but that doesn’t mean that England is within its rights to do so, as that would have required formal agreement by Scotland in the Treaty to permit it and, as written signed and ratified, no such permission from Scotland exists in the Treaty.
“Secondly, Robert Black KC has never said anything to affirm your view as far as I can see. His quite reasonable point is that an objective historical review demonstrates that Scotland was amalgamated into the ongoing state of England rather than an entirely new state being formed. His reasoning is sensible, but he does not suggest therefore that the union has ceased to exist or endorse any other of your strange ideas. You remain in a minority of one.”
He said quite clearly that the Treaty was bilateral, and was breached by England’s effective takeover of Scotland despite it. He did not endorse the legitimacy of the Union, nor England’s treatment of its sovereign partner.
“Which brings me onto my 3rd point. If we are prepared to undo century’s of constitutional development by re litigating the events of 1707, then how many other innumerable events can we also re-litigate, like the illegal act of invasion in 1066 or the Roman conquest of Britain.”
Now you’re channelling Hatey! 😀
Adverse consequences for England and its Union are not arguments for denying the logic of an argument, and cannot justify continuing the unconstitutional and unlawful imposition of adverse consequences on Scotland.
“Are you even sure the Scottish kingdom as it were in 1706 is a legitimate entity given its separation from England was previously established through violence.”
What are you smoking, Aidan? That earlier union entity was established through violence, and that’s OK? But splitting it by violence is illegitimate? Especially when there was no violence that separated Scotland from England in 1660? GFY!
“I don’t think any sensible person would suggest this, why then should our current constitutional arrangements be determined solely based on events that occurred in 1707 without regard to the subsequent developments in our constitutional and political history? I suspect your approach, whether you’ll admit it or not, is that all other events in history should be left to lie, but this specifically should be reopened because you see a tactical political advantage in it.”
But you went ahead and said it anyway! 😀
You’re reaching, Aidan, and you haven’t the chops for it.
@Xaracen – actually, sovereignty is the ultimate authority in a state and really emerges from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. But putting that side, the definition that YOU have given for “kingdom” and “sovereignty” mean the same thing, whether you realise this or not.
You say that the two crowns didn’t merge completely because the constitutions of England and Scotland were incompatible. Firstly, arguing that something that actually happened couldn’t happen is always a losing strategy. Secondly, the Treaty of Union and the subsequent acts of Union profoundly changed the Scottish constitution, and to a lesser extent the English constitution. The extent to which they were incompatible was resolved through the merging of the two kingdoms into one kingdom.
I think what you actually mean is that England and Scotland have had distinct constitutional and democratic structures pre-Union, and it’s therefore difficult to see how within the context of Scotland preserving its legal system within the Union, that the constitutional law of each country could apply to a single governance structure. That is indeed an interesting question, but thankfully we can answer it because the question applies retroactively (I.e. what did happen) rather than prospectively (I.e. what might happen). As Professor Robert Black KC has rightly said, it is largely the constitutional structures of England rather than Scotland that prevailed. Now you may not like that or think it’s unfair, but that has no bearing on reality. You can’t fantasise an alternative reality into existence, or pretend somehow that there is any scope to reopen long settled questions of law dating back to 1707. As I pointed out above, that would lead to a virtually unlimited line of issues throughout history to be capable of being reopened.
Aidan said;
“@Xaracen – actually, sovereignty is the ultimate authority in a state and really emerges from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.”
So sovereignty didn’t exist until 1648? Seriously? The Treaty took place in 1706/7, so sovereignty was a clearly recognised concept by then anyway. Also, Westphalia may have formalised sovereignty to some extent, but that doesn’t mean the concept had no meaning until then, and other nations had no need to accept those formalisms.
“But putting that side, the definition that YOU have given for “kingdom” and “sovereignty” mean the same thing, whether you realise this or not.”
Blethers! Your lexical sleight of hand applies equally to England’s sovereignty, and still doesn’t permit England’s MPs to legitimately overrule Scotland’s, since Scotland didn’t give them ‘permission’ for that under the Treaty. It also doesn’t permit the UK parliament to pretend that English MP decisions are directly equivalent to UK decisions. The Union does not belong solely to England.
“You say that the two crowns didn’t merge completely because the constitutions of England and Scotland were incompatible. Firstly, arguing that something that actually happened couldn’t happen is always a losing strategy.”
‘Couldn’t happen’, and ‘couldn’t lawfully happen’ are not equivalent statements. Arguing that something unlawful happened is an admission of a crime, and depending on it as an example of legitimacy is always a losing strategy.
“Secondly, the Treaty of Union and the subsequent acts of Union profoundly changed the Scottish constitution, and to a lesser extent the English constitution. The extent to which they were incompatible was resolved through the merging of the two kingdoms into one kingdom.”
