Is there no end to this separatist evil?
Posted on
March 10, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Financial Times has a gardening section. No, really, it does.
We have not made that quote up. (Gigha, incidentally, was in fact bought out by the community in 2002, over five years before the SNP came to power.)
Cos I’m a woman.
Enough to make Ally McCoist return from Gardening leave.
How the other half (a percent) live.
Couldn’t they all just fcuk off to southern Ireland and geez peace.
If there’s one thing that Scots NationalSocialists will despoil and have off you in the time it takes to toss a caber is yer virginal azaleas and unsullied Camellias, shelterbelt or no.
IS NOTHING SACRED!
Dammit. I was gonna buy that island and kick everybody off it.
Damn the incestuous sheep-belly scoffing Nats! Damn them all to Westminster!
I think it should be the Finance Times has a “pathetic section”, who are consuming a large dollop of soor grapes on behalf of the upper classes, screw them.
I pride myself on being slow to anger. They are getting michty close.
Brings to mind the German hiding in the bushes in Rowan and Martins laugh in. Vee vont your vood for the cause mein herr!!!
Aww – my heart is bleeding for them. Patronising – we are used to it.
It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
William Hazlitt, The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, 1830
Horlick and his ilk have nobody to blame but themselves, if they had done a better job of genocide or highland clearances as they are often known, poor Sir Horlick could plant where he liked. Sadly our better needed some serfs to breed for the factories. Oh its a long storey.
Southern Ireland might just be a convenient pressure valve when push comes to shove.
Although I wouldn’t wish that sort o colonist on the Irish.
Maybe Iceland could help us out here. I believe Surtsee is about ready for human habitation, well of a sort ready as it still might a bit hot underfoot.
Aaargh! They really are winding us up. Well it’s just inspiring me to go out and leaflet for my local SNP candidate. I’ve not been out since the referendum. But it’s time to get to the doors.
The entire article reads like a spoof a bit like the Billy Connolly tobacconist tobogganist sketch. The sense of entitlement is atrocious.
Where is my camellia? I haven’t received it yet.
Excellent. They continue to do a ‘sterling’ job
in antagonising us Jocksters.
Keep up the good work English free press.
Accord to the South Hebrides website, the island was first under one ownership in 1865, stayed in one family until 1919 after which it had several owners, eventually being bought by the Gigha community. The big house is a b&b and the gardens are looked after and open to the public.
Given that far more people enjoy the gardens, what is FT’s problem? (Maybe, that far more people enjoy the gardens …)
Ha ha-camellias will be split among Scots-hardly the end of the world now is it?
Wondered when the Scottish land owners would get in on the act. Half of Scotland owned by 432 people is just plain wrong & needs sorting. Tenant farmers on those lands have no rights. They can’t even own their own homes.Just wrong on so many levels.
Smacks of fiefdom, cap doffing, bowing to the supremacy of a master race (yeah right) just so they can hang on to their rented home even though the landlord does nothing to maintain it.
Personally I don’t think the Land Reform proposals go far enough but it’s a start & softly, softly catchee monkey tends to work. There’s a lot of monkeys to catch in that 432
A tad tongue in check, perhaps if I was playing the conspiracy theory, a fishing mission to see how far the thin skinned the ‘Nats’ are!
Let them enjoy the fun, It will not deter one single Yesser voting for the SNP in May. However it will with no doubt persuade a few No’s to switch camp
Sorry. Don’t have time to read. Too busy doing Strip the Willow while enjoying carnal relations with my relations
Hooch!
Do azaleas grow on the Kamchatka Peninsula? Perhaps they can ask Putin. Then bugger off the the far side of the world.
None of this will go away until we get independence. Everyone in Scotland who feels offended, needs to take that on board.
‘Community ownership’refers I assume to land/estates/islands bought under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 which was of course a Labour-LibDem piece of legislation passed in Holyrood when they led the Scottish Executive.
Rhododendrons are an alien and invasive species. They need to be ripped up and burnt to protect our natural habitat.
Dunno much about azaleas though. Do they make good firewood?
I’ll give the Times article credit for being more humourous than Steve Bell’s efforts.
