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Ferreting about

Posted on July 15, 2023 by
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Beauvais

Humza deserves the sack, that’s for sure.

Stoker

Poor ferrets! What did they ever do to be dumped with a photo-shoot involving that clueless self-serving muppet?

Astonished

Clueless, isn’t he ?

We’re nearing the end of his useless, bullying reign. Good.

Stephen O'Brien

The Party whip and Party politics, now made utterly redundant in Scotland, until after independence.

The game is over!

The People have been duped long enough. Democracy, is not at the behest of politicians.

The same politicians whom falsely promised a referendum, face being sued by the people of Scotland, regardless of the head count, at the next election.

Scots Law will restore democracy, by court sanction of a referendum, to end the Union. Politicians, thereafter, can plead their case for clemency.

Merganser

Shouldn’t they be rats in the sack?

Stoker

Astonished says on 15 July 2023 at 10:31 am:

“We’re nearing the end of his useless, bullying reign. Good.”

I hope you’re correct but something tells me he’s the sort who will have to be dragged out of position kicking and screaming. He has absolutely no honour, no principles and no backbone. A self-server to his rotten stinking core.

Red squirrel

Love the smug ferret face. Genius.

John Main

Not many urbanites can tell the difference between a ferret and a weasel.

Especially when it’s a lying weasel telling you it’s self-id-ing as a ferret.

Private Eye writes a lot about politicians doing a “reverse ferret”. Defo some evidence of that recently from the SNP.

Lying weasels doing reverse ferrets. I like it!

robertkknight

Stoker @11:03

I think you just described the SNP as a whole – not just its “Leader”.

Stoker

robertkknight says on 15 July 2023 at 11:23 am: “I think you just described the SNP as a whole – not just its “Leader”.”

No argument from me on that one, Robert. Every last one of them.

Towbar Sullivan

Did you see the Ghost of Christmas Past in The Guardian today? He is concerned about the rise of the ‘far right’ in Spain. I don’t remember him having much to say when Catalan indy was smashed by the Spanish tho…
What a fkn ghoul he is.

Antoine Roquentin

The power of the political-cartoon is inestimable when drawn by a master like Chris Cairns.

Astonished

Stoker and Robert Knight – How right you both are.

Ebenezer Scroggie

What’s the difference between a weasel and a stoat?

One’s weasily recognised and the other’s stoatally different.

Republicofscotland

Nice one Chris, we need a lot more ferrets to get outta the bag and pretty damn quick as well.

Republicofscotland

It cringeworthy noting some of those paying tribute to Winnie Ewing in a memorial service today.

Sturgeon, Yousaf, Forbes etc the SNP sycophants are out in force.

Doroth Devine

Love it – but there aren’t enough ferrets escaping from the sack and besides being too few they are also too late.

twathater

Hear hear Dorothy Devine the lot should just be gathered up, Useless should get in the bag wi nicla and the sacks o shit should be chucked in the piggin canal

twathater

Sorry Chris another belter

James Che

Xaracen.

Sorry for delay in responding to your comment regards the treaty, but life is busy,

However just to inform you that I have replied and I posted it on previous discussion post we held.

Chas

For some unknown reason I decided to have a wee wander over to the WGD site to read some of the comments.

7 SNP politicians are not standing for re-election. The FM and her deputy resigned. The CEO of the SNP and the Treasurer stood down, a sitting MSP has the whip withdrawn claiming the Party is not interested in Independence, police investigations are still active, yet all seems well with the SNP according to the comments! All the other parties in the UK are apparently in a mess.

I did see some comments that ‘Wings’ posts are all full of nutters and whilst I have to disagree with ‘ALL’ it is true that Wings does have it’s fair share.

The other thing that struck me with WGD is that there is not a huge spread of posters and that, similar to Wings, various individuals post umpteen times per day. Some of them post as much shite as the regulars on Wings-Che, Baird, RoS, Geri amongst others.

Nobody in Scotland appears to know what to do for the best. What a mess.

dearieme

“Nobody in Scotland appears to know what to do for the best.”

Happily I do. The single thing that would be best for Scotland is that Rangers and Celtic football clubs, their supporters, and everyone associated with them, should vanish in a puff of blue and green smoke.

sarah

Lovely ferrets, Chris!

Captain Yossarian

Chas – PhilM posted up earlier explaining that financial scandals and graft and all the rest of it are nothing new and that we should all get ourselves used to it.

What I notice is that there’s a malaise, as if everyone in Scotland knows that something is not right. We cannot rely on the Police to tell us what it is and we cannot rely on the civil-servants either.

So, it needs to change and I agree, it is a mess. What I will say though is that Labour may be just as bad. I would think very carefully before jumping into bed with that putrid bunch.

Republicofscotland

So the current Defence secretary Ben Wallace is thinking of standing down in the Autumn, Ben Wallace wants to be the new spokesperson for Nato, after no one wanted the job and the current spokesperson Jens Stoltenberg was forced to stay in the position for another year.

The calibre of Nato spokesperson isn’t that good with Lord George Robertson holding the post, then Stoltenberg and now Wallace wants it.

Wallace was caught out lying that he captured IRA bombers in NI in the 90’s he was decorated for it, but the MoD put a block on any info on the incident, old newspaper articles show that no one was prosecuted.

Wallace will make an excellent spokesperson for Nato.

link to declassifieduk.org

Luigi

Never mind those ferrets, folks. Who’s that weird looking chap left holding the bag, staring like a terrified rabbit frozen in the headlights?

Desimond

@dearieme

You have the perfect moniker if you think the solution to anyones problems is getting rid of 2 football teams.

John Main

RoS says

“no one wanted the job”

I say

BS

John Main

Luigi

That’s the New Pretender, as a result of the flawed and fraudulent election process that left him in charge of Scotland’s pretendy Indy party, and then pretendy FM of Scotland in our own wee, pretendy parliament.

As James Che pointed out, he’s also Keeper of the pretendy Great Seal.

And as others here have pointed out, uncountable Scots are now pretending they never supported or voted for the SNP at all.

Treble pretences all round!

Ian Brotherhood

@Republicofscotland (5.30) –

Didn’t know that about Wallace. Interesting.

I remember him, early days of the blue/yellow situation, being completely taken in by the Russian ‘pranksters’ who called him up as he was in his car, pretending to be the Uk***ian Defence sec or suchlike. Took him ages to twig and he was dishing out what should’ve been secret military intelligence right left and centre. Nothing came of it so far as I know.

Republicofscotland

Main.

This is the third time Stoltenberg (aka the Lord Haw Haw of Nato) has had to extend his tenure, because no consensus between Nato members being found on a new Nato SG and chosen ones rejecting the job such as Mette Frederiksen, Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia was lined up as the next Nato SG but she was relected as PM of Estonia.

Joe Biden wants Ursula von der Leyen to become the next secretary general of Nato.

Republicofscotland

Christ Ian you don’t know the half of it, if you think he’s dodgy check out James Cleverly the Foreign secretary and what he’s been up to. Remember which government he represents.

link to markcurtis.info

Ian Brotherhood

@Republicofscotland (7.01) –

Aye, he’s just a well-dressed thug.

David Hannah

Who lives in Scotland. BBC 1 Scotland. Episode 1. On now.

Our country is dying. The death rate is ahead of the birth rate.

The immigrants are coming in from England.

Indigenous Scots don’t want to stay. Can’t afford to have Waynes.

Angus Robertson’s advertisement campaign is to get foreigners in.

They’ll be no Scotland left.

John Main

RoS

So you’ve gone from “no one wanted the job” to “no consensus being found”.

So my first verdict was right:

BS.

And the only eejits bandying about the “Lord Haw Haw” jibe are, like I wrote, eejits.

45 sovereign nations supporting 404 with cold, hard, cash. I look forwards to iScotland becoming the 46th.

Stuart MacKay

This, link to archive.ph from ABC News says von der Lying didn’t want the job as NATO Secretary General. Stoltenberg’s term was up last year but it was extended. Presumably it’s been extended again as Biden’s favourite still doesn’t want it. How could Biden be be so deluded to think that von der Lying would be up to the task.

For entertainment purposes only: The USA wants an EU leader as Secretary General as NATO will become the military wing of the EU once the USA decides to go after China – the Europeans have already gotten cold feet over that little adventure. That’s why Biden fucked over Wallace and after all the UK did to prove it’s loyalty to the USA. The only question now is whether the EU/NATO splits into east (new) and west (old), with the Poles taken the lead to create the Trimarium, link to en.wikipedia.org. That would be rather handy as once the orcs have dealt with these upstarts NATO will be back to its 1997 boundaries and everyone will be happy.

Ian Brotherhood

No apologies for reposting this link.

Anyone supporting the greedy wee Action Man should be ashamed and the latest virtue-signalling pish from Shirley-Anne Sommerville should be condemned.

No-one’s falling for this pish any more.

21stcenturywire.com/2023/07/13/scott-ritter-investigation-agent-zelensky-part-1/

Robert Hughes

@ ROS

” Joe Biden wants Ursula von der Leyen to become the next secretary general of Nato.”

Creepy ol’ Joe The Sniffer – in his rapidly deteriorating mental condition , probably heard her name as ” Ursula’s fond of lying ” and thought ” my kinda gal , she’ll make a swell head of cabbage , no , pumpkin , no , POTATO , no , damn it …..NATO ” .

If she does it will be another * triumph * for the WEF Wunderkind . The ” Future Leaders ” – Trudeau , Macron , UvdL et al – whose defining trait is an instinct to ban , cancel , slander , punish anyone or thing that opposes their demented * Progressive */Green worldview .

They’re all * products * from the same Auto/Technocratic mould , completely convinced they know what’s best for we less evolved cave-dwellers . Such is their compassion and humanity , they want to save us from all that distressing freedom , relieve us of the burden of critical thought and – in an act of selfless devotion – define reality for us . Truly , we are not worthy

Uncle Klaus must be soooo proud .

As ever , great work C.C

Captain Yossarian

Robert Hughes – Well written. By the way, Starmer and Sarwar are both coming down the tracks towards us and they’re another pair that love themselves.

John Main

Can’t wait for the Orcs to triumph.

That will be a wild day of riotous celebrations for all of us Scots.

Haha, I crack me up.

Seriously though, it’s been 18 months now and still waiting for one of the regular deplorables to explain how the seesaw of freedom works, I.e. How Scotland’s freedom will be strengthened by the destruction of 404. Oh, and now the Poles have to be destroyed too according to SM!

Wha’s like us indeed.

Oh well, I guess I can wait another 18 months.

sarah

O/T: I’ve just finished watching Winnie Ewings memorial service on youtube by IndependenceLive. It had some beautiful solo singing [at 1hr to 1.08] and two excellent eulogies by Alex Salmond [from 39 minutes to 55] and Alex Neil from 1h 11.23.

At 1h 44 Alex Salmond has a word with Humza…

sarah

Unbelievable! Guess who had the gall to go to the memorial service? I wonder if she went to the Kingsmill Hotel gathering afterwards?

Jimuckmac

Pfizer, Ursula von der Leyen and €35 billion corruption

link to moderndiplomacy.eu

Geri

Great cartoon..

There’ll be no party discipline while Rasputin is on speed dial.

Gotta lead to be a leader, not capitulate to the failed exit crew. First action should’ve been to expel the Murrell’s & clean house but that would’ve taken a spine & someone with the sense to read the room.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Geri

Fckn moderation!

What did I say now?! *rolls yes*

Anyhoo, great cartoon. There’ll be no discipline. They needed a leader for that role & everyone knew Dumbza wasn’t it. They backed him lol. He should’ve called Sturgeons bluff once in office & cleaned house from day one.

PhilM

@Captain Yossarian
I don’t think I’ve posted anything for a while and I certainly would never say that “we should all get ourselves used to it”. I ain’t no fan of the Milo Minderbinders of this world.
I might have said that almost all political parties at some point get into trouble over party funding. Anyone who’s paid any attention down the years will see that as a truism and it should not be surprising. The current predicament of the SNP does not surprise me at all.
As for corruption in Scottish public life, I actually want to do something about it but almost no-one else does. There is one organisation I know of set up to restore administrative justice in Scottish public life and all power to them but in practice they are gentlemen amateurs.
It’s not enough to report on corruption and hope that a little sunlight will act as a disinfectant (just read that sentence back and I want to make it clear that I am not pointing the finger at any journalist or blogger here). I am talking about taking the next step. Fighting auld Scottish corruption means political engagement to enact legislation to make it nigh on impossible to escape the consequences of corruption.
One example: retiring from your profession should NEVER mean that you escape investigation for the corrupt acts that occurred whilst in post. I have one profession in mind when I say that and one person as well.
Another would be the introduction into Holyrood of complete legal immunity, parliamentary privilege, for…you know the rest…
Anyway, I could go on and on. It will all come out soon enough, it can’t be stopped now.
Makes gesture of zipping lips firmly tight…

jockmcx

Instead of aiming at the bullseye,too many wading in bullshit!

And if you happen to feel something lumpy under your feet as you try

to move forward,well that’s a scottish politician…that’s what that
is!

It’s not votes those lumps need!

twathater

PhilM it is no wonder we are still not independent and corruption and incompetence from our politicians and betters is rapidly increasing, you only have to look at the support gravy troughers still receive from people who frequent this site and are educated and exposed to the superior investigative journalism of its owner

YET they still promote and support people who have sat immobile and unchallenging to the deliberate sabotage carried out against the people of Scotland by a perverted deviant and her entourage

Cherry , Forbes ,Regan , Fergus Ewing , Angus McNeil WHAT have they done for SCOTLAND that earns them the support of people on this site, NOTHING ,NADA, ZILCH,ZERO, the ONLY thing they have done is enrich THEMSELVES whilst all around them people are struggling , and they KNOW the only way things can and will improve for the people of Scotland is through independence yet they have done nothing to achieve that

Every one of them has BETRAYED Scotland and Scots yet people on here still give them support and promotion

Sturgeon didn’t wreck independence by herself she had the cooperation and sublimation of her drones mentioned above , if any of them had integrity or honesty they would ALL have exposed the fraud sturgeon was , but they ALL went along with the FRAUD because of SELF INTEREST so IMO they are as guilty of trea son as sturgeon is

Alf Baird

PhilM @ 12:10 am

“The current predicament of the SNP does not surprise me at all.”

It shouldn’t really surprise anyone considering its behaviour is predicted for us by established postcolonial theory, in that: the dominant national party ‘leads the people up a blind alley’; ‘the party machine shows itself opposed to any innovation’ to secure independence; the party elite ‘feathers its nest’ and ‘builds up its pensions’; the party’s ‘will to break colonialism is linked to another will – that of coming to a friendly agreement with it’; and, in order ‘to hold back the movement’ and ‘protect the colonizer’s interest’ the party elite (now working alongside colonial forces) has to become ‘an instrument of coercion’.

The key problem remains, which is ‘the peoples lack of knowledge’ about what independence means (i.e. decolonization), why it is necessary (i.e. liberation from oppression), and how it can be achieved, information that is now available:

link to salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com

Ron Clark

twathater 4.02am

Great Post.

Why haven’t the likes of Angus McNeil or Joanna Cherry not spoken out years earlier?

Joanne Cherry only seems to speak out on Gay Trans issues,,,why not have the same convictions for Scottish independence?

Why haven’t these two “rebels” not exposed Sturgeon’s lack of drive for Scottish independence in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022?

Why now in 2023, when the Yes Movement is divided and at the weakest point it has been in since before indy Ref 1.

That is why we have become wary of ALL politicians.

We have lost all the trust we once had in these so called “indy” politicians.

It will take a huge shift in their actions before that trust can be regained.

