Kafka Chameleons
As it happened, it was fortuitous that this story intervened and stopped us writing the story we meant to run yesterday, because now we’ve got a two-for-the-price-of-one on the increasingly farcical insanity running riot in the offices of the Scottish Government.
Alert readers will have noticed the above piece from today’s Times, revealing that the Scottish Government just can’t seem to stop breaking the rules (and squandering huge vats of taxpayers’ money in the process) when it comes to Alex Salmond.
An inquiry by the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) – the same entity we filed a formal complaint with last week – found that the Holyrood administration had broken data protection laws by refusing to provide Mr Salmond with information that he’d requested in relation to the ongoing inquiry about the ham-fisted attempt to smear him with false allegations of sexual misconduct, and pointedly noted that he was now free to take the government to court for his legal costs (again) and compensation.
Absurdly, the Scottish Government – having literally just been found to have infringed data protection law by failing to let Alex Salmond see documents that were provided to the committee – issued the paper with this remarkable quote:
Hilariously, it turns out that the tissue-paper-thin excuse for that black-is-white quote is that having first been asked for the data on 19 June, they did actually deliver it on 13 November, after the SIC had already been investigating the matter for four months.
Or in other words, “We gave the money back after the police found out that we stole it, so there was never any theft.”
We’ll give the Commissioner the final word on the subject:
But readers, there’s more.
Because you may recall that our own complaint to the SIC was over a much-delayed response to a query as to whether the Scottish Government had been lying when it repeatedly asserted that it didn’t know anything about Nicola Sturgeon’s meeting with Geoff Aberdein on 29 March 2018.
We’d pointed out that since the Scottish Government itself had referenced that meeting in its remit to James Hamilton for his investigation into whether Nicola Sturgeon broke the Ministerial Code by lying to Parliament about it, it clearly DID hold a record of the meeting taking place, and so we asked if the Scottish Government would perhaps like to reconsider and correct its earlier denials.
The reply we received late on Tuesday evening, and which we’d planned to write about yesterday, is quite something to behold.
Or to put that another way, “The fact that the Scottish Government formally told James Hamilton that the 29 March meeting definitely took place does not mean that the Scottish Government knows whether the 29 March meeting took place or not”.
We’re running out of superlatives to describe how mad this is all getting, folks. We’ve literally just been told, with a straight face, that the Scottish Government “does not hold recorded information that would enable it to answer” whether Nicola Sturgeon had a meeting that both Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government have already publicly admitted, in writing, that she did have, simply in a pitifully tortured attempt to squirm out of admitting they’d been lying about it in FOI requests for months.
Indeed, the letter actually directs us to her admission of it.
Here’s what she says at that link:
And yet it still tells us it can’t actually answer the question, because apparently nobody has “recorded” that information at any point since this whole fiasco began, making a complete public mockery of the entire concept of Freedom Of Information requests if they can be evaded with such shady semantic sleight of hand.
(Perhaps this is all some deliberate show of arrogant, hubristic bravado – “watch as we torch absolutely every last shred of integrity or credibility, secure in the knowledge that we’ll win the election at a skoosh anyway, you helpless plebs”. It very much has the ring of how Donald Trump has conducted himself for the last four years.)
But especially alert readers will have noticed another part of that paragraph.
Right there, as plain as can be, is an explicit admission from the Scottish Government that the First Minister broke the Ministerial Code by conducting a non-governmental meeting on Parliament premises. (And once again, an implicit admission that she also broke the code by lying to Parliament that she didn’t know anything about the Salmond allegations until four days later.)
It’s also an explicit statement that the meeting was a party matter and therefore should properly have been discussed with the SNP’s chief executive, and the First Minister’s husband, Peter Murrell, and of course, it directly and explicitly contradicts Mr Murrell’s evidence to the inquiry that the exact opposite was the case.
In its belated reply to us – appended in full below – the Scottish Goverment continues to twist and thrash and try to escape the tangled net of its own lies (or more precisely the First Minister’s). But all it’s managing to do is tie itself tighter and contort itself into even more embarrassingly ludicrous denials.
We couldn’t help noticing, incidentally, that the response was bizarrely sent out in the name of Nicola McDonagh from the Looked After Children Unit of the Directorate For Children And Families. But then, “The Looked After Children Unit” is sounding like a more and more accurate description of the Scottish Government every day.
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Fuck…….. The loonies are really running the Asylum now.
Well, that’s TRuthless’s first question for FMQs today.
Great work. Oh what a tangled web etc. The plot thickens (or thins).
Might we reasonably assume that Nicola McDonagh of the CPJ : Looked After Children Unit was a staff member seconded to deal with your FoI request, because of ‘[constrained]staff availability due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis’..?
(i.e. if she found herself not fully occupied just now with her usual remit..)
Such is the confusion and absurdity seen in this series of responses, though, that I wonder whether it was a punt sideways by someone feeling prickles down their back for continued obfuscation: ‘Errm could you deal with this matter please this time Nicola I’m err not feeling quite right the noo’..?
What an absolute shambles, and these people are entrusted by the voters to run our affairs for us.
If this was a private company as a director I would be demanding a change of the entire EB
How the hell can the murrells survive this ?
And what is the crown office and procurator fiscal’s office doing about it ?
What are our SNP MSPs doing ? Our SNP MPs ?
Is there no one honest left in the upper echelons of the party ?
‘Rephrase your request’ – just as in a court of law, the law can only rule on the actual question asked or actual wording of a case. The questions in those cases are as crucial as the answer you’re looking to get. Often that makes it difficult if you’re unsure of the intricacies of a subject to ferret a way through so they’re forced to give the answer you’re looking for. In many ways you need to have an inkling of the answer you want being there before you even begin and an idea of the steps to make it come forth.
As you say they’re now trapped both ways, either it was or wasn’t a government meeting, and either answer shows wrongdoing. Very odd for such a letter to be written by, and researched by, a person from a children’s unit.
It stzrted iut as there was no meetings at all if I remember.
Then it went to a brief head pop round the door.
Then we had the meeting at Nicolas home, which were also the subject of memory loss.
Now we know for certzin these meetings actually did take place.
Were they party business or were they government business is the issue. In both meetings they appear from testimony given, to be in the wrong venue with the wrong staff for what they were.
Something is clearly being hidden.
I remember the old Abbot and Costello routine
“Whose on first base”. This makes as much sense.
Well done Stu.
Another great bit of work Stu, but Sturgeon remains in her job.
She remains in her job and her popularity remains sky high, so to me she looks 100% safe.
Please tell me something that gives me hope she will be removed. Ideally something of substance, rather than just wishful thinking!
Do we really want these people to run our country Scotland? It seems they couldn’t organise an orgy in a brothel let alone stitch up a man for sex crimes! C’mon Alex! start suing them for defamation and lets see them squirm out of that unblemished.
Sounds like you applied for a Freedom of Disinformation instead Stu. That’s what you got.
Polly @ 9.05:
‘either it was or wasn’t a government meeting’
This formulation of events implies a binary-oriented worldview, which, as is known, is not an ideologically appropriate paradigmatically implemented set of organisation criteria pursuant to a holistic appraisal of the narratives relating to the case vis-à-vis the Scottish Government and/or/nor the current dominant Party therein.
There is something else very “wrong” in all of this. All of these “protocols” for the want of a better word, have no potency or consequence.
By that, I mean we have a Scottish “Government” which deserves to be impeached for the scandalous abandonment of Scottish Constitutional Sovereignty, but when the need arises, we are undone because there is no constitutional impeachment process in place.
We have a First Minister who can break the Ministerial Code, but ignore the protocol which requires her to resign for doing so. Consequences? None so far. Misconduct with impunity.
We have arrogant Civil Servants who’s malice and/or incompetence has cost the Scottish Taxpayer millions of pounds, yet there neither the sanctioning nor the sacking they deserve. Consequences? None so far. Lies with impunity.
We have a Treaty of Union, the wording of which hasn’t been altered since 1707, which can be routinely and irremediably breached time and time again, even so far as the literally definitive subjugation of one signatory to the will of the other, yet meaningful consequences never arise. Subjugation with impunity.
Do you see what I mean about something being very wrong? Scotland is operating with all the pomp and ceremony of a courtroom, but whether the accused is guilty or innocent is completely academic, because there is simply no sentencing, punishment or retribution handed down.
Scotland is a Nation cursed with 2 governments who believe they can do what they like with impunity, and believe they can act with impunity because for most of the time, that is precisely what they can do.
A rule which isn’t enforced, isn’t a rule.
This rotten imbalance in the government of Scotland must be defeated, and the direct Route 1 method of doing so is for the Scottish people to defend their Constitutionally Sovereign Birthright and use it as the obsidian breakwater which survives undamaged through wave after wave of colonial expansionism.
The Scottish Constitution might be written thus…
Rule 1. The people of Scotland are Sovereign.
Rule 2. All other rules, new or ancient, defer to Rule 1. The people of Scotland are Sovereign.
The End.
If Scotland has any “government” which does not abide by the above Scottish Constitution, then Scotland doesn’t have any government at all, but instead, a would-be subverter of Scotland’s Constitutional Rights. A rogue government which has no constitutional legitimacy.
Reminds me of a former Chief Constable of my old, now gone Scottish police force.
He arrived from an English force and announced he was going to cut crime in ‘his’ area.
We – the beat bobbies – kept logging crimes as we always had, and there was no obvious reduction.
Then the force monthly crime stats were published and we were shocked by how much certain crimes had been ‘cut’.
Then we discovered that changes had been made in crime recording, for example, if a bike had been stolen (we had thousands of cycling students in our area) and recovered undamaged – even if the recovery had been made 10 miles away, the incident was now recorded as ‘no crime’.
If ten cars had been broken into and property stolen, using the same method and over the same night – it was recorded as a single crime.
Unless it was later solved, in which case that one crime reverted to the actual ten, so while fewer cars had been broken into (officially), the solved rate for that particular crime soared !
Didn’t last long as the local Police Board was contacted by a number of whistleblowers and the new Chief was given a bit of a roasting.
Not so much a tangled web but a Gordian knot stuffed in a bottle. Unfortunately for the Murrells more and more of us are metaphorically armed with a brick and a sharp knife.
This is absolutely breath taking.
They send you the number 2 than another number 2
then confirm it adds up to 3 then claim they didn’t say
It added up to 3 as they didn’t send out any 2’s?
Just completely unbelievable.
They take people for mugs by trying to be conceding
and telling you that you wouldn’t understand how brilliant
they are and how dumb you are.
Thank God we have one journalist in the UK who has the skill,
the perseverance and resilience to expose these corrupt fraudsters.
In any country with morals, integrity, accountability within their government
structure would sack those responsible for this, if not imprison them.
If we take this to local MP’s and MSP’s would they take part in this by
covering up and dismissing the blatantly obvious?
The very foundations required to build a fair and just society have crumbled
beneath our feet.
SNP has been exposed to be as corrupt as London’s Tory Party!
New Poll
58% in favour of independence
55% in favour of SNP
Sturgeon can do as she pleases. Her job could not be more safe. Even if a smoking gun is found in this inquiry, or she does something else terrible – she remains 100% safe. This depresses me, but its true.
It is finally time that we just accept that Sturgeon will be leader for the next 5 years as an absolute minimum?
Great stuff you are doing here, Rev.
As I understand it, Aberdein is scheduled to appear at the inquiry one of these days. That will be interesting.
You say “It’s also an explicit statement that the meeting was a party matter” and I was going to ask which meeting you were referring to but I guess both are now being called “party matters”. Well, depending on who you ask, of course (Murrell seems to have a different view).
How many breeches of the ministerial code are we up to? As I understand the rules, the meeting with Aberdein ought to have been recorded either way since it was on government premises. And actually the FM’s office should only be used for government business.
Craig Murray posted this at the end of the last thread and I think is at the root of all our problems.
Craig Murray:-
“There is no doubt Nicola is out for a top international job. Staff at the UN second HQ in Geneva have told me she has had feelers out there”.
“It is worth remembering that all top international jobs, particularly the UN, will never appoint anyone without the support of their own government – which in terms of international law and diplomacy currently means Boris Johnson. So no chance whatsoever she is actually going to take on Johnson over Indy”.
[…] Wings Over Scotland Kafka Chameleons As it happened, it was fortuitous that this story intervened and stopped us writing […]
God, just seen this mornings poll. Massive SNP majority and loads of Greens next May.
We can say good bye to women’s rights hello medicalised and mutilated kids
And if you object jail for hate crimes
The corrupt government growing even more arrogant.
Nicola and Murrell secure in their positions
And no chance Of independence
What can we do?
We need a plan instead of passively accepting the inevitable.
We need a strong list party and also candidates to challenge the worst of the SNP MSPs in the constituencies.
Will Alex join ISP? ISP needs publicity in the wider world
Will the women’s groups put up candidates against the worst of the trans extremists MSPs ?
James Horace: “she remains 100% safe.”
Not so. There’s an increasingly likely chance she will be the subject of a vote of no confidence. It’s looking like the ministerial code was broken a few times and any one of those if confirmed is enough to sink her.
Lies, damned lies, and statements made by the Scottish Government.
I’m getting increasingly concerned as to what a tin-pot, shite-bag, basket-case of a country we’re becoming under this shower of charlatans, crooks, carpetbaggers and liars.
If you’d said to me in 2014, when I was still an SNP member, that 6 years hence I’d write the above in describing an SNP Government at Holyrood I’d have told you to do-one.
How did it come to this?
Bent! Bent! Bent!
Open goals, all over the shop, ball at feet.
Why are none of the Salmond frame-up committee asking these questions? I mean, it’s all laid out for them, they need only visit this site for a leg up. Are they incapable even of this? Jeez. Is it somehow beneath them to include a reference to ‘Wings Over Scotland’, or to include the words ‘blogger, Stuart Campbell, in his FOI request’?
I’m thinking, if the ISP, Kenny MacAskill, or any other Party with a genuine desire for damning answers leading ultimately to an independent Scotland, were on this committee, we’d have had results – long ago.
In short, a judge-led inquiry would sort the scurrilous bastards out.
Such mugs on the committee – especially those delaying the inevitable in the hope it affects the outcome of next May’s Holyrood Elections. “We wish to have Mr Murrell back for further questioning”, oh, ffs, it’s right in front of your nose – open goal!
Sturgeon Must Go.
Looks like there already is a constitution in place and it reads– Keep the Murrels position safe at all costs.
If ever I had any doubt, the Teflon shouldered ones intend hanging on until May at least, unless there are more incontrovertible revelations yet to come to light.
The Britnat press are sitting on all this waiting to scupper the SNP at election time. The loser being Scotland. Unforgivable.
Cenchos, 9:33am
There is no reason to view this matter holistically, there is no grey area, it is black or white, it is binary and Polly is absolutely correct in saying so as these meetings have to be specifically identified as either or.
How they are identified has no bearing on what is discussed but from what perspective. It still remains that there are rules and regulations to identify and label the meetings.
Stu,
You don’t get it, do you? It’s got nothing to do with right and wrong.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
“Shame on he who thinks ill of it”
Shame on you.
It’s the same for every whistleblower. The shame is upon he who thinks ill of it and blows the whistle against the regime.
”all top international jobs, particularly the UN, will never appoint anyone without the support of their own government“
So, Nicola needs a reference from her boss, Boris.
Maybe instead of pledging SNP support for his trade deal In return for a section 30 – and it may very well need SNP support if there’s any sort of ERG rebellion – she could use the leverage to secure a nice reference.
Think she wouldn’t?
Stu Campbell
Minor correction for an interesting article.
The body who issued Alex Salmond with the assessment of non-compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 or DPA would be the Information Commissioner’s Office or ICO, not the SIC. They are NOT the same body as the SIC; they are separate bodies.
Long-winded explanation:
It’s the Information Commissioner’s Office (who are mainly based in England but also have an Information Commisssioner – Scotland . That ICO provides assessments of compliance with DPA Subject Access Requests (SARs) for people in Scotland but confusingly it also deals with FOIs for BBC Scotland (in relation to its public functions); and
The Northern Lighthouse Board.
In England the ICO deals with DPA SARs but it also deals with FOI’s regarding information held by public bodies.
Whereas, the Scottish Information Commissioner or SIC in Scotland deals with compliance with Freedom of Information Requests, which is about information held by public bodies ( not requests for personal data).
Hatuey, I dont share your optimism at all.
Even with a clear breach of the ministerial code, I cant see her either losing a vote of no confidence or resigning for any other reason
She is just too popular, and in the end, this will save her.
The ICO do not normally issue *rulings* about Subject Access Requests. They issue *assessments*.
So, the ICO would not rule the Scottish Government broke the Data Protection Act 2018 by failure to supply Mr Salmond’s personal data within the statutory period of one month by supplying it after five months.
The ICO would issue an assessment that it “appears” the SG have failed to comply with the Data Protection Act 2018.
For a legal ruling, Mr Salmond would need to take court action. He can use the ICO’s assessment as evidence if he seeks compensation for distress for breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 / GDPR.
“ Even with a clear breach of the ministerial code, I cant see her either losing a vote of no confidence or resigning”
The numbers are there, if it comes to a vote. And the evidence is there too, provided by them.
Popularity doesn’t mean a thing in constitutional terms. If a motion of no confidence is tabled I’d expect her to resign rather than be dragged through the mud with the chance of losing it. The question is will it be tabled?
If she hangs on all this will come back to haunt the SNP during the campaign.
Hatuey,
A vote of no confidence may not be tabled.
If it is tabled, the greens are likely not to for it.
Even if it is tabled and the greens vote for it, there is nothing to say she will actually have to resign. If indy and her personal approval ratings are still riding high in the polls, my guess is that she would still not resign.
To even get to this stage is fanciful, so its probably best adjusting your expectations for the next few months and years.
Sturgeon is very much here to stay.
I might have said this before, but what happens in the SG re FOI requests is this…
Request comes in and is logged
Its sent to the most relevant person to deal with it
That person has to take the response past lots of people and get approval from many many sources including legal…in this case Lesley Evans will have approved it.
Some unsuspecting soul who knows nothing about what’s happened basically reads the response to make sure it makes sense knowing that she/he cannot change it anyway and then signs it.
This response has come from Lesley Evans office not the wummin in the LACU. It is always signed by a lowly person in the first instance to leave escalation options.
“Even with a clear breach of the ministerial code, I cant see her either losing a vote of no confidence or resigning for any other reason”
She doesn’t have a majority. I don’t know why you think the Greens wouldn’t vote for it, it would be absolutely extraordinary for any opposition party not to back a VoNC in such circumstances.
Even if the Greens abstained it’s only 62-61 and that 62 includes Derek Mackay – imagine if she survived because he actually turned up to vote. The opposition would absolutely go to town in the election – “vote SNP to elect a proven liar saved by a disgraced kiddy-botherer First Minister”.
I just dont share your optimism Stu.
Even if creepybreeks returns to cast his vote, this will not even be a blemish on Sturgeon’s popularity.
And whats to say the greens abstain? I can see them finding a reason to vote against.
Sadly, we are all clutching at straws. Sturgeon is teflon, and she is here tk stay for the forseeable.
What a shower of entitled incompetents they are.
The SNP source in the Times article sums up the Scottish Government’s control of information about every aspect of its activities, not just its attack on Alex Salmond.
‘Instead they weaponise information, keeping secret what is damaging to them and correcting only when they are found out.’
Only two countries’ leaders in the world used the pandemic as an excuse to change the Freedom of Information rules. They were Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland.
link to heraldscotland.com
Although to be fair to Mr Bolsonaro, he is quite open about his approach to government.
What is the role of Ken Mackintosh in all this?
He’ll be as aware as anyone else of all this shenanigans.
Clear evidence that the First Minister has been misleading parliament but business goes on as usual?
What does it take for him to step in? Presumably there has to be some mechanism triggered before he can swing into action. Or is it that he just wants to see out his last few months in relative peace and quiet?
Or is he in on it as well?
Kim Jong-un salutes ROTTEN BANANA Scot Gov.
Breastplate @ 10.16.
Yes. I was being sardonic in order to underline Polly’s point.
“Sadly, we are all clutching at straws. Sturgeon is teflon, and she is here tk stay for the forseeable.”