The resolution that was actually applied, Aidan, was the direct subjugation of Scotland without Scotland’s formal agreement for it under the Treaty. That makes it unlawful.
“I think what you actually mean is that England and Scotland have had distinct constitutional and democratic structures pre-Union, and it’s therefore difficult to see how within the context of Scotland preserving its legal system within the Union, that the constitutional law of each country could apply to a single governance structure.”
Difficult it may be, Aidan, but that is no excuse for England unlawfully subordinating Scotland because it makes life easier for England. So I am entitled to say this; it’s therefore difficult to see how within the context of England preserving its legal system within the Union, that the constitutional law of each country could apply to a single governance structure. Sorted that for you.
“That is indeed an interesting question, but thankfully we can answer it because the question applies retroactively (I.e. what did happen) rather than prospectively (I.e. what might happen).”
There’s that bogus ‘whatever happened is automatically legitimate’ trope again, Aidan.
“As Professor Robert Black KC has rightly said, it is largely the constitutional structures of England rather than Scotland that prevailed. Now you may not like that or think it’s unfair, but that has no bearing on reality.”
There’s that bogus ‘whatever happened is automatically legitimate’ trope again, Aidan. You just can’t help yourself, can you? It was a true statement, but it was not asserted by Prof Black to confirm its legitimacy, it was asserted to evidence its lack of legitimacy.
“You can’t fantasise an alternative reality into existence, or pretend somehow that there is any scope to reopen long settled questions of law dating back to 1707. As I pointed out above, that would lead to a virtually unlimited line of issues throughout history to be capable of being reopened.”
And you can’t fantasise an authenticity that simply doesn’t exist, Aidan. This is another trope of yours, that adverse consequences arising from a sound and valid conclusion invalidates the logic that built it. (Hatey attempted this one, too.)
@Xaracen – Again your (I think now wilfull) misuse of the term sovereignty makes it difficult to understand your first sentence. But putting that aside, Scotland and England obviously agreed to give up their sovereignty as independent states in Article 1 of the ToU, that can be the only consequence of that section. Consequentially, the new state of the UK was from 1707 sovereign.
Secondly, you keep stating that “Scotland did not give permission for England’s MP’s to overrule them etc” and words to that effect. But that is exactly the situation that the ToU creates by specifying the number of MP’s and Lords from Scotland that were permitted to sit in each chamber. Again, the consequences of having a minority of MP’s means that it was and is possible for legislation to apply in Scotland that was opposed by a majority of Scottish MP’s. When I’ve previously pointed out this rather glaring hole in your reasoning you’ve suggested that the ToU intended to create a situation where legislation could only pass with a majority of MP’s from both former kingdoms, but you have yet to produce any reasonable explanation as to why nobody chose to mention this or to write it down in the Treaty. Even if we accepted your highly unlikely argument, the treaty nevertheless says as I have described above.
Lastly, we come to your “unlawfully implemented argument, to which there are two obvious rebuttals. The first is that even unlawful actions acquire legitimacy after a certain passage of time, which is why we are not litigating the unlawful crime of aggression by the Roman invasion of Britain. Secondly, the post-1707 constitutional developments were unlawful according to whom? Those developments have become long accepted within the legal system, our political framework and civil society both sides of the border. On whose authority do you rely on to determine that these developments are unlawful. I suspect the answer is that these developments are contrary to your own reasoning on the impact of the ToU. I’ll therefore remind you that neither you or I have the authority to make the law.
@Aidan;
“@Xaracen – Again your (I think now wilful) misuse of the term sovereignty makes it difficult to understand your first sentence.”
I’m not the one misusing the term, you are. Sovereignty is not an abstract label, it’s a vested authority.
England’s sovereignty was institutional, vested in England’s Parliament. Scotland’s is popular, vested in its people. When England’s Parliament ended, and it DID end, its sovereignty ended with it, while Scotland’s sovereignty remains active and unbroken, since the Scots are still a living people.
Professor Robert Black KC, former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, made that very point in a video interview, that the sovereignty of the parliament of England did not in fact pass to the new British parliament in 1707. It wasn’t automatic, and no formal process of any kind was undertaken to transfer the sovereignty of the former parliament to the latter one. I suspect that was because it never occurred to the English establishment that it would need to, because they had intended all along that the new parliament was going to be the English parliament in all but name. But the Treaty didn’t specify that.
But if you want to insist, Aidan, that sovereignty derives from a crown, despite the existence of nation republics like the USA which no-one would deny are sovereign, then be comforted by the fact that the Scots people ARE the Crown of Scotland under Scotland’s long-standing constitutional traditions. They are the Community of the Realm, and ‘the Scottish Crown’ refers to them, and not to their monarch. England has long misunderstood Scotland’s constitutional structures, and continues to misread its historical foundations.
All of the above confirm my position, as does the fact that, as I often have to remind you, nobody had the legal authority to strip Scotland’s sovereignty from the Scots anyway. None of the above supports your position.