Stephen O'Brien

SNP has the leader, it deserves, a devolved, second rate puppet!

The party has already reached it’s zenith. The cult of personality is over. There is no messiah!

The last thing, the Scottish electorate needs is to fall into the clutches, of another false prophet! Best recognise the fact, Devolution is where SNP resides.

Self-determination rests with the people of Scotland and the Inner House of the Court of Session. Those who so obviously failed the people, SNP, may defer to Westminster in their defence.

Ultimately, resolution can only be found in court sanction of a referendum, on the future of Scotland.

‘The People of Scotland versus The Scottish Parliament’, therein, lies the answer to the question of self-determination.

Scottish politics will remain a farce until the people of Scotland, take back control.

Willie

I watched the memorial service to Winnie Ewing.

A fine tribute to her memory.

The eulogies by Alex Salmond and Alex Neil were absolutely fitting. They encapsulated so much about Winnie’s life, work and utter commitment over a lifetime to progressing Scotland’s emancipation and the desire to make our country a better place.

And also the eulogy by a grand daughter to her Gran.

But aside of the eulogies, the Christian service replete with some absolutely wonderful hymns and interspersed with some fine music some of which was in Gaidhlig was so very apt.

Only by looking back can you look forward. Life is what we make it.

And so, as we move forward in our ever more hostile and brutal world, we would do well to reflect on the values and commitment of people like Winnie Ewing.

Breeks


Jimuckmac says:
15 July, 2023 at 10:43 pm

Pfizer, Ursula von der Leyen and €35 billion corruption…

Far be it from me to defend von der Leyen, but she is perhaps in the running for scapegoat of convenience.

I believe the West / NATO/ The EU / problems run much deeper.

While “The Press” in the West would have you believe otherwise, the aforementioned “West” has been comprehensively out thought, out played, and outmanoeuvred throughout the events in Eastern Europe, and have been schooled by Vlad the Unmentionable in virtually every discipline from Military strategy and tactics, Diplomacy, History, Economics and Statesmanship.

Pretty much the only lessons heading in the opposite direction, from West to East, are how “NOT” to do things.

While striving to remain objectively suspicious, how can I describe them, “the Non-Western Journalists” of the world have been given an eye opening “education”, where the conduct of Western Journalists has obliged their opposite numbers to recalibrate the dishonesty of the Western media. Such opinions were never very high to begin with, but there’s a very real sense that all rules, standards, and records have been broken. There ARE no rules.

Yes, of course it takes two to Tango, and only a fool would ignore history of Communist era deceptions and disinformation, but personally, I believe the Battle for hearts and minds was conceded when access to reporting was restricted in the West. Pro Ruskian outlets were shut down, while global observers via the internet have been able to witness Western propaganda being both broadcast freely, and typically, summarily demolished with contradictory evidence. And yes, I mean evidence.

Virtually nothing about the crisis in Yookraine has been reported fairly and objectively in West. The defeat probably hasn’t been as one sided as the defeat of Iraqi or Islamist forces by the Americans, but that is a misleading perspective considering the comparative nature of the fighting. Be under no doubt that the Ruskians took on, and roundly defeated, a potent AFU army trained and backed by NATO. To use the graphic vernacular, they didn’t just beat them, but fked them off the park.

There is an eerily familiar echo to the militarism, with all the high tech advanced modern weaponry coming unstuck when confronted with the crude resilience and obduracy of Ruskians fighting for Ruskia. (Before you say it, to them it IS Ruskia). It is objectively the truth that the Ruskian forces are now doing to Leopards what their grandfathers did to Tigers.

The Ruskians know their history. Their adversaries know their propaganda. And I mean, let’s not even mention the Transgender can of worms, and how that shit is going down in the trenches. FFS, let’s not even go there.

Such reverses as the Ruskian Army has suffered, such as the Nordstream 2, the blown up bridge into Crimea, or the Kakhovka Dam being destroyed, absolutely reek of Western “irregular warfare”, in some circumstances bordering on terrorist style suicide bombing. It is war without bravery.

Yes of course, no argument from me, that the drone attacks upon targets and infrastructure in Yookraine falls into the same category of cowardly and terror inducing attack. However, at least to a degree, the Ruskians do seem to be targetting infrastucture and storage capacity in an attempt to interdict NATO weapons and military personel on their way to the front. They’re saving their own lives.

But the point is, (see? I got to it eventually), for all the hubris, incompetence, disasterous strategic responses, and self inflicted damage of Economic Sanctions, not one single head has rolled. Not a single NATO General advisor has been sacked. Not a single bum has been removed from it’s seat. In fact, Ursula von der Leyen is in the running for promontion to become UN Secretary General. It’s actually insane. It’s all a game to these fkg people.

Right now, nobody is listening. Nobody wants to hear it. But perhaps there is a time coming when the world will be thankful for Vlad the Unmentionable’s restraint. Yes, I said restraint and meant it. Restraint that nearly led to him being deposed by is own Warhawks for NOT being aggressive enough. Maybe take a moment to think about that.

“IF” old Vlad got the heave-ho, and let’s speculate Wagner began to steamroller West to finish the job they should have finished in 1945, (their attitude, not mine). Exactly what would you use to stop them? Javelin missiles? HIMARs? Polish Krebs? Patriots? Leopard 2 Main Battle Tanks?

Sanctions? Didn’t work out so great, did they?

The ONLY thing the West should be launching are the long overdue Peace talks they should have started back in the 1990’s instead of their disingenuous Minsk “Agreements”. Don’t wait for the Americans or the Brits to hatch some “cunning plan”. Just do it for the sake of peace. Isolate and ostracise the shit stirrers.

What a bloody mess, and if we’re not careful, there will be a huge price to pay.

Republicofscotland

Jimuckmac.

Thanks for the link, von der Leyen was the German Defence minister for six years (2013/19) it was punctuated with with nepotism and incompetence.

She’s from the influential Brecht dynasty, Ursula is the daughter of Ernst Albrecht, a former German politician who was involved in the Celle Hole false flag operation. Anyway she is like certain Goldsmith’s destined (with lots of help) to rise to important positions she’s a well known Bilderbergers as well.

Republicofscotland

“For entertainment purposes only: The USA wants an EU leader as Secretary General as NATO will become the military wing of the EU once the USA decides to go after China”

Stuart Mackay.

After the fall of the Soviet Union/USSR, Nato had no remit they have to create fear among Europeans, a bogeyman if you like, Nato used DP shells in Bosnia/Kosovo and cluster bomb weapons, it was involved in Syria and Afghanistan, it even has its tentacles into South East Asia, its not as it describes itself a defensive organisation, its a warmongering group of nations led by the US.

link to declassifieduk.org

John Main

Breeks

Stick to your comfort zone and keep knocking out your “Thought For The Day” posts. At least with these, the reader might be able to convince himself you know a smidge about the subject matter.

Two nations, Breeks, a common border, the army of one nation over that border and knocking hell out of the other nation on the other nation’s territory.

Get yer fat, thick, lying, proto-senile heid aroond these facts.

“War without bravery”? WTF would you know?

Robert Hughes

@ Breeks

Right about now , the Drunk Mole Brothers will be furiously marshalling their collection of paper planes , elastic bullets – which never reach their intended targets , instead recoil back and lodge themselves in the club-feet of the shooters – Intercontinental water-pistols and all the lethally stupid weaponry at the disposal , with the Ramones ” Rocket To R****a ” on heavy rotation ,in an effort to shoot down your typically perspicacious comments .

” ONE ! TWO ! THREE ! FOUR ! cretins want to hop some more

Four-five-six-seven, all good cretins go to heaven

There’s no stoppin’ the cretins from hoppin’

You gotta keep it beatin’ for all the hoppin’ cretins “

Republicofscotland

“The defeat probably hasn’t been as one sided as the defeat of Iraqi ”

Good comment Breeks.

However as for the above, it was an illegal invasion of Iraq built on lies and deceit of Western nations, Nato had its HQ on the slaughter in Turkey where it ran the logistics in helping the West carry out the atrocities in the country, even today the US kills in Iraq, General Soleimani was murdered at an Iraqi airbase by the US without any recriminations from the so Hague.

Like Okinawa in Japan the Iraqi’s are getting seriously pissed off with the US and its military/political interference. Only recently a prominent and well respected Iraqi politician gave a speech in which he called for US forces to get out of Iraq.

Interestingly on the lack of any prosecution from the Hague of Blair and Bush over Iraq, the Malaysian courts found both men guilty of war crimes in an absentia trial

Robert Hughes

ROS

” Interestingly on the lack of any prosecution from the Hague of Blair and Bush over Iraq ….”

Of course , politicians in the West live consequence-free lives ; doesn’t matter how seriously n gravely they fuck-up , they never face even the slightest condemnation , never mind what they should face ie ….jail . In fact , not only are there never any penalties for the death n destruction the wreak on other countries , they go on to amass huge fortunes from their crimes , get to pontificate on global( ist ) forums and – most shocking of all – their opinions are sought and listened to when – inevitably – similar situations of conflict arise .

Owen Mullions

From Alex Salmond’s eulogy:
“Winnie never held office but you don’t have to hold high office to achieve something. Just as you can hold office and achieve nothing”.
I wonder who the second sentence was aimed at?

James

Breeks @ 10:43 on the 15th;

Absolutely excellent post, well done.

You had the idiot gammon Main spitting out his cornflakes within minutes.

James

Breeks;
Sorry, make that the 16th @ 9.45am!

Rogerborg

Any updates on that “ticking clock” at Polis Sco’lan’?

Breastplate

John Main,
I understand that it’s important to start your argument from Feb 22 as it’s historically convenient for you just like it’s convenient to dismiss the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government as the catalyst for the present hostilities.

It is no secret that the West, primarily with the Uk and the US, engineered and choreographed the coup for their own interests.

You blab on (selectively) about one country invading another as if the Donbas regions had no right to self determination and no right to ask for help after enduring 8 years of ethnic cleansing according to Amnesty International.

I happen to think it would have been quite simple to allow the people of the Donbas to go their separate ways with a handshake and a pat on the back with no animosity whatsoever but that wouldn’t have suited the West, as they have now admitted the Minsk agreements were only a charade while they positioned themselves for war with Russ ia.

I have no doubt you don’t like these facts and will continue to ignore them, I may remind you from time to time.

sarah

@ Owen Mullions at 11.36: “Just as you can hold office and achieve nothing.”

Sturgeon was sitting there, having had the gall to attend. Do you think that she squirmed at that?

There were several points in both eulogies that Humza should have taken on board including Winnie’s 4 points on how Holyrood should conduct itself. At the end of the service, Alex had a few words with Humza – I hope Humza will shake off NS and revert to listening to Alex instead.

The singer was Julie Fowlis, as I expect everyone but me knew! Beautiful songs, beautifully sung. In Gaelic so perhaps not to the Revs taste though.

sam

In 1991 Ukraine became independent. 92% of voters were in favour.84% turnout.

At that time 75% of Ukrainians identified themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, 25% as Russian.

UK researchers have monitored how people in Ukraine identify over time. More people identified as Ukrainian after 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea. More followed in 2019 when Zelensky said Ukraine wished to join the EU and NATO.More have become Ukrainian following the treatment of Ukraine by their invaders.

Russia’s invasion of 2014 was triggered by the parliament voting to remove Yankukovich as President.

In 2013 Yanukovich’s government suspended trade and association talks with the EU in November and chose to revive economic ties with Moscow, triggering months of mass rallies in Kyiv.

The protests, largely focused around Kyiv’s Maidan square, became violent. Dozens of protesters were killed.

In Feb 2014 the parliament voted to remove Yanukovich, who fled to Russia. Within days, armed men seized parliament in the Ukrainian region of Crimea and raised the Russian flag. Moscow annexed the territory after a March 16 referendum which showed overwhelming support in Crimea for joining the Russian Federation.

The referendum was not recognised by most countries and Russia has denied human rights abuses.

Aljazeera ran an article that likens the Russian occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk to North Korea with the closest control of the population and the use of torture.

In 1944 the Soviet Union deported around 200,000 ethnic Tatars from Crimea to Siberia.

Captain Yossarian

Sarah – “Winnie’s 4 points on how Holyrood should conduct itself.”

I am now pessimistic for Scotland’s future under Holyrood. Whether it’s SNP or Labour, it doesn’t matter. The spirit of optimism and trust has been destroyed. I don’t think somehow that any of us really know how bad it is at Holyrood.

John Main

@Breastplate 12:49

I guess that if in your world, everything is the fault of the wicked west, what’s one more, eh?

Yup, Sleepy Joe & Boris forced P to attempt to annexe 404. The manipulative bastards.

Have to say though, if you truly believe that level of manipulation and string-pulling by our western elites is possible, best give up on Indy.

Maybe your Cringe is running you. If you are convinced that we Scots are powerless, then just for your own self-respect, you are going to have to convince yourself that nobody else has agency either.

Makes a change. The objections of the usual deplorables to the clear case of a sovereign, independent nation trying to repel a vicious imperialist aggressor seems to hinge on their perception that 404 fails the ideological purity test. They may well be a sovereign, independent nation, but they are not a good enough one. And thus they must be destroyed so the Scots Indy movement can dance around their funeral pyre.

Freedom!

But only for those they deem to be worthy.

sarah

@ Captain Yossarian: “..any of us really know how bad it is at Holyrood.”

I think the Rev knows and is doing his best to share the word but not getting help from MSM, as usual.

John Main

“how HR should conduct itself”

It’s a pointless talking shop that had the gall to force an unelected and unelectable nobody on the long suffering people of Scotland as their pretendy FM.

I don’t give a fuck how it conducts itself, and I won’t give a fuck until somebody has the guts and simple, old-fashioned integrity to start campaigning for a re-run of the flawed and fraudulent election process that resulted in HY strutting the world stage as pretendy Scottish leader.

It’s a travesty and a disgrace that simply screams out that we so-called Sovereign Scots are so insignificant and irrelevant that they can do anything they like to us.

And we will just suck it up.

stuart mctavish

Sarah @9:55 pm

If they were discussing the potential for scottish sharia to allow stoning of the prosecutors, in addition to keeping attempted rape allegators anonymous, it might help explain the hobsons choice*, from a religious perspective, at next holyrood election.

Ditto, and by extension, the outgoing police chief’s extraordinary claim about racism being rife in the civil service (shortly after his old boss had gotten on her knees to channel John Main/Colin Caeperniks demands to be shown the (cough) money, etc)

Robert Hughes

Epic! Although in truth current circumstances dictate that Nicola Sturgeon, like Ruth Davidson elsewhere, might be by far the best candidate for that job. Different circumstances might have seen a more appropriate role reversal but the silver lining for Sturgeon could maybe be having the recent 2 time hot favourite for UK PM as her lead spokesman/ bag carrier. 🙂

*unless and to extent Douglas Ross can benefit from an infeasible amount of second hand stardust in event Ruth Davidson brings home the rugby world cup.

Northcode

Knowledge, it has been said, is power.

And rhetoric is what gives words power.

So a knowledge of rhetoric equips you, as a citizen, both to exercise power and to resist it:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie.

W. H. Auden 1st September, 1939

The folding of the lie and the undoing of it are both accomplished through rhetoric.

Still not convinced? Let me try to persuade you.

Rhetoric was developed primarily for delivering speeches. Speeches designed to persuade an audience to side with the speaker’s argument.

Abraham Lincoln was a rhetorician, and American Presidents in general have been big fans of rhetoric at least since Lincoln’s time.

I’ve been playing around with speech writing and I thought it good fun to have a former American President deliver one I’ve written as an example in the use of rhetoric.

There are five parts to rhetoric, but for my speech I’m focusing on the second part, Arrangement.