Then give up. At 58% in the polls, independence is dead.
But I’m not quitting before May, because I simply don’t believe she could survive an official verdict of lying to Parliament and I don’t see any way for there not to be such a verdict.
It’s taken some excellent committed graft by Stu to collate all this information, in a process akin to playing chess against opponents that are using live eels as their pieces.
I want to convey that I very much appreciate his commitment and determination to nail down those involved in this shocking protracted display of lies and corruption for those in the team that just want open, honest, fair governance, legal practice, and justice in Scotland.
The slippery ones must surely realise they are nearing the point All Their Base Are Belong To Us.
The crux of the issue now, is just what can be done with all those that colluded to weave the tangled web, when they seem so embedded in positions of power and control.
Our Scottish society could have been in a wholly better place in these unprecedented times if those scheming self-serving arseholes had better focused all their well remunerated time and all the taxpayers’ money they continue to squander in this corrupt farce.
“What is the role of Ken Mackintosh in all this?”
He doesn’t have one until Hamilton or the inquiry delivers a verdict.
It’s like the Marx Brothers without the humour.
If truthles Ruth doesn’t jump on this in Holyrood, and demand a vote of no confidence, we will know that the Tories are part of the plot.
If the Murells are still in charge come the Holyrood elections, my first vote will be “None of the Above” .
At 58% in the polls it seems the SNP will take most of Holyrood Constituency seats. That will keel her fans happy, but will actually do little for Independence.
I hope Martin Keatings wins and applies more pressure on the SNP to act.
Should Sturgeon survive we have to somehow keep the SNP in check re GRA , Hate Crime Bill etc.
The only way is to make sure as many Indy minded and women rights oartys occupy as many list seats as possible.
I knowv the old saying that theres many a slip tween cup and lip, but we must be prepared to mitigate SNP excesses.
Cant believe I’m writing this!!
James Horace Which means nothing given Boris will not grant a legal indyref2 even if the SNP got 99% next May.
Plus only 40% of Scots want indyref2 in the next 2 years in that poll anyway, so Sturgeon will continue to stay in her highly paid job and luxury accomodation and pay lip service to independence while doing sod all about it as now
@10.45 Rev Stu
That ‘imagined’ opposition leaflet’s not right is it? I’m not going to repeat it because…
Time for a quick edit?!!
I second Dan’s comments at 11.08.
“That ‘imagined’ opposition leaflet’s not right is it? I’m not going to repeat it because…”
It’s perfectly semantically valid as far as I can see, although if you were going to be picky about clarity the addition of a couple of commas or an “as” would be tidy…
Re the UN position for Sturgeon, or any other international role, she could resign, giving whatever reason passes as an excuse. Then she wouldn’t need the nod from the UK?
‘On 27 June 2007, Blair officially resigned as Prime Minister after ten years in office, and (within hours) he was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia. Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as Prime Minister came into effect; however, on being confirmed for the Middle East role he resigned from the Commons by taking up an office of profit’.
Wiki & The Independent
Or she could go private based on Cop26 Nov 2021 exposure –
‘In January 2008, it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan Chase in a “senior advisory capacity” and that he would advise Zurich Financial Services on climate change’.
Wiki
We are going to have to keep the pressure on to stop these nonsensical Bill’s- GRA, HC etc -from becoming law. It’s going to be a hard slog and we need you Stu so don’t give up after May.
On the matter of ‘democratic politics’ and before anyone says that 50%+ is needed for constitutional change, maybe worth remembering that the Tories who hold just 25% of the vote in Scotland are: 1) taking Scotland out of the EU; 2) changing the trading terms agreed in the Treaty of Union, and; 3) transferring devolved powers (that were won by a Scottish referendum) back to Westminster.
In view of these anti-democratic actions and multiple treaty breaches and with more likely to follow, the 48 SNP NATIONALIST MP’s (81%) who hold Scottish sovereignty should give notice of their intention to withdraw Scotland from the UK treaty-based alliance.
As I understand it there are only Salmond and Sturgeon to give evidence to the inquiry with perhaps a couple of re-calls. So when will the inquiry realistically deliver its report?
Great work again, Rev. Although I cannot see any way round the SNP when it comes to independence, and although the FM and her government has done some good things, she and they are in danger of falling, and falling hard, with little but ignominy to show she and they ever were in power. It is becoming a very sad end to what should have been a triumph for Nicola Sturgeon and her government – with the delivery of independence.
Instead, every opportunity has been squandered, and the Alex Salmond affair may yet bring her down. None of it surprises me now, given the authoritarian lack of scruples on other legal matters that so much breaking and bending of the rules has taken place. It appears to be par for the course now. It matters not a jot where you stand personally on the Salmond affair, what has been done marks this government out as lacking probity on this, and other issues, and he has been proven to have been right about the flaws in the procedure and subsequent actings. Nothing appears to have been, or is being, tested legally before announcements are made that laws will be changed arbitrarily and procedures ignored and flouted. Those are the actings of an authoritarian government, teetering on the edge of totalitarianism. Being in power does not confer its use for your own ends, on you. I feel sick to the pit of my stomach about all of this and what it says about the SNP and its downward spiral, and also about our hopes of regaining our independence soon.
Cenchos,
My apologies and a hat tip to your dry sense of humour.
The only way NS could survive a vote of no confidence is if her handlers applied some East German style blackmail on a few of their pawns to abstain/vote accordingly/throw a covid sicky, etc.
That might do it.
@ Rev: Dan at 11.08 and deerhill are right – you are a hero and everyone who thinks the truth is more important than anything else is very grateful to you.
Now “all” I ask is – how are we going to get rid of the corruption in SNP party and parliamentarians, and soon? Because I can’t stand living in a corrupt state and a corrupt Scotland. Nor can I stand them not attempting to regain independence.
I hate writing to SNP MSPs and being ignored or, worse, reading their replies. Yet every single one of them [and the MPs] who does not speak out is complicit in the misdemeanours of SNP government and HQ officials. It would only take one or two to threaten resignation unless the wrong uns left and our job would be done. But they won’t do the right thing.
I expect Joanna Cherry, Angus MacNeil, Kenny McAskill and Douglas Chapman are hoping to make enough difference by sticking in place but they aren’t get any visible support are they? And they are all in Westminster, not Holyrood.
Thing is, even if NS gets hoofed out on her erse, I don’t see anyone with any fight about them who could take over. All I see is placid acceptance of whatever sh*t WM will throw our way.
Of course one of them grabbed the mace in the HoC last night. Whoopee fkin doo, I bet that showed them. :rollingeyessmileything:
When the flying f@ck is all of this going to come to a head??? It seems to be taking longer than the investigations into 9/11.
Only just caught up with the news regarding Drew Henry. Following the IMB debate, suspended after trying to abscond with the ‘mace’.
Brilliant. Maybe our MP’s should have a daily rota.
@ Bob Mack at 9:10 am
You make valid points,
I see it as the SNP 97% of the heid bummers have no grasp of their real position, The SNP side of administration(Murrel and the rest of the dossers)work solely for the SNP, and should have absolutely nothing to do with Government side,
A clear division should be maintained.
What has happened is SNP personal are so far up their own backside and are interfering data protection ( and formal records)being one of many I would think
They are a bunch of thickos who don’t know their place
I’ll correct that for you Stonefree ” they’re a bunch of weirdos”.
There are certain words that cannot be uttered in the Scottish Parliament.
At the top of that list are the words, “INDEPENDENCE” and “REFERENDUM”.
Individual MPs living in Scotland do have sovereignty, (ie) being living in Scotland and as a Scottish person, However they do not have sovereignty over the people of Scotland and above the people of Scotland as a collective government,
Sovereignty is retained by the Scottish people alone, as stated and recorded time and again.
It is only a governments if the Scottish people give it away away to them voluntarily.
And it is Lying dormant at present due to the people of Scotland not recognising the power they hold in their hands over any government, or political party.
We the people in Scotland could change the politics, and intervene in the Scottish and British governments whenever we choose,
but we do not, We have the claim of right legally and in the constitution and legislation, if acted upon, we automatically withdraw consent to be governed by the British state or our present inept Scottish government, thus ending the treaty of the union by legal default, it’s our own choice,
I don’t for the life of me, understand why we do not do this, perhaps not enough people recognise its value, maybe many others do not know about this legal escape route, alas, all I can do is keep putting it out there.
@Stonefree,
You are of course correct
I think its important to emphasise that The Government and the Scottish Government( civil service), are and should be two completely different things.
The problem I see is that there are very few degrees of separation between them. This might seem handy at first glance, but it also means they have a common interest in hiding problems should things go wrong. As they have obviously done in the Salmond case.
Instead of one or the other being liable, they become inxtead complicit .
Sturgeon isn’t likely to be welcomed by the U.N. after her involvement over the Salmond stitch-up. The U.N. learned to be wary when appointing ex-politicians after Kurt Waldheim.
If only our government wasn’t legally bound to follow Westminster’s approach to legal practice.
link to rcmediafreedom.eu
Couldn’t agree more with “ Alf Baird @1153 am “ . The Westminster government imposed an EU referendum on us ( a major constitutional change), with substantially less than 50 percent of the vote.They are now breaching the Treaty of union with the new trading position in Northern Ireland. In fact when was the last time any London UK government had more than 50 pc of the popular vote . Consequently , as we have 48 SNP MP’s in Westminster with a higher percentage of the popular vote in Scotland than the Tory Junta has at Westminster , then I see no reason why they shouldn’t en mass withdraw from Westminster on Jan 1st and declare Scotland to be provisionally Independent. If the FM at Holyrood wishes to “ back them up “ then quite simply she could simoultaneously resign her “ devolved” government on Jan 1st and declare the subsequent Holyrood election would be fought on the “ single issue of Independence ( failing any section 30 agreement prior to the election date) .
The outrageous overruling of the Sovereign wishes of the Scottish people to remain in the EU and being “ stripped” of our EU citizenship is REASON ENOUGH for this proposed action . It is high time that our ELECTED LEADERS in Scotland CONFRONTED Westminster over this completely unacceptable democratic injustice. Enough is enough!
Is ‘a meeting’ and ‘met’ the same thing?
See if I was to win the lottery, mega bucks style, I as a sovereign Scottish person would announce a referendum on Scottish independence, pay for it, bring in ODIHR to run it & invite in international observers. Would that get round this Section 30 trap nonsense?
If it’s legal & possible let’s crowdfund ourselves, The Sovereign Scots, yer iwiz better daein it yersel.
@Eric Dodd
Reminds me of a similar tale from my (distant) days in industry. We sent a rookie young engineer round to examine some problem situation in our shipping warehouse, can’t remember what. He wrote a good report, but claimed in a footnote that the rate of defectivity shipped from the warehouse was 3000 parts per million (ppm). He’d worked it out longhand just to be sure. Nobody noticed until the report fell into the hands of senior management, who went crazy. All our promotional literature claimed 0 (yes, zero) ppm defective. The boss pulled me aside and told me to get my arse round to the warehouse and find out how young Jimmy could have made such a mistake.
The sampling plan was take 13 from the batch, fail the batch on one defective. Count the defectives and do the ppm calculation. But the new Quality Manager had been around, and this poor sucker was tasked with reducing 3000 ppm to zero on a timescale of two years (all our major competitors were claiming 0 ppm). ‘Don’t count all the defectives’ he told the warehouse operators. ‘With just one the batch will fail, so no customer will ever see it, so always put down zero – zero ppm is what is leaving this warehouse’.
This position was defended stoutly by senior management and prevailed for two years until there was a change of General Manager, who put a stop to it. By that time the name of our department was mud because we told such terrible lies, and it never recovered.
I often noticed afterwards that whenever management is given a target they meet it, no matter how wildly unrealistic it might have seemed beforehand.
I bet this Scottish Government has met all its performance targets on FOI.
“We are going to have to keep the pressure on to stop these nonsensical Bill’s- GRA, HC etc -from becoming law. It’s going to be a hard slog and we need you Stu so don’t give up after May.”
If the SNP get a majority in May there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
“As I understand it there are only Salmond and Sturgeon to give evidence to the inquiry with perhaps a couple of re-calls. So when will the inquiry realistically deliver its report?”
Salmond, Sturgeon, Liz Lloyd and Geoff Aberdein are the key players, and none of them have appeared yet. Allowing for Parliamentary breaks we’ll be doing well to get a report by the end of February.
Stu, with indy at 58% and SNP look to win a possible 17 seat majority surely it’s time to put this all to one side for now, in the grand scheme of things it’s trivia – and focus on what really matters over the next year – what will make Scotland a better country than it is now for everyone – indy! Let’s work together Rev and win.
“If the SNP get a majority in May there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
There is the existing fabric of the law, which I think provides plentiful protection of our rights. We just need someone who is able to view the law from outwith the confines of Westminster’s unsubstantial legal authority. That way they might be semi-competent in supporting human right law.
link to rm.coe.int
And here I was hoping to read something about the amazing 58% support for independence reported by the Scotsman. Instead it’s more determined internecine attacks. Supportive criticism is to be welcomed, but it seems there are issues more important than that. And that’s a criticism that this site rightly makes against elements within the SNP obsessed with Gender Assignment.
Do you really think getting rid of Nicola Sturgeon will boost those figures? Just go and talk to your neighbours about why they’re coming round to supporting our central cause. You’ll find that Scottish government competence and a strong liking for Nicola Sturgeon figure prominently. You may think these folk are deluded, but the fact is that it it’s working to achieve what we want. If it’s working, why try to destroy it? If someone could say with clairvoyant certainty that independence would be achieved with Nicola Sturgeon leading the SNP, would you still say, No, I don’t want that as long as she’s in charge? Are we stiff-necked dogmatists willing to sacrifice our dearest hope for a principled stand? Are we not getting a bit self-righteous?
There is a slow sea-change happening among among SNP MPs and MSPs as well as in the newly-elected NEC which is shifting the Party towards going for a referendum in 2021 regardless of what Westminster says. It’s a large party, and large parties are like oil tankers – they take a long while to turn. If, as many on this site think, Nicola Sturgeon is a slave to power, then she’s bound to ride that wave/jump on that bandwagon when she sees which way the wind is blowing…
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
17 December, 2020 at 1:37 pm
If the SNP get a majority in May there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
What’s the answer? Hope for an SNP minority government with a strong ISP opposition?
How likely is that?
No passing comment on the Leslie Evans article from earlier in the week Stu? Not normally a twitterer, but had a browse of the comments to her tweet and was good value. Impressively representative cross section of Scotland’s demographics united in disbelief that she is still in a job.
Hopefully Alex Salmond will publish his side of the story soon. Plus would Love a full autobiography from Salmond on his time as FM.
@Tridentitycrisis,
You may well decide to wheesh for Indy. Are you married? Do you have daughters and granddaughters?
If you do, then just have a look at them. Can you honestly say that their rights as women are expendable on the alter of
the GRA Bill?
If you can perhaps you should examine your role within your family.
Lorna Campbell says:
17 December, 2020 at 12:00 pm
“….. It is becoming a very sad end to what should have been a triumph for Nicola Sturgeon and her government – with the delivery of independence.
Instead, every opportunity has been squandered, and the Alex Salmond affair may yet bring her down….”
I agree, but go further. (Perhaps you do too). These past 5 years, the SNP under Sturgeon hasn’t just failed to deliver, it has gone out of it’s way to fail to deliver.
You try very hard to resist the temptation of putting on your tinfoil hat and giving yourself over to the dark side of conspiracy theory, but a retrospective analysis of Sturgeon’s “leadership” makes truly grim reading for any Independence supporter.
From where we were, to where we are now, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Sturgeon, by accident or design, has run us aground, and the doing it ‘by accident’ option looks increasingly charitable.
Another_Ian_Blackford_Speech says:
17 December, 2020 at 1:53 pm
…. in disbelief that she is still in a job.
… Disbelief she’s still not in jail as far as I can see.
@ tridentitycrisis: “more determined internecine attacks”.
It is the same attack – do you want truth or lies in Scotland’s government and the SNP? Corruption? Incompetence? Sheer nastiness?
You are prepared to leave that unexposed because of polls?
If the current active and complicit people are left in place I am sick to my stomach at the idea of what they will do with a majority in May. And I fear independence will not be their first priority either.
Tridentitycrisis @1:49
Do us a favour, change your monicker to “Wheesht for Indy” – Saves you having to follow up with screeds amounting to the same thing…
The public are blind to all this because the MSM sees NS as doing the bidding of the British Establishment and gives her a free pass so long as the IndyRef2 can keeps getting kicked down the road and Mother England gets her Brexit done with no trouble from the Mace-wielding Jocks. (Or should that be Jock, singular – there appears to be only the one backbone issued to the Westminster Group these days).
In the highly unlikely event IndyRef2 is called, the headlines will be awash with all the dirty linen NS & Co. have spent years trying to hide from the public.
You’re a damned fool if you think that there will be anything other than a continuation of the status quo or the whole Salmond/Sturgeon/Murrell circus blowing the chance of a majority for Yes in any IndyRef2.
If you want to continue to assume the position and stick your head in the sand, go ahead, but don’t come here looking for an SNP/NS fanzine. The bus for the party faithful leaves in 2 minutes…
Denise says: at 9:58 am
“What can we do?
We need a plan instead of passively accepting the inevitable.”
Emigrate! If I am going to be stuck with seemingly eternal corrupt governance I may as well do it somewhere scorchio with an all year round growing season which will facilitate healthy sustenance for what’s left of my existence, rather than stuck in this cold damp corrupt shithole.
I’d wager the health benefits of increased exposure to sunlight to stimulate Vit D production and UV to kill “the covid” will in the scheme of things be healthier on the body and mind than enduring life in
ScotlandWazzockstan.Obviously the loss of Freedom of Movement is a blow to that plan but it now looks like I could simply claim refugee status on the grounds of political persecution for wrong think…
On another note. There seemed to be some progress being made recently with MSP selections, NEC nominations, NEC voting, and latterly the sex / gender wording amendment.
I can’t help but wonder why the foot was taken off the gas and similar pressure wasn’t applied with regard to the Hate Crime Bill vote.
NB. I am in know way blaming anyone for this situation. I know it takes massive amounts of energy to push these short bouts of rapid but effective activism, so it would be totally understandable if folk were simply burnt out after pushing solidly for a few months.
Maybe this is something that needs to be looked at, possibly through the developments within AUOB?
An issue with orchestrating of that sort of activity through a larger organisation though is that it all has to go through and be agreed by committee discussions, and that process can really stall and dilute the effective quick roll out of a fast campaign for the moment.
The Geoff Aberdein evidence will be especially interesting – if he is ever allowed to give it. Covid may be used to stop that as well.
C. Griffiths @ 1.45pm
We are not going to shut up. The GRA reforms will hurt every women in Scotland. And yusuf’s thought crime bill is horrific.( The idea that ” we will amend the bill in the future ” is straight out of the Nazi/Stalinist playbook.).
Once yusuf’s bill is passed – any criticism will result in you facing a court.
These bills are being sneaked pass the Scottish public hidden beneath the independence cloak. And more and more of us are becoming aware just how dishonest the genderwoowoo leaders of the SNP are.
How little of all this has been reported in tabloids, TV or even in the “Quality press” ? Outside a few obsessives (like me), no one reads about this.
Meanwhile The Party Faithful and the Payroll Vote peddle their nonsense about Gender Reform and Hate Crimes. Bullshit legislation that comes from the same legal factory that produced the unnecessary and badly-framed Named Person Legislation., Sectarian Crimes at Football with all that other crap.
I would be happier if politicos involved with our daily lives did things to improve our country. “Looked After Children” – what a euphemism for a government department which like Social Work Departments in the 32 local authorities is clearly failing in its attempts to improve things for children. I remember some years back an article written by Kenneth Roy on the tragic events leading to the suicide of two such “looked- after” girls.
C Griffiths the simple fact is that NS and her cabal aren’t interested in independence they want a genderist dystopia – how much can we COMPEL the population to believe – and I want no part of that. If that means spoiling my constituency vote then so be it. I will not share womanhood with freaks and psychosis. No I have NO sympathy left for the trans community. They are trying to debased my existence. No more!