The media hysterics re the SNP is unprecedented.I’m hoping that Wing’s campaign of highlighting this intolerence and disdain for our democratic preferences exposes them to Scots for the ignoramuses that they are.
So from frightful oiks and bigots at the Guardian, to frightful upper class twits at the FT. That must be the most classical referencing gardening article ever written. Wiki says this one English twit was an adviser and extra in Oliver Stone’s Alexander, in cavalry manoeuvres, probably boring the Greeks to death with endless references to the classics. Maybe this twit’s the reason the movie is dire too.
You always know a Scot when they drop burning camellias into the conversation. They just can’t help themselves.
Sorry O/T.
Following the link to Stephen Daisley on the Daisley Mail, he homes in on the phenomenon of Yes voting Dundee.
Here is my conundrum. You would think that the Thompson empire would have a good sense of their readership when the Courier is still selling 47,000 copies a day. Yet it was a unionist paper through and through last time I looked. Is this just because its marketing rises above politics, relying on a traditional product, or can we all relax about the supposed power of the MSM?
Incidentally, the author, Robin Lane Fox, is an Oxford educated historian…. How, I wonder, could such an august member of the establishment get his ‘history’ wrong vis à vis Gigha and SNP ‘socialism’?
It must be getting near that time to round them all up in a transit van
Aye, my heart bleeds for wealthy landowners, the ones that looked after their tenant farmers, waiving them a bon voyage and lighting their way, by setting light to the thatch on the former family home.
Give me strength, ffs.
Shelterbelt…is that like a muffin-top?
hey, Steve Bell and yon Labour retiree started it!
What a radical idea – that the land should belong to all of us (or even none of us) rather than a chosen few. Who’d a thunk it?
But what am I saying? Of course only an elite 400 or so people (many with no connections to Scotland at all) will be much better guardians of our land than the other 5.4 million of us who were born and raised on it.
And it’s almost certainly factually incorrect as I imagine much of the “recently empowered Scottish crofters” aren’t Scottish at all.
The proud author of that is presumably Robin Lane Fox — yet another Old Etonian.
That is how to do humour – Steve Bell take note
The Financial Times article is factually incorrect on all fronts. Sir James Horlick (of the Horlicks malted drinks family)bought the island of Gigha in 1944 and retained it until his death. During his ownership he developed Achamore Gardens and was generally regarded as a beneficial landlord, doing much to improve the island’s dairy industry.
On his death his collection of plants was left to the National Trust for Scotland and the NTS gardens at Brodick in Arran contain specimens of plants from Gigha. The estate was sold in 1973 and passed into the hands of landlords who did little or nothing to to improve the island.
The community buy out took place in 2002, long after the death of Sir James Horlick. The island is now owned by the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust. The Trust has had some problems but the island is in better shape than it was under the last owners.
Gigha is a lovely island to visit and I have been there with my family on numerous occasions over many years.
Nice place Poolewe and you pass Gruinard Island on the way you should go and plant your azalias and camellias there imperialist dog fucker
Gardening sections should always maintain a healthy manure section and they certainly have ….superseded here.?
O/T
For info-from Salford Star-courtcase goes ahead on fracking contamination
link to archive.today
I mustn’t get drawn into slagging off the fellow, far South inhabitants of this wee outcrop of land not wholly covered by the Atlantic, but mutton dressed as lamb keeps entering my thoughts.
How about a universal social decree that restricts the wealth, and so the power, that any individual can possess and so restricts their opportunity to upset the way of life of their fellows?
Like Burns To a Mouse –
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
has broken Nature’s social union
An justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me,thy poor, earth- born companion,
An fello mortal!
The Financial Times doesn’t check its facts.
And they want you to pay for their investment advice too.
Danger. Tin hatted nationlists amassing on the border at Berwick. Pitch forks and gardeners weekly in hand ready to plant claim posts on Cumbria because it looks more Scottish than English.
Robin Lane Fox will be facing the return of Fox hunting if the Tories get in post-May. Luckily for him the SNP will – on an issue by issue basis – save his sorry skin.
Some of them even have temerity to breathe Sir James Horlick’s air without his written permission! :-0
The FT styles itself as the “world’s leading trusted source of global business, finance and political news”, and they can’t even get a gardening column right.:D
Still not received my camellia.