In the Arrangement there are six areas: Exordium, Narration, Division, Proof, Refutation, and Peroration.

Not all of those areas are required in a speech and in my speech I’m only using Exordium, Narration and Division, and Peroration.

So, let’s imagine my speech is being delivered by Barrack Obama. An Obama who, this time, is rooting for an independent Scotland and is addressing a thronging crowd of indigenous Scots up on the hill – the Bannockburn hill, of course.

Bear in mind that reading a speech isn’t the same as watching it delivered by a speaker. Hand gestures, arm movements, head movements, tonal changes, tonal emphasis, facial expressions, and other devices are obviously missing. But if you can imagine an orator speaking aloud the words you are reading it will help give some idea of the speech’s potential impact on a listener.

Let’s set the scene.

It’s a warm summer’s day and the Sun is at full shine. Obama walks up to the podium. He is tall and slim and immaculate in his $2000 Dollar tailored suit. His hair is perfectly trimmed and his smile is whiter than fresh-fallen snow. He lifts a languorous arm and waves easily as if to an old friend. The hubbub dies down. The crowd settles into silent expectancy.

Obama speaks:

Have you ever wondered how the term, Uncle Sam, used as a personification of the federal government of the United States, came to be?

Well, for those who haven’t and don’t know, I’ll tell you. Uncle Sam was a real person; Samuel Wilson. He was a meat-packer from Troy, New York whose company supplied American troops during America’s war with the United Kingdom back in 1812.

Wilson was a descendant of one of the oldest families of Boston through his grandfather Robert Wilson, a Scot from Greenock, a town that, as I’m sure you all know, sits not far west of where I’m standing now. Samuel Wilson was Scottish with a Massachusetts background.

Uncle Sam – named after a Scot.

I, too, along with ‘Uncle Sam’ and thirty two former US presidents, can lay claim to some Scottish ancestry. My maternal great grandmother’s name was Leona McCurry.

But what have I, an American, to do with your national independence?

Are the great principles of political freedom, of natural justice, and of the sovereignty of the people, embodied in America’s Declaration of Independence, extended to you?

Well, actually they are. America’s Declaration of Independence is, to a great extent, inspired by the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath – a document that pre-dates the American revolution by some 450 years.

In fact, the annual Tartan Day celebrations in America – founded by Senator Trent Lott in 1998 – take place on April 6th; the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath.

The Scots were a sovereign people centuries before America as we know it today even existed.

And across those centuries; across the decades and the years, and even now, the Scots have made a disproportionate contribution to the development of civilisation around the world – and indeed were major contributors to the development and prosperity of America.

It is for those reasons that I am pleased to speak to you today in support of Scottish independence, that in some small way I might help repay the huge debt owed by America to the Scots. The Scots whose ancestors came to the aid of a fledgling nation, my nation, to defeat the same oppressor who threatens the continued existence of Scotland today.

Friends and fellow Scots,

Something is happening .

Something is happening in your rural communities. Something is happening in your towns and your cities. Something is happening in Scotland.

From Gairloch to Gretna. From Kirkwall to Kelso. And from Stornoway to Stranraer, Scots are waking up.

They’re waking up to the reality and magnitude of their country’s ruination at the hands of a corrupt few of their fellow Scots. Scots who have betrayed their own people for the imagined patronage of what they suppose are a superior people.

Scots are opening their eyes and are shocked at the sight of what has become of their once great nation. They are appalled at the degenerate and criminal conduct of their puppet leaders, And they are dismayed at the devastation wrought upon their cherished public institutions.

The Scots are waking up to a grim truth; that their nation is nothing more than a colony subject to the whims of a ruthless and callous overlord. A colony not in name, perhaps, but a colony nonetheless; a colonial trick fraudulently couched in the language of friendship and treaty.

The Scots are waking up and they are angry. They are angry at the broken promises and the cynical lies, the greed and the corruption, the endless deprecation and denigration, the cruelty, the depravity, the stupidity, and the careless arrogance of their southern neighbour and oppressor.

Most of all, the Scots are angry at the deliberate and deceitful ransacking of their nation and the arrant contempt their coloniser has for the indigenous Scottish people.

America, of course, dealt with Scotland’s jailer when it was a truly global power. Those days have long since faded into history and now America’s former adversary has little or no real power or influence in the world – even if, blinkered by its delusional arrogance, it believes it still has.

This offers little consolation for the Scots. When the remnants of that former power are your still bigger, belligerent neighbour, camped on your nation’s territory and claiming everything of yours is theirs, the task of decamping them may seem unsurmountable.

But know this, Scotland. The world is on your side, and though that truth might not yet be clear, it is the truth.

The world is on your side because it hasn’t forgotten the grievous wounds your oppressor inflicted upon it. It hasn’t forgotten the despair and misery it caused in its feverish, greed-driven undertaking to steal the wealth of nations. And it hasn’t forgotten what Scotland has done in making life better for many of its peoples.

I look out from this podium and I see anger on your faces, I feel the heat of it rising on the warm air of this hope-filled Scottish summer. I sense its potency; its power to raise a people who have been beaten down back up off their knees.

That the Scots have every right to be angry is incontestable. Their anger is both righteous and justified – righteous in the eyes of God, justified in the eyes of the world.

Just a few short weeks ago King Charles III celebrated his ascension to the English throne by putting on a show in Edinburgh and proclaiming himself, without crown or oath, King of Scots.

To indigenous Scots the King of England’s celebration was a sham; England’s boasted liberty an unholy pretence; its national greatness, bloated vanity; its sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; its prayers and hymns, its preached sermons with all its parades and solemnity, are to the Scots mere bombast, fraud, deception, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to hide the ongoing theft of another nation’s treasures and the subjugation of its people.

For shameless hypocrisy, the King of England reigns without a rival.

At long last, that dishonest veil of friendship and union has fallen away and the deception of Scotland’s unworthy neighbour revealed.

The Scots have woken up. They’ve woken up to the true face of their duplicitous, grasping neighbour. They’ve woken up to discover a thief has been robbing them while they slept.

Now is the time for Scotland to use its righteous anger as the engine of its determination to break the chains of servitude. Now is the time for Scotland to declare to the world its desire to be free of those colonial chains. Now is the time for Scotland to act; to make its appeal for self-determination to a waiting world and abandon the lie of a united kingdom.

The Scots have woken up and they are determined to exorcise an unwanted interloper from their nation’s psyche; to recover their self-assurance and noble spirit after centuries of debasement and humiliation, and to rebuild a Scottish nation free of an imperial parasite.

Now is the time for the Scots to make a stand and reclaim the nation of Scotland as their own.

And when they have done what they must do to ensure Scotland’s survival. When they have as one voice denounced their oppressor. When they have risen again to be the great nation they once were, then America and the world will welcome Scotland’s free and sovereign people back into our global family of nations.

Something is happening in Scotland…the Scots have woken up.

Thank-you, and God bless Scotland.

Speeches to the world made by American presidents generally take specialist speech-writers several weeks to prepare and are proof-read to the last period. They’re tested in front of groups of high-level Whitehouse staff long before they get anywhere close to a podium.

Why? Because words have power, and when you’re the most powerful person in the free world the words you speak in public require careful consideration – or at least they used to,

Oh, and if by any chance Barrack Obama reads the comments on WoS, I hope he doesn’t mind me putting my words in his mouth. Just having a bit of fun, Mr President.

Geri

The farce of the SNP

Candidate one:

Have you been investigated by the police? (Allegedly) Fecked off with over £600k? Lost yer party 70k members? Brought the party into disrepute? Fear not, we at the SNP are here to help. Have a bouquet of flowers, a heartfelt apology & you can keep yer job & yer property allegedly obtained by ill gotten gains.

Candidate two:

Have you had a rammy with an eejit at work that wasn’t your fault? Told a few home truths? Served yer constituents 18 yrs service? Were you Mis-sold an independence referendum? Been made to look a fool by the roaster known as Slater? Well you receive a suspension, yer membership revoked & you must leave the party with immediate effect. You’ve brought shame. We have standards & codes of conduct you know! Feck off & yer not coming back..

Btw, Angus has spoken out. Plan B & even writing to Mayhem for a section 30 himself who passed it on to Mundel to reply to. Also spoken out on twitter as well as various podcasts. Telling us a sec 30 *was for the birds* as far back as 2018 & totally exasperated of repeating the same failed plan hoping for a different outcome. Angus is a keeper, imo. Also ace at handling the media & as far as I know has never fluffed an interview & always has an answer. He should’ve been WM leader – instead we had whiney fckn Blackford for yrs. He’ll make an excellent leader of a political part & a future FM of Scotland, imo.

As for Cherry – well she’s doing it for the women, girls & gay rights at WM & those may not be indy but they are our most imminent threat in the here & now & is smashing it out of the park..

Also remember they’re elected to serve their constituents. Not serve the party with their fcked up policies adopted from another political party by Sturgeon.

Just my bobs worth..

Republicofscotland

The Scottish governments (SNP) quangos fleece the Scottish taxpayer of over £22 million quid in one year (2022).

link to archive.is

sam

Let’s see.

UK**e voted for independence in 1991. 92% for. Turnout 84%.

Percentage identified as ethnic UK**e 75%. 25% identified as ROosh.

Over time, according to research in Manchester Uni those ethnic identifications have changed.

First in 2014. Then in 2019 and since Feb 2022. Many more now regard themselves as ethnic UK**e.Across all regions. Across linguistics.

What happened?

2013: Yanukovich’s government suspended trade and association talks with the EU in November and opted to revive economic ties with Moocow, triggering months of mass rallies in Ki vive.

2014: The protests, largely focused around Kyiv’s Maidan square, turned violent. Dozens of protesters were kissed.

February 2014: The parliament voted to remove Yanukovich, who fled to Roosh. Within days, armed men seize parliament in the Uk**en region of Comeea and raise the Roosh flag. Moocow annexed the territory after a March 16 referendum which showed overwhelming support in Comeea for joining the Roosh Federation.

Judging by subsequent events in territory occupied there might have been just a teensy weensy icky bit pressure on how to vote.

Aljazeera ran a piece on what was happening in where Don Bass and Lew Hansk were occupied. It is like North Korea it said, with the closest of eyes kept on the population. Theft, violins and torcher.

“For almost two years, he was incarcerated and torchered in these “cellars” until separatists swapped him and dozens of other prisoners in 2017.

Thousands of others were torchered and ab used in the “cellars”, according to rights groups and witnesses. The grave human rights abuses make Don Etsk and Lew hansk far worse than today’s Roosh, an international human rights advocate said.

“The cellars where prisoners are held in Don Etsk, and the widespread use of torcher, are among the most obvious human right issues,” said Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group.”

There was no genocide by UK**e anywhere. That is a lie.

It looks to me that UK**e has been ecovering from the effects of colonisation for some time. Some drawn to the East, some to the West and inherited with its freedom a big pile of **it. Corruption, division. now, more united by an ill eagle invasion.

The big increase for support in joining the EU and NATO came in 2019 when Lee Zensky proposed the idea. It was called the Zee lensky effect though some here may call it the Glasgow effect Such is my grip on realty.

John Main

When they have as one voice denounced their oppressor

So many oppressors, so much selective denunciation, when the oppression is deemed “oppressive”, so much looking the other way, when the oppression suits the narrative that is being pushed.

BTW, not everybody shares your high regard for the saintly Obama, Northcode.

In face, given the hype that surrounded his anointing, the subsequent 8 years of non-delivery has tarnished any rep he ever had for good.

sam

Divergent attitudes of Roosh and UK**e to one another is clearly visible in opinion polls. In 2008-2010, during the last three years of UK**e President Viktor Yushchenko’s term when relations were tense following Roosh in vasion of Georg ia on my mind, UK**e attempts to receive a Membership Action Plan at NATO’s Bucharest summit, and an ongoing Roosh-UK**e gas crisis, polls did not show a significant worsening of UK**e views of Roosh. Between 88 and 93 percent of UK**e held positive views of Roosh, with only 6-9 percent espousing negative views.

In contrast, during the same period, the percentage of Roosh holding positive views of UK**e plummeted from 55 to 34 percent. UK**E phobia in the Roosh media peaked during the second half of 2009, when UK**e expelled Roosh diplomats for promoting separatism and Roosh nationalist extremism and President Dmitri Medvedev responded with a threatening open letter to then President Viktor Yushchenko.

In 2010, with the election of Viktor Yanukovych, Roosh attitudes toward UK**e dramatically improved, doubling to a 70 percent approval rating. Yanukovych signed the Khar kiv Accords extending the Black Sea Fleet basing agreement to 2042, and UK**e adopted a ‘non-bloc’ foreign policy and changed its approach to national identity questions such as the Holodomor.

UK**e attitudes toward Roosh were stable until 2013, with positive attitudes ranging from 65 percent in the west to 93 percent in the east. These figures belied allegations of a Roosh phobic western UK**e; only twenty percent of the public there held negative views of Roosh.

Not surprisingly, the major shift in opinion took place after 2014. A major gulf in attitudes rose regarding Come ea, whose annexation was supported by 87 percent of Roosh and opposed by 69 percent of UK**e. In Roosh, both pro-Put it in supporters and anti-Put it in oppositionists like Alexei Navalny and Mikhail Khodorkovsky backed the annexation of Come ea. Seventy-nine percent of Roosh linked that action to the revival of Roosh as a great power and a return to Roosh rightful dominance of the former Sovi 8 Union.

Positive Roosh attitudes toward UK**e once again dramatically collapsed during the Euromaidan, which was portrayed in massive state-sponsored information campaigns as a West ern-backed coup bringing Roosh phobes and fash chests to power.

Beginning in spring 2014, UK**e attitudes toward Roosh begin to massively change—not because of any state-directed propaganda campaigns but in response to Put it in’s millie tary aggression. By mid-2014, positive views of Roosh had fallen to 52 percent. Put it in’s aggression has integrated UK**e and Roosh speakers by bringing the views of eastern and southern UK**es closer to those of central UK**es.

From “The Conversation”

Shug

The thing for me is trying to understand what type of person Nicola was when actually promotes a conspiracy to destroy Salmond or allowed it!!

We all know who did what but the conspiricy is protected by the police who seem to have been involved and it is protected by the courts by silencing any report or investigation.

Why why why would the establishment protect Nicola?

There can only be one reason in my opinion.

Having been in place so long the SNP will now be riddled with plants.

These are people whose job it is to undermine the case for independence, make fools of themselves providing good copy to the BBC and being promoted beyond their ability to insure the maximum level of incompetence is brought fully to bear. The blue haired brigade spring to mind.

I have stil to decide if the establishment is protecting Humza or just letting him tick over to the election when details of the Salmond conspiracy will be leaked causing maximum damage.

George Ferguson

@Shug 4:37pm
I have a different explanation. Nobody was holding the Scottish Government and Nicola to account. Her MSPs,MPs, the MSM and even the Scottish Parliament with their deficient structure and procedural processes. If you want to think about the integrity of the Scottish Parliament think Linda Fabiani. Police Scotland are rightly taking their time in amongst World class diversion and non transparency. The truth will out and people are going to jail. Amen

twathater

@ Geri 2.36pm I presume your response was to my comment regarding Cherry , Forbes, Regan and Angus McNeil, I am aware of all the things that Angus has done and how outspoken he has been at times, but each time he has spoken out he then sat back down on his arse and did nothing, self preservation won out IMO , Cherry opposed prorogation and won then sat back down on her arse , no challenge to the COR or to the sovereignty of Scots, the only times I heard her speak about the GRR the priority was in regard to the threat against lesbains, the mention of females came with less priority
As for Forbes and Regan , Regan at least had her 5 mins of fame before sitting back down after the Useless (not my FM) was IMPOSED improperly and illegally on Scotland
Forbes has no integrity or honesty IMO she is just another neoliberal following the gravy bus

I enjoy your comments and your destruction of trolls but I despise liars and troughers who have sat back and allowed the deviant to sabotage independence causing unecessary pain and suffering to fellow Scots , that is my opinion

highlander

Republicofscotland says:
16 July, 2023 at 9:59 am

von der Leyen was the German Defence minister for six years (2013/19) it was punctuated with with nepotism and incompetence.