Talking of buses looks like the Number 29 is headed towards Joe Fitzpatrick. The first time the City of Dundee has topped a league table since 1983. Not something we should be tolerating. So we have Dundee East, Stewart Hosie MP and Shona Robson MSP. Dundee West Chris Law MP and Joe Fitzpatrick MSP plus an SNP led Council. A clean sweep for the SNP. What’s the excuse? You can see why we are getting resistance from SNP voters myself included. Add GRA, Hate bill to the list.
Graeme Hampton @ 11.55
It probably doesn’t matter when the committee reports or what it says.
Holyrood’s RECC just reported on the ‘catastrophic failure’ of SG and its two ferry agencies in the 2-ferry fiasco at Ferguson’s and called for urgent ‘root and branch’ reform. Yet the same SG and its agencies who procured those failed and thus far undelivered ferries are about to announce orders for further similarly questionable ships in early 2021.
In other words the SG couldn’t care less what any Holyrood committee says.
If, as Rev suggests, we shouldn’t expect to see a final report from the harassment committee until February, that may well be when Murrell’s lawyers do their thing i.e. stall publication.
Judging by his performance last week they haven’t been advising him on his personal testimony, or he wasn’t listening. So why did he hire them?
Ian
Maybe he hired them because he did not have to pay the bill ?
@Astonished Humza’s hate crime bill is nothing like that, he only wants to eliminate hate speech, intolerance & prejudice, there will be plenty of checks and balances for free speech. Nothing to worry about. As for the GRA reforms, again there will be checks & balances for womens rights. But at the end of the day the bottom line is transwomen are women, these reforms work fine in Ireland. Again nothing to worry about.
No C Griffiths trans identifying males are men. How dare you insult me by saying they are women. They most definitely are not.
First-class work Stuart.
Nicola Sturgeon and her ilk have riddled our body politic like a cancer and besmirch the name of our ancient and noble land. We are being attacked from within and from without. Westminster and the Tories are stabbing us from the front, while the SNP leadership stabs us in the back.
The opinion polls may make Nicola Sturgeon think she is secure, but that is all opinion polls are – the equivalent of an opinion piece in a newspaper and not objective journalism. Nicola Sturgeon is safe for only as long as she can conceal the truth.
Breeks:
“… Disbelief she’s still not in jail as far as I can see”
There was a fair amount of that sentiment on display too. Is it around the corner? Would be justified from what I’ve seen.
@ C Griffiths
“the bottom line is transwomen are women,”
That statement is an insult to all women, transwomen are not women they are male fetishists pretending to be women
Thank you for agreeing Graeme @ 3:14pm
@ C Griffiths
Due to the continuing modern day clearances in my area there are virtually no suitable women left for which I and other male acquaintances could start a family with.
I took chemistry and physics at school thus possibly lack biological knowledge, so maybe you can help me out here.
If you’re categorically stating transwomen are women, then could us males shag a transwomen and make a baby?
If that isn’t the case because there are some limiting reasons as to why male on transwoman sex action won’t produce offspring, then I respectfully ask that you stop spouting shite.
@ C Griffiths at 3.01
If you think “these reforms work fine in Ireland”, you haven’t been paying attention.
A quick read of this twitter account – link to twitter.com , especially this tweet – link to twitter.com – will update you.
I am so sick and tired of their lies and deceit and manipulation and lust for power and control. It can’t be that simple is a kind of modern mantra. Yes it fucking is. STOP telling lies and covering your arses and plunging everyone into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Like Stuart, I am raging about the fact that children are being medicated and mutilated at the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow. I watched the exchange at FMQs when Nicola Sturgeon was challenged on this by Jenny Marra. The First Minister’s condescending and smug “ response “ made me ashamed and horrified in equal measure. She believes that children have the capacity to understand such “treatment”. Who knew that the FM seems to have a predilection for cruelty and causing state sanctioned harm to children?
Our children should be cherished and nurtured and protected from harm. It is so important and vital that their innocence is not disturbed during the latency period of their development…ages 3-12/13. Her party’s monstrous GRA ideology and feverish insistence on “ progressivism “ is seeping in to our schools. The dark forces in the SNP have engineered a situation that allows political criminality, despotism masked as law and order and state sanctioned child abuse.
It’s well past the time for the loyal voting fodder to consider just what the hell they have become loyal to and where has it got them? I wish we could bypass the whole fucking lot of them. I do like the idea of doing a “ Belgium “ where parties can’t agree on anything, no one has the power to govern and the people of Belgium seem to survive ok without them.
C Griffiths @3:01 pm
“…there will be plenty of checks and balances for free speech. Nothing to worry about.”
Ah, good old checks and balances. They’re always there as long as someone says they’ll be.
All the folk who are saying they won’t vote for the SNP ie independence in the 2021 election because the SNP is corrupt need to rethink.
We need an independence party in power, even if it’s dodgy. At least the revised NEC will have the opportunity to depose the independence blockers, and then proceed with the independence case.
If we end up with a Labour or Tory govt, we’re dead in the water for at least another 5 years.
However the list vote should be for another independence party.
Otherwise the opposition will be an independence opposing party and selling out Scotland for their London masters
“the bottom line is transwomen are women,”
Really @ C Griffiths says at 3:01 pm !!!
So those of us who believe in the demonstrable evidence of Biological Science and Genetics are plain wrong / or are we heretics?
And you are saying that you personally believe in magic as opposed to millennia of scientific evidence?
When I say you “believe in magic”, I am not being facetious.
Instead of “Abracadabra” the magic words you use are “ trans-women are women” aka “My pronouns are” and “I identify as”
Oh, and Humza’s hate crime bill will close sites like WoS, Craig Murray and Prof J Robertson’s and more than likely have comments like mine considered a Hate Speech / Wrong Think Crime!
I await a chap at the door from The Scottish Inquisition who will extract my confession, whilst the well meaning but naive, the sane but cowardly and those who profit personally from this madness, (like Big Pharma and those Big Pharma have bought off) watch and agree that I must be punished for such despicable wrong think.
Examples like the 16th Century Witch hysteria, Galileo branded a heretic etc. are there for you to reference (unless those examples are the ‘wrong type of history’)?
Sorry if you’ve explained this before and I missed it…
But is there any clear line between when a “meeting” of some people at Parliamentary premises is or is not required to be recorded?
Presumably Mum and Dad dropping round to tell you how proud they are is OK? At the other end, presumably Mr Big Fat-Bastard from Mega-Bux Corporation popping in to tell you how proud Wall Street and the entire 1% is with your work would have to be recorded?
Do they have the slightest chance of trying to slip it between the cracks of those two extremes somehow?
E.G. – It wasn’t Government Business at that point because it was just a “social” and “informal” visit between acquaintances.
Just using my lawyer brain to work out how they’re intending to wriggle out of this.
PS – Reference to “Culture Club” noted and appreciated.
@BLMac 3.51pm says
“We need an independence party in power, even if it’s dodgy”
Please tell me you made an error.
Russian Mission OSCE (twitter)
`Seriously concerned about detention conditions of Assange at British Belmarsh prison, where 65 out of 160 detainees are COVID19 positive.
We support UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer call on UK to immediately release the journalist or place him under house arrest`
Re the Sandyford Clinic ,
This was from Alex Massie in the Times ,
Puberty blockers: are Scottish and English children that different?
“ At Holyrood last week there was a sighting of that rarest of birds: a good question. Jenny Marra, the Labour MSP, asked Nicola Sturgeon if the Scottish government still believes puberty-blocking drugs should be administered to children, some of them as young as 11, in Scotland.
This followed a ruling in the High Court in England that children under the age of 16 lack the competence to consent to such treatment. In Scotland, however, no such restriction applies and the first minister appears to think this should remain the case. “
“ In 2013, just 37 children under the age of 18 were referred to the Sandyford Young People’s Gender Identity Clinic in Glasgow. By 2018, the last year for which figures are available, that number was 298. Some 33 of these were aged between four and ten. Putting this into context, significantly more children are now referred to gender identity clinics each year than are diagnosed with cancer. “
link to archive.vn
I’m sorry but this Snp Government is solely to blame for this happening in Scotland and there’s no way I could vote for them in May after 40 years voting for the Snp . Nicola Sturgeon and her woke cabal need to go before they ever receive my and my family’s vote ever again .
The assertion that trans-women are women, is a position that appears ignorant of the existing legal interpretation of male and female.
link to lawnlinguistics.com
Wonderful speech by Liz Truss debunking all things woke.
Why can’t our Scottish politicians do something similar?
I’m not paid big bucks to shape Scots law, but that doesn’t mean I’m selling folks a dummy. So here’s a look at “Formal Linguistics and Law”, which I would think essential reading for ‘our’ Justice Minister.
link to degruyter.com
C Griffiths @ 3.01pm
I really don’t know where to start.
Let’s try biology – Literally every cell in a transwoman’s body proclaims they are men.Women do not, and never have had a penis.
Let’s try Yusuf : He says every white person has “white privilege”. He is a privately educated millionaire. He believes he is without privilege. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I don’t think he wants independence. ( I note you don’t answer my point that the thought crime amendments are what very unsavoury regimes would do.).
Let’s try the present SNP/Genderwoowoo leaders. They do not want independence. They have played us for fools. The evidence is that the NEC did not discuss independence once since 2014.
I have two questions : A group of 13 year old girls are changing in a swimming pool. Should an anatomically intact transwoman be allowed to change with them ?
Secondly will anyone who objects be subject to Yusuf’s hate crime bill?
So why should we vote SNP when they will only take a win as a reason to push genderwoowoo and doubleplusgood rightthink ?
Astonished says:
17 December, 2020 at 9:03 am
How the hell can the murrells survive this ?
And what is the crown office and procurator fiscal’s office doing about it ?
What are our SNP MSPs doing ? Our SNP MPs ?
Is there no one honest left in the upper echelons of the party ?
Very good work, Stu. Re the above comment. Scotland is a legal anomaly, because it has powers over things like police and the law which belong to a parliament which is not sovereign. It is a devolved assembly with no independent constitutional powers.
I would put it that this is a win-win situation for both the Murrells and Westminster and so is likely to continue. For Westminster, the Scots get screwed. And because it is done by the Murrells, Westminster gets even more hold over them. This is a scenario which I do not even think Shakespeare or the ancient writers were even capable of creating.
The only way out I see it is to use the union to our advantage. Contact MPs (not MSPs) and the Scottish Select Committee. Because there is power still above Holyrood and above “Scotland”.
Och, I wish she would do the right thing, and just go. It is abundantly clear that despite all her rhetoric, she does not have the courage to genuinely stand up for Scotland. Brexit is about to happen and Devolution is about to be completely undone by English Tories. What are the SNP doing about it?? Whining (with the honourable exception of drew hendry).
This is the reality of the situation, Independence is now the majority view of Scots, yet still the SNP are too feart to stand up to Westminster, or even, god forbid, call an independence referendum.
I truly find it hard to believe that the SNP have now shown themselves to be wholly unwilling to actually ACT to save Scotland from all of this.
With each passing day, I grow more and more dismayed at the SNP. The SNP, the talk-lots, but do-nothing party.
I now genuinely will find it near impossible to vote SNP next year, and I used to a be a member. So depressing, so utterly, utterly depressing.
Christine, you can by pass the lot of them. Legally,
One day the sovereign Scottish people will come awake, hopefully very very soon,
By passing hate crime bill, transgender issues, Nicola sturgeon issues, weak knee snp issues, civil servants issues.
tapping my fingers, just waiting for the penny to drop.
Nobody trolls more effectively than CameronB Brodie
This is some pretty elite-level trolling, using some really quite peculiar but efficient tactics.
Christ I always believed Alice in Wonderland was a Fairytale
The Queen of Hearts is not dead but alive and running the scottish government
The revelations of scotland’s drug problem would probably account for recent actions these people are all of their heads on dope because relatively normal sane people dont usually act like this
I’m not here to sell folks a dummy. I’d like to think I’m helping some in “Finding ordinary meaning in law: The judge, the dictionary or the corpus?”.
link to degruyter.com
Astonished, in answer to your 2 questions: 1 yes bcos he is a she, he’s had an operation and mentally feels himself to be a woman. 2 Of course not, but anyone who promotes hate, intolerance or prejudice should be, that’s not controversial surely? Merry Christmas.
@Kapelmeister the checks & balances are there, Humza & Nicola have said that themselves. Nadolig llawen.
A FURTHER COMMENT AFTER READING oops caps lock engaged before brain .
Anyway the SNP Government under this management are out of control it looks like ordinary members and Independence supporters are either wilfully being ignored and the whole Idea of Independence has been dropped , never to be mentioned even the fiercest backers of this current lot must question what the fk is going on ,blind Loyalty is making them back people who have lost all trust with people who follow these events , there is no other explanation
Cameron,
I guess if I was Bill Clinton your link to the “ordinary meaning” article might help me understand what the meaning of “is” is.
Sadly it does not seem particularly relevant here unless you were advocating that lawmakers in a future independent Scotland used this as a guide when drafting legislation or you were encouraging the Scottish Government to avoid the weasel words they usually employ. You did not offer either position for discussion so I guess this is just more Cam Spam.
Robert Louis says: at 4:39 pm
“With each passing day, I grow more and more dismayed at the SNP. The SNP, the talk-lots, but do-nothing party.”
I ken you’re referring to progress on implementing Indy, but they aren’t actually doing nothing.
It’s clear as day they have actually been extremely busy with lots of “other side projects” which appear to serve their own self, and favoured lobby groups’ interests above that of protecting wider Scottish interests.
It’s interesting reading that Belgium has managed without a functioning government for so long, and the day to day stuff of running the country is presumably handled by their civil service.
Does make you wonder how we could take the initiative back and bypass all the political careerists, party whipsping on policy, and all those influential lobby groups.
Howz about individuals stand as independent (non party) candidates on a platform that if they get elected they will set up an App that facilitates handing democratic decisions making process right back to the actual people in said constituency.
The electorate for that constituency is empowered to cast their votes as they see fit on each issue as and when required, and the winning choice is then implemented in parliament as the representative wish of that particular constituency.
Elected reps. could set that up relatively easily and only take minimal costs of running such a system, with the remainder of the normal wage being spent across the constituency on other issues which would also be suggested and decided upon by the electorate.
The beginnings of a proper participatory democracy that enfranchise and empower the many rather than the few.
So knowing what we know now in part due to your excellent perseverance on the matter, one wonders will the inquiry act on it and will Sturgeon and Murrell finally be removed to make way for someone with independence at heart.
Or will Sturgeon and Murrell continue to obfuscate, obstruct and deny until campaigning mode begins next year.
Stuart MacKay
I’m trying to show folk that attention to linguistuic theory, and “corpus linguistics” in particular, has institutional support elsewhere, and why. Perhaps if I was paid the big bucks I might be able to be more topic specific. I appreciate that cognitive linguistics and the law is a dry and uninviting subject to some, so here’s a look at “Depictions of deception: A corpus-based analysis of five Shakespearean characters”, as evidence I’m not selling folks a dummy.
link to journals.sagepub.com
Stuart and everyone we ALL have the answer literally at our fingertips , the other day when the forensic medical sciences bill was being voted on, WE ALL came together and emailed not JUST our SNP MSP’S but ALL MSP’S representing our areas , tories , libdums, liebour and SNP , DID we get responses,very few , did it change anything ? I would like to think so , the amendment by JL PASSED , a small victory for common sense
CAN WE do it again I FUCKING THINK SO , can we keep on doing it (why not) , forgive me BUT WE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MUST COUNT
We could have done it , and should have done it for the reading of the HCB but we let ourselves down , we can’t let it happen again
Can someone who is adept at writing straight to the point concise letters, draft something that highlights all the salient points Stuart refers to, the lies being told by Sturgeon and Murrell the inconsistencies in their stories , the FACT that there is NO record of Aberdeins meeting although Sturgeon admits to it taking place , the outright refusal of the SG and John Swinney to supply COMPLETE documentation to the AS inquiry , THE DEMAND for ALL MSP’S to INSIST the inquiry is given ALL support to explore every aspect openly without hindrance or obfuscation and if those conditions are not complied with a vote of no confidence MUST be applied and ENACTED
If someone can do that we could amend it for varience and include Stuart’s column then STATE a time and day that we collectively send it to ALL MSP’S. LET’S SHAKE THEM UP
C Griffiths @5:09
The Hate Crime Bill does away with the vital concept of people being equal before the law. It’s a charter for bullies, which is why it appeals to Sturgeon.
twathater @5.54
I think you’ll find it was a twitter storm that persuaded the SNP MPs to vote for J lamont,s bill.
Can NS drag it on past the election? That seems like the only way out for her, if she gets an overall majority.
The fact that both Nicola and her husband said that they didn’t discuss Salmond allegations at home at all, beggars belief and annoys me on two accounts. 1 They have to be fibbing, they think we’re stupid? 2 I actually agree with Ruth and Jacob Mogg views on this, and that annoys me more than anything!
Kapelmeister @5:58pm
here’s ‘a look at’ a longer text that explains your comment in more words.
link to spiked-online.com
and O/T: FFS re cameron brodie he always links to someone else’s spiel, when i went to school it was made clear to me that simply quoting someone else’s words did not show that you understood them. But he’s not even quoting someone else’s words, i doubt that he’s even read them, just googled for ‘ cognitive lingustics law deception shakespeare’ and picked one at random and cut and pasted the abstract.
This reminds me of the 1987 American political thriller, “No Way Out” which starred Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Will Patton & Sean Young.
Hackman plays David Brice, the Secretary of Defense. His sleazy advisor, Scott Pritchard is played by Will Patton who helps hide the accidental murder of Brice’s mistress Susan Atwell, played by Sean Young.
It’s a long, complicated plot but near the end, Brice concocts a story blaming Pritchard, who is homosexual, for killing Susan because he was jealous of Brice’s relationship with her.
This takes place inside The Pentagon & a devastated Pritchard immediately commits suicide. When guards break in, the dead Pritchard is accused by Brice of having been “Yuri”, a Russian mole that Tom Farrell, played by Kevin Coster was employed by Brice to uncover.
On a side note: one of Pritchard’s more sinister lines is … “I am tired of weakness! I am faced with a grave problem, and I intend to resolve it quickly and cleanly.”
I’ll leave readers to guess who inside the Scottish Government I am referring to but it is not unreasonable to predict a major scalp before Sturgeon is forced to step down.
Often in these lurid situations, there is a strong sexual theme running through them.
It will be especially interesting then to watch who gets pushed first into the firing line. Like I said, Sturgeon might have to go but she won’t be the first.
I accept I may have assisted changing the topic but I thought I could combine the mishandling of information with supporting women’s rights. As that is kind of central to the project to strengthen the epistemological integrity of institutional knowledge. I probably need to be more prescriptive with my intros, but I don’t want to overly influence anyone who actually clicks my links. Though it’s a bit depressing the opposition I’m still facing from some, who appear determined to disbelieve I actually might know what I’m talking about. Though I don’t know how many folk out there would think that the semiotics of the law might be a thing. One that shapes the ways we think. So here’s a look at “Jurilinguistics: Ways Forward Beyond Law, Translation, and Discourse”.
link to link.springer.com
“This is the guest editors’ introductory paper to the special issue “Situating jurilinguistics across cultures using translation and discourse approaches.” The introduction showcases the interdisciplinary vocation of jurilinguistics from its conception almost forty years ago.
It is argued that jurilinguistics has achieved its current maturity by diversifying the disciplinary lenses of the originally contributing disciplines of legal translation and legal studies while keeping faithful to its original principles – facing practical problems with a rigorous outlook, venturing into any new domains that may prove enlightening, and combining professional and academic perspectives.
The authors highlight how the series of conferences “Jurilinguistics: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Language and Law” have been instrumental in enhancing the scope of jurilinguistics. Finally, the articles gathered in this special issue are presented and their contributions in advancing the knowledge available for practitioners and scholars meeting at the interface between law and language are underscored.”
C Griffiths says:
17 December, 2020 at 5:08 pm
Astonished, in answer to your 2 questions: 1 yes bcos he is a she, he’s had an operation and mentally feels himself to be a woman. 2 Of course not, but anyone who promotes hate, intolerance or prejudice should be, that’s not controversial surely? Merry Christmas.