I’ve just air dropped some botrytis for his camellias and Azaleas. Long live the grey mould.
The FT tax evading liars. Supported by tax evading liars and no self supporting readership.
Gillie – I have to admit – the southwest Ireland bit is good
It’s like reading something from another century.
Us ignorant, heathen savages wandering around, scratching our bare arse under our kilts, sneaking onto the lairds land, looking to rip up his camellias, to drag back to the hovel/cave.
Och aye, we should be more respectful to our betters.
Scotland is majority owned by tax evading (foreign) liars, crooks and troughers. Under UK rule (productive?) land is exempt from inheritance tax. A massive tax haven for Westminster and their associates. The Scottish clearances. The (secret) plunder of Scottish resources continues. They try and bury the evidence, under the Official Secrets Act.
Football, shopping and serial nonsense, the opium of the people.
Horlicks!
“Oh Sir Horlick do not touch me!
Oh Sir Horlick do not touch!
Oh Sir Horlick do not!
Oh Sir Horlick do!
Oh Sir Horlick!
Oh Sir!
Oh!”
I’m going out for a walk in the garden now. I might be some time.
“If there’s a bustle in your azalea row, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.”
…. one can only speculate on the fate of The Beachgrove Garden with all this Scottish Nattery, is the Potting Shed safe from expropriation …. we demand answers.
FT doesn’t understand the concept of the ‘right to roam’, or Scots Law or the sovereign right of the people enshrined under the Union Treaty, which Westminster breaks at every opportunity. To hold Scotland back for spite.
I wonder if the FT would like to do a similar article on Gruinard island, to see if there is any evidence of the anthrax the British government left there in 1942?
Despite the assurances that it was clean in 1990, Archaeologist Dr Brian Moffat, said he would never risk walking there, as anthrax can live in the ground for 100s of years.
DAMN!
Here I was, just last night actually, speaking with my partner and fantastic financial adviser about what we should do with all the millions currently squandering in the black hole that is the bank vault of H.S.B.C. in Switzerland.
We had, I can now tell folks, decided to splurge out and buy around half a dozen Scottish islands. We wanted to buy them you understand and hand them over lock stock and burning azaleas to the local inhabitants. It was only right after all. I mean being a non dom Scot living in far away D & G there was no way we could no way own these islands without paying out millions in tax to those horrible wee gits the LibLabTories! We have therefore decided that it is far better, and cheaper for us, just to buy the islands and give them back to the local communities.
Who knows, one day these lucky communities may even get a surprise visit from their secret island donor.
Oh No!
We have lost Glasgow if they think we will side with the crofters against absent wealthy Tory landlords.
Talk about out of touch.
EBC Reprting Scotland:
This program and its presenters are pathetic. Think we would be better with a test card or a felix the cat cartoons. Would be more mentally stimulating and certainly much more informative.
We are going to loose the British transport police?
We are going to be swamped by immigrants (East european)?
The bagpipes are not really Scottish?
Scottish cricket at bottom of the pile.
Two gold fish operated on for £500.
Michty me what cretin puts this show together? Bring on felix!
After reading all posts here and two previous threads, I have gone through every emotion I think there is to have. All morning I was beiling at Bell end and his outright racism, then it was the gov leaflet(which I still haven’t had) that cranked up utter despondency until I read wingers replies.
Now this I’m back to my hope over fear self. These people should just Get out my country. I’m so sick of it. I’m proud of being a 60 year old female born and bred in Scotland yet never felt as distant from British values as I have in the last 3 years.
I have always defended my Scottishness yet didn’t take any jokes about haggis eating kilt wearing see you Jimmi’s as an affront as I have yesterday and today.
So thanks Wingers for bringing so much humour into this tidal wave of Jock bashing. Had to wipe coffee of my tablet a few times today. Thanks Rev and keeping knocking these b******ds out the ballpark with your keyboard.
Oh good grief.
How very dare they buy up that island and try make a home. What a colossal, condescending arse.