—————————

Broomsticks

And Spouse

So watched a TED talk by David Wengrow, an archaeologist who spoke about Tlaxcala, the state city where Cortez stayed and used them in his plan to conquer the lands of the americas. Apparently that city was very egalitarian. Well, the politicians there and the prospective politicians were regularly flogged and verbally abused as a method of reminding them who was in charge.
Just saying!
So Stu and this blog are merely keeping up centuries old traditions. Not the flogging!!

Northcode

I’m posting this brief rhetorical analysis of my earlier ‘speech’ post separately because that post was getting to be on the long side.

Of course my ‘speech’ was deliberately way over-the-top, more of an unconvincing rant really, so that I could highlight how rhetoric is constructed.

All the Scots need to do is vote for independence using some kind of democratic mechanism. Not quite the same thing as the American revolution.

And I’m sure King Charles III isn’t nearly as bad as I made him out to be. I’ll be honest, that little bit in the middle of my speech about him, and England, was nicked.

It was actually part of the peroration of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Fourth of July address. Douglass (1818–95) was born into slavery in Maryland, but escaped to the North and became one of the most celebrated campaigners for abolition. He was having a go at America and its hypocrisy over slavery.

My effort at speech writing uses a number of rhetorical figures including: Anaphora (possibly Obama’s favourite figure), Litotes, rising and descending Tricolon, Alliteration, Personification, and Hyperbole.

It’s constructed like this:

First comes the Exordium. That’s where you make the audience receptive using one of a number of techniques, but mostly just getting your audience to think of you as one of them – hence ‘Obama’s’ references to Uncle Sam and ex presidents with a Scottish heritage and his own Scottish heritage.

Next comes the Narration. Narration is the who, what, when and where. That’s where you lay into your opponent, often with a bit of spin and hyperbole.

Finally comes the peroration. The peroration is where the speaker can really have fun. This is the opportunity to end on a twenty-one-gun salute, to move the audience to tears of pity or howls of rage, to wheel out your grandest figures and highest-sounding words (I think I might have failed here with my effort).

The peroration often uses figures of auxesis (a gradual increase in intensity) and repetition – frequently pulling together words or themes from earlier in the speech. This is where many orators will crank it up a wee bit in the direction of the grand style.

Of course my rhetorical breakdown is at best very basic. It can get a lot more complex and intricate but I’ve given you the bare bones of rhetorical construction.

And lastly, I apologise for my poor attempt at speech writing. I suspect there won’t be much in the way of career opportunities in that discipline for me.

But I hope at least I’ve given some idea of how powerful rhetoric can be and how we should always take the speeches we hear and the literature we read with a pinch of salt – at least until we’re sure of their validity.

Stephen O'Brien

Is there a statute of limitation, for treason?

Does the clock start ticking, from the date of the supposed IndyRef2?

Asking for a friend, of Scotland United.

twathater

@ Northcode 11.09pm TBQH northcode I enjoyed your previous speech irrespective of certain others efforts to demean and denigrate your work,I wouldn’t worry about their criticism I have yet to see any positivity in their comments which is a pity as some of their previous exhortations were bordering on lucidity

Ron Clark

FINLAND have just finished building the largest cruise ship ever built. (Icon of the Seas).

It’s massive, yet here in Scotland we can’t even complete the construction of a car ferry for the Ardrossan to Brodick sailing.

What the fuck has happened to our once proud shipbuilding tradition?

link to unilad.com

Oneliner

@Northcode

I’m sure that I spotted a hendiadys in there.

Chas

Northcode

No need to apologise for the length of your previous post.

Very few, like me, would read to the end, anything that you produce.

Robert Hughes

@ Northcode

I agree with Twathater’s comment below your last , above .

Your fictional speech is a fine one . Too fine to ever be uttered by the collection of feeble mirror-gazing narcissists that comprise this generation of politicians

John Main

@twathater 2:23

You sure? Even NC later admits it was an “unconvincing rant”.

Maybes change yer handle to “twatneutral” then.

Dorothy Devine

Northcode, ignore the smug entitled bastard.

Dorothy Devine

I wonder who’ll claim the title of “smug entitled bastard”

Mac

Quite hard to find this so the sound is not the best but check out the insanity that is being taught to kids and the madness that is going on in schools as a result.

Of course Nicola gets an honorary mention…

People identifying as cats, other animals etc etc…

youtube.com/watch?v=pPz4f-Q7D3g

Mac

The fact they are trying to destroy this guy Andrew Tate (Assange style, Salmond style) is very telling, very revealing.

This is a guy who should not even be on their radar but he clearly is considered a serious ‘threat’.

Listen to what he has to say…

youtu.be/uAbERCAe9iI

He also provides a lot of clues and insights into what has been done to young men (in the west) and more importantly why, and what ‘woke’ ideologies are really intended to achieve…

Stephen O'Brien

It’s safe to say, the Scottish National Party has played a significant part in undermining any faith the Scottish electorate had in politics.

As far as I’m concerned, immanent elections have absolutely no bearing on pursuit of self-determination, by the general public.

Politicians are now almost irrelevant, except for future court proceedings, as respondents to legal action for misrepresentation of our right to self-determination!

Geri

**What the fuck has happened to our once proud shipbuilding tradition?**

Tories.
War wankers.

When the rest of the world was making a killing with the lucrative explosion of luxury liners Thatcher had Scotland churn out death & destruction ships.

Northcode

@twathater. Thanks, tawathater. Much appreciated.

@Robert Hughes. Thanks for the compliment, Robert. Again, much appreciated.

@Dorothy Devine – 🙂

The paratactic @Oneliner – at least one Hendiadys, and a couple of Transferred Epithet, too.

Northcode

@twathater.

Apologies twathater. Just noticed I misspelled your moniker.

This:

Thanks, tawathater.

Should be this:

Thanks, twathater.

Luigi

“What the fuck has happened to our once proud shipbuilding tradition?”

Sadly, folk have now been asking that question for 50 years. The tories (red and blue) decided to put everything on a shiny, globalist future, where everything of any value was outsourced around the world (cheap labour) and London made a mint out of laundering the world’s dirty money. Easy money. Home manufacturing was too much like hard work. Investment? Why bother? Worked a treat – for a while.

Well, now with the Brexit hangover and BRICS kicking in, we are in a very different world. Globalism is off the agenda (some deluded fools think it is still going to happen) and even the dirty money is going elsewhere. Those countries that sold off the family silver in a hurry and banked everything on a global economy (essentially the west, led enthusiastically by the US and it’s UK puppet) are now seriously screwed. Folk’s this ain’t going to end well. Empires rarely go quietly.

Shug

I have to believe the Salmond trial will be exposed for what is was in the run up to the next election and there will be much focus on:

Woman H and an issue of perjury and the pay off.
A failed Scottish legal system that appears to be protecting the guilty and persecuting anyone writing about it unless from an authorised position.
A media that failed to challenge and the reasons for that failure will be presented as ‘but they told us!!’
The SNP senior team (all MPs MSPs and officers) who could see what was going on and stayed silent.
Senior officers in the government who failed in their responsibility will of course have been following their minister’s instructions.

Now I don’t expect our unionist media to expose all of this but I do expect they will focus on the conspiracy and failure of the SNP, making it entirely the fault of the party making it a dead parrot in the election.

I see no point in supporting the party any further as they have been well and truly goosed by Nicola and her team incompetents.

What a sad end to a great party

MaryB

Ron Clark
6.44
The Finns honed their shipbuilding skills through paying WW11 reparations to the USSR. Then they made their name building ice breakers and developed Nokia mobile phones. Now it’s cruise ships. They’re independent and they’re imaginative.

Ian Brotherhood

According to Col Douglas MacGregor the blue/yellow deaths are at 350,000 with a similar number severely injured, platoon-sized desertions/surrenders, mounting anger against Zelen*** etc.

Supporting this evil dwarf and his minions is unforgivable. Angus MacNeil should get that flag off his Twitter handle immediately.

21stcenturywire.com/2023/07/16/col-douglas-macgregor-odessa-and-kharkiv-fall-under-russian-control-and-authority/

Beauvais

Northcode

Your didactic posts on rhetoric are always a welcome feature of Wings.

I wonder, could you do one about adianoeta? I learned that term recently. It would be good to have your take on it sometime. Of course you may have posted about it before.

Stephen O'Brien

Humans Yousaf’s garden shed submersible, offering folk the opportunity to view the wreck of IndyRef2. All that’s required is an ‘X’ on the ballot paper, for SNP.

Any takers?

Got a feeling, it could be a one way ticket.

John Main

@Ian Brotherhood says:17 July, 2023 at 12:14 pm

Not long to go now before Scots Indy can really break out the celebratory bunting, eh Ian?

Do make sure do tell us beforehand exactly what we will all be celebrating, there’s a good chap.

Some of us Sovereign Scots can’t quite see how our own Scottish independence and freedom from colonialist imperialism is going to be enhanced by a stunning victory for oppressive, militarist, colonialist imperialism just the other side of Europe.

Fucks sake, some of us are so dense we can’t even see how Scottish aspirational EU/EFTA membership is helped by an existentialist threat to the EU. What are we like, eh? Too fucking stoopid, honestly it’s embarrassing that you will have to step in and teach us.

So, Ian, me auld mucker, take some time out from your celebratory dancing around the funeral pyre of yet another sovereign, independent nation and culture to explain why we must all join in.

Northcode

Beauvais @12:25pm

Thanks, Beauvais. Nice of you to say so.

I will lose no time in reading your next post. 🙂

Adianoeta, as you obviously know, is a figure that has an overt meaning and an unsuspected hidden one beneath. It’s an interesting figure and I haven’t written about it on WoS before, although I might have used it in some of my posts.

Happy to oblige you with my take on it if you want. I’ll put something together soon.

Beauvais

Northcode

Thanks Northcode. I shall look forward to reading it.

Brian Doonthetoon

From “YOURS FOR SCOTLAND A blog by Iain Lawson”.

Reproduced from an Iain MacWhirter article published originally in The Times. It deserves a wide audience in Scotland as the process described in my headline still has some distance to travel.

link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com

It’s a rather fine, perceptive piece of writing.

John Main

@Brian Doonthetoon says:17 July, 2023 at 1:26 pm

That’s a great article, thanks for the link.

sarah

@BDTT: I have just commented adversely on McWhirter failing again to point out that the allegations v Alex Salmond were perjured e.g. the “attempted rape” of a woman who wasn’t there!

Robert Hughes

Ian B .

As anyone who watched the Scott Ritter video you posted the other day SHOULD realise , Agent Z is so mired in corruption and deceit , his role as the US’s glove-puppet means he will sacrifice any amount of his countrymen – indeed the totality of the country – in the desperate effort to preserve his own worthless skin . Even if it means bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war , or over that brink .

People need to remember , the likes of Agent Z , the ” tactical nuclear strikes ” fantasists in and around the White House / Pentagon and the rabid profit-at-any-human-cost dogs of the MIC are psychopaths ; morally , spiritually & psychologically depraved beyond remedy . They must be stopped before they precipitate the destruction of us all

sam

“According to Col Douglas MacGregor the blue/yellow deaths are at 350,000…”

According to Reuters,reporting on the above claims, “Reuters has not been able to independently verify the documents and some countries, including Roosh and UK**e, have questioned their veracity, while U.S. officials say some of the files appear to have been altered…

…According to an assessment collated by the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency, Roosh has suffered 189,500-223,000 total casualties, including 35,500-43,000 ki*led in action and 154,000-180,000 wounded.

UK**e has suffered 124,500-131,000 total casualties, including 15,500-17,500 ki*led in action and 109,000-113,500 wounded in action, according to the document entitled “Roosh/UK**e – Assessed Wombat Sustainability and Attrition.””

Sorry to disappoint you, Ian, the UK**e soldiers’ deaths are not as high as you thought.

As to the “evil dwarf”, Lee Zensky, he seems well regarded in his own country. One wonders if his countrymen and women know more about him than others.

Political scientists from Manchester University (who know nothing, of course, being academics) are quoted in The Conversation.

“In their recent book, The Ze***sky Effect, political scientists Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale argue the president emphasises the unity of all UK**e and expresses a civic national identity that is shared by the overwhelming majority of his fellow citizens.

This means that UK**es’ main loyalty is to the state rather than to a region, a language or a religion. According to an August 2022 opinion poll carried out by the Ki viv International Institute of Sociology, 85% of UK**es consider themselves to be citizens of UK**e rather than being from the eastern or western regions of the country, Roosh speakers or UK**e speakers, Christian or Jewish.

But while Ze***sky’s emphasis on UK**e civic national identity helps to explain his ability to connect with his own citizens, it does not explain the popularity of UK**e’s president abroad. Here, too, shared values are the key…”

sam

The brotherhood gathered together today united in their belief of the pure evil of UK**e should first check their sources.

In particular, the past convictions of Mr Ritter, much admired by some.

John Main

@Robert Hughes says:17 July, 2023 at 1:54 pm

They must be stopped

A clarion call to action from Bob. Postpone cooking your tea until this is sorted out.

Mystifying why Bob is addressing this to me auld mate Ian though. Hardly any time since Ian was posting on here about the need to keep all intentions quiet from now on.

Don’t tell them they are going to be stopped, Pike!

John Main

@sam says:17 July, 2023 at 3:20 pm

it does not explain the popularity of UK**e’s president abroad. Here, too, shared values are the key…

An innarestin assessment.

Maybes shared values are the key to the usual deplorables’ continuing rabid enthusiasm for the Orcs too.

Luckily, their warped and perverted shared values are a million miles away from the shared values of the majority of decent Scots. Decent Scots may well be split approx 50-50 on Indy, but we can all recognise another Sovereign Nation fighting mightily for its independence, freedom, culture and language against a vicious, colonialist, invading, occupying empire.

And thus we can nearly all be on the right side of history with this one.

Usual deplorables excepted.

Republicofscotland

Robert Hughes.

The Black Sea Grain Deal ended today, well the last grain filled ship left yesterday. The reason the deal wasn’t extended beyond today was that the West/UN/EU/404 didn’t live up to the end of the deal so the RF cancelled it.

Soon the price of grain will rise, however more worryingly millions of people living in Third World nations will feel the pinch, or even starve as they won’t be able to meet the new costs of buying the grain.

Unsurprisingly whilst the deal was in motion the the majority of the grain found itself on its way to Europe, and not to countries that needed it more.

Ian Brotherhood

@sam (3.20) –

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Ian, the UK**e soldiers’ deaths are not as high as you thought.’

If that’s the best you can do you must be a bit thick as well as a nasty-minded cunt.

Captain Yossarian

Brian Doonthetoon – I read that and it is very encouraging. I have been dealing with Holyrood for the past 7-years, the Labour Party, and they are putrid. They were described so by a very mild-mannered guy who was an expert in the field of law. So, the Labour Party is putrid and I accept that. Are the SNP better, or are they even worse? What I have noticed over the past 10-years is that Parliament has been hollowed-out until there is nothing left. Questions are asked and never get answered. Ditto the civil-service (some of whom are no better than gangsters), the law and the Police. I really hope we are turning a corner here and the Police lead the way. I regret saying this and I know that I am inviting opprobrium in return, but Scotland was described as resembling a banana republic several years ago and that was not far wrong.