—————————————————————-
So what you’re saying is anybody can be whatever they want to be just by saying they are
ie by your logic if I said to you I’m a Polar Bear because I mentally feel like a Polar Bear, that would make me a Polar Bear is that right ?
CBB – at 1629 you referred to a whole book at £118. Is any particular chapter of interest, or are we expected to read the lot, all 426pp?
Or do you think the justice minister comes here for your advice?
C. Griffiths @ 5.08pm
Have you ever considered that ,like the murrells, transwomen might be lying ?
SOG
It’s not my fault a sound comprehension of sound law is so pricey or wordy. I’m not trying to train folk in legal science, I’m simply pointing to less well-known aspects of legal method that need to be taken into account, IMHO.
C Griffiths says: “Nothing to worry about.”
That is what the Nazis said to their victims as they packed them off to the concentration camps.
@ Graeme at 6:38 pm
I’m still awaiting a response from my 3.24pm query to C Griffiths, but they better hurry up as time is of the essence.
I’m not getting any younger, and if as a male I can now create a kid with a transwoman, such an event will help sustain oor society’s future viability and I’ll widen my search parameters on the internet dating providings site.
The recent enforced isolation, the self medicating induced beer & wine goggles, along with not going to the opticians in ages for fear of catching killer virus death, has rendered my eyesight to a point I am more amenable to being attracted to any moving fuzzy attractive shaped individuals. 🙂
Two simple questions that show where Nicola Sturgeons priorities lie since the Brexit vote in 2016 ,
1. Has she led or taken part in a Pride march and Rally ?
2 . Has she led or taken part in an Independence march or rally ?
Answers ,
1. Yes
2 . No
Although she managed to travel to London to take part in a stop brexit rally and she took part in the rally held by the National in George Square last November but that was only because the December general election was coming up .
Last on the subject of corpus linguistics, but I’m on a roll. Or is it a bap? Crivvens, help ma Boab and Jings This world is phuhl o’ a number o’ things. 🙂
Corpus Linguistics in Legal Interpretation. An Evolving Interpretative Framework
link to languageandlaw.eu
Cameron B Brodie,
You’d get a lot more traction if you gave some context and kept the links relevant to the topic at hand and not in an esoteric or lofty way either. You need to tailor your message to suit the audience otherwise it’s impossible to tell whether your grasp of the law is sound or you’re just googling shit at random.
Remember. Less is more 😉
Rev when you submit a revised request please, please, please ask them how many other meetings were held in the First Minister’s office without being recorded in her official diary. They will of course come back with ‘there are no relevant records’ but ask just to put the wind up them.
At the same time ask what instruction was given to the keeper of the official diary to NOT record that meeting with Aberdein. I bet it was verbal but again, ask to put the wind up them.
If they failed to record one meeting the question does arise: how many other meetings were not recorded? Was there a systematic culture of not recording certain meetings in the FM’s office?
THIS is why a judge led inquiry where people can be compelled and legally sworn to tell the truth at risk of, damn this meningitis, begins with P, not pleurisy. So questions like this can be raised.
From that nice Mr. Murrell, who corresponds regularly,
In total, 55 per cent of Scottish voters are planning to back the party in their constituency, with 42 per cent backing the incumbents in the regional list vote.
We’ve got a simple new way for you to sign up to four of the SNP’s affiliated organisations – the Disabled Members’ Network, the BAME Network, Out for Indy, and Scots Asians for Independence. One click, and we’ll alert the affiliated organisation that you’ve signed up. It couldn’t be easier and it’s completely FREE.
So, feeling the jaws of righteous justice closing in around your scrawny, weaselly neck are we?
@Stuart MacKay
I have seldom seen a neck less scrawny than thon.
Stuart MacKay
In you not-so-lofty opinion, of course. I’m certainly not claiming my methods are perfect or the best, though I try not to deviate unless in defense of certain legal rights. Remember, I’m very rusty but this is my best performance of relational post-colonial practice, informed through organisational and communication theories and stuff. Like the law. Though I’m not claiming I every got it all down pat. 😉
Organizational ethical integrity: good and bad illusions
link to nature.com
The whole trans concept is just ridiculous.
It’s like me, a heterosexual male, donning shorts, a vest, growing a dodgy moustache and dancing around to Erasure songs and claiming that that would make me qualify as being homosexual.
For the older readers liker myself, it would be like the Black & White Minstrels claiming that they were coloured because they had blacked up and were singing negro spirituals.
@MaggieC says:
17 December, 2020 at 7:11 pm
“Two simple questions that show where Nicola Sturgeons priorities lie since the Brexit vote in 2016 ,
1. Has she led or taken part in a Pride march and Rally ?
2 . Has she led or taken part in an Independence march or rally
Answers ,
1. Yes
2 . No”
Maggie, remember that they do not like binary choices…so possible answers:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes but identifying as No.
4. No, but identifying as Yes.
5. Yes and No
6. Maybe
7. Perhaps
8. Maybe, but identfying as…
ad finitum 🙂
No c Griffiths. A man who has his genitals removed is a eunuch. A man who has breasts created is a freak. That’s the bottom line.
Beaker @ 7.45 pm ,
Well that’s my cup of coffee gone everywhere but then again it might be identifying as a cup of tea . LOL , LOL , LOL .
MaggieC says:
17 December, 2020 at 7:11 pm
Two simple questions that show where Nicola Sturgeons priorities lie since the Brexit vote in 2016 ,
1. Has she led or taken part in a Pride march and Rally ?
2 . Has she led or taken part in an Independence march or rally ?
Answers ,
1. Yes
2 . No
Not entirely accurate. I saw her speak at the rally in George Square 2nd Nov last year.
– W
Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to follow the conversations rather than lead them.
Organizational Knowledge: Ethics and the Importance of Trust
link to core.ac.uk
Dan, as regards your comment at 7:04 pm. There’s a song by the New Riders of the Purple Sage which sums up your predicament. It’s called “She’s Looking Better Every Beer”!
@susanXX (7.59) –
The Wikipedia entry for ‘Eunuch’ is a great read.
Mind you, I crossed and uncrossed my legs so many times I had blisters on my thighs.
link to en.wikipedia.org
@ george wood says: at 7:42 pm
I have long been critical of aspects of this subject and the way it is being promoted and pushed by willing idiots that have zero real scientific qualifications to back up what they are selling.
Does transgenderism occur elsewhere in the kingdom of animals or are humans really the sole mammals it pertains to. We have very similar physiology but our psychology is notably different to our close primate relatives.
It surely should raise concerns for animal welfare practices if zoos and facilities rearing animals for food choose to force incompatible gender combinations together in the same living quarters.
Breeding programs could actually be forcing non-consensual sex between animals. The injustice and horror of that! Fuck knows, maybe that’s the issue with Pandas…
I’m jist a practical kinda chap, but have tried testing the theory by “trans-ing” in other realms with little success.
EG. I tried Trans-transmissioning once by shouting “Ford Gearboxes are Gearboxes”… only to be disappointed and exhausted to find that after spending hours wrestling with a 50kg Ford gearbox there was just no fuckin’ way it would mate properly onto the VW engine.
I don’t know, it was like it was incompatible for some reason and there were fundamental differences like bellhousing bolt pattern, driveshaft flange design, input shaft diameter spline count, and gear linkage componentry that differed from the original VW gearbox I’d previously removed from the car.
On a similar automotive vibe, I got a call from a neighbour who had mis-fueled their diesel car by filling it with petrol by accident.
I’d had a beer so couldn’t drive to assist them but took the opportunity to test scienz further by suggesting they simply tell the petrol in their tank to ID as diesel and drive home. Well suffice to say that didn’t really work out or end particularly well on a common rail diesel engined vehicle…
Ian Brotherhood
I think you may have found a solution to our self-ID problem. In our hyper-sexualised society maybe the transwomen have mis-interpreted or misunderstood their role in society. A secure and somewhat venerated vocation awaits them as trusted advisors to the Scottish Government. After all, if they identify as women that do they need testicles for.
Here’s some evolutionary psychology that may help shed some light on the nature of transgenderism.
“Do Transgender People Respond According to Their Biological Sex or Their Gender Identity When Confronted With Romantic Rivals?”
link to journals.sagepub.com
“This study examined the hypothesis that gender identity and biological sex represent independent modules and that transgender individuals respond to romantic rivals in line with their gender identity and not with their biological sex. Additionally, associations of jealousy with intrasexual competitiveness (ISC) and social comparison orientation (SCO) were explored. A total of 134 male-to-female and 94 female-to-male transgender individuals from Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, responded to a questionnaire.
In line with the predictions, female-to-male transgender individuals experienced more jealousy than male-to-female transgender individuals in response to a physically dominant rival, whereas male-to-female individuals experienced more jealousy than female-to-male individuals in response to a physically attractive rival. Regardless of their gender identity, in both groups social-communal attributes were the most jealousy-evoking characteristic.
Overall, the results indicate that transgender individuals mainly respond in line with their gender identity and not in line with their biological sex when facing romantic rivals. In addition, transgender individuals high in ISC experienced relatively more jealousy in response to all rival characteristics, whereas SCO was only among male-to-female individuals associated with jealousy.”
Dan
Homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom. Slugs are hermaphrodites and some fish can change sex, possibly at will.
Lizards are pretty flexible too, link to telegraph.co.uk, no doubt much to the chagrin of zookeepers.
In mammals, well, one in particular, it seems to be fashion statement.
If only the trans clans were motivated by reproduction and not misogyny they might get a more sympathetic ear. Breast-feeding fetishes don’t count, link to grahamlinehan.substack.com
@Stuart MacKay –
It’s a sign of the times that I’ve been very reluctant to share this old gag, but it is apt:
‘Why do wummin rub their eyes when they get up in the mornin?
Cause they dinnae have baws tae scratch.’
Transgenderism is a Mental Illness nothing more.
I am reading through the comments and I see humour is back on, brill, I am smiling away here, you’ve cheered me up no end,
Cenchos says:
17 December, 2020 at 11:05 am
Breastplate @ 10.16.
‘Yes. I was being sardonic in order to underline Polly’s point.’
Yes, I got the humour, I thought you were pulling my leg. 🙂
ScotsRenewables @ 8.17 pm
You wrote ,
Not entirely accurate. I saw her speak at the rally in George Square 2nd Nov last year.
Me @ 7.11 pm
I did put a reference in my comment about George Square in my post ,
“ Although she managed to travel to London to take part in a stop brexit rally and she took part in the rally held by the National in George Square last November but that was only because the December general election was coming up . “
If there hadn’t been the general election coming up last December I’m pretty sure that Nicola Sturgeon wouldn’t have attended that rally even if the National had still organised it without a general election happening .
Also after that rally was staged by the National , surprise surprise Richard Walker ( editor of the Sunday National ) and his partner both passed vetting by the vetting committee to stand as candidates in the constituency selections as an Msp for the Snp although both of them were not selected as the candidates by the members .
The same vetting committee failed better candidates who wanted to stand for selection as an Msp .
Lorna Campbell @ noon in her reference to our ‘probity-lacking”authoritarian government’, which is ‘teetering on the edge of totalitarianism’, and SusanXX at 2.29 in highlighting that Scottish government’s determination to turn Scotland into a ‘genderist dystopia’ are both absolutely correct. Please take note, and make sure that the SNP, if it continues in its current Sturgeon-skewered form, is NOT given carte blanche to do whatever it likes to our country as a result of the May elections.
I have wanted independence all my life. As a matter of simple historical justice, and in view of a better future for all. But neither justice nor that better future is up for grabs. These can’t be sacrificed for the vain hope of acquiring an independence without them. Vain in every sense, not just because that would be to give in to vanity, but above all because unjust means cannot be justly used to acquire a just end (independence). Injustice corrupts whoever employs it.
Very sorry, but I am not going to vote for the extremely grave injustices that will ensue when an authoritarian and totalitarian clique take over Scotland, in order to impose by force both their gender dystopia and many other evils that will then rain down on the once-sovereign people. Whose sovereignty they will by then have finally and (as they think) irreversibly usurped. For they will use their victory at these very same May elections to claim the legitimacy of that usurpation, and to take all power to themselves.
Their imposition of their appalling fantasy agenda, they intend, will be for all generations to come. I will not collude with that, or be party to it.
The only disagreement I might have with Lorna Campbell, quoted above, would be to insist that the present SNP government are no longer ‘teetering’ on the brink of this: they are there already. What they tried to do to AS (and even if you don’t like AS, you would still have to say this) is clear proof of the fact, but there are plenty of other proofs as well. More and more of them.
Do not avert the eyes. Take a very good look at it all. What a pile …
All they need, in order to go full steam ahead with their full-on totalitarian agenda, without even bothering to hide it, is victory in May 2021. Once they have that in the bag, there will be no stopping them. If I were to vote for them, I would be colluding with the horror-show that’s well on its way, and coming next. Not just to ‘a cinema near you’, but right down on top of you, in every town, village and farmstead throughout the country. What you are seeing now is just the trailer – just you wait till you see (sorry, feel, including around your collar) the real thing.
I am sorry, but I will not be voting in any way for a Party that usurps our – the people’s – sovereignty in the way they are already doing. And will all the more do, after May, if we give them half a chance.
No way am I going to facilitate their imposition of their hoped-for unending reign of total control. They might not put a number on it – ‘don’t frighten the horses’ – but dreams of 1000-year reigns of indestructible power we have seen, and heard (and watched on old footage) before.
Of course, they won’t last 1,000 years, because evil soon undoes itself, falling headlong into its own pit of its own making. As its mass of lies, illusion and distortion trip it up and send it crashing to its own self-destruction. But they don’t need much time to wreak their havoc. 1,000 days might be quite enough. You don’t need a lot of time to do a lot of evil.
Of course, it could never happen to us. We’re good people. It’s only these others who do these kind of barbarities … Do you really think so? What about ‘the banality of evil’ … the way it so easily gets normalised … and quickly, too?
By the time they come unstuck, and they finally do away with themselves in their last-bunker-fest of the terminally-and-culpably-deluded, they will have turned the whole country into a desert, with the smoke rising from the ruins, the surface a carpet of left-over debris from what once was.
These kind of people have to be resisted. Totally. Even the old adage ‘if you sup with the devil, use a long spoon’ isn’t good enough, or strong enough, to stop the damage they will do. Instead, the right advice would be: Do NOT sup with them at all.
Rip up their invitation card. Their banquet stinks. Do NOT collude.
It seems to me we are now engaged on several fronts at the same time. The enemy within poses the greater threat.
By comparison, the enemy without is easy meat, and can be overcome without too much difficulty.
Both need to be stopped, both defeated. But it is the enemy within that can do Scotland by far the greatest damage. And that ‘enemy within’ is far more difficult to deal with than the enemy without. The one dressed in camouflage, whose signallers send out false messages to make you think they are fighting on your side, are so hard to identify compared to the buffoons who obviously are not.
If the SNP is unable to turn its cumbersome and unwieldy ship around before May, what will we do? And what are the chances of that turn-around? Smaller ships always had the advantage over huge galleons that they could turn quicker, and realign faster. Maybe the same with smaller horses compared – ponies even – to overladen heavy-footed ones.
We will need clear, honest, pro-the-people’s-sovereignty pro-independence candidates who will stand against the SNP not just on the second ballot, for the lists, but also on the first, for the constituencies. This will be the only way to make the SNP wake up, and do something about themselves.
We should not be so afraid that that will split the pro-indy vote, thereby risking the possibility of some Unionist gains. The SNP needs a fright. The cry from the terraces to the players on the field to ‘gi’e themsel’s a shake’ might not be enough to have any effect, as the lethargic and complacent leadership is far too busy with ‘other things on its deluded mind’ to make the radical change that is so badly needed.
Even if this vote-splitting did in fact end up bringing about some kind of Unionist majority in Holyrood (even though, personally, I don’t think that that will happen), it won’t necessarily be a disaster.
How long do you think the three Unionist Parties are going to be able to hang together in Holyrood? The only thing that unites them is their opposition to independence: could they even form a government? Even if they did, within a fortnight they would all be at each other’s throats, wouldn’t they?
And those in each Party who did not get any of the Ministerial limousines, out of all the crazy deals that would be done, would very soon be viciously attacking their own fellow Party members who did. There is an opposition to independence for sure, but it is not – emphatically NOT – a united opposition. The ‘Disunited Unionists’ are not suddenly going to start agreeing with each other about any other single thing.
Unionism is not a love-fest, just a matter of convenience. There are Unionists and Unionists, of many different stripes. The quality they mainly have in common is that they have nothing else in common except their Unionism. In political terms, are they not on opposite sides of huge divides, more inclined to take pot-shots at each other on every other issue, something which those in favour of independence could easily exploit? Is it not the case that they basically hate each other? If so, what kind of stable ‘coalition government’ could they ever really form?
I can’t see a Unionist coalition lasting a whole 5- (or is it now 4-?) year term. They would be lucky to last 5 months. Even after 5 weeks they would be in serious trouble with each other. They will not be a viable government, and – nutters together – they just won’t last.
Meanwhile, after losing out (and after losing their cushy numbers), the SNP might be forced back to its senses. The voice from the terracing might finally get heard. Would there not be a night of the long knives, with scalps galore? Is it not likely that the inevitable blood-letting would bring back leadership figures who know what the SNP was founded for in the first place?
Is that not precisely what is needed? Get rid of the fakes who have taken over the SNP; bring back the ‘real SNP’, as we once knew it.
Would this not be a lot better – safer, even – than supping with the Devil. The present Devil, so slippery and snake-like and elusive, smiling and untrue. Don’t forget that even the smallest devil is much more clever than you or I. And that the De’il, to give him his proper name, is a constant in Scottish life and letters: we shouldn’t really be surprised to see him make an appearance among us. He’s been doing it for centuries. Think of Stevenson; think of Burns; and it goes back a long, long way before that.
Anyway, imagine supping with Auld Nick (or even Young Nic) only to find that the banquet he/she/it laid out for you vanishes before your eyes one day after the election is won. Not only vanishes, but actually turns into the poison-laced only-dish-on-the-menu – ‘Just be quiet now, an’ eat yer dinner, son’ – that your host always had in mind for you from the minute he/she/it sent you that oh-so-appealing invitation card.
No matter how long your wary spoon was, you will realise – all too late – how late it was, how late – that you have been well and truly gubbed.
You might even find yourself waking up behind bars, imprisoned for life. Only then perhaps will it suddenly – at long last, but so suddenly – dawn on you just how badly you were taken in.
But by then, it will be too late. Give up hope, all ye who enter here. Your jailer will have thrown away the keys, or at least made sure they can’t ever be found again. You will not be getting out … not even on parole … so don’t dream of it. Welcome to the New Scotland, that you helped to bring about.
‘And stop complaining – YOU voted for it!’
Indeed.
While a vote for the SNP remains a vote for the Sturgeon-Murrell axis, or even if Murrell gets dropped from the ticket and it becomes a vote for ‘Sturgeon alone’, it is inadmissible as a means towards Scotland’s independent future. A step too far.
Such a vote will be a vote for the establishment of a genderless dystopia; a vote for the undoing of the sovereignty of the Scottish people; a vote for an authoritarian and totalitarian future; a vote for an ideology you pretended to yourself wan’t there, though it’s now plain before our eyes.
A vote that ushers in, confirms, endorses and once and for all establishes that wholly destructive authoritarian totalitarianism which is already clearly on display.
The evidence is overwhelming.
Open your een, O Sovereign Scottish people. Don’t be duped …
Wull
I don’t always agree with your contributions, but that time-stamped @ 9:56 I can’t fault.
Seconded, as they say.
Trying to catch up after a long day. Serious question does anyone have a scooby doo what the village idiot is on about ?
Sorry to be a pedant but it is safer to describe those suffering gender dysphoria as clinically disordered rather than mentally ill. Their psychological identity is disordered from their biological physiology. Though I’m not suggesting that is healthy, it’s not ethical to stigmatise those who are ill. Especially not if ridiculing the nature of their disorder.