Horlick was a very benevolent, if patrician estate owner. More enlightened than many – he actually did invest in his estate. I live on Gigha and it is anything but socialist. The pig ignorant FT journo clearly doesn’t understand the difference between community ownership and socialism and should be sent home on gardening leave. The Trust is a company limited by guarantee, so has to be run as any other company with an eye on the bottom line – except it doesn’t pay dividends. The island is struggling financially having been ripped off by various contractors over the years who were somewhat ‘red in tooth and claw’. We were also badly advised by professionals such as HIE – not conspicuously successful when they manage projects rather than just fund them. We are still incredibly underinvested here. The gardens may even have to close as they are so expensive to maintain. We need inward investment badly. The island has huge potential for green tourism and has been a successful trailblazer for community renewables. As usual London based media are stunningly ill informed about life north of Watford – it isn’t even a Scottish thing.
I wonder how long before more people realise what they think about us? We NEED independence before we are crushed out of existance.
Papadox @ 6:57
“Scottish cricket at bottom of the pile”
Almost on a par with English cricket then, except who in Scotland gives a fuck?
I think that was just before Brian Taylor asked my question.
Well, I say my question, he didn’t really push him on it and just allowed Jim to claim that I was trying to infer there were no issues with the NHS, which I wasnt.
This is what I sent in to the BBC.
Dear BBC Scotland team,
I would really appreciate the following questions being asked at Jim Murphy’s webchat.
Since Scottish Labour have spent the last several weeks talking down our fantastic NHS and saying that it’s in crisis thanks to the SNP, perhaps Mr Murphy would care to explain to the Scottish electorate why even though delayed discharge (or bed-blocking) is at a four-year high this year, it is still exceptionally lower under the SNP’s watch than it ever was under the Labour and Liberal Democrat led Scottish Government?
In January 2002 over 2000 patients fell out with the six-week discharge period, and the lowest figure the Government at that time managed to achieve over the course of their administration was still around the 500 mark in January 2007, before the SNP took over. If we look at last year, January 2014, fewer than 160 patients fell out with the six-week discharge period.
Perhaps you could also ask Mr Murphy how the people of Scotland could possibly put their trust into Scottish Labour with something so fundamentally important as our NHS, when they can’t even be trusted to read a simple table properly?
Kindest regards,
Alexandra McArthur
To be honest I was quite surprised they chose my question after I was quite sarcastic about their researchers’ abilities on Twitter.
Anyway, you can listen to Jim skim around the point at 6mins 30seconds here:
link to bbc.co.uk
Thormaspotter2014, come on why inflict us with such scum when we have already kicked them out once before, forcibly, in 1921/22. Let them stew in their own London shite.
Auld Rock
Marcia says:
10 March, 2015 at 6:11 pm
Still not received my camellia.
Marcia.
BtP
But my southern belle, you are a Camelia.
Southwest Ireland eh? Didn’t Ireland pass their own land reform act on something similar in 2009? Yes, yes they did.
I would caution any proud Brits about going to Ireland, they have a history of separatism, why the scoundrels even left our mighty union. Plus its full of foreigners and we don’t like foreigners because we’re British ( or Margaret Curran ).
The author obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rhododendrons don’t need wind breaks and no one in their right minds plants them anymore anyway!
Oh goody goody gardening tips,av goat Saltire Roses that dont like the rain, whit can ah dey aboot that.
hope the Gigha Trust complain about this. As they have been doing their best to look after the Achamore Gardens with limited funds its a disgrace the people of Gigha are subjected to such puerile comment. I live in Kintyre and I can tell you Gigha is a beautiful island and a great place for a holiday.
The SNP could learn from the Irish (Home Rule) Parliamentary Party on Land Reform.
The IPP was the first organised parliamentary party in Britain and Ireland and used its grasp of the balance of power in Westminster for decades to put though a whole series of voting, equality and land reform bills. Culminating with the 1903 (final) land reform bill that saw public funding to buy out 90%+ of Landlords in Ireland in favour of family farms and the Irish equivalent of a crofter.
Precedent is there . . . the SNP does not have to re-invent the wheel
How about doing the people of Ghiga a good turn?
In solidarity with its inhabitants, and the Trust which manages its affairs, let’s plan a visit to Ghiga whenever we get a chance. Even if many of us had never before heard of it, … and even let the FT Garden section know their pathetic ‘insular’ article has benefited (perversely for them) the people of Ghiga.