The answer? All at Westminster agreed that Boris Johnson was a liar and corruption was starting to hang about him like a bad smell. So, they dumped him. They didn’t defend him or send him flowers or anything like that, they just sacked him. That method of cleaning out the stables should come here too.

If only Salmond had stuck around these past 10-years, this would have been an entirely different country and I don’t think many would disagree with that. The trouble is, it takes a long time to build a strong bedrock of support, but once you start to lose it, and lose trust and public confidence, it is very, very difficult to get it back again.

Anyway, if anyone thinks the Labour Party are the answer to anything – forget it. Perhaps Holyrood as a respected institution just needs a bullet in the head?

John Main

@Ian Brotherhood says:17 July, 2023 at 4:20 pm

If that’s the best you can do you must be a bit thick as well as a nasty-minded cunt

Aw Ian, brave face an that.

And remember hearts and minds. You’re trying to convert decent Scots to supporting the genocide of a free and independent nation and culture. Simply spouting expletives won’t do that.

And if you’re worrying your bunting won’t keep, dinna fash, that stuff is good for years.

Robert Hughes

sam says:
17 July, 2023 at 3:53 pm

” The brotherhood gathered together today united in their belief of the pure evil of UK**e should first check their sources.

In particular, the past convictions of Mr Ritter, much admired ”

Don’t know if yr being deliberately provocative or just thick , but there is no ” brotherhood ” and fuck-off with conflating the people of Uk rain with the targets of our condemnation ie …the despicable leaders they’re currently cursed with .

And good try with the attempted smearing of Scott Ritter , dig a little deeper and you’ll find the truth of what happened to him for being a thorn in the side of the Deep State . Besides which , shooting the messenger is the last resort of those who can’t face facts

John Main

@Republicofscotland says:17 July, 2023 at 4:13 pm

Ah ken fit ye mean RoS. One hard-done-by imperialist aggressor invaded and is destroying a former colony, and it’s the former colony’s bastarding fault it can’t get its produce shipped to market through the ports under the control of the imperialist aggressor.

It’s a crying shame how the MSM twists everything to make it look like the imperialist aggressor is at fault.

BTW, couldn’t you do with shedding a few pounds? Free up a bit grain for those countries that need it more?

Republicofscotland

“You’re trying to convert decent Scots to supporting the genocide of a free and independent nation and culture”

You have no moral high ground on this one.

You mean like the Azov, Kraken and Aider battalions were doing in the Donbas for eight years whilst the UN looked on and did nothing.

John Main

@Captain Yossarian says:17 July, 2023 at 4:29 pm

Perhaps Holyrood as a respected institution just needs a bullet in the head?

The incumbents of HR knew that the election process that put HY in place as SNP leader was deeply flawed and mired in illegality.

But the incumbents of HR went ahead and elected him FM anyway.

By doing so, they showed that they don’t care about the law, they don’t care about appearances, and they don’t care how the reputation of Scotland looks to the rest of the world.

They don’t care about handing ammunition to Scotland’s enemies, because any legit politician facing and negotiating with HY will know he is a fraud, and thus in a weakened position.

And they certainly don’t care about us ordinary Scots.

Sadly, I think the root of it all is that we ordinary Scots don’t care, and from that, everything else flows.

Ever seen any #NOT MY FM banners? Naw, me neither.

twathater

@ Ron clark “What the fuck has happened to our once proud shipbuilding tradition”

Having worked as an outside contractor in most of the Scottish shipyards I can tell you that most of them suffered from the greedy bastard attitude of “Give us the fuckin money owners” but don’t ask us to reinvest profit in new tooling to make the job easier and quicker,and when they tried competing with other countries their cheaper labour costs, lower wages and conditions, lack of health and safety won out and the large yard owners just shut the doors

sam

“Ian Brotherhood says:
17 July, 2023 at 4:20 pm
@sam (3.20) –

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Ian, the UK**e soldiers’ deaths are not as high as you thought.’

If that’s the best you can do you must be a bit thick as well as a nasty-minded cunt.”

Deflection there, Ian. Just telling you the figures you quoted can’t be verified by a reputable source and also are not regarded by US Defence Intelligence as accurate.

If you are not going to acknowledge the possibility of being wrong why mention the UK**e losses in the first place and why the petulant reaction rather than admitting the possibility of being wrong.

It’s not so long ago that you were thanking me for providing you with information. Now I provide you with information that looks to be more accurate than that in your post and you go ape.

@Robert Hughes

“fuck-off with conflating the people of Uk rain with the targets of our condemnation ie …the despicable leaders they’re currently cursed with”

Generally populations do understand their leaders pretty well and it is indisputable that now that particular leader has approval ratings of over 90%. A reasonable person might think it useful to take account of those ratings and the wisdom of the population in deciding what is “despicable” about that leader.

Mr Ritter does have convictions. According to the BBC, “Scott Ritter has been found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor following an online sex sting operation.

Ritter, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, had a sexually graphic online chat in 2009 with an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl named Emily.”

He is your source. The only one?

Dan

Sigh, still waiting for John Main to link back to just one of his previously expressed concerns about Yoocrane on the run up to and during Euromaiden.
He seems to spend so much time posting on the internet pontificating about stuff it shouldn’t be too hard for him to provide a solitary link back to a comment around 2014 and long before “the war” kicked off when people were being blown to bits.
C’mon John, Show me a comment!

Alf Baird

Luigi @ 11:44 am

“What the fuck has happened to our once proud shipbuilding tradition?”

The fact is we do not educate enough of our own people to design and build ships, or much else it seems. For many years our universities have mostly employed and educated people from other countries and cultures to do such things elsewhere, and to do most of our thinking for us.

Captain Yossarian

John Main – I’m inviting more opprobrium but I can remember a succession of Secretaries of State for Scotland. Each was honest and accountable and that meant the civil-service worked, law worked, education, health and the Police all worked fine. In fact, they worked better than they worked in England. When that strong leadership is removed, and replaced by 10-years of Sturgeon and Swinney, all the things that we rely upon become tainted by bias and cannot be trusted any longer. We will see what the conclusions from Operation Branchform are, but a continuation of the last 10 years of Holyrood malfeasance will not be acceptable to many, probably not to most of us. It has totally failed, hasn’t it.

PacMan

O/T

Don’t usually bother with social media but I’ve been spending a lot of time on YouTube lately.

I’ve noticed quite a few adverts from the Scottish Labour branch highlighting. They are not promoting their policies but highlighting the SNP financial investigation and other scandals involving the party.

I have no doubt that these adverts will be on other social media platforms.

Leaving aside the glaring fact that the unionist branches in Scotland can lean on their London paymasters for financial assistance that the SNP can never dream of having, it looks like Labour is going all in to get more Westminster seats here.

It is hardly surprising that the SNP Westminster MP’s are doing their best to either find alternative careers or finding ways of keeping their seats.

Ian Brotherhood

@sam (5.08) –

I hope for your sake that you are a 77er or suchlike because if your comments today are sincerely held personal opinions then you are sick in the head.

I shouldn’t have called you a cunt and it won’t happen again – I won’t be responding to anything else you post here and would be grateful if you could have the decency to do likewise, unlike Main who grabs every opportunity to proffer his unsolicited bilge.

Republicofscotland

The red tory branch manager in Scotland Anas Sarwar makes up a pathetic excuse to defend his millionaire knight of the realm boss.

“ANAS Sarwar has made a ridiculous excuse for Labour’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap – claiming that changing the policy would risk a repeat of the disastrous Liz Truss mini-budget.

The Scottish Labour leader claimed there were fears of repeating the financial mismanagement imposed by Truss and then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which saw inflation rise, the pound collapse and a hike to mortgage interest rates.”

Alf Baird

Captain Yossarian @ 5:31 pm

“I can remember a succession of Secretaries of State for Scotland. Each was honest and accountable and that meant the civil-service worked, law worked, education, health and the Police all worked fine”

Aye, Younger, Rifkind, Forsyth and Lang etc were aw jist pure deid brilliant, so they were! Mass unemployment, de-industrialisation, discounted giveaway of public utilities, financial deregulation, the PFI scam, poll tax, and plunder of our resources “all worked fine” – as did Westminster’s propensity to drag Scotland into its numerous illegal and costly military conflicts.

The Scottish Tories deceit and abject failure led to Scotland becoming a ‘Tory Free Zone’. New Labour’s Devolved assembly offered Scots a wee bit hope but as we’ve now discovered its just a colonial administration which hauds doun the people and protects the colonizer’s interests, a hauf wey hoose at best.

Fowk cannae ser twa maisters and that is the SNP’s downfall in trying to manage a colonial administration run by civil servants and institutions whose allegiance is to an anti-independence British state; the outcome of that ‘model’ is entirely predictable.

sarah

I don’t have much hope, any, that Operation Branchform will result in prosecutions of those who deserve it. COPFS has permitted prosecutions of clearly innocent parties – Mark Hirst and Alex Salmond, for example – and I can’t see them suddenly pursuing justice instead.

Iain MacWhirter’s article refers to rumours within the SNP about charges being imminent in Operation Branchform case. Can anyone else see a change of heart in COPFS? I hope for but doubt it.

John Main

@Ian Brotherhood says:17 July, 2023 at 6:09 pm

unlike Main who grabs every opportunity to proffer his unsolicited bilge

Early onset senility Ian? Maybes get that checked out?

Or just lies. Alert readers will note the first post of unsolicited bilge from yourself at 12:14 today.

Completely irrelevant, completely off topic, completely unsolicited.

And complete bilge.

Anyways, Ian, me auld pal, I’m glad its the lying thing and not the senility thing.

Maybes keep to Rev Stu’s rules in future, eh? There’s a good chap.

sam

“Ian Brotherhood says:
17 July, 2023 at 6:09 pm
@sam (5.08) –

I hope for your sake that you are a 77er or suchlike because if your comments today are sincerely held personal opinions then you are sick in the head.”

I shouldn’t have called you a cunt and it won’t happen again – ”

Still deflecting I see. Not willing to admit the possibility of being wrong?

You’ve called me in your previous post “thick” as well as a cunt. Now you say I’m sick in the head, conditionally of course. I have to be believing what I post. Or be a 77er. Is that ageist?

Would you withdraw the remark about being “sick in the head” if I said I don’t ever mean what I say?

Did you know that phrase, “sick in the head” is identified in medical research literature as derogatory towards people with mental health problems? Use of it among the young is an obstacle towards those with mental health problems seeking help. Youngsters get such derogatory language from the media and parents.

You only mentioned deaths of soldiers. You might have mentioned deaths of civilians. Of course, those are overwhelmingly from one country.

And you were only interested in one country?

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified a total of 9,177 civilian deaths as of June 30, 2023. Furthermore, 15,993 people were reported to have been injured. However, OHCHR specified that the real numbers could be higher.

John Main

One great thing that Anas Sarwar has going for him is that the election that made him SLab leader wasn’t a fraud.

At some point I expect every opposition party campaigning in Scotland to “remember” that HY only got where he is due to that flawed and fraudulent SNP leadership election process.

That was the behaviour of a party with a collective suicide wish.

Captain Yossarian

Michael Forsyth’s mother, or maybe his sister, was a school teacher and so took an interest in education and managed it in conjunction with the Councils and Unions and kept it on a steady course. Same for policing, law, the health service and all the rest of it. That’s the point I was making. Now, after 25-years of devolution, it is all in a mess. As far as PFI goes, England dropped that 6 or 8 years ago. Scotland still uses it to build everything (some of it quite badly, I would add). That’s why we are constantly complaining we don’t have enough money. A lot went wrong pre-Devolution and I agree with you on of that, or most of it, but a lot has gone wrong in the last 25-years here too, hasn’t it. It’s been a missed opportunity – can we agree on that?

Republicofscotland

What the English parliament thinks of the UN’s 24-SCD.

“Defying the UN over the Falklands

The UN’s 24-country Special Committee on Decolonisation — its principal body addressing issues concerning decolonisation — has repeatedly called on the UK government to negotiate a resolution to the dispute over the status of the Falklands. In its latest call, in June 2019, the committee approved a draft resolution “reiterating that the only way to end the special and particular colonial situation of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) is through a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom”.

The British government consistently rejects these demands. Last year, it stated:

“The Decolonisation Committee no longer has a relevant role to play with respect to British Overseas Territories. They all have a large measure of self government, have chosen to retain their links with the UK, and therefore should have been delisted a long time ago.”

In 2016, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf issued a report finding that the Falkland Islands are located in Argentina’s territorial waters.”

Yet.

“Between 1966 and 1968, the UK government had been engaged in secret negotiations with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falklands.

The BBC revealed in the late 1990s that the two countries signed an agreement in 1968 stating the UK “will recognise Argentina’s sovereignty over the Islands from a date to be agreed” while “duly taking into account the interests of the population of the Islands”.”

The first link makes a compelling case that the UK, though the English government makes the final decisions is a rogue state.

link to markcurtis.info

link to declassifieduk.org

Captain Yossarian

Sarah – I understand that at least one other outside agency is involved, so it’s not just Police Scotland and the COPFS. I’m therefore optimistic that the correct arrest(s) will be made. I have absolutely no inside knowledge by the way.

craig murray

I know Scott Ritter he is a very good man. Like so many critics of the Establishment they set him up with sexual accusations. He was not interacting with a minor, he was interacting with a FBI operative playing the role of a schoolgirl.
Scott maintains he knew it was an adult and it was a roleplay game. I believe him. What is not in dispute is that it was in fact an adult.
The honey trap operation occurred after Scott, a US Marine officer seconded to be a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, blew the whistle on the lies about Iraqi WMD. The parallels with Assange, Salmond and other threats to the Establishment are obvious.
I don’t agree with much of what Scott writes on Russia but that is irrelevant.
I also know and like Iain MacWhirter, but he has rather been pandering to the Spectator and Times since leaving the Herald. He knows very well the truth about the Salmond accusations but elides this in his work for new paymasters.

Viscount Ennui

I was trying to think of the image that captures the Sturgeon years best.
For me it is a toss-up between:
1. Painted-on windows on the Glen Sannox
2. Classroom doors cut-off at the bottom (Have tried to find out through FOI if any actually were but “ScotGov does not keep records”).
3. A cardboard box for newborn babies box (that does not work).
We desperately need Branchform to seer these into the electorate’s conciousness to ensure that no Sturgeon-like cult is ever permitted to form again.
Well, at least not until the next time.

Alf Baird

Captain Yossarian @ 7:11 pm

“but a lot has gone wrong in the last 25-years here too, hasn’t it. It’s been a missed opportunity – can we agree on that?”

Most Scots suffer from a lack of opportunity (hence also historic excessive out-migration) and are unable to benefit from their own resources. A colonial country and people is always under-developed for that is the inevitable result of its economic plunder and cultural obliteration. It matters less whether external rule is direct or indirect, the main decisions are still made elsewhere.

John Main

@Republicofscotland says:17 July, 2023 at 7:19 pm

The relevance of your ferret onto the sovereignty of the Falkland Isles eludes me, but maybes you could answer a simple question.

Has the bastarding English government told Argentina that they regard the Falklands as English and that any attempt to attack them will be met with a nuclear response?

Haha, just my little joke.

Here’s a wee quote from those bastarding liars at Wiki:

“A referendum on political status was held in the Falkland Islands on 10–11 March 2013. The Falkland Islanders were asked whether or not they supported the continuation of their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom in view of Argentina’s call for negotiations on the islands’ sovereignty.

On a turnout of 92%, 99.8% voted to remain a British territory, with only three votes against. Had the islanders rejected the continuation of their current status, a second referendum on possible alternatives would have been held. Brad Smith, the leader of the international observer group, announced that the referendum was free and fair and executed in accordance with international standards and international laws.”