The Misuse of Gender Dysphoria: Toward Greater Conceptual Clarity in Transgender Health
link to journals.sagepub.com
“The notion of gender dysphoria is central to transgender health care but is inconsistently used in the clinical literature. Clinicians who work in transgender health must understand the difference between the diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria as defined and described in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the notion of this term as used to assess eligibility for transition-related interventions such as hormone-replacement therapy and surgery.
Unnecessary diagnoses due to the belief that a diagnosis is clinically required to access transition-related care can contribute to stigma and discrimination toward trans individuals.”
O/T:
25% of Covid infections in England are now acquired in a ‘hospital setting’!
No calls from BritNat MPs, MSPs or their Media for Matt Hancock to resign.
Scottish Health Ministers have been hounded into resigning for a hell of a lot less.
Ian Brotherhood says:
17 December, 2020 at 9:10 pm
‘Why do wummin rub their eyes when they get up in the mornin?
Cause they dinnae have baws tae scratch.’
Unless, that is, they are trans “wummin” Scratch awa lass/laddie!
cynicalHighlander says at 9:17 pm: “Transgenderism is a mental illness nothing more.”
I think cynicalHighlander is right. If we think about it, transgenderism is not a physical illness. Physical illnesses – such as measles, Crohn’s disease, pneumonia etc. etc. – are all illnesses which affect the physical body. With transgenderism there is no physical illness attacking the body which the immune system has to respond to. It is all in the mind. Therefore it is a mental illness.
Aye Scotland is bloody Toytown what an utter shower, jeezo if not for parental responsibilities I’d be well out of this shitshow, cause know what it is not getting better anytime soon.
Aye and have you seen on blinkin FB that horror A McLauglin claims she’s no had hot water fir 3 years, aye get tae, she’s a ruddy MP. Jeezo man.
Many thanks robertknight @ 10.04. I am all in favour of a Scotland where people will disagree with each other, about all kinds of things, without ever having to be at daggers drawn – and sometimes they will also find (even unexpectedly) they do agree with each other about something. Best friends are people who can easily and honestly disagree with each other.
That’s the Scotland I have always known. Not just known, but always presumed. And love. It’s part of the fun of life …
Unfortunately, that Scotland seems to be a foreign country, a completely unknown land, to some of these rather strange (to me) people at the top of the SNP. I quite often shake my head in disbelief. Where did they spring up from? How did they get there? Where did they come from?
Haven’t they ever had a normal experience of other people?
Why are they so humourless? Do they not enjoy a bit of banter? Don’t they have normal conversations with ordinary folk? What kind of world do they live in? Are all these stories about ‘UFOs’ in Scotland actually true? And when did they enter pour galaxy, and descend from their space ship?
Truly, it’s unbelievable.
Anyway. Thanks again, Robert. An’ a’ the best.
I only suggested it is the “safer”, not the correct mode of description.
Perverse Psychology: The Pathologization of Sexual Violence and Transgenderism
journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/IJ/article/download/1605/1304
Her boss (Johnson) is protecting her.
This should be all over the British media..it should be called ‘Sturgeongate.’
Why isn’t it?
That’s the real question.
Phew, edge of seat, riveting stuff watching this UK “democracy” in action.
Russian planes near our airspace = Bad!
Russian submarines in our waters = Bad!
Actual Russian man in The Hoose o’ Lairds = Meh…
link to twitter.com
o/t
I watched the clip that featured the throwback from the 17th Century Mogg referring to UNICEF donations to children in England,
Moggs comment was , it’s a disgraceful political stunt by a United Nations organisation , the same type of comment he made after that disastrous fire at Grenfell These people should have used common sense I wouldn’t have taken any notice of what the police or fire service advised. According to Lord Fauntleroy who has never broken sweat in his life or dirtied his well manicured hands
Sometimes in life you meet or come into contact with people that really don’t contribute or add to other people’s enjoyment of Generally referred to as a waste of Space ,they are there sucking every bit of joy and living off other people and what they do , most of them wouldn’t be missed Mogg is that type of parasite where the world would benefit from their passing
English people really baffle me sometimes a caller to LBC congratulated Mogg for his honesty and said they could buy a sack of spuds for say 20p a Kilo the same type could live perfectly well on our welfare system , Aye for a bleedn week try doing that for months or years at a time , the benefit system is not a lifestyle choice it’s there to frustrate and gradually wear down claimants with some of the strangest rules you can imagine , one of the little jokes that the Job Centre pulls is sending Mail out to be received on Saturday morning so that it ruins the claimants weekend , then make sure on the Monday all lines are busy adding to the pleasure , in short psychological bloody torture
some reading of general interest –
an exploration of the psychology of the moralising bullshit punted by the global “high servant” class (- it hates democracy and nationalism and sees itself as “the good guys” fighting the good fight against the people, who are reactionaries who need to be led)
link to unherd.com
– some good lines and solid paragraphs throughout, it’s almost worth reading it all.
trickle down economics is very short range and selective; like having a middle class law/media job in London/South East
link to nakedcapitalism.com
aw bless, brexit and the city – the bankers are all upset. Sure it will be okay (- let’s hose the scots, they’re all drugged up on the “heroine” anyway)
link to nakedcapitalism.com
– some interesting nuggets
never let a good crisis go to waste; whatever the true nature of the covid virus, global elites used it to fill their pockets and push a lot of authoritarian agendas they have fantasised about for a long time
link to unz.com
Go for it!
Famous15
What have you been told???
Your hero Sturgeon is a fuckin fraud,,,
now Fuck Off.
Some really good btl posts, there’s hope for us yet.
@ Flower Of Scotland 6.13pm in response to my post re emails to ALL MSP’S in the SG , you stated that it was the TWATTER storm that caused the MSP’s to vote for the amendment , do you have PROOF of that assertion or are you just assuming as I did
Why is it when ANYONE posts something on here that may help in the fight for independence and may FORCE the SNP to listen to the great unwashed , there is always someone willing to decry or denigrate that proposal without offering a counter proposal (shades of James Kelly with the OBFA)if the proposal stinks IYO offer up something better , I mistakenly thought we were all on the same side and working together
I’ve just watched a crime documentary involving Stockholm syndrome and the jury had to decide whether the victim was held by consent or coercion. It then struck me that we elect governments to govern by consent but instead we are living in an age of government by coercion.
Another triumph for ScotGov: “Two men wrongfully arrested during a fraud probe relating to the sale of Rangers have settled a legal claim against Scotland’s top law officer.”
“It is understood the latest settlement is worth several million pounds each and both men will also receive a public apology from Lord Advocate James Wolfe QC in the coming weeks.”
link to bbc.co.uk
I’m not a legal expert or anything, but if these two get an apology and “several million pounds”, how much can we expect Salmond to get?
And on the payout of millions by the Crown for ‘malicious’ prosecution of Whitehouse and Clark, where does the cash come from? Anyone?
O/T but important.
Barrhead boy really hits the nail on the head in this essay from his blog.
Referring to Sturgeon, Quote “It is either time to grab the Independence reins or step aside and we the grassroots will find ourselves a warrior. We do not need an administrator or PR person. We need a fighter. We need more of the Drew Henry spirit and less of the Neville Chamberlain nonsense!”
The full piece is here, and it is well worth reading. I agree with every word. The SNP leadership needs to sniff the freaking coffee and wake up. Nicola either needs to start fighting (instead of making excuses), or move over and let somebody else who will.
link to barrheadboy.com
“Nicola either needs to start fighting (instead of making excuses), or move over and let somebody else who will.”
—————————————————————–
100% agree Robert, but the question is who will be our latter day Robert Bruce or William Wallace.
I can only think of one
Iain Lawson’s latest is worth a read. The interesting part is not what’s in the article but your reaction to it – it will tell you a lot about where we are and what we can expect to happen in the run-up to next May’s elections.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Saffron Robe @1:45am,
The Scottish Unionists have often been referred to here as suffering from Jockholm Syndrome, it’s a very apt description.
Appears Brexit talks now down to fishing.
The bulk of which is Scotland’s water.
Aye- its not easy being too wee and too poor.
Iain Lawson linking to Barrheadboy podcast with Denise Findlay.
link to twitter.com
It’s so bleedin obvious that something must be done. Enough already of the rhetoric and heart rending and get on with it Scotland.
If you do nothing, or hang waiting for something to happen you are as useless or pointless as the people currently in charge.
Doing nothing is neither an excuse nor an option.
Abalha
‘And on the payout of millions by the Crown for ‘malicious’ prosecution of Whitehouse and Clark, where does the cash come from? Anyone?’
Obviously we all pay, yet again. Their ham handed incompetence is paid for by our dosh. But as Hatuey asks just above your post there is also the question of how much will Salmond get? I know I believe he deserves far, far more than them and hope he can take them to the cleaners. I’m doubtful though whether he will be able to given the different nature of the supposed offences.
Dunadd says:
18 December, 2020 at 9:12 am
“Appears Brexit talks now down to fishing.
The bulk of which is Scotland’s water.
Aye- its not easy being too wee and too poor“
Aye, stripped of European citizenship as two third parties divvy up Scottish resources while our illustrious leadership wave rainbow flags and try to figure out the lie that will make a failed stich up go away. Fucking brilliant state of affairs.
Stuart MacKay
‘Iain Lawson’s latest is worth a read.’
Yes and it often is. I liked especially his take the conversion we had prior to 2014 ‘was gained not by being gentle with No voters’ and especially his mention of after 2014 defeat the huge numbers ganging together to show a power of strength for independence by joining SNP and Greens in such numbers. That was most definitely not trying to be nice, or being gentle not to scare the unionists. It was showing our colours, taking up arms ready to battle on, and even relishing the fight. That’s how I felt anyway, and seeing so many others willing to do the same was inspiring and quite magnificent and probably unprecedented in a political context. It was more akin to the citizenry coming out en masse to fight with the regrouped, retreating soldiers of our country to defend its borders. And we know it scared the bejesus out of unionists and Westminster at that time.
Sturgeon’s softly softly has its place, only so long as she’s also carrying that big stick and is ready to wield it.
Dunadd says:
18 December, 2020 at 9:12 am
Appears Brexit talks now down to fishing.
I hear that a lot, but it niggles me.
There seems to be a great imbalance between what our fishing industry means on paper, and the disproportionate importance it has in European negotiations. It ‘feels’ like another UK con on Scotland. We’re told our resource is worthless, critically overfished, and yet underdeveloped, while it’s only behind closed doors that the value of Scotland’s massive resources a given due weight, …when Westminster is bargaining with Europe.
To hear that “fishing” is a sticking point in negotiations reeks of disinformation dumped on the Scottish people, or a skewed narrative which obscures another great deception. But what’s new? There isn’t a single facet of Scotland’s existence which hasn’t been corrupted inside out by “British” distortions.
Robert Louis says:
18 December, 2020 at 6:50 am
…… Nicola either needs to start fighting (instead of making excuses), or move over and let somebody else who will…
The time for Nicola to “start” fighting is long gone. Sturgeon’s claim to immortality is that she sold out Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty, overruled Scotland’s democracy, and delivered Scotland bound and gagged to the mercy of the Westminster Parliament and the nightmare fantasy of Brexit.
Sturgeons “leadership” reeks like Scotland’s Fishing. What you see doesn’t tally with what you hear.
My crystal ball sees no future for Sturgeon. The more pertinent question is whether the SNP has a future, and whether it can dump all it’s baggage, including Sturgeon’s rotten cabal, and somehow rediscover it’s mojo. Personally, I hae ma doots.
It isn’t a political leader we need coming to the rescue, it’s a Constitutional Lawyer of no small talent and determination. And you know what? Maybe they don’t even have to be Scottish, just good.
Scotland needs to be “plotting” with the UN in the same way as old school SNP’ers were plotting with the Council of Europe to force the UK Government to embrace Devolution, but not for more devolution, for the purposes of sovereign Independence and accordant International Recognition. The UN must be persuaded that the UK’s 1707 Treaty of Union is unsound, unconstitutional, and unlawful, and Scotland’s Brexit subjugation is an issue which forces a determination on the issue.
Nothing short of this approach will suffice. Not elections in May, or an IndyRef at some unspecified opportunity. That is ALL just more of the sophistry dictated by Westminster and deployed against Scotland to steer us off the correct path to Sovereign liberty.
It is time Scotland cut to the chase. Brexit is the emergency which forces our hand… or at least should be, once we stop listening to the likes of Sturgeon.
O/T
Isn’t it funny that all the severe weather warnings usually stop right on our border….Don’t want to be paying insurance claims to these Scotch eh….?
O/T
We all know Johnston’s government is mired in corruption but it’s a bad day when it’s being highlighted elsewhere.
This from the New York Times.
link to nytimes.com
Polly,
The problem with the gradualist approach is they want an invisible transition from dependence to independence. What’s really missing is confidence – a clear display that “we want this and we’re not going to f*ck it up”. It’s not going persuade those with a severe case of Jockholm Syndrome but it will persuade enough people that going for independence is a good thing and life is going to be better as a result.
Gradualism, rather than demonstrating a clear desire for change just shows a desire for mediocrity and the status quo. The Scottish Government cannot be substantially better than Westminster – it would never be tolerated. Instead we’re left with the message that gradualism will deliver “an independent Scotland that’s just a wee bit less shite than England”. No wonder the polls are driven by the failings of Westminster rather than the successes of Holyrood.
The really interesting part will be what happens when we can shake off the fear and fearmongering surrounding covid. If the spirit of 2014 can be rekindled then it will sweep away everything before it, gradualists included.
Polly,
Just want to say thanks for your comment. After reading Iain’s blog I was thinking all these things are great but the SNP are going going to deliver it. Your reminder of how it was in 2014 really lifted my mood.
Breeks, Dunadd
There was an item on France 24 yesterday where they were interviewing fishermen and processors in the ports along the north coast of France. Apparently half their catch comes from British waters and if they lose access then they all go out of business. It’s probably the same story from Spain to Denmark. With the ability to raise hell by blocking ferry and container terminals, angry fishermen have a lot of clout. Combine that with the lack of alternatives in many coastal towns then you have a recipe for quite a lot of unrest and upheaval.
A wee bit o/t
I am continually reminded how little Scottish people know about how this Union works , take Fishing no Scottish Government has ever had any say about the waters round our country , this is the rubbish the Tory party peddle on a daily basis ” the SNP want to hand control to the EU ” ,? We have never had control ! .
The major operations sold their Quota Licenses to the highest bidder that’s why foreign companies now own most of the Quota Licenses in our coastal waters , Who asked us ? .
A interesting point made about Free Ports these are a means of global Capitalism to let rip with no control this is the mantra of the usual suspects in the Tory party all the right wing nutters who can’t fill their pockets quickly enough , it’s very disappointing SNP led Dundee Council are being seduced by them despite the SNP conference voting against getting involved.
Where has the SNP I once knew went ? FFS totally disgusted .
This absolutely screams of intervention of the SPADs. Those shifty little people who are just there to hush up and delay the information being released.
It’s more than likely the meeting isn’t recorded because the SPAD told them not to so the FM could deny any knowledge of it and “forget” it happened.
It feels like a delaying tactic till people get bored hearing of it but thankfully you keep pinging them the request back. They should have got ahead of it on day 1
Robert Graham, I’m a bit confused when you say Scotgov has no power over fishing on a day when “ Fishermen mount court challenge against Scottish Government”.
“ In 1985, a ban on trawling within three miles of the west coast – which had been in place for almost a century – was lifted, largely because over-fishing had drained stocks offshore.
Creel fishermen say the decision has ultimately destroyed coastline habitats and environmentalists agree.”
link to news.stv.tv
The Scottish government seems to have had enough power to screw things up, a familiar story. These are the sort of stories that the independence movement used to “overlook” and refer to as examples of “SNP Bad” propaganda.
Heard a bit of the interview between Andrew Neil and Andrew Wilson last night and, although he did very well against AN’s tough questioning, there seemed to be a lot of contradictions in what he said, especially regarding currency. He was arguing for sterlingisation which is NOT what Rideout is proposing and you would have thought that the upper echelons of the SG would have that sorted that out by now.
However, he at least came over as someone with a bit of intellectual class unlike some of the ‘zoomers’ we hear from Westminster and Holyrood. Joe Fitzpatrick!!!??
According to Wilson there will be around 10years of austerity before things begin to look up but surely independence is all about sovereignty and a little less prosperity would be a small price to pay.
Same principle as Brexit.
If you want something, be prepared to make sacrifices.
@Pete
Wilson is a closet Tory I wouldn’t want him anywhere near the finances of Scotland.
Incoming Brexit narrative fall-back position:
A no-deal to protect fishermen, morphs to a no-deal to protect Scottish fisherman, morphs to a no-deal to protect Scotland, morphs to no-deal is Scotland’s fault.
Hatuey
I was referring to control over fishing licences not inshore fisheries I agree that they have seemed to manage to fk that up all on their own and as you say not widely known. Happy to be corrected.
« By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. »
KAFKA
If transgenderism is a mental illness, then trying to legislate for a mental illness, as the GRA and HCB do, is itself an act of madness!
cynicalHighlander
I think you’ve just highlighted your problem.
By going all left wing and Corbynista, the SNP has attracted loads of people who would otherwise be in the Labour Party.
That’s why you’ve got all those left wing woke nut jobs (maybe you’re one as well).
You ‘reap what you sow’.
The following interview with Dr Sucharit Bhakdi was removed by Youtube but this is a copy.
I’m posting this for those who like to keep abreast of this stuff and might not be aware of it – not to start another ‘argument’ with Hatuey or anyone else.
link to triggernometry.locals.com
Pete says:
According to Wilson there will be around 10years of austerity before things begin to look up but surely independence is all about sovereignty and a little less prosperity would be a small price to pay.
Same principle as Brexit.
Only according to him, and he knows nowt, and that includes the future.
If you want something, be prepared to make sacrifices.
That’s just the old ‘things have to get worse before they get better’ bullshit.
This has never been true and appeals to a karmic sense of balance and order in a colony without any allegiance to karma.
For things to get better,all that is required is the will and the effort to make things better.
The austerity of the last 10 years has resulted in fuck all, yet wilson thinks more leeches are required.
Waiting for the unidentifiable point of optimal badness required for improvement is chasing rainbows.
From Joanna Cherry on twitter,
Joanna Cherry
“ Questions raised in litigation to defend devolution from #InternalMarketBill could be of wider significance in relation to the British Constitution, the status of the #ActofUnion & the circumstances in which #Independence may come about “
From her article in the National ,
“ BRAVO for the Welsh Labour government. Yes, you heard me right.
After the Parliamentary Labour Party’s shameful capitulation on amendments tackling the Internal Market Bill’s devolved power grab, it was surprising to see their comrades in Cardiff come out of the traps so quickly with a legal challenge to the bill. Surprising but exciting – and what happens with the Welsh Government’s legal challenge could be very significant for Scotland. “
link to archive.vn
@wull, 9.56 17 December 2020
Well said.
Pete:
By going all left wing and Corbynista, the SNP has attracted loads of people who would otherwise be in the Labour Party.
That development certainly passed me by, the entryists were distinctly new labour to my eye.
That’s why you’ve got all those left wing woke nut jobs (maybe you’re one as well).
See above.
You ‘reap what you sow’.
So cynical highlander was behind it all?
You’ve watched too many scooby doo episodes.
And on that other battle front.
link to off-guardian.org
Lies, damn lies and covid testing….
Essentially, nothing to lose but irrational fear of catching a bad cold.
Who benefits? certainly not the cowed masses presented with 2021 delivering more of the oppressive same.
The Scottish Government, or at least the current leadership of the government may have thrown in the independence towel but the people certainly have not. Nor do people want the rotten stinking corrupt connivance of free loaders that are currently the government. Them and their equally bent civil servants like Linda Evans, Liz Lloyd et al are not wanted.
The existence of Brexit and a Tory Government are all that keeps the SNP support up because currently there is no alternative. Give people an alternative of a list Indy party endorsed by senior trusted nationalist figure, and maybe a few very high profile individuals standing independently in targeted seats, and I believe we will see an independence super majority in May.