But putting that aside, Scotland and England obviously agreed to give up their sovereignty as independent states in Article 1 of the ToU; that can be the only consequence of that section. Consequentially, the new state of the UK was from 1707 sovereign.”
No, Aidan, they ‘obviously’ only gave up independent self-governance for joint self-governance, and neither of them surrendered their sovereignty. Sovereignty pooled for joint governance does not permit or imply sovereignty unilaterally surrendered for domination by the other. The fact that Westminster still asserts English-based sovereignty today confirms my position, denying yours, even though technically, its own sovereignty no longer exists.
“Secondly, you keep stating that “Scotland did not give permission for England’s MPs to overrule them etc.””
Correct, and demonstrably so. I keep stating it because you keep forgetting it.
“But that is exactly the situation that the ToU creates by specifying the number of MPs and Lords from Scotland permitted to sit in each chamber.”
No, it isn’t, unless the Treaty also specified a flat voting system for them. It didn’t. No voting mechanism was ever formally agreed for the brand new British parliament. That means Westminster’s presumption of it cannot legitimately be imposed. It is also obvious that a flat vote is inherently inappropriate for the body of the UK’s MPs given the binary distinction of the sovereign parent nations they formally represent. The English presumption was entirely partisan. Presumption is not law.
“Again, the consequences of having a minority of MPs means that it was and is possible for legislation to apply in Scotland that was opposed by a majority of Scottish MPs.”
It might have, if the voting mechanism had been formally agreed and legally ratified. But it wasn’t, so it isn’t. Which means that legislation to apply in the UK that was opposed by a majority of Scottish MPs is unlawful.
“When I’ve previously pointed out this rather glaring hole in your reasoning you’ve suggested that the ToU intended to create a situation where legislation could only pass with a majority of MPs from both former kingdoms,”
I have never claimed the Treaty ‘intended’ dual-majority consent. I’ve argued that dual-majority consent is the default position, logically and constitutionally, based on the continued sovereignty of both kingdoms, unless the Treaty formally agreed otherwise. It didn’t. Scotland’s sovereignty remains with the Scots, as the Treaty contains no clause mandating its surrender. Its sovereignty is wielded in Westminster solely by Scotland’s formal representatives, just as England’s representatives may only wield the ‘non-sovereign’ authority of England.
Interestingly, that latter point is important. As explained above, England’s sovereignty was vested in its Parliament, which formally ceased to exist in 1707. Scotland’s sovereignty, by contrast, is vested in its people, and they continue. That means the only body in Westminster today that can legitimately wield any sovereignty in the House of Commons, and the UK, is the body of Scotland’s MPs, the only legitimate sovereign presence in the House of Commons today.
“but you have yet to produce any reasonable explanation as to why nobody chose to mention this or to write it down in the Treaty.”
I just did. Again!
“Even if we accepted your highly unlikely argument, the Treaty nevertheless says as I have described above.”
Except it very obviously doesn’t, Aidan. You are reading provisions into the Treaty that don’t exist and were never agreed and never ratified.
“Lastly, we come to your “unlawfully implemented” argument, to which there are two obvious rebuttals. The first is that even unlawful actions acquire legitimacy after a certain passage of time, which is why we are not litigating the unlawful crime of aggression by the Roman invasion of Britain.”
That’s nonsense. A crime may lapse only if relevant law provides for it, or if litigation is impossible, such as when the perpetrator no longer exists, like the Roman Empire. The Treaty of Union is still active, and its provisions and Scotland’s sovereign rights are still being violated today.
“Secondly, the post-1707 constitutional developments were unlawful according to whom? “
According to the Treaty itself, Scotland’s constitutional tradition, and the sovereign Scots, including Professor Robert Black KC, former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.
“Those developments have become long accepted within the legal system, our political framework and civil society both sides of the border. On whose authority do you rely to determine that these developments are unlawful? I suspect the answer is that these developments are contrary to your own reasoning on the impact of the ToU. I’ll therefore remind you that neither you nor I have the authority to make the law.”
You’re right, we don’t make the law, but we can and do read it. And when the Treaty’s terms are ignored, it is not unlawful to say so. It is unlawful to pretend otherwise. Robert Black KC, former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, has affirmed Scotland’s continuing sovereignty and the illegitimacy of constitutional developments imposed by England.
Scotland’s sovereignty endures because it was never lawfully extinguished.
“Scotland’s sovereignty endures because it was never lawfully extinguished”
Ah c’moan noo, Xaracen.
If anybody were to suggest a “lawful” means of extinguishing it, you would be back to say it can’t be extinguished.
You would claim that not even a 100% decision by the Sovereign Scots could annul their sovereignty. Because it’s not ours to annul.
It’s a “given”, remember?