Sovereign Falklanders, eh? No, don’t tell us, it’s the wrong sort of sovereignty, or it fails to pass your self-imposed ideological purity test.

Sovereign Falklanders right enough. They wouldn’t see you or others who think like you in their road.

Captain Yossarian

Alf – About 50% of my family support the SNP. I’m fairly ambivalent about it all to be honest. That said, I enjoy the posts here and some people have good ideas which, in my opinion too, centre around energy – oil, gas, wind and all the rest of it. My party used to be Labour but they are no good and so I am content to be vote-less. I remember the Salmond years at Holyrood and I was content that the country had a course, or a direction, and there was a basic honesty about him. If that had continued for another 5 or 10 years the Nationalist movement may have been unstoppable. There is an undeniable underlying force and justification for it but, in my opinion anyway, the Nationalists we have now aren’t really Nationalists and that’s the real tragedy.

Scots engineers have always worked overseas, I was one of them, but that is just because we trained so many and the money overseas was better. I wasn’t chased abroad because I was starving or couldn’t find work here. I used to work with another Scot on the edge of the Sahara in Africa. He used to play golf in the sand after work every day.

Sven

Viscount Ennui @ 19.42

Perhaps the image of the “private” former First Minister calling a press conference to announce that she was making no comment and that “she was convinced she had committed no offence”.
Laugh ? I was almost tempted to go out and stand a round for everyone.

Dan

@ Viscount Ennui

IIRC btl commenter Shug had collated a list of stand out failures.
But aye, that door saga was certainly a fine example of the epic fuckwittery we’ve witnessed.

Nicola Sturgeon has defended plans to cut the bottom off some school classroom doors to improve ventilation as “basic common sense”.

link to bbc.co.uk

I’m not First Minister (yet), but I like to think (without listening to input from a crapshoot of taxpayer funded bullshit special advisors) that I could garner more support from across the Scottish public for my basic common sense idea which was to just open the fucking doors a bit during times when increased room ventilation was required.

Building regulations acknowledge door aperture sizes are important for a myriad reasons, and they really shouldn’t be fucked with off the back of some batshit crazy lunatics’ suggestions.
Door dimensions marries well with my other headline manifesto position of ensuring that no less than 90% of slices in a bread loaf should actually fit properly in a toasty machine.

Elect me and no Scots bairns will endure drafty classrooms when there are no colds or flus doing the rounds, and no Scots will suffer the pain of third degree molten cheese burns from improperly sealed toasties.

Republicofscotland

Main.

“Argentina’s government is celebrating a decision by a UN commission to expand its maritime territory in the South Atlantic Ocean by 35% to include the disputed Falkland islands and beyond.

The Argentine foreign ministry said its waters had increased by 1.7 million square km (0.66 million square miles) and the decision will be key in its dispute with Britain over the islands. Argentina lost a brief, bloody 1982 war with Britain after Argentinian troops seized the South Atlantic archipelago that Latin Americans call the Malvinas.

The UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf sided with Argentina, ratifying the country’s 2009 report fixing the limit of its territory at 200 to 350 miles from its coast.”

I found this reply to above by the English government very enlightening in a hypocritical sense.

“The British government says islanders cannot be forced to accept Argentinian sovereignty against their will.”

Putting Scotland’s position aside for a moment with the above in mind, one wonders what the Chaggossians would make of that statement

Of course UK oil companies are making a fortune from oil found in Argentine territorial waters, under the guise that the Falkland island are cough cough British.

link to polarjournal.ch

Breastplate

Sam,
I think you will find that the Russ Ian government will lie to its people, the Uk rainian government will lie to its people and our Governments (both of them) will lie to us.

So how do we find out the truth? Unfortunately the answer is we don’t, the best we can do is collect information from different (unconflicted) sources as sources funded by governments and their agencies are compromised by said funding.

I have already explained this to John Main but it suits him to believe what he wants and I’m guessing if you’re willing to believe liars, you will certainly have a comfortable world view through your rose, white and blue coloured spectacles.

I noticed that you replied to my facts the other day about country 404 by typing off somebody else’s opinion on the matter, I often find that this is the crux of any problem we have as a country. Too many people buy an opinion from one of the daily rags or adopt an opinion from the BBC or whatever channel is spewing forth the government narrative, all because they can’t form an opinion themselves.

Of course, you are entitled to believe whatever you want but I would like to ask you one question.
In what way would your life be affected by the people of the Donbas making their own decisions?

I can’t envisage any negative effect in my life at all through their independence but if they were left in peace in 2014, there would be a lot less dead people.

Perhaps you see things differently or perhaps you have to phone a friend first to get an opinion.

Breastplate

Craig Murray,
Yes, it always seems important to some to play the man and not the ball.
“Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

Breastplate

John Main,
Regarding the Falklands, in the event of Scottish independence, would they continue to see themselves as British? I have no idea.
Surely this would create a bit of an identity crisis unless British actually means English.

John Main

@Breastplate says:17 July, 2023 at 8:47 pm

If we accept there are two sovereign nations, sharing a common border, then one of these nations is a good bit over the shared border on the other nation’s territory.

It “suits me” to believe this. Not only is the lie in the MSM, it is in all the “alternative” news sources the deplorables like to cherry pick from when it suits them.

It “suits me” to believe that borders should be respected as an ultimate principle of international relations, not the least because I dearly wish for the borders of my own nation, Scotland, to be respected and held sacrosanct.

BTW, bad timing with your post. Immediately above, RoS is claiming that what the inhabitants of any area of the world’s surface actually want is irrelevant. Tough for the Dons U Bass, eh?

To be fair, tough for the UK rainy folks too, but fortunately, we can discount every wibble RoS writes, as if taken seriously, it would end all hope for Scots Indy. Tough for us, eh?

Not to mention world peace.

Anyways, as you pointed out, it’s all lies. The cluster munitions, the nuclear sabre rattling, the mass graves, the drone attacks, the existence of the big bridge, the sinking of the big ship, the n@zis, Wagner, dead kids, rescued cats, those fake refugees in Sue Ryder, all lies, lies and more lies.

That’s what it “suits you” to believe isn’t it:

the Russ Ian government will lie to its people, the Uk rainian government will lie to its people and our Governments (both of them) will lie to us.

So how do we find out the truth? Unfortunately the answer is we don’t

Ouija boards, clairvoyance, has their time finally come? Try them out and report back, BP.

John Main

@Breastplate says:17 July, 2023 at 9:02 pm

Maybes they would see themselves as rUKainian?

To be pronounced very carefully when in some parts of the world!

sarah

@ Captain Yossarian at 7.23: “…at least one other outside agency is involved, so it’s not just Police Scotland and COPFS. I am therefore optimistic that the correct arrest[s] will be made.”

I pray that your optimism is justified. They have got away with so much when I have thought their come-uppance was inevitable that I hardly dare hope any more.

Brian Doonthetoon

Hi Dan.

RE: Toasties. I rediscovered the joy of the ham, cheese and onion toastie a number of months ago. Now I have a couple every week.

I use Lidl’s “Simply Pan Loaf” or whatever its real name is. Because most pan loafs are taller than the space allocated in the toastie machine, what’s the point in paying a premium price for bread, when a half inch of the toastie extends outside the toasting area, and has to be cut off and binned or thrown out for the birds, if you’re lucky enough to have a piece of ‘green grund?

When did the bread producers decide that the toastie machine manufacturers were up the wrang dreel?

A slice of bread should still fit within the confines of the toasting area, as originally designed. Bread producers are playing with our brains.

Brian Doonthetoon

That’s a good point, Breastplate.

Alf Baird

Captain Yossarian @ 8:26 pm

“Scots engineers have always worked overseas”

Personal anecdotal experience is interesting. However, historic census data and research on industrial development suggests Scotland ever since the union has imported a significant proportion of its professional and managerial class.

An example today would be the fact that around half of teachers in Scottish schools in a number of council areas come from rest-UK, mainly England. Another illustration would be that only around 1-in-10 academic staff employed by Scotland’s ancient universities are Scottish.

Mass unemployment (and state incentivised out-migration of skilled workers) was of course a long-term feature of a weakened (i.e. under-developed) Scottish economy until relatively recently.

A ‘cultural division of labour’ continues, and this seems inevitable so long as the indigenous Scots language is deemed ‘invalid’ and not taught to future generations of Scots, and elite universities offer very limited places to indigenous Scottish students, whilst all the best jobs remain advertised outside Scotland in the metropolitan capital press.

John Main

@Dan says:17 July, 2023 at 8:38 pm

open the fucking doors a bit

Ah Dan, your naive innocence is oddly touching, even if it does hint at what must be your advancing age and lack of contact with modern day Scottish reality.

When was the last time you were in a Scottish school, in the Central Belt, say.

These places are locked down, often with campus police officers on duty, because otherwise, some knife-wielding or gun-toting maniac could burst in and start slaying anybody within reach.

You can’t just open the fucking doors and leave them open.

Stuart MacKay

Agentina’s submission to the UN can be seen here, link to un.org

I’m not sure what areas were covered previously but if the map on page 6 is now the accepted limits then the area covered is simply eye-popping. The bigger picture is definitely oil, fishing rights and minerals. The Falklands, even if they keep their right to self-determination is simply a drop in the bucket. Rather like Vatican City sitting in the middle of Italy.

As for the islanders allegiances? Well, I was there in the early 2000s and they are more British than anyone living in the UK. There were a few immigrants after the war, keen to show solidarity and make a new life. However original islanders, being farmers, are as independent-minded as you care to imagine. Argentina, if it ever got its act together could treat them like Alaska – leave them alone and write everyone a cheque, every year and still have vast mounts of money left over.

A very interesting development. I wonder how this will pan out over the next few years and possibly decades.

Mac

Salmond’s speech on Winnie. Starts at roughly the 39 minute mark.

youtube.com/watch?v=KGlnX89nzR4

What a class act Alex Salmond is.

Mac

The True Radical Spirit Of Scotland Hall of Fame.

Robert Burns
Winnie Ewing

Alex Salmond is a certainty after he leads us to independence.

Robert Burns absolutely was… that poem is scathing, people should read it again and for him it was historically ‘fresh’ in the memory like we can’t imagine. Read the poem, it is brutal.

Alf Baird

Stuart MacKay @ 9:51 pm

“The Falklands”

Importantly, the UK Decolonization Committee (C-24) did not accept the referendum result on the island (to remain part of Britain) because it did not take account of the descendants of the indigenous population that had been evicted by the British. Which suggests we need to consider then the descendants of 3-4 million displaced Scots since British rule was imposed in Scotland.

James D

Alf, The Falklands had no indigenous people. The only people who have any claim to that title are the current residents. Having visited the islands a couple of times, i must say that they are welcome to them.

twathater

@ captain yossarian 5.31pm can I ask when you first arrived in the uk as I am 72 years of age and have lived all my life in Scotland and have no recollection of those honest and decent Scottish Secretaries from the unionist parties you speak of, every last one of them was a Scots but who desperately wanted to be english, so much so that they even returned £1.5 billion pounds to the english treasury because they couldn’t find anything worthwhile to spend it on in Scotland

My family were all liebour voters who believed that labour represented the working class and maybe in the early years they actually did, but I can assure you speaking from lived experience of 72 years they BETRAYED the working class
sturgeon and her fellow depraved perverted deviants have wreaked havoc on Scotland’s governance for the last 9 years but that pales into insignificance when compared with the decades of labour corruption in Scotland and the ROUK and the destruction wrought on the whole of the uk by the greed driven amoral tory incompetents
It is the rose tinted all our yesterdays guff so beloved of the english working classes that allows these parasitical bastards to get away with muuurduur

David Hannah

I’m reading the news about the commonwealth games in 2026 being cancelled by Australia.

We need the commonwealth games to return to Glasgow.

It would mean everything.

Someone get Alex Salmond on the phone.

David Hannah

Get Alex Salmond the phone. If he reads this. We need the Commonwealth Games to return to Glasgow.

We should step in and take the bid. It would help the national pride for an Independent Scotland.

Sturgeon of course only wanted Eurovision.

We need the commonwealth games to come back to Scotland. Let’s make it happen!

A summer of Independence as big Eck said. We need to promote our national identity to the world. Again!

David Hannah

link to bbc.co.uk

Come on Scotland. Let’s make it happen. Someone needs to suggest hosting the 2026 commonwealth games.

I can’t think of a better man than Alex Salmond. The East end of Glasgow is a better place today. Sir Chris Hoy. Remember him? We some new national heroes. This country needs to get off its hands and knees.

Bring the commonwealth games home.

Captain Yossarian

Twathater – I’m younger than you but not by much. I’m also erstwhile Labour and my point is that we had an opportunity which was presented to us by the creation of Holyrood and by Salmond’s term there, which proved that it could work and be a success. What I am saying is that has been squandered and it will take 2 or 3 generations to get that trust back again. £1.5B may have been returned to Westminster unspent, and I have heard this story before and so it is no doubt true, but more than that just disappears annually from Holyrood and that is what is currently under Police investigation.

John Main

@Alf Baird says:17 July, 2023 at 11:36 pm

did not take account of the descendants of the indigenous population that had been evicted by the British

There was no indigenous population. Nobody was evicted.

we need to consider then the descendants of 3-4 million displaced Scots

Sure, tell WM to pay them reparations [chuckles].

Tell you what though Alf, I’m losing sleep over the Declaration of Arbroath, you know, that bit where it boasts that we Scots had thrown out the Britons and completely destroyed the Picts.

An iScotland could defo be on the hook for reparations to their descendants, and what if our ancestors actually missed a few Picts? Could be millions of the beggars by now. The mind boggles [chuckles].

Haha, Alf, just my wee joke.

Now tell me, what’s your excuse?

Robert Hughes

Craig Murray @ 7.25pm

Thanks for giving more detail on what really happened to Scott Ritter , and why .

For the record , I don’t take anything ANYONE says as gospel .

I make judgements on the veracity/plausibility of what I read based on what I know of the person writing , their background and the accuracy of their previous writing eg did what they say turn out to be the case , or not ? Intuition and Reason also play their part .

Ian Brotherhood and I are referring specifically to Scott Ritter’s recent two-part video – Agent Z…… in which he lists known facts regarding the * mysterious * political ascendancy of Z , his equally * mysterious * vast wealth , foreign and U property portfolio , his * coincidentally * prescient role in the movie ” Man of the People ” among other details of this shady character’s life .

Elsewhere , on Stephen Gardner’s podcast , he interviewed an ex-CIA officer who said it was common knowledge in * certain circle * Z was a regular cocaine user . Obviously , I have no way of knowing if this is true ; but it could account for the latter’s erratic behaviour and verging on megalomaniac self-inflation .

Despite all that , he’s being presented to the Western public as some cross between Che Guevara ( minus the Communism , of course ) and Francis of Assisi . Jesus in ( wrinkle-free ) combat fatigues . A lot of effort has went into the laundering and ironing of this image .

Meanwhile countless 1000s of humans die and the world edges closer to catastrophe .

Robert Louis

Oh dear, what is the point of britnat Labour?

All the polls show folk hate brexit and want back in the EU, I mean just wait until you need a vise to enter the EU as of next year. Yet what is Labour’s policy? Do the same as the Tories. By next year, the demands to return to the EU will be massive.

Then to top it off, their is the hated and frankly evil rape clause for benefits. Another easy political win for Labour, but No, ‘SIR’ Keir thinks it is a very good idea. Same as the Tories.

So, there we have it, Labour with those two policies alone could win a landslide, and likely win massively in Scotland by rejoining the EU and getting rid of the rape clause. Two easy, easy open goals for ANY serious opposition party to win with. I mean, I am no Labour supporter, but honestly, any kid could tell Labour how to win a landslide at the next election with just those two policies.