So, with changes at the helm of the SNP and a new list Indy party independence through all of the available routes becomes the options. Now is the time, le5 us all get behind it.
o/t again
Just watched FMQs the last one
Rightly so Drug deaths were the main subject , Nicola Sturgeon missed a great opportunity to put opposition parties in their place ,one after another they demanded resources be spent on this serious issue ,and it is for it affects everyone .
Where does the money come from ? ?
A simple question where ?
Do they imagine that Scotland has been spared all the Tory cuts, we alone are special , I bet English voters would jump at the chance of Free Precriptions , No bedroom Tax and all the other things that the Scottish Government provides but are denied through political dogma in England
So don’t accept any of this pish from Unionist party’s hit straight between the bloody eyes with the point out this is the Union Dividend , the broad shoulders they crow about .
Edinburgh Council end their consultation outcomes (sic) consultation on 20th December.Lots of weasel words so worth pointing out to them lack of clarity. I did ask what LBGTQ+ meant as they did not explain. I did say I fought for LBG and women’s right for many years and it sounded as if they would end that and create hate for trans unwittingly!
link to consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk
Gradualism never works, in fact it is the weakest and most dangerous approach one can take. The Social Democrats in Germany had the chance to stop the rise of Hitler, but they took a gradualist approach, and we all know how successful that was.
The parallels are clear – the UK is sliding into fascism. And we shouldn’t forget the race element. The Nazis drew their support from the white Angle-Saxon majority of Germany, just as the Tories draw their support from the white Anglo-Saxon majority of England. The Tories view us (Celts) in the same way as the Nazis viewed the Jews. Just look at Boris Johnson’s racist poem which is full of Nazi imagery. Replace “Scots” with “Jews” and you can see the intent clearly.
So are we to suffer the same fate as the Jews in Germany? Our greatest strength and hope lies in our sovereignty which our ancestors fought so hard to bequeath to us. And yet, as the comments above indicate, we are now stuck with a national party which is more interested in waving rainbow flags and navel-gazing than fighting for our survival and our rights. The key to our future lies in understanding the past.
Re Andrew Wilson on the previous comments ,
He’s on the board of the John Smith trust along with Ruth Davidson , Ed Balls and others ,
“OUR BOARD
The John Smith Centre Board oversees the conduct, leadership and management of the Centre and includes members of the Smith family, University of Glasgow alumni, public service practitioners and academic staff.
The Board sets the priorities; benchmarks best practice; and reviews performance to enable the Centre to achieve its aim to promote trust in politics and public service and to empower and attract more people to contribute to public life.
link to gla.ac.uk
And the staff ,
link to gla.ac.uk
I wouldn’t trust anyone who’s involved with the John Smith centre .
Stuart MacKay @ 11:01 am
I agree with most of what you say here but I really doubt the fear of covid will dissipate any time soon. Certainly not enough for next year to help us in any way. Going by my unionist (and one brexit supporting) relatives, who are elderly and have illnesses, and whom I’ve used as a barometer of how unionists in general might react to the differences between Sturgeon/Johnson or UK/EU relations, though they’re not so far moving their position – they are hunkering down very strongly about the possibility of catching the virus and criticising all and sundry for minor violations. Older people being mostly affected by viral complications and mostly unionist, I’m not yet unconvinced that there might be an about face when the mass of English population are affected or medicines aren’t delivered next year. One kept going on ‘I don’t know why they couldn’t use the Oxford vaccine’ because, of course, it is British.
Glad if the remembrance lifted your mood, it was an uplifting period. That fighting spirit once started is self generating and we need it again. We just have to remember that we ordinary people standing together created that. As Lawson said, the NEC result was people coming together, working hard and that lifted all our spirits. Stuart’s writing when in a fighting mood does the same. We definitely need rabble rousers as well as diplomats, Sturgeon forgets that.
Who gives a fuck about Embra Cooncil.
It’s that waste of space Holyrood we are targeting.
@Ian Brotherhood, 12.29
More from Dr Bhakdi. link to 2020news.de
Further action by Dr Wodarg link to 2020news.de
Ronal Fraser.
“Hearts and minds”
Naw do as ah tell ya! Ah know best?
link to mobile.twitter.com
Andy Wightman resigns from Scottish Greens.
When we speak of the slow gradual approach to independence, that’s a past worry as far as I can tell, as the snp and others have already done this for the last six years or more,
So we can safely say, Been there, done that, and it didn’t work.
You know, I have a funny feeling in my bones, that next May’s election is not going to happen in the way we think, something I cannot put my finger on, but over the last few months I have been unable to shake the feeling off. I do not think we are going to have a vote in elections, who else has this feeling?
So Andy Wightman has grown a backbone. Fair play to him.
”Rightly so Drug deaths were the main subject [of FMQs], Nicola Sturgeon missed a great opportunity to put opposition parties in their place, one after another they demanded resources be spent on this serious issue, and it is for it affects everyone.
Where does the money come from??
A simple question where?”
Money isn’t the problem. The Scottish Government has plenty to spare.
See Stuart’s second paragraph (just under the Times article) above.
Much more substantially though –
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
Once the Scottish Government has finished paying the (continuing) bills for these shameful actions; tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will have been spent.
That sum would have tackled the drugs problem many times over and paid for many other much-needed projects.
Wightman quits the Greens, due to the issues surrounding the Lamont amendment. The Greens have got serious questions to answer about this, which they obviously won’t do.
That’s an interesting development re. Andy Wightman and his given reasons. Potential levee breach for others to follow on this issue?
Never understood why the Greens are so focused on gender stuff.
There’s plenty of other matters that would align better with a party concerned with environmental issue.
EG.
link to twitter.com
Clearly the Green Part has been hijacked, much like the SNP.
I hope Wightman will continue on the Inquiry team – he definitely understands the detail of the Salmond stitch up.
Has he withdrawn from politics altogether, or just from the Green Party,
o/t and it will probably piss off somebody
A recurring theme for every MSM outlet is
All Government advice is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth , suspend all rational thought , forget all previous actions and events the main players have been involved in .
Trust in your Government.
A real situation , a Drug I have taken for years Ranitidine disappeared from my repeat prescription recently , no explanation and I put it down to a supply chain holdup due to Brexit , however it appears this Drug was urgently removed from sale by the US Drug Administration and was deemed unfit for human consumption due to carcinogenic impurities identified after testing , I checked further this Drug should only have been used on a short term basis , not years as I have been doing ,
No explanation from my GP Practice or the local Chemist , and definitely no follow up to check for any long term harmful effects
So please forgive me for being sceptical about this new wonder remedy for the virus,
Do I trust this Government ” your having a laugh now ”
Do I trust the Drug Manufacturers ” ha ha aye right ”
Just 3 Drug Manufacturers the main players have managed to chalk up almost 9 that’s 9 BILLION DOLLARS in fines levied against them , that’s not Fake News and something taken off the Internet its Court Records and verifiable , 9 Thousand Million Dollars , that’s more than some countries economic activity for a whole year,
So by all means put your trust in the people who have previous and are strangers to the truth
in the meantime I trust my past experiences and will make my own judgement without any help or in the case of this Government without any threat of exclusion or coercion ,Thanks very much .
Andy Wightman leaving the Greens deprives them of the only big hitter they have and is a serious blow. If an indy list party could just stop a few more of them we would get some peace and quiet. I wonder if Andy is now on the transphobe list.
I remember he did good work in trying to bring about land reform in Scotland, only to have it squashed in the Scottish parliament,
I often thought he was a square peg in a round hole in the Green Party, as they seemed to be right up their own b……..side,
And yet Andy whightman seemed to want all people in Scotland to benefit from our own land, with a fairer tax system, well done to him that he has a moral compass.
More like self preservation by Wightman I suspect @susanXX says at 2:17 pm
If he truly had a backbone, was his own man or disagreed with the GRA Bill he would have voted for the Lamont Amendment (or at least abstained).
May Elections will soon be on us and Andy knows the Green list vote is going to ISP or whichever Indy List Party Salmond joins.
Greens are fucked due to repeal rather than amending the Offensive Behaviour and Communication Act and subservience to The Trans-Cult!
Too little, too late (and disappointing as I like his land reform ideas).
Wonder if he’ll join the ISP, stand as an Independent Candidate or retire from politics?
James Che
I think your right. I don’t think people realise the toll this covid thing is having on themselves or the people around them.
It’s a bit over the top to say there will be upheaval like the periods after the two world wars but I do think there will be “significant” changes. What constitutes that is anyone’s guess.
One possibility. Sturgeon has clearly tied herself to the pandemic there’s a strong chance she’ll be cleared out along with the clouds of doom. People won’t want to look at her face and be reminded of dead relatives and being confined to their houses of weeks on end. Her daily briefings might just be the longest suicide note in history.
Personally, I want the MSM destroyed utterly and all the lazy journalists who just read off what they found on Twitter sent to re-education camps – preferably in China to replaces the Uighurs. In it’s place I’d like to see real journalists take the stage again.
Robert graham, I remember my mother being told that the flu vaccine were safe, my mum had a good immune system throughout her life and very seldom suffered from colds or flu,
However when she accepted the flu vaccine, she had the flu every winter she also had the addition of having an allergic reaction every year,
So One glove does not fit all when it comes to vaccines,
I have allergies to food, certain metals and toothpaste among other things like cleaning materials, so I was curious as to wether we be automatically have the right to ask the ingredients of the vaccine.
I have had a good immune system all my life and very very seldom catch colds or flu, I could use one hand to count the amount of times I have had flu, in over sixty years,
People should ask for the list of ingredients in the vaccine and any long term side affects for their own safety, not blindly and stupidly be injected without questioning, after all who would eat something without knowing what it was.
Another problem with the ‘gradualists’, is they appear to lack an understanding of how constitutional law works. Which kind of puts then at a disadvantage and makes them vulnerable to ideological naivety. So if I was trying to train folk in legal science, I might post something like “Researching legal terminology: a corpus-based proposal for the analysis of sub-technical legal terms”. 😉
link to journals.openedition.org
“BLaRC, the British Law Report Corpus, was designed and compiled with the purpose of identifying and exploring the nature of legal terminology. This process was carried out abiding by the standards of Corpus Linguistics established by McEnery and Wilson (2001), Sinclair (2005) and McEnery and Xiao (2006) for general corpora, and Pearson (1998), Vargas (2005) and Rea (2010) for specialised ones. It is an 8.85 million-word legal corpus of law reports. Law reports could be defined as written collections of judicial decisions made at the UK courts and tribunals.
The reasons to focus on this legal genre to study the linguistic properties of its terminology are varied. To begin with, the UK law system belongs to the realm of common law. Unlike civil or continental law systems, such as those found in most European countries, common law is not codified, that is, it could be stated that, in a way, it is judge-made.
Judges interpret the law (found in statutes) and apply the existing case law related to a given case as long as it is similar to that case in its essence. They determine whether a decision made at a higher court should be applicable to a case and how it should be applied. In addition, they must also justify the rationale behind their decision. This is the so-called ratio decidendi, which is binding on courts of lower jurisdiction.
According to the doctrine of stare decisis, which common law revolves around, the judicial decisions (called precedents) made at higher courts such as the Supreme Court or the High Court of England and Wales must be followed by lower courts owing to their binding character, setting a legal precedent within the system, hence their relevance. This is why they are published every year by institutions such as the Incorporated Law Report Council of England and Wales (ILRC) and must be consulted and cited by solicitors, barristers or judges. Therefore, they act as the solid ground which legal practitioners build their arguments on.”
Well done Andy Wightman. And thank you for your excellent book ‘The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland (And How They Got It)’. And also explaining how ‘they’ still hold on to it too, not least thanks to a colonial Holyrood administration.
Alongside our culture and languages, our land/sea territory is arguably the next most important feature of nationhood and national consciousness. Colonial domination makes for an oppressed people and an exploited land, which is Scotland’s wretched reality and the true rationale for independence.
More oppressive intolerance is precisely what the Scots do not need with GRA, the HCB or any other nonsense foisted on us. Scots have suffered extensively from intolerance of our culture and languages, the imposition of alien cultural values, and the hindering of national development within an incorporating ‘union’ intent on our cultural obliteration.
“A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion”. (Fanon 1967).
Jockanese Wind Talker
‘If he truly had a backbone, was his own man or disagreed with the GRA Bill he would have voted for the Lamont Amendment (or at least abstained).’
I agree, the vote was what mattered not the speech before it or this stance now, however it might be late in the day conscience pricking that made it untenable for him to do otherwise. Perhaps he was taken by surprise that SNP as a while voted as they did – which obviously left him out on a limb and hanging precariously. Still good he’s now standing up and shows the pressure he was under, but he’s a hypocrite nonetheless.
Good for Andy Wightman. Winder if he’ll nail his colours to the ISP or continue as an independent.
@Cameron,
The internal Market Bill excludes Judicial Review of ANY Executive Decision, so your post is already obsolete in that regard .
we should be getting a petition together on wings and demand that these crooks should be arrested forthwith, we must demand the law is enforced no matter how high and mighty they think you are
should read… they are
Wasn’t Wightman a signatory to that letter? Could Wightman by resigning from the trans obsessed Greens be trying to cover his own back. Still I had a lot of respect for Wightman at one point on topics such as land reform in Scotland of which the Scottish government did not heed him enough on.
What does this say about the Greens in general, have they become a party that no one could vote for, lets not forget Patrick Harvey’s name also appeared on that letter, no I think the Greens are untouchable by the voters at the moment, best to avoid their convoluted trans ideology until the party grows up.
@Republicofscotland,
He voted with the Greens then obviously got grief on social media from men and women. I think he realised this was a political error and has now jumped ship.
People asking him how his wife felt about him putting trans rights before her. Skin saving.
Yes Bob, I was thinking that myself, a case of self preservation on Wightman’s behalf, the Greens are in a right old state over the trans storm in a tea cup issue, they’re completely unelectable in any constituency at the moment in my book.
I think Patrick Harvey will need to go and the Greens will need to drop their trans obsession before we could even think about voting for them again.
I see a niche opening up now for a new indy party ISP etc to replace the fallen Greens at next years elections.
Bob Mack
I wasn’t aware our subjugation through the law, was so far advanced. That’s not good.
An excellent article by Joanna Cherry, where she points out how Welsh Labour, has more of a backbone than Scottish Labour when it comes to standing up for their respective countries interests with Westminster in mind.
Cherry also points out that the Lord Advocate is still actively hindering Martin Keating’s S30 court case, when he should be carefully crafting a Scottish government bill on independence for the courts to consider, and I thought Mullholland was a possibly the most insincere Lord Advocate of Scotland in recent times.
link to thenational.scot
As that means the internal Market Bill is considered to be above legal method that is central to “constitutional balancing”, legal proportionality, and the separation of powers.
Judicial review and institutional balance
link to journals.openedition.org
I thought Andy Wightman was doing a good job on the Inquiry. He has been got at. The balance of power on the Inquiry has been upset, totally predictable. Shift of focus on this blog, The SNP has been in power in the City of Dundee for decades and now we have Humza Yousaf and his prospective parliamentary partner living in Dundee whilst our children die on the streets. What has Dundee done to deserve this accolade. I challenge on the streets everyday I never see any SNP politicians on the streets. They have done nothing to prevent the deaths. Shame on you.
@James Che who said:
” I do not think we are going to have a vote in elections, who else has this feeling?”
I agree James. For whatever reason,like yourself, I have long been feeling uneasy about them. In my view, they are just not going to happen
I see international tax avoider Rupert Murdoch got
Priority for the Covid Vaccine at his local English GP
survey?
They extended their opening time for him and his minders
warned not to leak his attendance for security reasons.
His News Internal has paid no tax for a decade.
Hunted by both Australian and US tax officers he
Moved his company to an off shore Caribbean island.
If we didn’t have the most corrupt government in my lifetime
I would ask why this creep gets priority over our NHS workers etc.
Absolutely disgusting.
Anyone need another reason for Scotland to get shot of Westminster for ever!
Reasons Greens are so focused on gender/sexuality issues is in some measure down to Patrick Harvie. He’s bisexual, worked in that area and was almost all he ever focused on in Parliament before becoming leader. There is nothing wrong with that and working for tolerance for all sexualities and genders, but a party should never focus on them to the point of alienating members.
More good news looks like Mridul Wadhaw has joined the Greens
link to twitter.com
Alf Baird,
I think the land and culture are closely entwined. Given the history, in some ways, reforming ownership of the land would also lead to a revival in culture – though there’s not a direct relationship.
My plan:
No large estates in private hands – well nothing larger than a medium sized farm. Compensate existing landowners, but not at market rates. Nationalize if you have too. No exceptions. This is going to be hard on the Polvsens and the Averys (Stanton Avery up on Dunbeath estate has done amazing things) but it’s same rule for everybody.
Create a network of national parks and recreation areas. Create a ranger service to manage this. Create a network of hostels and bothies and start getting tourists (mountain bikers, hikers) to start moving money into the local economies.
Designate wilderness areas which you need a permit to get into. Cull the deer and make forest regeneration a priority. Start restoring our wildlife – yes, wolves. That means cutting the number of wooly maggots (sheep) on the hill. Replace them with cattle. Create some form of marketing board to promote Scottish beef.
Ban driven grouse shooting but keep walk-up grouse shooting. Pension off the older gamekeepers or the ones that won’t stay. Give them their houses for free. Retrain the rest as rangers.
Allow hunting of the remaining deer only available to people prepared to pay and with the skills needed to leg it around hills for a few hours or days in order to get a kill. Rich, fat, bastards who are doing to impress their trophy girlfriends need not apply. Create a lottery system so anybody living in Scotland can get permits hunt or fish in the best areas.
Take a large chunk of what’s left and give it back to the townships from which it was taken otherwise create local trusts who are responsible for management, licencing things like wind farms, etc. Make sure a good chunk is made available for house building and farming to resettle the glens. For good measure kill British Telecom and start building fibre-optic networks so the next Google comes from Bonar Bridge or Durness.
In other words don’t just give it to the government. Create separate institutions, like a parks department or some form of natioinal trust which is responsible for management and accountable to the people, not the politicians.
Anyways, I think you get the idea. Vote for me and radical change will follow.
Forgot,
Cut down every last tree on the Flow Country.
When I was young the population of Fundee was 184000 it is now 148000. A transposition of numbers directly proportional to SNP influence. 2 MPs, 2 MSPs, an SNP Council and now additional SNP ministers hiding here. And their partners. Independence they can’t even run Dundee. I am furious on what’s happening on our streets. No excuse it’s their fault. They look after themselves and nobody else. I retain some physicality so I can walk about my streets. What’s their excuse?. Let’s make no mistake the latest data showing Dundee as the drug Capital of Europe has had a big impact. We are furious! God bless my late Mum you’re SNP efforts were in vain.
Oh, the Andy Wightman discussion is here, not on the post on the actual vote.
So, here are my views: I am sorry to hear that AW has resigned.
I think he is right on this issue. I guess I wish he had voted as he believed to be right, and then dealt with the fallout. Getting “complaints” is normal for a politician, and given his land reform work he must have had spades (and indeed was sued over it). And resigning because of “possible expulsion” & “deselection” seems a bit self-defeating for me? On the other hand I can understand if he felt he has other important issues to work on (e.g. land reform) and this fight would have been a huge distraction so he looked for an easy way to avoid the fight without having to again vote for something he believes is right.
Re-posting this podcast link from earlier. Well worth a listen. Alert readers will obviously already be aware and agree with the content covered, but it could be a very useful hour’s listening to share with less well informed folk to raise their awareness and inform them of various aspects of why we are where we are, and also prime them so they are receptive for potential future developments and strategy.
Thanks to Roddy and Denise for creating this informative discussion.
link to barrheadboy.com
@ Stuart MacKay 5.33pm all very admirable Stuart I would also add do away with unelected QUANGOS that have an ability to frustrate everything and cannot be held to account , the perfect example being the Loch Lomond sell off to a major tory donor company based in engerland , the proposed planning application had in excess of 52,000 historical objections many calling for SG intervention ,which they claimed they could not do , even although the application FAILED the QUANGO has insisted that the tory donor company MUST HAVE exclusive rights as to the future of the land
How is it right that we can have a panel of unelected upper middle class establishment hingers oan determining what and who SCOTTISH OWNED LAND can be SOLD to and used for
Hopefully Mridul Wadhwa is not the first to leave and the rest of the * woke * cabal follow him ,
link to twitter.com
The replies are good to his tweet , LOL LOL .