I’ve seen this argument before. The Life Of Brian in fact. Only the truly divine can deny their divinity. You’ve just mixed it up a little. The truly sovereign can never deny their sovereignty.
And we’re truly sovereign. It’s a “given”, remember?
Addendum to my post above;
The English parliament acquired its sovereignty by incorporating the English crown via its 1689 Bill of Rights.
The British parliament did not.
Nor did it inherit it from the English parliament, (ref R Black KC). Nor was there any incorporation of the British monarch, or of the Scottish monarch.
What it did literally incorporate was the formal delegation of Scots MPs, who are the sole formal representatives of the Scottish sovereign people, who ARE the Crown of Scotland.
This reinforces my statement about the Scots MPs being the sole body in Westminster entitled to wield any sovereignty at all.
@Dunx
Don’t encourage them.
If they get their way, the “democratic event” they talk about will be copied from the poot playbook. Armed militia will go door-to-door with the ballot papers and invite each householder to fill one in while they look over the householder’s shoulder.
Well done Dunx for stating the obvious!
1. The UN General Assembly has no legal status, only the Security Council does on which the UK has a veto.
2. The SNP/Greens are a lost cause. They are so wedded to woke and “progreesive” tings (such as “Net Zero”) that they have lost, in my opinion, over 50% of the voting population.
3. I sometimes think that Independence-fighters should ally with Reform UK at Westminster so that England and Scotland could go separate ways peacefully. Thoughts?
@James Cheyne,
killing the most vulnerable,the elderly and unborn,is still an offence in Scotland,
British Labour voted to legalise killing the old and decriminalise killing babies in England.
British Labour MP Kim Leadbeater in killing the old,
British Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi in decriminalising killing babies at any stage up to birth.
killing the old is currently going through Holyrood ,at stage 2 of the bill,brought by Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur who has been funded by `Dignity in Dying`,
Lib Dem will do and say anything for cash.
I do have a giggle about some of the cunning plans that folk on here come up with because they think that is a way around the nuisance of actually getting folk to vote for independence.
If in 2014 with Salmond in charge, what folk thought of as a competent and popular government in place and a massive majority in the SP the vote still could not get over the 50% mark what chance at the moment with the current situation and binch of wasters in the SP.
If folk want independence then something has to change to get folk enthused and willing to vote for it, that is the only way. That enthusiasm isn’t there at the moment and can’t see any prospect of it for the moment.
I also find it quite insulting that some state you cannot be a Scot if you also consider yourself British.
Personally I Personally I consider myself Scottish, British and Canadian in that order or importance and who cares what others think of that.
I think some folk need to wake up and smell the coffee, even if the UN thing was even remotely practical it will still come down to a vote, and you ain’t winning that anytime soon!
“Personally I Personally I consider myself Scottish, British and Canadian”
Guess which two are colonies and which one the Imperial power?
Canada has not been a colony since the 60’s and was never really one then either. Its been self governing for a long long time.
Scotland isn’t a colony either, we voted to be part of the UK in 2014 and until we vote otherwise, which is currently unlikely, we are simply part of the UK
The dual (i.e. false) persona is bad enough, but a triple persona?
The colonialist “is always unsure of their identity” (Memmi).
“The colonialist “is always unsure of their identity” (Memmi)”
Nae shit, Sherlock.
Fit does Memmi say about the proud TRUE SCOT who declaims he’s a Scot first, and a citizen of Europe (by which he means the EU) second?
Let me make an inspired guess:
“Logic and reason are the weapons of the colonialist (Memmi)”.
“Canada has not been a colony since the 60’s and was never really one then either.”
I’m not sure the first nation peoples there would agree with you, and where “the legacies of colonialism continue to profoundly impact Indigenous communities.”
link to tandfonline.com
As for “Scotland isn’t a colony either” I think we are well past that level of misunderstanding now:
link to youtube.com
Anyone see the small independence music festival of the Guitar and Rant open mic session. There was five demonstrations in Edinburgh at the weekend. It was like a Disneyland of flags and rants.
You could have spent the weekend going from one show to the next. Which I suspect many of them did.
United Scotland my arse!
Jimmy Savile lives on in Watson! He will really harm someone physically, if he has not already. There will be victims from way back to feart or traumatised to come forward, like those hurt by Savile. He was prob harming while a serving officer! Its being covered up like Savile was. Once had a cop tell me that they tend not to hunt warrant evaders cos they eventually show up after committing another crime. Watsons et al are being given too much rope and WILL take someone out before stopped. The the excuses like Rotherham will start=’Didn’t want accused of Transphobia’ etc.
‘wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say somethi
Listening to all the “ye just Cannae dae it because (then white noise)”..
Makes you wonder how these people see themselves and the hoops and legalese they love to tie not just themselves but all of us in..
Scotland is an ancient country, heck Great Britain is not much older than even the USA who still like to mention the old world; whit 30 years give or take?