And, just imagine if the Labour policy was to return to the EU, the Tories would rip themselves apart in the run up to an election.

Am I the only person to notice that SIR Keir Starmer is a feckin Tory? Seriously, just what is the point of britnat Labour?

Ian Brotherhood

@Robert Hughes (7.11) –

Hear hear.

‘Conspiracy theories’ have a strange way of becoming fact after a while. 20 years ago since David Kelly was killed and the cover-up continues. The architects of the invasion of Iraq still enjoy immunity whilst making public pronouncements about civil liberties, ‘freedom’ etc.

Not one of the visitors to Epstein’s island has been arrested. The new film about child/sex trafficking, ‘Sound of Freedom’ is being suppressed by msm despite huge public interest.

This interview is a long watch but riveting. Caviezel looks traumatised.

link to youtube.com

John Main

@Robert Hughes says:18 July, 2023 at 7:11 am

Good post, Bob.

I don’t know how you missed the uncanny ability “Agent Z” has to make people who are opposed to him dance like puppets on a string.

Heck, he even made P order a military annexation of a neighbouring country. It’s like “Agent Z” has inherited all the Machiavellian powers of Rasputin.

Meanwhile countless 1000s of humans die and the world edges closer to catastrophe

Aye, and just think how easy it would be to make it stop. All “Agent Z” has to do is tell P to withdraw his army back to his own country. But naw, “Agent Z” just keeps on with the death and destruction and because of his control of P, P is powerless to make it stop.

John Main

@Robert Hughes says:18 July, 2023 at 7:11 am

Good post, Bob.

I don’t know how you missed the uncanny ability “Agent Z” has to make people who are opposed to him dance like puppets on a string.

Heck, he even made P order a military annexation of a neighbouring country. It’s like “Agent Z” has inherited all the Machiavellian powers of [redacted cos the name of the Russti Mad Monk triggers moderation].

Meanwhile countless 1000s of humans die and the world edges closer to catastrophe

Aye, and just think how easy it would be to make it stop. All “Agent Z” has to do is tell P to withdraw his army back to his own country. But naw, “Agent Z” just keeps on with the death and destruction and because of his control of P, P is powerless to make it stop.

Breeks

Robert Louis says:
18 July, 2023 at 7:17 am

…, any kid could tell Labour how to win a landslide at the next election with just those two policies.

I agree, so in what kind of world does this make any sense?

Well, in the UK kind of world, where politics is just a soap opera / puppet show, a token government, where it’s the “Establishment” framing the options where the proletariat are “allowed” to exercise their democracy upon.

You have a “choice” between red and blue, but all that is at stake is the colour of ribbon on the rosette, nothing more. You think you influence power? Dream on fool.

The UK Establishment only ever allows choices to be made when it already holds both ends on the string. Democracy is their weapon and instrument of control, yet we, the poor deluded people, insist it is ours.

The people are the rabbit, the Establishment is the stoat, and democracy is the dance we are all mesmerised by.

Dan

To show a degree of balance and some much needed credibility whilst pontificating on matters of “war”, you’d think John Main would at least throw in the odd post highlighting his concern for the people of Yemen…

Breastplate

Come now Dan, if it’s not on the news it’s not happening, obviously.
Anyway, Russ ians bad!! Bad, bad bad!

Stephen O'Brien

The words ‘Directive’ and ‘Stirling’, strangely absent from the comments.

Must be a serious contender.

I look forward to the big reveal!

Mac

Very interesting indeed from Scott Ritter… British bodyguards.

rumble.com/v2zs3r0-a-scott-ritter-investigation-agent-zelensky-part-1.html

John Main

@Dan says:18 July, 2023 at 8:58 am

To show a degree of balance and some much needed credibility whilst pontificating on matters of “war”, you’d think John Main would at least throw in the odd post highlighting his concern for the people of Yemen

Sure Dan, just as soon as you lead from the front with the “balance” thingy by calling out the other posters on here who like to bring up The War from time to time.

And as for the “credibility” thingy, have you read the posts from the usual suspects who are cheering on the destruction of free, sovereign nations on Europe’s eastern borders?

For the avoidance of future doubt, I don’t give a flying fuck about Yemen. I don’t expect that to change until such time as the leader of that country, or any other country in its vicinity, decides to threaten me and you with imperialist aggression backed up by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Jeezo Dan. Whataboutery virtue signalling. Is that your best shot?

Republicofscotland

“Importantly, the UK Decolonization Committee (C-24) did not accept the referendum result on the island ”

I’m not surprised by that Alf, Britain/England is no longer a member of the C-24.

link to un.org

Mind you consecutive English governments have been propping up some of the most nasty regimes around the world, where democracy is a dirty word, whilst interfering in other nations political business.

England’s current king has met with the dictators that Westminster props up at least 120 times. Of course King Charles III isn’t/wasn’t the only royal linked to these evil oppressive regimes.

link to declassifieduk.org

link to declassifieduk.org

Republicofscotland

They’re toppling like dominoes in a row now.

“ANOTHER member of the SNP frontbench team in Westminster has announced they will not seek re-election next year.

Philippa Whitford, the MP for Central Ayrshire and the party’s Scotland Office spokesperson, has said she will not contest the next General Election.

Whitford becomes the eighth SNP MP to announce they will stand down ahead of the upcoming Westminster election, expected in the later months of 2024. “

Ian Brotherhood

Part Two of Scott Ritter’s Zelen**y expose.

link to youtube.com

Stuart MacKay

Sort of for fun/mischief.

How many adult, human, female MPs or MSPs (whether they identify as such or not) have long hair compared to Maggie Chapman hair (short cropped – so you don’t have to gird your loins and google her)?

The reason I ask is that I’m wondering if the Madame Maos’ of the gender identity movement (let’s be nice and not call it a cult) all have certain traits which either make them susceptible to recruitment or define how zealous they are in pursuit of the goals of the collective.

Personally I think all of this is simply a mind-virus, that got kicked off by #metoo and is burning it’s way through the stock of college-educated, middle-class, female, professionals and by inference, the candidate pool for political parties keen to give women 50% of the blame for why everything is falling apart. That means the whole thing probably has a ways to go unless the proportion of said college-educated, middle-class, female, professionals elected to parliament is bumped up to 100% and the collapse of civilisation is triggered. After that sensible people can step in and rebuild.

Terribly sexist? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Women, in general, haven’t been holding the reins of power for very long. There must be a learning curve.

Stephen O'Brien

Imperialism has kept Scottish independence in its box. I’d guess that American influence, deeply permeates Whitehall, when it comes to maintaining right-wing control over troublesome lefty Scots.

In any event, SNP comply, happy to continue to play politics in their kindergarten parliament.

Whatever is announced this weekend, in support of Scottish sovereignty, it must contend with the most powerful and underhand western nations on the planet!

Utilising Scots Law, our representatives, need to be every bit as sleekit, in order to expose the truth and deliver self-determination.

Holyrood and Scotland, has everything to gain, when our own people, are truly in charge of the nation.

Dorothy Devine

RoS, that’s peculiar – I was just wondering where the lady was as I expected her to challenge the gender/science denying ordure and never a whisper did she make.

Geri

Philippa Whitford

Another fkn disappointment.

Fully paid up member of the woo cult. Girls amputating their breasts & stripping their bodies of future motherhood & men with dicks in women’s crisis centers. She damn well knows it’s prepping for pedo central.

Shocking from a breast cancer specialist & healthcare professional. A great loss to indy because she was an excellent orator but as the saying goes: Go woke, go broke.

Another *be ready for indyref2 any moment* knowing fine well it wasn’t happening.

They’ll all flee now. They’ve feck all to try punt at the next election & they know it.
What are they selling? A section 30 request…ZZzzzzz!

Geri

Dorothy

There were shades of her going to speak out, defending Joanna was one – then she was demoted & put back in her box & came out again (obviously after some re-education, Stepford wife reboot) to defend the woo with gusto (one of the daily politics shows)

Disappointed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Especially given her profession. If this mass sterilisation program was happening in some 3rd world country – she’d be on a plane to campaign for it to stop.

Dan

John Main says:

“…deplorables…usual suspects…

I notice you’re channeling your inner Andy Ellis these days!

The thing is, I don’t feel the need to tediously call out or interject on nearly every btl post / point in an attempt to denigrate other posters by diminishing their input, which is effectively trying to censor differing views and information on a range of subjects some may want to consider to help develop their comprehension on such matters.
That you choose to operate the way you do highlights your unwillingness or inability to consider anything other than your own perceived reality.
But in #Westworld stylée: Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?
There is no way you can be so up the curve and fully informed on the myriad constantly evolving factors that are applicable to specific local, national, and international issues affecting all the countries on this planet. Jack of all trades, master of none, comes to mind.
But if you actually think you are some stellar know it all then why not grace us dumbies with a few examples of hardcore in depth proposals (backed up with evidence to justify and prove their worth) that would actually help resolve any of the number of the issues you continually post about.
Like the overweight and unfit supporter sitting on the sidelines slagging off the athletes on the pitch, it’s easy to heckle, but a whole lot harder to actually step up and do better.

John Main

@Geri says:18 July, 2023 at 11:54 am

If this mass sterilisation program was happening in some 3rd world country

Erm …

Naw, forget it, it’s fine.

Shug

So far I am only seeing good people leaving and the dunderheads are staying put

John Main

@Dan says:18 July, 2023 at 12:16 pm

“…deplorables…usual suspects…”

These are quite mild and anodyne criticisms compared with some of the vituperative abuse that is frequently posted on here.

Once again, I am disappointed to see your selective outrage on clear display.

“Like the overweight and unfit supporter sitting on the sidelines slagging off the athletes on the pitch, it’s easy to heckle”

It’s a nice picture, but who exactly are the athletes on here? It’s all overweight and unfit supporters shouting and bawling at each other. If there’s a serious game going on somewhere, we’re not playing. In fact, I don’t think we are even watching it.

To stretch your analogy to near breaking point, we’re certainly not watching and commenting on the same game.

Towbar Sullivan

I see John Main, a sort of Scottish Col Blimp, has resurfaced again. A year ago he was telling us all ‘the rouble will be rubble’, Ru’s economy will collapse, Ru is running out of missiles, shells, drones, chips …and he’s still spouting shite now.
NATO? A club for ex-imperialists and failed empires – all the way from the Belgians to dear old Blighty. And this is what he has the horn for…yet he claims to be an indy supporter.
LOL

Sven

Hard to believe, however I’m reading that our incomplete Ferry (the two vessels combined were originally to cost some £97 million, now estimated to come in around £300 million) has been refused a Maritime & Coastguard Agency Certificate as a staircase, or stairs connecting decks, is too narrow.
Stuart Ballantyne’s offer to construct proven design Catamarans must surely be looking even better now, well, to anyone except Ms Sturgeon and her former administration.

Ebenezer Scroggie

RoS claims:

“Of course UK oil companies are making a fortune from oil found in Argentine territorial waters, under the guise that the Falkland island are cough cough British.”

Ho many barrels of oil does RoS believe have been sold in the British Falkand island EEZ?

Many? Any?

What kind of “fortune” does that make in the real world?

The Falklanders had their Referendum too. A bit like the similarly “once in a lifetime” here in Scotland one in which less than 38% of the electorate voted to remain British.

The big difference is that the vote in the Falklands to remain British was 99.8% (with a 92% turnout) to remain British.

That’s in the real world, not in the imaginations of the Separatistas who believe that there is no such thing as the United Kingdom.

Ebenezer Scroggie

Correction:

I meant to say that less than 38% of the electorate vote to leave the United Kingdom which was created by Scots for the benefit of Scots.

sam

“Part Two of Scott Ritter’s Zelen**y expose.”

Some might see an unfortunate phrase here.Is this the Scott Ritter, caught on webcam by the polis (pretending to be an an underage girl),
mass ru baiting?

John Main

@Towbar Sullivan says:18 July, 2023 at 1:15 pm

A year ago he was telling us all ‘the rouble will be rubble’, Ru’s economy will collapse, Ru is running out of missiles, shells, drones, chips

Naw, Wilson, I wisnae.

Ye’re deluded, or a liar.

Geri

If oil was so pish why don’t they just leave it in the ground?

Pack up, go home, take yer drilling elsewhere..give it away for free to a neighbour.

Said no country, ever.

Republicofscotland

“The big difference is that the vote in the Falklands to remain British was 99.8% (with a 92% turnout) to remain British.”

“Importantly, the UK Decolonization Committee (C-24) did not accept the referendum result on the island ”

“Ho many barrels of oil does RoS believe have been sold in the British Falkand island EEZ?

Many? Any?”

“In a previously unpublished letter, the former chancellor Norman Lamont said the revenues from Falklands oil should go to the British government, not the Falkland islanders.

“I have no doubt that in the event of a major oil find, tax revenues should accrue to the UK exchequer.”

I doubt any English government would’ve given a toss about Falklander’s and their fate, if oil and mineral assets hadn’t been discovered in and around the region of the islands.

“Declassified documents show that Britain has long been interested in oil around the Falkland Islands. In 1975, an energy department official wrote: “Our ministers are very interested in the possibility of exploiting offshore oil around the Falkland Islands.””

Dan

@ John Main

That response is soo Ellis like it’s uncanny. C’mon, can you not show a bit more deviation in character. 😉

I am not outraged as you try to suggest though. That is you slipping into the lazy binary antagonistic modus of trying to divisively box everything into extremes so commonly found on t’internet.
I’ll give you that I was selective though, and I selected you because you are unique in the way you operate on here in terms of regularity of posting, and general input to discussions.
Because you comment so much on so many differing subjects, it highlights your contradictory positions.

One minute you are expressing concern about the plight of certain people and sovereign states, but in your next post you “don’t give a fuck about” other people and states enduring similar situations.
You sate you are concerned about ongoing migration into Europe, yet you don’t seem overly concerned about the geo-political shit playing out that causes the instability in countries that forces the displacement of folk who then become those migrants.
Can’t think of anybody else posting on here that displays such openly blatant hypocrisy or lack of consistency in the positions they take on matters being discussed.

Anyway, got to go as stripping brake calipers and reconditioning them for an extensive brake overhaul on my car for its MOT. Prefer to rebuild my own stuff as bought recon stuff costs money and is far too often shit which sometimes means you’re lucky to get a few years out of components due to low quality materials used in replacement brake pistons, rubber seals and protective dust boots.
I’ve made a simple electrolysis bath to put my calipers and carriers in to chemically kill and remove the corrosion build up, then they will be rebuilt using OEM seals and the pukka red grease.
Can’t see my electrolysis bath setup using more than a couple of Kwh (so about 70 pence of leccy) to properly recondition all the calipers. Interestingly the electrolysis bath process is effectively a hydrogen gas generator.

Republicofscotland

On the English government approach to immigrants but not those from 404.

“THE United Nations have issued an extraordinary statement condemning the UK Government for being “in breach of international law” with its newly passed Illegal Migration Bill.

It comes after Tories in the House of Lords crushed a series of renewed challenges to key aspects of the bill by peers.

In a night of drama on Monday, the Conservative frontbench saw off five further changes being sought by the unelected chamber to the Illegal Migration Bill, including modern slavery protections and child detention limits.

The reforms are a key part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s bid to deter people from making hazardous Channel crossings in small boats.”

“On Tuesday, the UN stepped in. Issuing an extraordinary joint statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk (below) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi condemned the UK’s actions.”

“This new legislation significantly erodes the legal framework that has protected so many, exposing refugees to grave risks in breach of international law,” Grandi said.