Joe Fitzpatrick has resigned whatever the pressures he faced in Parliament he did the right thing in the end. I have said before he is a decent guy but the number 29 bus came calling. An honourable decision. Nicola take note. We want big improvements in Dundee. And so do Scotland.
From Joanna Cherry on twitter ,
“ I’m one of the people Andy was monstered for sharing a platform with simply because I have spoken up for women’s sex based rights & #FreeSpeech. It’s got so bad the leadership of my party are afraid to condemn the abuse & threats I have received. “
link to twitter.com
@Tannadice Boy,
Nicola sold him out in Holyrood in any event, when she proclaimed she was going to take closer charge of his Public Health remit following questions from Labour. He didnt look happy at that
I recall she did the same with another Heaith Minister before.
Control freak
‘If he truly had a backbone, was his own man or disagreed with the GRA Bill he would have voted for the Lamont Amendment (or at least abstained)
From the guardian:
‘It appears that a clash over policy and decision-making in the party was brought to a head by Wightman’s attempts to vote for an amendment to the forensic medical services (victims of sexual offences) (Scotland) bill last week, which legislated for the option to request an examiner of a particular sex.’
He was whipped, he wanted to vote for the amendment but was threatened with disciplinary action if he did. So he already had a backbone, the greens are a shower of little narrow minded agenda riven wank sockets. His whole reason for resigning is because there are no free votes in the Scottish Green Party, it’s our way or the highway wi that lot, they can get fucked, they’ll never get my list votes ever again.
He isn’t the problem, the single issue agenda with no room for differing/diverging viewpoints or genuine debate is, ideologically driven parties always end up fucking everything up…bunch of clown fucks, he’s well out of that and at least he made a stand, and more importantly publicly revealed what was going on behind the scenes in the party,
link to archive.is
Land ownership and land use are entwined in the power structures that determine our government and laws, so there is bound to be strong resistance to reform. So here’s a look at “Land Rights Issues in International Human Rights Law”. Though Westminster considers itself above international law, so I suppose international human rights law is irrelevant to Scotland.
link to ihrb.org
@Tannadice Boy says:
18 December, 2020 at 6:26 pm
“Joe Fitzpatrick has resigned whatever the pressures he faced in Parliament he did the right thing in the end.”
I don’t know much about him, but I agree he’s done the honourable thing and probably would have done so without being pushed – which I think has happened.
Question is, why is Swinney still in post? Is he too high profile? Or perhaps he knows too much…
@Bob Mack 6 33
Agreed it was inevitable for him. How many spare buses has Nicola got left?. Not many now I venture. I think she will resign before May and not stand for office. Too many hardships coming down the track. It says something when this is the only Independence blog where you can have honest debate. And unless you missed it we are furious about SNP performance here in Fundee their heartland.
@Beaker 6 56
I know Joe, I maintain he is a decent guy, a family man and he carries my best wishes. But it was the right thing to do. We have to get Dundee back on track. Nobody else to blame but ourselves.
Swinney is a shield for Nicola. He comments on social media under a pseudonym. Fine unless you disagree with your official ministerial position on a Supreme Court ruling. Contempt of Court surely?
Re Drugs Deaths.
It is the policy that is a crock of shit. Would figures be any better if a Yoon Coalition was in charge. You can bet your arse it wouldn’t. Change the policy. The SNP though is probably too gutless to change the failing policies. I can hear the Quisling and Yoon Press and Media howling in fury if the SNP found a backbone.
There seems to be a lot of supposedly pro-indy folk on this supposedly pro-indy blog site swearing blind they’ll not vote pro-indy SNP first vote or pro-Indy Green second vote.
So on the 6th of May who are you going to vote for, or are you just going to sit at home and watch telly or something?
K1
‘He was whipped, he wanted to vote for the amendment but was threatened with disciplinary action if he did. So he already had a backbone…’
I disagree. Had he a backbone he would have done then what he has done today, resign and vote with his conscience for the amendment. The fact he voted against his conscience and better nature is entirely the problem, and showed he was far worse than many of the SNP MSPs who were always willing to rebel. Those SNP Parliamentarians are the ones with the backbone – them and all the ordinary folk like Grace/Denise who helped organise the opposition to it.
I do agree he’s been great with land issues and wish him well in the future and hope he stands as independent to continue with that work, but frankly I wouldn’t trust his votes much on any other issue in the future. People who fail to resign in those circumstances, or who agree to vote against their conscience, have very little moral fibre worth mentioning when push comes to shove.
I forgot to add. Drunks don’t exactly follow Covid 19 rules and care even less about them. Alcohol abuse is still the biggest “drugs” related problem we have in Scotland.
“So on the 6th of May who are you going to vote for”
Unless Nicola Sturgeon, her genderwoowoo and Yousaf are shown the door, Mr Salmond returns to front line politics or Wings puts candidates in constituency seats, my votes will go to Scotia Future for the constituency and ISP for the list.
Does that answer your question?
John Sm
If no change at the top, I’ll be occupying a booth for 5 minutes explaining in writing why I’m effectively spoiling my paper for the constituency vote. (The ISP will get my List vote).
What is more, I’ll not lose any sleep afterwards, because if Sturgeon is still heid bummer there’ll not be a cat in hell’s chance of IndyRef2, despite all the bullshit claiming otherwise.
These days I rank the SNP alongside the BBC in the credibility stakes.
@John Sm
I suppose it’s the way you see things.
From my perspective I see a lot of pro-Indy folk on this pro-Indy site saying they will not vote for the supposedly pro-Indy SNP.
As soon as you start blaming punters for their voting choices, you are lost my friend.
@John Sm,
Firstly I would never,ever have a Tunnocks tea cake wrapper as my moniker considering their behaviour during Indyref 1.
Secondly I will vote ISP on the list. My constituency vote I will decide on future developments in the SNP. No developments. No vote.
Me @ 6.23 pm ,
Another * woke * gone to the greens ,
link to twitter.com
It’s Alyn Smiths supposedly ex Jordon Henderson .
Hopefully a lot more follow him ,
Stuart MacKay
I was in touch with Andy W about Scotland’s derelict cityport land on Clyde, Forth and Tay. Its all owned by offshore groups who were also given regulatory ‘port authority’ powers, one of Rifkind’s more bizarre ideas as then Tory Transport Secr.
Thousands of acres of land could have been used for housing, and to avoid the current race to build on greenfield sites outside the cities.
V&A of course is a Downing St Department and should never have got near Dundee waterfront. Don’t know what the SNP elite think they are doing there. Its obviously just a British propaganda exercise.
My proposal to Edin City and others was to compulsory purchase derelict urban port land which the offshore owners were sitting on.
More here: link to reidfoundation.org
Is it true or just a rumour that the National Health Service is to be renamed the National Coronavirus Service?
The Scottish government should’ve done more to save lives from the scourge of drugs.
link to thenational.scot
robertknight & The Dissident, that’s totally okay but to not vote pro Indy SNP or Green or whatever Indy rep you support next May is daft ‘cos governments last four or five years.
Policies and leaders are transient and can be changed by action and that’s something Stuart Campbell has proven over the past wee while.
So don’t piss your pro-indy vote away.
Thankfully I don’t need your agreement with regard my opinion, stick to your own and don’t start silly arguments with those whose opinion you disagree with, be as harsh as you like, you don’t know all the motivations behind anyone’s decisions. That’s a fact, not an opinion.
I prefer to give Andy the benefit of the doubt instead of the usual dog whistling shit where everyone seems to ‘know’ the precise location and shape of his spine and is more concerned with their own moral high grounds than any factual evidence contained in the reported events.
@MaggieC (18 December, 2020 at 7:31 pm)
Reading that twitter feed it appears that the male dressed as a woman, who works for the Rape Crisis Centre and that no that long ago wanted to be an SNP candidate may have now also joined the greens. Wow, that is some loyalty to the SNP!
@John Sm.
I will be voting for a full time pro indy party not the present pretendy one in power just now.
@K1,
Opinions ? Facts?. Hard to come by in this instance. What is indesputable though is that Nicola threw him to the wolves yesterday in Holyrood in answer to Richard Leonard.
Everhbody still think Nicola is not like other leaders and cant be ruthless when she likes ?
Patrick Harvie is about to reap what he sowed.
With his totally undemocratic ‘No Debate!’ pish he’s given the wokesters the green light, literally. Whatever vetting procedures his party has in place are about to be tested to destruction.
And bear this in mind – if they managed to cause such ructions by successful infiltration of the SNP, duping thousands of people in the process, can you imagine what they’ll do with the Green Party? It’ll be a whole herd of cats playing with one Harvie-shaped mouse.
Mridul Wadhwa has joined the Greens eh
Anyone good with data, graph-reading and suchlike may be interested in casting an eye over the following, as published over on O/T:
You can probably take it the Green\SNP alliance is about to come to an end if these Wokes obtain influence within the Greens.
Another reason to vote ISP on the list.
@Ian Brothethood,
You can’t compare apples and oranges. Covid attacks more than the lungs. it cahses death by other means too.
@Ian B 8.12: thanks. Many hands make light work and all that.
To clarify, my question should end, “and that this year’s total is the lowest November respiratory disease total in at least the last twenty years?”
Of course, I may be misreading the data as stated.
“So on the 6th of May who are you going to vote for, or are you just going to sit at home and watch telly or something?”
I would vote to resile / rip up the Treaty of Union and restore Scotland’s national sovereignty in a plebiscite election.
But, we have a Scottish political class that is employed or wants to be employed by the UK Imperial power. They won’t bite the hand that makes them wealthy.
I’d rather abstain than vote for a colonial administrator MSP in a colonial parliament stripped of powers.
Tinto Chiel says:
If there’s anybody there, could someone please check that I’m reading these data correctly, namely that there were 138 fewer deaths from respiratory diseases this November in Scotland compared to November 2019 and that this year’s total is the lowest in at least the last twenty years?
—————————————————————-
That does seem to be what it’s saying but it does say as a footnote the the figures for 2019 & 2020 are provisional whatever that means
Some info (facts ?) on drug related deaths in Scotland from `National Records of Scotland`,
link to tinyurl.com (it`s a pdf)
these are not drug users trying to die, 96% of drug deaths are listed as `Accidental
poisoning`,
the question that needs asked/answered is
`what are Scottish drug users doing differently than every other countries drug users to cause more of these `accidents`.
Oh god it just keeps getting better Jordon Henderson (Daddy Bears little toy boy) has joined the Greens
link to twitter.com
@Bob Mack (8.29) –
Sorry, but I’m not getting drawn into any further ‘arguments’ about this stuff.
Don’t mean to sound dismissive or ignorant but I’m only posting links to material. I’m not answerable for the contents – the answers/responses to your questions/statements are contained in the links, expressed by knowledgeable people, and fully referenced.
(BTW, it’s now two months since the World Health Organisation agreed with Dr Iaonnidis, that lockdowns simply do not work.)
@Ian Brotherhood,
What argument? Mystified!
K1
‘Thankfully I don’t need your agreement’
Thankfully you don’t since obviously I don’t agree. Nor did I expect you to agree with me, neither was I trying to start any argument, silly or otherwise. Since you took the statement someone else made (which I quoted) and used the Guardian article in defence of your claim it proved he had a backbone I responded with reasons why I didn’t think that was the case. No argument so far, just an exchange of valid views. You talk of facts – well the indisputable fact is he voted against the amendment, despite feeling as he says now he did, and has felt that way for a year. Obviously he felt loyalty to the party, but I do wonder if he can resign now, very publicly in this way, why did he not do so before the vote and vote with his conscience as he obviously wanted. It would have saved him some heartache and many women would have respected him more. Have a good evening.
I am pleased AW resigned from the Greens and I wholeheartedly agree with his reasoning. Well said indeed Andy!
Pity about the timing though – perhaps could have supported JL’s amendment and spoken in its favour rather than against?
It is incredible that the Greens are hurtling toward self immolation on the trans issue given that the climate crisis is going to be centre stage for next 10 years.
Patrick Harvie is obsessed with gender and sexuality. He is dong enormous damage to the environmental movement by dragging the Greens into the mire!
Can we have a new green independence party please?
@ Graeme
‘Oh god it just keeps getting better Jordon Henderson (Daddy Bears little toy boy) has joined the Greens’
Yes good news, if true, though thought he’d threatened it before. Hasn’t Smith taken up again with that old boyfriend he went skydiving with? Its been a good day overall.
So Mridul Madhwan has just retweeted that ” the sooner Scottish people realise they are racist the better ”
Well so him for calling all of us racists. That is certainly not the case. With attitudes like this I think most fair minded people would consider it better if he chose somewhere else to live.
Clearly the guy / gal / freak or whatever it is that he or she or it is, has deeply engrained prejudices. Name calling all Scots is racist.
He’ll no doubt be welcome in the Green party where he has, only weeks after contesting an SNP nomination, now departed.
I’m so happy Mridul & Jordon have found their spiritual home I’m sure they’ll be happy there.
So whose gonna be next I wonder ?
Come on Rhiannon you know you want to
Hand picked useless segments will be on offer, whilst the import sections will be redacted.
link to thenational.scot
If I hadn’t already informed the Scot Greens that as a result of their efforts last week I’d be voting ISP, I’d certainly be doing so now given today’s events.
Robert Graham @2.36.
That is interesting re ranitidine as this was approved years ago as an over-the-counter drug (i.e. as safe as aspirin) which you can buy at your local supermarket ( or maybe that has also been stopped). Anyways, a medical conference I attended last year was looking at the ways Big Pharma are trying hard to remove the use of tried and tested, safe, and highly effective drugs which have become very inexpensive and widely used, and to replace them with much more expensive new drugs which are often far less effective and don’t have the many years of proven safety records. It also covered the way Big Pharma manipulate data and stats to persuade prescribers and users that the new, extortionately expensive drugs are safer and more effective. Their one motivation is profit, profit and more profit.
I wouldn’t be too quick to start worrying about carcinogenic effects of ranitidine. I am sure Big Pharma and their policitian friends will come after omeprazole very soon too, and that is what I am prescribed to counteract the effects of some of the other drugs I have to take.It has a similar but more powerful effect to that of ranitidine.
But of course, their deceit by omission as well as by manipulation of data and stats is one good reason to be wary of any claims regarding their covid vaccines. As far as I have seen and read, the efficacy of the pfizer vaccine has not been adequately tested on the most vulnerable group, the over-65s, and what data they have on this older group is that it only has 65% efficacy among older people, not the 90-95% claimed which ahs only been found in younger low-risk individuals.
Already people taking this vaccine are being recorded as developing severe, life-threatening allergies and even anaphylactic shock. Others, a small number so far, have been recorded as developing serious auto-immune and neurological disorders, but the drugs companies and politicians are dismissing this as irrelevant and unrelated. IMHO Big Pharma and the govts who support them are not to be trusted in anything they claim related to medicine and health. Its another case of follow the money.
Stuart mackay, I certainly don’t mean to be rude or confrontational so please don’t take this the wrong,
There is a big difference between those that actually live in the countryside, those who visit the countryside, those whom are new to living in the countryside and others that read txt book theories. For a start gamekeepers usually have a free , but tied house to their employment, and quite often get to retire on the estate edges somewhere, depending on employer, they used to have free coal or wood or sticks, and milk if a dairy was on the estate, and a certain amount of pheasants or grouse, and in times past hare or rabbit meat, they seldom had to travel of the estate to go to work, unless the landowner was invited to a neighbouring estate, they would choose their gamekeeper and his dogs perhaps to go with them or not as the case needed,
If they got sacked or made redundant then they lost their house more often than not,
Now let’s discuss national parks, why do you need them in Scotland, you have the right to roam in Scotland anywhere as long as you do not do damage to crop, fencing, buildings or livestock , in America they are beginning to have quite serious problems with the people whom run the national parks, you are not allowed to film there, or video, permission for more important issues such as people whom have gone missing and never return to their vehicles is not always allowed to be investigated even by their families years later, the national parks have gone power crazy in dictatorship, these precious public spaces are now being run like a private parks, for a chosen Few. laws being passed slowly over time make it a slow subtle steal of land,
Quite simply I do not agree that Scottish people need permits to walk, ride or cycle on Scottish land.
As for culture, or a way of life, that has been eroded by to many big land owners whom often do not live in Scotland, and incomers putting up signs , private keep out, totally unaware of the right to roam, and most people do not envade people’s privacy right up close to houses, but these private signs often cover large swaths of land for miles,
Sanctuaries and supposed animal charities are becoming a land ownership problem without consultation with the population of Scotland, often registered down south, or abroad,
And how about all the large houses turned into nursing homes to make a profit that are also registered down south or abroad
It cannot be that Scottish people need a permit to go on the land that belongs rightfully to the Scottish nation, while outsiders hold control and are able to mark it of as a tax haven/evasion
The only way to solve any of these large issues, is by land tax, the more you acres you own
The more you pay to the Scottish government, this prevents any person finding great profit from Scottish land, and perhaps the people whom were shoved to the edge of the sea in Scotland eons ago could return to the land.
If you are a woman or a bloke
But the thought of it’s enough to make you boak
Don’t dwell on where you’ve been
Now’s the time to join the greens
wokey, wokey, woke, woke, woke
Blackman out of order again, she would be better getting off twitter as she makes an arse of herself most days, to think that I pounded the streets of Aberdeen North for decades in all weathers to get an SNP incumbent in place of the Liberals and Blackman is the recipient of all the hard craft some good people (not including me obviously as I have been Away from there for 13 years) put in.
mandy rhodes
@holyroodmandy
·
3h
So someone is so committed to a particular political party that as soon as they don’t get selected to stand, they join another party…
Kirsty Blackman
@KirstySNP
· 2h
Replying to @holyroodmandy
1. It has nothing to do with you. 2. It is very clear, obvious and has been explained why Mridul has left the SNP. 3. Why shouldn’t someone who feels strongly about improving Scotland join a political party? 4. U have a lot of followers and this catty comment encourages a pile on
Fionan
Nonsense
There have been onlyTWO mild mild allergic reactions and both cleared up in 48 hours.
What you are saying is that thousands of medical staff incolved with the vaccination campaign.
Get your tinfoil hat on.are concealing serious illnesses
@Fireproofjim,
I cant wait to get rid of big pharma so we can get back to the old cures. You knkw like
Eye of toad and tooth of bat
mixed inside a witches hat
powdered earwig and some fleas
skin from new born baby knees.
Thats for earache.!! Better than an asprin.!!!
@Daisy Walker says:
18 December, 2020 at 9:49 pm
🙂
A lot of families play board games at Christmas.
“Guess Who?” could be interesting…
Scot Finlayson says: 96% of drug deaths are listed as `accidental poisoning`, the question that needs asked/answered is what are Scottish drug users doing differently than every other countries drug users to cause more of these `accidents`?
Scot, as I understand it, most drug deaths are caused by the adulterants. The poorer you are, the poorer the quality of the drug you can obtain on the street, and therefore the greater chance of dying. Poverty is a downward spiral.
It is tragic, because the situation could stop immediately if drugs were decriminalised. Not legalised (except for marijuana) but decriminalised i.e. available by prescription only, so that use can be safely monitored by your GP. It is incredibly ironic that the state legally imports heroin on the one hand for use in the NHS, but denies it to those who are essentially “self-medicating”. Since it is more likely to be the impurities that kill you rather than the drug itself, and the drug is readily available on the NHS, then drug deaths are nothing less than state-sponsored homicides. There is also all the attendant crime, violence and gangsterism that comes with criminalisation.
I empathise greatly with the good people of Dundee. I come from Glasgow and things are not much better here. In fact the one word I would use to describe the situation is “bleak”.
Seems some people still trying to assert the “self licking ice-cream cone” jargon on us just like dafty across the watter in regards to covid..
Covid is a hoax.It’s just like flu. Vaccines are bad.
Trump-“the only way I can lose this election is with massive fraud” He did that to soe the seed before the election at every rally..