The UK is even younger, the US is like its auld uncle by comparison.
Germany is a late 19th century invention, toddlers in comparison to all except Teflon Tony’s so called Supreme Court; which by comparison is barely beyond foetus stage.
Yup, let’s just pack our bags up because an artificial instrument created by The Tony says we Cannae..
Or let’s just pester away for another referendum even though it’s been made clear “now is not the time” had just become a bored “No”.
Yup let’s just keep harping on about majorities gained in the Edinburgh regional administration of certain devolved powers hamstrung by a voting system that few understand and was artfully embedded in arithmetic that gaining a majority was all but impossible right from the get go.
Yup let’s take snipes at those groups who are at least trying in the best condescending manner as A: It comes from the people and B: the chattering classes never thought of it and where was the money to be made??
Then there’s the real cringe brigade: England owns all, we get nothing, they get everything (except the national debt) and we really should be thankful for the money they are spending on infrastructure here to take resources generated here Dan saf while we continue to pay premium.
Yup, the Scotch are a lousy bunch, not voting for the deviant party while a joke of a media over the telly or in print twists and turns all, heck, even the clown BOJO reckons no money should be spent in Scotchland as we have unlimited access to HS2 (once youve travelled hours to get to it) to be funnelled like everything else to the great hoore London/ saf east which has leached of everywhere for time beyond reckoning.
Yup let’s slag off those who want to speak Gaelic, Scots because they are not “proper languages” actually while we should all be brushing up on the speaking the Queens English a la 1952..
Yup, how dare we question the status quo and risk upsetting the apple cart, or dearly held strategies for independence of just a few years ago that floundered against the barriers put up and will again..
Einsteins description of stupidity anyone?
Some of you “experts” here need to take a good look in the mirror as opposed to polishing up your middle class smart aR8e put- downs and start getting onboard with those you deem beneath you who at least are actually trying and (touch of the vapours!!!) actually putting their money where their mouth is.
Make me sick.
Gaun yerself: Doff yer cap and say “thank you m’lord” as they do it.
Aye, Young Lochinvar. Absolute Wanks. There are now more unionist commenters on this site than Independence supporters. I would not be surprised if it was a single poster. just scroll on past.
Anyone who disagrees with the nasty nats is a Yoon unionist.
Anyone who disagrees with the looney left is a fascist.
We know that independence is over. Look at Edinburgh this weekend. The Indy club open mic afternoon. It’s over. It’s been over for a long time.
I for one, speaking for myself I’m not a unionist.
Iam a realist.
Beggan;
“I’m not a unionist.”
ROTFLMFAO!!
Absolutely correct YL the wannabe CRINGERS desperate to be thought of as engerlish denigrating REAL Scots trying to take back their country from thieving scum, the same Scotland haters and CRINGERS who would not only give away our resources to their maisters they would do it crawling on bended knee whilst kissing their arses
They talk about the referendum vote in 2014 as if it were a union victory glossing over the FACT that REAL Scots NOT cringing arseholes voted 52.7% for independence, and if the great unionists were SO SURE of victory they would have another one, but they are too shit scared they would lose AGAIN
“REAL Scots NOT cringing arseholes voted 52.7% for independence”
Ah, c’moan noo Twat H. Tell us what you really think.
REAL SCOTS voted 100% for Indy. The mistake made the last time was counting the votes of them who aren’t REAL SCOTS.
That’s what this farrago at the UN is really all about. CM and a puckle more REAL SCOTS will fetch back Indy. None of this tiresome democracy shite.
You’ve tried that and it keeps on delivering the “wrong” result.
And none of that tiresome Sovereign Scot shite either. Scotland is hoaching with Sovereign Scots who don’t agree with you. Sae tae Hell wi their Scottish Sovereignty, eh?
Sure, YL.
Let’s all pretend that the sweeping political and economic changes being made all across Europe and other parts of the world, as I write, aren’t happening.
Let’s all pretend that these are NOT as a result of popular, grass roots demand, organising and agitation.
Because if we all pretend that, then we can all also pretend there’s still an appetite for the kind of Indy campaign that involves an afternoon of saltire waving, then off to the pub to get a few in, because every flag-waving, blue-arsed marcher knows running a country is a piece of piss that any ranting fuckwit can do in his sleep.
Lastly, we can all pretend that you lot didn’t have your crack at it, you didn’t vote in and support congenital eejits for years, and you didn’t spectacularly waste your chances.
But there are plenty of us who can’t pretend any more. The reality is it’s over. You tried. You were found wanting. You failed. You’ll all be deid soon.
It’s time to get out of the way and let others take the lead.
The self declared sovereign parliament of England and Ireland since 1800 fails to retain its union with Scotland from the year 1707 when it failed to renew its union with Scotland when it made the Anglo- iIrish treaty.