Our foreign landowners are not the worst, they spend money and create employment. One of the country’s biggest landowners, a Dane, incredibly pays land tax for his Scottish holdings to Copenhagen can you believe, we need a proper land tax toot-sweet and what we also need to get rid of, at the first opportunity, are the chinless wonders who own estates and are either skint or will part with nothing, estate staff are kept at the bare minimum, dry-rot is rampant and the school closes.
No matter how good a landowner is they have the unfortunate habit of dying and being replaced by an arsehole. Andy Wightman’s book on the subject, “The Poor had no Lawyers”, is a must-read. I’ve loaned somebody my copy and badly want it back.
Al at 6.09
I don’t know about Scotland but I can tell you that hunting foxes didn’t stop in Wiltshire and Gloucester.
I have personally witnessed (in Wiltshire) two fox hunts where the toffs were chasing foxes.
One of them my wife and my wife quite literally ran through. This was much to the annoyance of the farmers and hangers on who were scouting ahead for the erm “trail”. These guys proceeded to point at the trail. The “trail” was in the form of fox that sprinted across the road in front of us.
I think that one actually got away. He crossed water twice and was quite far away from the hounds.
Quite why these farmers and friends need to scout for a scent trail is beyond me.
I also spotted a fox running into a garden in a Wiltshire village on another occasion. Followed by hounds. Who laid the trail into some ones garden and what a coincidence that a fox followd it.
Then we have the case of Tetbury, just several miles from the locations already mentioned. The master of the hunt there faced complaints after the hunt charged around Tetbury. They were either chasing a fox or had laid a trail through a built up area.
I have friends in Wilshire who make a living with horses and in addition to what I have personally witnessed (I could give times dates and grid references!) I have been reliably informed that my observations are repeated all over England.
Me at 1000pm.
Just to clarify, that’s my wife and I.
I only have one wife.
@Gary, anent Rhododendron Ponticum, this is a purple trifid which loves Scotland’s climate but fancy varieties planted on west coast island gardens would certainly need a windbreak. Osgood MacKenzie pioneered this work at Inverewe which formerly was a barren windswept promontary.
Thank you one and all! I also live on Gigha – and we run a democratic ship here. The buyout was before the Land Reform Act (a s was Eigg, Assynt and Knoydart) so acted as a trail blazer for other communities. The rhodies ar mostly non invasive exotics so come on over! I might take some Camelia cuttings for wingers who do!!
@bugger the panda
Come over – we’ve got bamboo (as well as cemelias!)
Our Imperial Masters, during the empire building years, brought us numerous botanical examples which they planted in their country estates.
Rhododendrons, azaleas, Indian Balsam, Japanese Knotweed and
Giant Hogweed to name but a few. These invasive species are virtually indestructible and have spread throughout our countryside, killing our own native species in the process.
Seems like a good idea to take absentee landlords land from them and give it to the people who actually work it.
Then they can make the money that disappears from the estates to the wealthy.
Oh and we’ll have that bit of North Sea you stole from us back aswell….
The BILE of Gigha
This native v non-native business is botanical UKIP-ery. When the ice departed nothing was native, the vast majority of Scotlands plants are alien, whether they blew in as seed, were washed up, imported in bales of wool or introduced by famous Scottish plant hunters like Forrest & Douglas. The countries flora is greatly enriched by these emigrants, and trying to reverse the clock is a nonsense.
People get hysterical about these things, the RSPCA spent a vast sum of their members money trying to eradicate the ruddy duck, the reason being that they might possibly shag some Spanish duck when on holiday, despite the fact that we have a long list of birds which are also alien, little owl, collared dove, mandarin ducks etc, etc. Leave the fuckin things alone!
The greatest threat to the upland environment is the onward march of so-called natives like rashes & bracken which pre-clearance agriculture formerly kept in check. A sense of proportion is required here even rhoddies have their place, a sail once through the Kyles of Bute when they were in bloom was an unforgetable experience.
Food-Banks & Poverty, now there’s a problem!
@Dave the Squirrel says:10 March, 2015 at 5:17 pm:
“Dammit. I was gonna buy that island and kick everybody off it.
Never mind Dave, we could tell them that we will swap them Gruinard Island as compensation – anthrax and all.