“In addition to raising very serious legal concerns from the the international perspective, this bill sets a worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow, with a potentially adverse effect on the international refugee and human rights protection system as a whole,” Turk added.

“I urge the UK Government to renew this commitment to human rights by reversing this law and ensuring that the rights of all migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are respected, protected and fulfilled, without discrimination.

“This should include efforts to guarantee expeditious and fair processing of asylum and human rights claims, improve reception conditions, and increase the availability and accessibility of safe pathways for regular migration.”

Anyway the immigration barge/prison arrived in Dorset England today it can detain/lockup 500 immigrants it arrived from Italy.

No such hardships for 404’s especially in Scotland where they lived on a luxury cruise liner with an inhouse doctor and dentist, not to mention having their very own SNP government minister in Ian Gray.

The 404’s have all been housed now in Scotland or close to it, no such luck for many of the indigenous folk with thousands of Scots still waiting to be housed.

Republicofscotland

The most important article you’ll ever read on where the citizens of the world stand, we are in the dark.

link to consortiumnews.com

James Che

When we have finished studying and analysing the mess of a Westminster legislated pretendy parliament put up to Scotland with all the appointee employees, who sale in her while punching big holes in the Bottom like a deliberately self inflicted titanic crushing its way through the Scottish democracy,

We will get some grit and self esteem an just walk away with no negotiations, just a total reset.leaving the bait clickers to rescue the other half.

Ebenezer Scroggie

There is ZERO income from oil in the Falkland EEZ. None. Not a drop.

“It’s Falkland’s oil” is as idiotic as the SNuPties’ slogan “It’s Scotland’s oil” was in the 1970s.

In the case of the Falklands there is no oil production.

In the SNumPtie case, there is no oil that belongs to the UK because it is all belongs to the oil companies who own it.

There was, briefly, a nationalised oil company, based in the land of Weege.

BNOC was created by Wedgie Benn as a socialist programme. He gave them Dennis Thatcher’s Burmah Thistle oilfield as a birthday present. I remember in 1976 the entire staff, all five of them including Lord Kearton and his secretary, visited us in Leith where we were preparing for the installation of the Greythorpe One jacket in the Thistle field.

A decade or two later there were 3,000 Weegie bureaucrats in the HQ, all of whom had self-promoted by cramming underlings under their own arses to rise up the food chain.

BNOC was a disaster, rather like the troughers, and in pretty much the same way, as the toughing arseholes of Holyrood and the Leith Numptorium.

Nationalisation of a country’s entire oilpatch, unless done very intelligently as the Noggies did, is always a recipe for disaster. See Iran in 1952 as an example of what can go wrong.

Chic Murrays's Chiropodist

Ebenezer Scroggie @ 4:31PM

Thatcher is dead – get over it.
You may have tried to forget but we didn’t. We had a party and a very fine one it was too 🙂

Away back to Surrey with your greed and ignorance, Mr Scroggie

James Che

Ebenizer Scroggie,

If not the territory of Scotlands Oil or Oil belonging to Scots why did Westminster need to hide the MacCrone report Scotland and Scots?

Dorothy Devine

Geri, I hadn’t heard of her defence of Joanna Cherry , I just heard her silence – which disappointed me greatly.

Dan

Got to love supporters of the UK union questioning the potential abilities of a future self-governing Scotland to manage… well manage just about anything better than the current setup under London Rule.

link to businessforscotland.com

John Main

@Republicofscotland says:18 July, 2023 at 2:40 pm

There’s a complex debate to be had on:

1 Legal asylum routes, versus illegal asylum routes.

2 Seeking asylum in the first safe country, versus traveling through umpteen safe countries to get to a preferred country of convenience.

3 Penniless desperate people, versus wealthy people who can pay far more than the legal ticket price for an illegal journey.

4 Temporary refuge (there’s a war on) versus permanent settlement for economic purposes (dollar, dollar).

5 Skilled people versus benefits claimants.

6 Defenseless women and children versus angry young men.

7 Sharers of the culture and values of the refuge country, versus hostile and uncompromising enthusiasts for their own alien, incompatible, frankly stone age, culture.

It’s all complicated and nuanced, eh RoS? It needs a grown up debate and it needs it soon (actually, it’s years overdue), cos the knowledgeable grown ups think there’s going to be millions coming here.

Every single year

As a result of wars, climate change, etc. etc.

50 DegC in southern Europe. Makes you think, eh? How long would you stand it before you were on the move?

twathater

@ Dan 2.34pm as you say, so Ellis like in thought and self delusion , in the face of his constant negativity and denigration about everything proposed by anyone I have asked him to put forward his own positive suggestions that may propel us faster toward independence, the answer came called evasion, positivity is a foreign concept to him, he is only interested in his own opinion
His arrogance and disdain towards others is designed to create animosity

Stephen O'Brien

Intentionally or not, the devolved Scottish Parliament (SNP) stands in the way of independence and must be sued by the people of Scotland, in pursuit of a court sanctioned referendum, for restoration of Scottish governance and complete autonomy.

Our right to self-determination, the basis of democratic ballot, enacted by Scots Law and therefore, internationally recognised, as such.

The above court action should be a matter of priority, for those leading the Stirling Directive.

David Hannah

Yesss Ya dancer! I don’t believe it!

Humza Yousaf looking in to bringing the Commonwealth Games back to Glasgow.

He’s been reading my comments on Wings over Scotland.

Get big Eck on the phone.

Let’s back the bid for Scotland.

Glasgow needs the boost. Our city swarming with rats after 8 years of Sturgeon malaise.

We need the commonwealth games back in Glasgow. To lift and be a nation again.

Scotland United for the commonwealth games!

James Che

A lot of Hilary/american talking heads.
What ever the case it seems to iAmerica War dollers and wars contracts driving the need to hang on to Scotland as a base.

James Che

Scotland run by hoax union,
England run by America,
Britian run by EU treaties and legislation

Which bit is Great Britain

Republicofscotland

Hats off to the council bosses in the Australian state of Victoria for ditching the Commonwealth Games and to instead use the billions of Aussie dollars inhouse on schools, hospitals infrastructure etc.

Meanwhile the foreign owned media in Scotland is pushing for Glasgow to put an offer in to hold the Commonwealth Games, what utter madness.

Glasgow is a rundown filthy city that’s crumbling around the edges, its people are mostly poor, and its schools, doctors, dentists, hospitals, housing and infrastructure are desperately in need of investment, the last thing that the city needs is to fritter away over a billion quid on a short term sporting event that has no real legacy.

The SNP ran city council and the SNP government had better not decide to waste huge quantities of taxpayers cash on this Commonwealth nonsense, which is due to start in three years time.

The games should be shelved as many countries are struggling just to keep public services opened. Better still get those mega rich royal b*stards to fork out for it, those royal leeches have been bleeding the taxpayers dry for centuries.

John Main

@twathater says:18 July, 2023 at 5:19 pm

Aw, is this cos I called you “twatneutral”?

constant negativity and denigration

It’s an online forum. Worse happens at sea. Man up.

put forward his own positive suggestions

Done that plenty of times: Show us the money neatly sums it up. For reasons not clear to me, the idea always meets with hostility and contempt, yet it seems a no-brainer to me.

only interested in his own opinion

I am certainly not that interested in some of the ludicrous opinions that are regularly splurged on here. It’s still a free country, and as a Sovereign Scot, I not only believe I am entitled to post my opinion, I believe the reputation of Scotland is damaged when the more nonsensical guff goes unchallenged. So I do what I can.

His arrogance and disdain towards others is designed to create animosity

I feel some considerable animosity myself when I see what the SNP, and by extension the Indy movement, has done to our country of Scotland.

It has all been a mahoosive clusterfuck, and I don’t think another decade of just doing the same will magically come good.

Anyways, I will hold my breath waiting for your critique of the next opinionated, negative, disdainful comment, whoever posts it.

Haha, just kidding! You post plenty like that yourself.

Republicofscotland

Main.

“Legal asylum routes, versus illegal asylum routes.”

“In April 2023, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick was asked in Parliament which safe and legal routes were available to a young person wanting to flee the conflict in Sudan.

He said, “the best advice would be for individuals to present to the UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency]. We already operate safe and legal routes with them.”

But the body insists “there is no mechanism through which refugees can approach UNHCR with the intention of seeking asylum in the UK”.

Critics of the government’s asylum proposals, such as the Refugee Council, say they risk breaking international law.

The main principle of the 1951 Refugee Convention states that refugees should not be returned to countries where they faced threats to life or freedom. the Court of Appeal ruled in June 2023 that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful and risks breaching Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Theresa May’s Go Home Vans, Brexit and Stop the Boats, show English governments up for what they are.

Its no complicated Westminster has pillaged and murdered all over the world under the guise of bringing democracy and freedom, is it any wonder then that some of the people from those countries decide to come to the UK to make better life for themselves and their children. Of course its only a problem if you have brown skin.

Republicofscotland

More on England’s The Illegal Migration Bill.

I suppose we can’t expect any better from a country (England) that is illegally detaining Julian Assange, and its judiciary intends to send him to the USA.

“The WGAD — the supreme international body scrutinising this issue — has repeatedly demanded that the UK government end Assange’s “arbitrary detention”. Although the UN states that WGAD determinations are legally binding, its calls have been consistently rejected by the UK government.”

The Bill extinguishes access to asylum in the UK for anyone who arrives irregularly, having passed through a country – however briefly – where they did not face persecution. It bars them from presenting refugee protection or other human rights claims, no matter how compelling their circumstances. In addition, it requires their removal to another country, with no guarantee that they will necessarily be able to access protection there. It creates sweeping new detention powers, with limited judicial oversight.

The Bill denies access to protection in the UK for anyone falling within its scope – including unaccompanied and separated children – regardless of whether they are at risk of persecution, may have suffered human rights violations or whether they are survivors of human trafficking or modern-day slavery and may have other well-founded claims under international human rights and humanitarian law.

Most people fleeing war and persecution either do not have or are unable to access formal documents such as passports and visas. Safe and “legal” routes are rarely available to them. The 1951 Refugee Convention, for its part, explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly.

As a result, their rights to health, an adequate standard of living and to work are at risk, exposing them to the risk of exploitation and abuse.

sam

@John Main 6.41 pm

Show us the money neatly sums it up. For reasons not clear to me, the idea always meets with hostility and contempt, yet it seems a no-brainer to me.

It’s not the only idea and, to many, not the most important.

Neoliberalism is an ideology that can and does do enormous harm. It has the interests of the elite at its core and causes great harm to health, well documented,by causing poverty and inequality.

Consistently, on here, you do not recognise that. Why?

Geri

Commonwealth games 2014

Whit a year! Scotland was alive & buzzing with indyref & the summer was a long hot scorcher.

They’ll never capture that buzz again.

Instead it’ll be a reminder now that we had it in the grasp of our hand & we let outsiders fuck it up for us.

John Main

@Republicofscotland says:18 July, 2023 at 6:50 pm

which safe and legal routes were available to a young person wanting to flee the conflict in Sudan

Not even going to look this one up. I already know there are plenty of safe countries between here and Sudan.

is it any wonder then that some of the people from those countries decide to come to the UK to make better life for themselves and their children

If you believe people making vague claims to be descended from people who may have been adversely affected by people long since dead, are entitled to come to the UK and take it out on us who weren’t even alive at the time “just because”, then we won’t ever be agreeing. Quelle surprise.

Of course its only a problem if you have brown skin

Do you have brown skin? What about Yousaf and Sarwar, not to mention Sunak? Where precisely do you see the problem, cos I don’t?

Rubbish, whataboutery and inchoate, formless resentment, RoS. So nothing new from you. Hope I don’t trigger accusations of arrogant disdain from TH, but I won’t censor what I think.

Geri

It’s a breach of international treaties. The UK must accept refugees & the refugee has the right to go to the country of their choosing. Not the other way around.

This is mostly because of language barriers. No point stopping at the first *safe country* if they don’t speak the lingo.

Another reason they’re losing friends everywhere. They’re racist & that well known exceptionalism in thinking they’re special & can cherry pick international commitments.

Heehee – chickens home to roost. That’s what happens when you colonise most of the world & batter ppl to speak the *Queen’s English*

sam

I don’t much like referring to Mr Ritter so I’ll stop posting about him after this.

Whatever he says should be seenin context. He has been in a large country close to UK rainy today doing a promotion tour for the sale of his book.

Naturally enough he is enthusiastic about his location saying it is “thriving”. He says Mr Put it in “will go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time.”

He also says, ““It’s only because of Mr Put it in that the big R exists today. But big R doesn’t just exist — it thrives.”

(Somewhat edited)

He also said the place near him UK rainy today was a rabid dog which should be shot.

It’s just a book promotion tour.

ronald anderson

RepublicofScotland

(Useless has a team looking into it he would’nt want to lose out in the publicity stakes ).

As u say let Charlie pay for it after all the Commonwealth belongs to the crown .

Northcode

Republicofscotland @3:42pm

Interesting article, ROS. It’s important that we, the people, are able to shine a light on the inner workings of institutions and bureaucracies that claim to exist for our own benefit.

I’m always a bit reluctant to refer to the Germany of the nineteen thirties and forties – it’s a time in fairly recent history that is too often dragged into debate for spurious reasons. But the article you provided a link to made me think of a book I recently read about the trial of the war criminal, Adolf Eichmann.

I think it’s relevant in the context of the article, but correct me if you think I’m overstating the point the article is making.

Have you heard of Hannah Arendt?

She covered the Adolf Eichmann trial at Jerusalem in 1961 for The New Yorker, where her account was originally published in February and March, 1963.

She wrote a book on her experience of the trial in the summer and autumn of 1962 during her stay as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University.

It was she who coined the phrase, “the banality of evil”.

This is an extract from her book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”:

It is quite conceivable that in the automated economy of a not-too-distant future men may be tempted to exterminate all those whose intelligence quotient is below a certain level.

In Jerusalem this matter was inadequately discussed because it is actually very difficult to grasp juridically.

We heard the protestations of the defense that Eichmann was after all only a “tiny cog” in the machinery of the Final Solution, and of the prosecution, which believed it had discovered in Eichmann the actual motor.

I myself attributed no more importance to both theories than did the Jerusalem court, since the whole cog theory is legally pointless and therefore it does not matter at all what order of magnitude is assigned to the “cog” named Eichmann.

In its judgment the court naturally conceded that such a crime could be committed only by a giant bureaucracy using the resources of government.

But insofar as it remains a crime – and that, of course, is the premise for a trial – all the cogs in the machinery, no matter how insignificant, are in court forthwith transformed back into perpetrators, that is to say, into human beings.

If the defendant excuses himself on the ground that he acted not as a man but as a mere functionary whose functions could just as easily have been carried out by an one else, it is as if a criminal pointed to the statistics on crime – which set forth that so-and-so many crimes per day are committed in such-and-such a place – and declared that he only did what was statistically expected, that it was mere accident that he did it and not somebody else, since after all somebody had to do it.

Of course it is important to the political and social sciences that the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.

from Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (1963)

The ‘cogs’ were not excused their deeds on the grounds that they were mere cogs. That was Eichmann’s defence, which ultimately failed.

Shortly thereafter he was hanged for his part as a cog in the machinery of a brutal bureaucracy.

David Hannah

I disagree with comment on spending a billion on the games.

We don’t need to spend a billion on the games.

However. Our city is crumbling. The SNP quite literally want to turn it into the rubble. The shopping centres are to be demolished.

We need the sporting competition, to bring in money.

We need the snp to build new housing for Glaswegians. Affordable housing. We don’t make money off the commonwealth games. But it will encourage them to spend the money on housing with the benefit of tourism.

Bring it home. We need some hope and pride.