A legal impossibility to act as the parliament of England to make a treaty but then revert back to a faux claim that Westminster is a union parliament with Scotland to create the unitary State of the united kingdomS.
“We the parliament of England agreed”…….1800.
And if England is in a treaty of Union by itself…..explain that without it sounding like a coloniser
Country,
Westminsters England could not be the only…. (one in a one side treaty)…. and yet in a treaty of union with Scotland and then declare it is a Sovereign parliament of England, to make treaties with Ireland and America, without juggling a big lie.
Westminster logically would have to prove it was in a treaty with Scotland to even approach the conversation of the Unit State of the united kingdoms of Great Britain parliament. Otherwise that too would be a faux union.
If in the approach to making a binding international treaty Westminster parliament could not legally ratify [Scotland domestic law ] side of the treaty in Its side of the finalising the treaty, (which it did) as it had no jurisdiction over Scots Domestic laws to enable this in the first instance.
Both sides remain in each Countries domestic law, respectively and the Great Britain new parliament was not ratified into an official parliament prior to its opening.
Pride come before a fall so they say,
The Westminster parliament of England has presumed to much,
Well that’s that then.
Those stupid English trying to pull that one on you James.
You got them now.
Hell yes they ain’t got a leg to stand now.
So will we all get ready for the big announcement from the UN. I can see the headlines;
James stuns World with devastating truth.
United Nations bows to the pressure from world leaders.
The newly formed English government forced to apologize and pay reparations for kolonizing a sovereign nation.
Yes, it will. At last, the penny has dropped.
You need to go back to the records to view whom confirmed Scotlands domestic law to enter it as a international treaty..
It was the parliament of England and the monarch of England.
“Pride comes before a fall”
Weeeeeeee!!!
Only thae ‘Scots’ o’ low ambeetion an conceit aspire tae belang tae ony ither people than thae folk God gied thaim tae.
This truth is self-evident when we see the likes of those Scots who – in their blind ignorance – hold the Inglis higher in their flawed judgement than thae dae thair ain folk. Oh, hou wrang thae be.
Thae be mistane – swayed tae idiocy by Inglis witchery, false treaty, lies and faithless promise – in conseederin the Scots lessell than thaim Inglis wha thae admire maist.
Scotland… the picture perfect natioun brought low and *pentit-ower *fauchie bland by its unworthy neebour tae the sooth.
But soon and fir ivermair thae deities wha love the Scots, Agrona and Arawn and Badb Catha and Dagda, aye, and the Fowkgaist itsel will recover Scotland fir the Scots and pouerfu curse aw thaim, regairdless o whit land thae come frae, wha haed the arrogant temeritie tae beat doun the Scots and wha stole fae thaim thair wealth and wha hald doun thair speerit.
* fauchie: A faded colour, sickly looking, pale, colourless.
* pentit: painted.
Northcode, I do realise much of what have written here is tongue in cheek, though much of it isn’t. Anyway I will take the opportunity to insert this quote — not as accusation, just as misgiving:
« Thug sinn fianais air reisìm ais-cheumnach fhuilteach an Nàsachais, na àl truaillte spioradail dhen eachdraidheas feallsanachail fasanta. Thill beachdan cinneadail [volkse] uile-smachdach, fo bhuaidh miotas “fala is ùire“ [mythe van “bloed en bodem”], an cultar siarach air ais gu oidhche dhorcha nan creideamhan nàdarra pàganach. »
« We have witnessed the unspeakably bloody and reactionary regime of nazism, the degenerate spiritual offspring of modern historicism. Totalitarian racial [volkse] ideals, inspired by the myth of “blood and soil” [mythe van “bloed en bodem”] reverted western culture to the dark night of the pagan nature religions. »
English extract from: Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options’, Paideia Press, 2012.
“…reverted western culture to the dark night of the pagan nature religions
Thanks for sharing. I love nature, too – the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and rivers and mountains and all the little furry creatures scurrying aboot in the forest and such.
I often wander about the woods hugging trees (small furry creatures tae… if I can catch them) and collecting flowers for my pressings journal.
And when there’s no-one about (and even if there is on occasion) I’ll often run about naked – painted blue pretty much all over apart from the groin area – chanting tuneless songs of devotion to Anu, Goddess of nature and fertility and Lugh, God of the sun, arts and craft, before settling down to whittle oot a wee gift fir tae offer up tae ma favourite gods.
Aye, good fun not. Psalm 104 is more my thing.
“before settling down to whittle oot a wee gift”
Fnarr, fnarr, chob, chob.
One to add to Roger’s Profanisaurus.