Say it often enough aye and people will just believe it.
Naw we won’t-the numbers don’t lie. Flu worldwide kills approx 250k-500k each year because it’s a persistent blighter that won’t go away.The flu keeps mutating and every year we have to administer another vaccine for the influenza strain to give to the vurnable and kids. Imagine if covid was more deadly to the kids? Would you be thinking the same?
Covid has killed more than three times that of flu so far and doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon.We need the vaccine so we can get on with our lives in the best way we can.Letting nature take it’s course is NOT acceptable in this day and age.
Trump denegraded the danger of covid right from the start (constantly) and now wants credit for a vaccine that he had feck all to do with from start.
Remember he said he knows more than the scientists. He knows fuck all and is nothing but a GRIFTER.
200+ million so far he’s raised by perpetuating the “self licking ice cream cone” garbage on those poor suckers.
James Che
There are a few things that make my blood boil, and people banging on about a Scot’s “right to roam” are one of them.
That “right” died forever in March. I can’t believe you failed to notice, but then again, there is no end to people’s blindness when they make their own blinkers.
A “right” that can be unconditionally and unilaterally withdrawn overnight is no right at all.
@Saffron Robe,
Drugs which are illicit are much more complex now. As well as being adulterated with dvery conceivable chemical to increase bulk, there are also designer drugs created by pharmaceutical graduates for illicit dealers.
There is one which I cannot remember off hand, but it is over 10,000 times stronger than morphine. There are several in the same group.
It is immediate death to an inexperienced user.
Johnson says:-
“All that that takes is for them to understand that the UK has a natural right, like every other country, to want to be able to control its own laws and its own fishing grounds.”
Johnson reiterated “no sensible government” could agree to a treaty that does not give the nation control of its laws and waters.
Every other country except Scotland.Hypocrite
”
Self licking ice-cream cone”
link to grabien.com
@ Colin Alexander says: 18 December, 2020 at 8:40 pm
“I’d rather abstain than vote for a colonial administrator MSP in a colonial parliament stripped of powers.”
Zzzzzz, you let us know every day that you are a staunch & loyal advocate of suppressing the vote.
Anything new with you?
@ Bob Mack
Think you’re referring to Carfentanil. Xanex isn’t as strong but seems to be one that gets abused and catches folk out easily.
Back end of last year I came out of a meeting a noticed someone staggering up the road. Presumed they were drunk, but when I walked the 20 yards to my car I turned to open the door and notice them collapse to the pavement. Took blanket from car and did basic recovery position and open airway and spent best part of two fuckin hours waiting on Ambulance.
I thought they had died at various points, unresponsive and the shallowest of breaths barely a minute.
And some strains of cannabis are way stronger than the 1 or 2% THC of the 60s. There’s some very strong stuff out there now so liberal old hippys saying yeah go for it maybe don’t realise the implications of abusing a much stronger toxicity.
Bottom line is folk get wasted for numerous reasons. Poverty obviously an major driving force in take up.
Checkout a vid of someone in a K hole (Ketamin) and there’s another which rolls the eyes back in the head so all you see is white as they lie on the ground in what looks like a state of full seizure.
It don’t look like that great a time to me but for some reason folks do it.
Hmm, lost part of that post. The lad that collapsed had taken Xanex. The paramedic when they eventually arrived had previously dealt with the individual. They administered a shot of some kind which brings them back round.
AYRSHIRE NOB 10.42pm
Ha Ha Ha
I wonder who you are talking about tonight???
FFS, I would never have guessed,,,Donald Trump.
You should enter the Quiz Show called Mastermind.
Subject… Donald Trump. LoL.
What a fuckin roaster you are.
Like-
Famous15
Liz g
Pigsty
You are all in denial that Sturgeon is a evil little bastard.
robbo, get back to the wee Gingerbread Man where you belong.
And I won’t be long in calling any of you out if you continue to use the Wings name.
This site is in the process of bringing down Sturgeon and her inner circle.
Arseholes like you four only hold up any progress we are making.
I think the name for something that lives off of the blood sweat and tears of others is Parasites.
Apt name for you four.
@Saffron Robe,
poverty and bad drugs are a worldwide problem,
but why is the death toll in Scotland so high compared to most other countries,
specifically what is it Scottish drug users are doing differently that causes a higher chance of accidental death.
@Scot Finlayson,
NOT GETTING CAUGHT!!
The only roaster on here is you Ronald Fuckwit.
Last time looked there’s only one owner and moderator on this site.
I wouldn’t have a clue about the other site as I’ve never posted on it and rarely read.
Bye bye powder puff
If Sturgeon is found to have broken the ministerial code and she refuses to resign
what is the procedure for removing her from office?
Can the government ignore a no confidence motion?
@Ronald Fraser
I used to laugh about people like you that you only met them in the bookies or the accident and emergency waiting room. I no longer laugh at you or Donald Trump as you are the problem.
Independence is normal and is coming soon.
Whether you spew or shite you WILL be liberated.
@Davie Oga says:
19 December, 2020 at 12:08 am
“If Sturgeon is found to have broken the ministerial code and she refuses to resign
what is the procedure for removing her from office?
Can the government ignore a no confidence motion?”
She might have run out of buses by then…
Ronald Fraser – why do you feel the need to be so abusive to those who don’t concur with your view of current events?
Marks you out as someone who has to shout the loudest, lest they are ignored.
Psychological insecurity doesn’t beckon – it is already ingrained in you.
I’ve noticed those who are sceptical about the pandemic, covid-19, and the vaccine never really explain what their scepticism is based on. It’s all very vague.
You get this a lot in closed cultures, whereby nobody really feels the need to explain the central tenets of the belief system – simply expressing belief is enough and serves as a sort of tribal identifier rather than an attempt to explore or understand underlying principles.
This is problematic. It seems the scepticism is based on “feelings” rather than science.
I remember reading an interview with a card-carrying KKK racist a few years ago and he couldn’t explain what his racial superiority was based on – if I remember correctly, he was an unemployed forklift driver. Pointing out that he couldn’t explain or justify his dangerous beliefs didn’t dampen his confidence in them, if anything it made him more adamant.
This is the world we live in today. Significant numbers of people in the west simply refuse to listen to reason or play by the rules of rational discourse and discussion that were considered preconditions to informed debate just 5 years ago. Out of that chaos came Trump, Brexit, and a bunch of other disturbing phenomena. It’s a world “without sky”.
Today in the United States more people died as a consequence of covid-19 than died as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks. Health experts in the US believe they will lose at least as many as that to this virus every day for the next 2 months, and that’s assuming the vaccines work.
The flight of the Wokes!
And where too?
Well with Andy Wightman out and the creature from the Rape Crisis Centre heading to the Green just weeks after contesting an SNP nomination, it doesn’t take much difficulty to realise where the Trans Loon Brigade see their spiritual home.
Yep the flight of the loon balls has begun.
And Fiona Robertson, anyone heard anything about her?
Bob Mack: I take your point. The line has to be drawn somewhere. I was mainly referring to ‘traditional’ hard drugs like opioids, amphetamines, and possibly cocaine. I would draw the line at all synthetic or ‘designer’ drugs, and of course drugs like methamphetamine, PCP, ketamine, free-base cocaine etc. etc. However your point is still valid. There are opiates in use in the NHS which can be hundreds of times stronger than in their original form.
Scot, I thought I had answered your question, or at least my understanding of it. The poorer you are, the more drug dealers can take advantage of your desperation, and cut the drug with all kinds of unimaginable shit. Generally you will have a better chance of not dying if you are using relatively pure heroin rather than heroin cut with all sorts of other substances which can be much more deadly than the heroin itself. And I think you will find that drug deaths generally correlate with the most deprived areas, hence the high rates of drug deaths in Dundee and Glasgow, and in Scotland overall with comparison to other nations.
And herewith a link to a re-jig of a Christmas favourite which summarises exactly why we need Independence.
Humorous yes, but a deadly serious message for us all.
link to m.facebook.com
Willie, that’s brilliant. Really well done.
Talking about underlying principles, time for some constitutional legal theory? P.S. Woke is good. The GRA amendments are not compatible with woke theory though, or practice that is awake to social reality. In fact, the Scottish government is opening itself up to large scale negligence claims if it reaches statute.
Precautionary Principles in Constitutional Law
link to academic.oup.com
“This article examines precautionary strategies of constitutional design and interpretation. In many contexts, constitutional actors and theorists justify rules of constitutional law as precautionary measures against various political risks, including the abuse of power by incumbent officials, dictatorship, majoritarian oppression, and biased adjudication.
After providing an analytic taxonomy of such arguments, I examine criticisms of constitutional precautions offered by early proponents of national power such as Hamilton, Marshall and Story, and by New Dealers such as Frankfurter and Jackson. These critics argued that precautionary constitutionalism might be futile, might jeopardize other values, and might even prove perversely self-defeating, if and because the precautions create or exacerbate the very risks they were intended to prevent.
Accordingly, these critics argued for a “mature position” that requires constitutional rulemakers to consider all relevant risks of action and of inaction. I identify a strictly negative but nonetheless valuable function of that approach: by laundering out one-sided arguments and placing all relevant risks before constitutional rulemakers, the mature position improves the process of constitutional design and interpretation.”
Cam: “opening itself up to large scale negligence claims if it reaches statute.”
I think I know what you mean by that, but it would be good if you could explain…
The thing about Sturgeon that nobody ever talks about is that everything she touches turns to dust. Every single major plank of policy that she’s tried to implement has catastrophically failed. Go through the list – named guardians, obfa, indyref2, Stop Brexit, BIFAB, drugs policy, GRA, repatriating EU powers, etc., etc.
Look at the embarrassing mess we call the Salmond Inquiry. She had just about every branch of the civil service deployed and they still fucked up. They can’t even cover the mess up properly.
We all get caught up in brexit, covid, indyref stuff, etc., and miss the bigger picture. I can’t think of a politician that comes close in terms of screwing things up with such regularity, big things too.
And here’s a look at “Precaution, Prevention, and Public Health Ethics”. P.S. We are leaving the EU largely to liberate us from the precautionary principle. Which is embedded in EU law.
link to tandfonline.com
“The precautionary principle brings a special challenge to the practice of evidence-based public health decision-making, suggesting changes in the interpretative methods of public health used to identify causes of disease. In this paper, precautionary changes to these methods are examined: including discounting contrary evidence, reducing the number of causal criteria, weakening the rules of evidence assigned to the criteria, and altering thresholds for statistical significance.
All such changes reflect the precautionary goal of earlier primary preventive intervention, i.e. acting on insufficient evidence, the least amount, or minimum level, of evidence for causation. Evaluating the impact of these changes will be difficult without a careful study of how well the current methods of causal inference work, their theoretical foundations, and the ethical implications of their applications.
That research program will be most productive if it is jointly developed by public health professionals trained in the ethics and philosophy and by bioethicists and philosophers trained in the theories, methods, and practice of public health.”
Hatuey
It’s a very long time since I looked at the law, but the bill is complete “mince”, in technical parlance. Sex and gender may be interchangeable, but not in all circumstances. And certainly not in law. That’s why best practice in policy design follows a gender-critical approach to the law. Though not in Scotland, where ‘our’ civil service has been instructed to accommodate anti-foundational ideology.
I’m pretty sure there will be women who come to harm if these proposals become law, which would ultimately be due to government negligence. Women in general might chose to take out a class-action. Which has just been adopted into Scots law. Though given the negligence and discriminatory nature of Brexit, I’m giving up all hope for Scotland’s democracy. 🙁
link to eige.europa.eu
“The 2010 Equality Act is the key legal instrument for equality in the UK, banning unfair treatment and helping to achieve equal opportunities in the workplace and wider society. The 2010 Act draws together previous equality and anti-discrimination legislation, with a shift from gender equality to a concept of equality that spans all dimensions of discrimination. This is part of a shift in the UK to broaden mainstreaming frameworks [6], requiring ‘public bodies to address a complex range of inequalities including but not limited to gender’ [7].
As part of this shift, in 2011, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) replaced the Gender Equality Duty (GED) (2006). The PSED covers gender, race and disability equality duties and extends across nine protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation). The GED was the UK’s most obvious effort towards gender mainstreaming.
The PSED consists of a general duty (s149 of the Act) and specific duties, set out in regulations that vary across England, Scotland and Wales [8]. The PSED requires all public authorities to have ‘due regard’ to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations when carrying out their activities (including in shaping policy, delivering services and in relation to their own employees). However, the main challenge for the PSED lies in its implementation, which varies considerably across the public sector.”
P.S. Gender and gender-identity are not the same, so sex and gender-identity are not interchangeable.
James Che,
The post was written in a hurry and is just a bag of ideas. Two quick points:
1. I know gamekeepers have tied houses that why, when driven grouse shooting is banned and they get fired that I’d offer them their current house (appropriated from the landowner) or another free of charge as compensation for me having them lose their job.
2. The permit thing. Right to roam – no question but wilderness areas are exactly that – no humans. You need a permit to get into one,. This is what the Americans do. Basically it means that the wildlife is left alone. There might not be much scope for that in Scotland as none of it really remote. It also “adds value” to the land as a lot of people want to get into wilderness areas, hence the permits. It’s essentially boosts the image of Scotland being wild and beautiful. People will pay for that.
Hatuey @ 3.27
“I can’t think of a politician that comes close in terms of screwing things up with such regularity, big things too”
What can we expect when all the department heads in the SG factory are still employed and directed by the parent company, incl the real branch manager, Ms Evans? The FM is a figurehead.
I don’t blame Joe Fitzpatrick, he was totally unsuitable for the job. How many Ministers are appointed who have no expertise in what they are overseeing? If you have a Hotel you don’t put the Housekeeper in charge of the restaurants.
Alf, I’m acutely aware of the limits on her power. I regard the whole parliament as a gimmick, not just the role of FM. But you can’t blame anyone else for the stupidity of her policies and the abuse of power exhibited throughout the Salmond scandal.
I’ve given sturgeon a lot of thought and considered all the possibilities. The only thing that explains the catalogue of blunders is political stupidity. The Salmond scandal reveals dangerous levels of stupidity – I’ve never seen such short-sighted vindictiveness and irresponsibility.
I dread to think what she’d be capable of with real power at her disposal.
Stuart mackay appreciate our common sense conversation, I was bought up in a very isolated area in Argyll, where it was all woodland, lochs or bare topped mountains, some of these now have the title Munro’s, it was not unusual for us not to see anyone else from one day to the next. These hills were our back garden we were totally aware of nature in a big way, on the occasion we saw someone else they stood out a mile not only in dress sense, but the way they behaved or didn’t mentally adjust in the environment,, wherever they came from, mentally they had not adapted, there was rubbish left behind, not taken home, there were fires lit to near to woodland, and the stones they had gathered for their fires they just left them and did not return them,
The more people that filtered in over the years the messier and untidy it became,
The old saying, there are a lot of people on this planet, but very few in it, or something like that, is true,
I went back for a holiday and for a reminiscence, and was shocked how filthy the place was, and how many places you could no longer stop and just fill your lungs with fresh and drink up the beauty of the places..
the people that left the mess, had come to do the same, as I had been doing naturally all my life, but they came thinking someone else would clear up their mess after they had gone home, this is a lack of education and ignorance, they do not realise the damage they do,
And for all that I would not be issuing permits,
However there should be serious finds for those that leave or dump litter, and should be regularly checked, and the way my childhood countryside is now run, is for profit, big caravan sites or log cabins everywhere, water jet skis and crazy fast boats that destroy and erode the banks, and your not allowed to stop in a lay-bys they are cordoned of, big estates scare the living daylights out of all animals, big shoots, loads of noises people,
This is to shove everyone onto the profit making sites. Where people are herded together like sheep, with loads of regulations,, they might as well as stayed in the town, or at home.
People should be free mentally, physically and environmentally, to excercise and have fresh air, but they should have some serious education at all school levels and have exams on the subject, on how to fit into the countryside in a natural way, to be part of it, If they want excitement and thrills there in the wrong place for a holiday. If you come to the country, you have to become part of the country,
You have to mentally become a invisible animal in your mind, you walk quietly, you breath in the different smells and scents of the woodland and beaches, you stand stock still viewing your surroundings, listening for the other creatures that are there around you, enjoy the morning dew on the landscape and spiders web beside you, hear the lapping waves, and how the snow quitens everything around you, silence is a noise unto itself.
That, you should never ever need a permit for, or to pay through the nose for,
what is needed is serious education. And a ban on the money-making holiday camps and sports on lochs, that destroy the environment, their should be toilets at regular intervals. And rubbish bins that are emptied regularly, for practical reasons and by the councils, tourism is a profit for them too. Teach the children how to be content within themselves, stop pandering to their “ i ave got nothing to do, teach them how to care and adjust to different things in life,
Most people live in a superficial world nowadays.
No national parks are needed, no permits are needed just education. We didn’t have any, and we still respect nature and the landscape.
Why do you need to kill or cull animals, nature it’s very self does this, I disagree with culling hedgehogs because their supposed to eat all the birds eggs, this is big private owned estate thinking, who are looking for profit of grouse.
I disagree with culling any animals in Scotland or the idea of bringing wolves and bears back into Scotland, so some time in the future the (rich) can go on big game hunts for sport,
James Che
I think we are on the same page but coming at it from different angles which is great as the the more minds the better the solution will be.
People who visit say Scotland is beautiful. Sadly, for me, it’s more like a garden. It’s over grazed, and managed on an industrial scale (grouse and deer) by a few vested interests for the benefit of a few. I’d look to see that entire system overturned and turned over to the people of Scotland (though I don’t entirely trust the government not to make a mess of it). I’d like to see the benefits of a beautiful landscape made available to all and the benefits flowing into the communities, so the glens which were emptied over the last few centuries are repopulated.
The RSPB (I think) did a study where the benefits of re-introducing sea eagles to Rùm was in there order of £5 million a year. My motivation for reintroducing wolves would be two-fold. First, keep the deer in check so woodland has a chance to regenerate naturally and second bring in the tourists. There’s a population of 60 million right on our doorstep with another couple of hundred million within easy flying distance. I’d to see some of them come to Scotland to experience the landscape and wildlife and put money into the local economies. It would be way better than the few business types that come to shoot or fish but are really after the business and political connections and leave little behind.
There’s lots to talk about and lots of ideas to kick around. As news of Andy Wightman’s tribulations with the Scottish Greens becomes more well known perhaps the conversation on land reform and all that entails can pick up the pace once more.
Perhaps this might be a good time for another holiday and acclimatise to the new horizon. I did try in a previous post, but can’t be arsed referencing it now.
It won’t be the last time the rug is pulled and foundations shook – but leave the NS alone for now please. By the New Year, you’ll understand why.
Good luck.
Hatuey says:
19 December, 2020 at 1:50 am
I’ve noticed those who are sceptical about the pandemic, covid-19, and the vaccine never really explain what their scepticism is based on. It’s all very vague.
That’s simple, these folk trust even fewer people than you do. AND in this time, in this world, who can blame them?
For what it’s worth ……my scepticism is based on the actual data and comparisons with similar viral outbreaks in the past . A pretty virulent strain of the Corona Virus came in in early Spring , taking out the most vulnerable , sadly – the vast majority of fatalities being over 75 and/or otherwise susceptible , after which it followed the same pattern as every other similar outbreak , declining to virtually zero during the summer months ( during which , bizarrely , the UK Govs decided to impose mandatory mask-wearing ) and what we’re seeing now is the also predicted/predictable seasonal resurgence of viral infection , the difference this time being that the number of infections is being inflated by the exclusive use of the PCR Test – which was never intended for such purposes – and which will result in nothing worse than a common cold , if that , for the non-susceptible . There is now some 23 fully peer-reviewed papers disputing the efficacy of such measures and indeed the whole Lockdown dogma . So the only really relevant questions are 1. why are any dissenting voices , even those of highly respected experts in the relevant fields , being denied MSM exposure , other than a smattering in the margins of public discourse and 2. why are our ” Authorities ” so keen to enforce a narrative with such severe social detrimental effects – economic , social , pyschological and MEDICAL ? and that has been shown to be seriously flawed ?