He stole my name and NOBODY CARES
It seems to me that if you are not-
1) Enthralled by boring ancient history
2) A believer in fanciful ways of gaining Independence
3) A hater of anything/everything English
4) A ‘Real’ Scot
5) Clueless about finance/economics
6) A fantasist
7) A nutter
8) Colonised
9) A golfer
10) In full agreement with some of the more rabid posters on Wings
Then you must automatically be a Yoon and shouted down at every opportunity. It is said that there are in excess of 50% of Scots who want Independence. What is not said, is what percentage would vote for it tomorrow. I suspect it would not be very high given the calibre of Politicians within the Independence movement and their skills and experience in virtually anything. Their track record is there for all to see. Will this change by magic following Independence?
Some pin their hopes that Independence will be achieved in some weird and wonderful ways. The sane and educated KNOW that this will only be gained by the ballot box. However, people will not vote for the unknown which is exactly what the Independence movement, be it SNP or whoever, want us to do.
Myself, for one, am not having it. I am not alone.
You’re basically talking about a dozen or so hardcore nutcases with nowt else to do and nowhere else to go. They’re of no consequence whatsoever.
It’s beyond futile trying to get through to any of them. They’re beyond all help.
Agreed. The thing that annoys me the most is that they put off those who might be inclined towards Independence with their endless, repetitive drivel. I know of at least 5 people who were regular readers of Wings but no longer can be bothered.
The hard core have nothing else to do but pollute the site. All slapping each others backs in praise.
Sad.
@Chas – I think basically the hardcore posters here are all members of the Salvo cult, for whom posting the same endless drivel repetitively multiple times a day is some form of campaign tactic. For some reason, there is an obsessive focus on the circumstances around the Treaty of Union (not in the form of a well-researched and informed comment, but normally an unstructured ramble) and very little to say about Scotland’s current social, economic or governance context.
Then they have to cheek to complain that “Wings BTL is dead”.
…..and your purpose here is….what exactly?
Do tell.
I might have expressed this observation on here before… but just in case a hivna here it is agin:
There’s barely a comment posted here by colonialists (formerly known as unionists) that is anything other than insult, threat, lies, diversion, distraction, or logical fallacy.
Aye, and much o’ it brimmin’ ower fu o’ hateful anti-Scots rhetoric tae.
“brimmin’ ower fu o’ hateful anti-Scots rhetoric”
Yes Northcode, which explains why colonialism is described as ‘hateful racism’ (Cesaire).
I suspect that Baird and Northcode are one and the same person.
Surely there can’t be two people equally as boring?
“explains why colonialism is described as ‘hateful racism’”
Jeezo. I’m sure that just the other day it was fascism.
How long before it’s disestablishmentarianism?
The significance of Liberation Scotland’s approach to the UN C24 is not to do with any expectation that it will lead directly to independence.
What may happen is that Scotland will be recognised as a colonial territory. Resolutions on action will be blocked.
Such recognition is unlikely to lead to immediate change but would cause a stir in Scotland and among ex-pat Scots and put political pressure on Unionist politicians.
Reality like bankruptcy starts with a small crack here and a little burst there then the whole thing comes crashing down
I have, after deep and extensive pondering o’ the subject, arrived at a theory of why the Ingles hate us Scots so much and it is this:
The English ENVY the Scots
So much so they are willing to oppress us into oblivion that they might not be reminded of their inadequacies in comparison.
If they weren’t trying to wipe us Scots off the face of the Earth we might be inclined tae spare the poor souls the odd pitiful thought and help them rise up the evolutionary scale a notch or twa toward the level of enlightenment and intellectual prowess exhibited by the Scots.
@Northcode
If you are still alive and at liberty, give us a sign.
Post something on here. If they are watching you, or have even taken you as their slave, include one of these keywords and we will understand:
“puerile” “pathetic” “gurn” “greet”
Those of us who dearly love you are racked with worry that the English could have “wiped you off the face of the Earth” in the night. Please put our minds at ease on that, at least.
FFRRREEEEEDDDDDOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!
Nae word fae NC in ower twa days.
OMG! The English must hae wiped him fae the face o’ the earth!
Now I’m feeling really bad for joking about it. Ochone 🙂
The current members of the UN C-24 Committee in 2025 include Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Chile, China, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Grenada, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sierra Leone, Syria, Tanzania, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Tunisia, and Venezuela.
Wow. How uninteresting is that?
Uninteresting enough for you to interest in wasting your time
Nice. The Covid Spreaders and the Orcs.
One of them spending hundreds of thousands of lives yearly in its attempts to reconquer the former colony that got away.
The other still digesting the countries it colonised and making ever more threatening noises about the next country on its list.
But sure, they’ll deliver a verdict on Scotland. If Scotland had any gumption about it, we would deliver a verdict on them.
But what can we ever expect from CM.
I count some 14 dictatorships among the 24 countries on this committee.
Typical of the UN, and it’s disregard for democracy.
The fabian-dabadousey colonialist yoons never want to give up control of Scotland willingly as it hurts dignity, pinches future pockets and effects their ego status,
And this comes across with each comment, once you see it, you can not un-see it.
“Long NHS waits over 800 times more common in Scotland than England, Labour says”
This crap is from STV and BBC plus other media outlets.
Northcode is right.
There is nothing wrong with people of England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales,
It is the politicians, think tanks societies running the countries of the four nations,
the people are just fine,
Unless someone tries to stir up racism, mark. Nice try.
That is why I always mention parliaments, Statue, legislation, monarchy and treaties,
‘In theory woke culture aimed to improve society but in practice it spawned a wave of entitled individuals who think they deserve a medal for throwing around buzzwords.’
Scotland has a smaller population to Support if it came to a financial crash, and more resources per head for regrowth.
However how would England cope with such a high population? If it was not using Scottish resources,
Ohh I forgot they have the bank of England, the bank they are trying bring income into at the moment, via advertisements of get rich quick scam bail out scheme , and then they will collapse an fold with all your money disappearing,
Always good to read a financial colossus like Cheyne giving us their take on anything to do with finance/economics.
A wee tip-stick to writing about 300 year old pish that 0.001% of Scots are interested in. The sad thing is that, those who are, are to be found on Wings.
In 1694 a Scottish entrepreneur William Paterson proposed the concept of the Bank of England.
The claimis that Scots are 800 times more likely to wait over two years for treatment than England.
England’s NHS data is notoriously unreliable. In 2014 NAO found half of 650 waiting time records surveyed were unreliable, either lacking documentation or being inaccurate.
Because of antiquated IT systems problems still exist. Of the 400,000 GP referrals each month an estimated 21% simply vanish.
Patients may then have to start afresh with their GPs after waiting for information that does not come. The necessary data to track patients is scattered across different IT systems that do not talk to each other.
Hospitals are meant to return patients facing such unnecessary delays to the waiting lists. Of 30 hospitals contacted by the BBC in 2024 to ask how regularly this happened only 3 could provide figures. There are therefore unrecorded referrals.
The system can be gamed.Trusts get £33 for every patient who comes off the waiting lists. They are competing with each other and with targets to meet. Some Trusts stop the clock or pause it on waiting times if a patient misses an appointment or there are unecessary delays. Around 8 million outpatient appointments are missed every year.
It is claimed that England’s NHS is cutting waiting times.This may be a result of unreported removal of patients from the waiting lists, says the Nuffield Trust.The waiting lists have gone down while unreported removals have gone up.
Unreported removals, around 245,000 per month, are estimates, They are cases where treatment is not completed. Possible reasons for removal are patients have moved to private treatment; patients have died waiting for treatment; software faults; cleaning because of faulty data collection or recording.
It is impossible to know if waiting lists are falling because of effective treatment or an increase in unreported removals and unrecorded referrals. There is often no reliable data.
But data does suggest that more people are being added to the waiting lists than treatment pathways completed. Of 100 referrals only 86 are recorded as completed pathways.
Scotland’s waiting lists are based on appointments made. If, like me, you have more than one condition you will have more than one appointment. Scotland is over counting waiting lists while England is undercounting.
What do you think happens with counting drug deaths and which area of the UK might be worst in Europe?
Citing Jaguar Land Rover as a source for threatening to sue someone for not including a non-binary option shows that someone is relying on Stonewall law.
The case was an employment tribunal – it never went to an appeal. It’s not binding on any courts or tribunals.
The tribunal considered that gender transition (as in the Equality Act) was a spectrum (in the sense of a process) and concluded – in my view wrongly – that this meant that gender itself was a spectrum.
However, it was later ruled definitively by the Supreme Court in Elan-Cane that sex/gender is binary for the purposes of domestic law and there is no provision for non-binary in law. It completely overrules Taylor v JLR.
I just call people like that dribblers. Or twinkles. Sometimes I call them spoondrifters. Sometimes too I think about calling them ducks. I don’t say it. I just think it.
Does not change the legal Status that it is now and always was known as the Bank of England, so it might be a good idea not to provide Scots Welsh and Irish finances into it,
Everything to do with finances could disappear, and you would have no Claim on a bank of England as it is not the Bank of Great Britain,
Scots invented a awful lot of things that people use today, I was not aware having intellect was only wrong if you are Scottish.
Scotland had its own mint and banks, however the Colonisers closed them down after they promised Scotland could keep them in a faux treaty.
So the Bank of England it is,
Wow, how incredibly boring and dull
I know this one. Was it the Murray Mint?
Then there’s The Banks o’ Doon and The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.
I’m sure all of these are still around, not closed down at all.
Yes facts are, but it keeps you riveted enough to keep posting,
Once you see it, you cannot un- see it.
Yes – you haven’t quite managed to kill off the comments section of Scotland’s most read political blog quite yet, but keep on going, I’m sure you’ll get there!
They obviously don’t so irony in ‘Fifeshire’.
‘do’ even…