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Wings Over Scotland


Kiss With A Fist

Posted on June 23, 2023 by

We’ve seen some hilarious demands for “unity” in the independence movement in the last couple of years, almost all of them from the most divisive figures ever to wave a wee plastic Saltire (Pete Wishart, Neil Mackay, Wee Ginger Dug etc etc).

But this effort from the SNP’s new airhead mascot takes the shortbread.

Because apparently this is how Kelly Given attempts to create unity:

So let’s just recap: “Alex Salmond is worse than a Tory, Lorna Slater is a credit to the Scottish Government, other independence parties are destructive attack dogs who should just shut up, anyone concerned about women’s rights and the protection of children and gay people is a toxic grifter engaged in a moral panic and anyone who criticises the SNP is probably an MI5 plant who doesn’t really support independence at all. Come on, everyone, unite!”

You won’t all rush at once, will you?

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Derek

Aye, but you’re only allowed to unite around the SNP.

Unite anywhere else and you’re filthy splittists…

SteepBrae

Yes – but in a different direction.

All roads lead to Stirling.

JockMcT

Oh dear, dead, done & dusted. RIP SNP. Then, and only then, we can unite.

Tom

Those dirty Albissstsss(spit).

Blackhack

Ok then, who should we vote for ?? The peoples front of Judea or the Judean peoples front ??

It’s getting harder and harder not to laugh at them.

duncanio

What do you expect from a donkey other than a kick?

Effijy

Yes, United behind the biggest train designed for this journey only to find that the engine has gone, it’s on the wrong track and see warning signs not to look out the windows to see where the others are going.

Got it!

Michael Laing

At this point, I’m struggling to tell the difference between the SNP and the Tories. They’re both useless to Scotland and they can both GTF!

No acknowledgement, I note, from Kelly Given that the SNP could in any way be responsible for the division and rancour in the independence movement. If she is representative of the mindset of the SNP, they’ve become just like Labour before they were practically wiped out in Scotland: it’s the stupid voters’ fault!

charlie

Worse than that, you’re only allowed to unite around the NEC of the SNP, which is unrepresentative of the SNP membership let alone the independence movement. This article is about Boris Johnston but could equally be about the Uddingston Martyr link to theconversation.com Pip-pip!

Ian Brotherhood

Kelly Given?

Are we supposed to know this person already?

FFS, just when you’ve had your absolute fill of these throbbers, another one pops up.

🙁

Anonymoose

What is it with wannabe-celebrities who work for the British state-controlled BBC dictating pish to Scottish people as if they are some hero of the people, they are quite literally in the pocket of the British State, being paid by the enemy of the Scottish people.

The newspaper they write in is not even owned by anyone in Scotland, it’s not a Scottish company, it’s parent company NewsQuest was founded in England in 1996 and is a subsidiary of the US media empire Gannett Inc based out of Virginia who control hundreds of local & national publications in the UK and hundreds more in the US.

Doesn’t the SNP HQ have enough people who are ex-BBC and MI5-vetted within their ranks already or are they bolstering it with even more to “legitimise” themselves for when they do the dirty with Labour at the next UK election under the guise of “more devolution” thereby further imprisoning Scotland under the chains of colonialism.

charlie

Just to quote from my link above: When a “dark” leader attains power, conscientious, moral people rapidly fall away. A government operating under these conditions soon becomes what the Polish psychologist Andrzej Lobaczewski called a “pathocracy” – an administration made up of ruthless individuals devoid of integrity and morality. This happened with Donald Trump’s presidency, as the “adults in the room” gradually headed for the exit, leaving no one but staffers defined by their personal allegiance to Trump.

The adults in the room have gone.

Kenny

They’re desperate.
Printed bile and dubiety is the work of Better Together, only now they wear yellow and green, and, they’re hopeless at subtlety and shite at recruitment.

Good old National – great source of how to identify the bad guys!

holymamoses

This woman represents everything that is the self-centred, self-seeking, scrambling shamble of screwed-up shabbiness, that the SNP has become. As some old comedian once didn’t say ‘Who’d want to be in a party that would promote that person?’

Geri

& this is why they are dead.

Here’s yet another fkwit to tell us all where we’re all going wrong & we’re all just trolls.
Why don’t we all just go away & let them collect thier £80k salary in peace eh?!

Do these fcking idiot’s not realise that’s politics? Get out of public life if you can’t umm …deal with the fcking public! Jeez, snowflakes.

Lorna Slater should be nowhere near government.I wouldn’t even want her in charge of stationery. No one voted for her to be in cabinet.
& I notice she mentions GRR as the catalyst – aye, cause you just fat did it anyway against the majority of public opinion & public scrutiny which makes the SNP absolutely toxic to voters.

You’ll be another who’ll be looking for a new job soon. Idiot.

Laughing

Kelly Given is a zoomer. She hates men, and writes articles full of Sturgeon-lite hyper-PC horseshit for The National. No idea how she appears to older (yuck! Homotransbreakdanceophobic!), sane people. A vapid narcissist daughter of Nicola. Autistic, so that’s her get out of jail free card. A real waste of space.

Northcode

A brief exploration of the proverb ‘Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard’ seems relevant:

This proverb first appeared in Mirk’s Festial, published by a clergyman around 1450:

Hyt ys old Englysch sawe: A mayde schuld be seen, but not herd.

The word sawe is an old English word meaning proverb. In old English, a mayde was a young woman.

How this proverb evolved to include all children is unclear. It is clear, however, that this proverb alludes to a child’s naivety or ignorance of adult matters.

It is most often used to reprimand a child who tries to interfere in a conversation between adults.

This extract from Wikipedia also seems pertinent and summarises one aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.

Galloway Lass

I made a comment earlier about Kelly Givens but it wasn’t posted.

I saw this young woman when she took part in “The Apprentice”. She took part for a reason – to make a name for herself (remind you of anyone?)

She didn’t win, but the next time I saw her was in a photoshoot at the Kilt March in New York (who paid for the peniless student to get to New York?)

Funnily enough, when she appeared before Sir Alan Sugar, she never mentioned her views on transgender people!!

Suddenly, it appears that she is the new little darling of the SNP! How stupid are Humza Yousaf and Nicol Sturgeon? It was quite obvious to me, from watching the program, that she wants to become a politician.

Who wants a “poitician” (or should I say, a “Silly little Girl” who has managed to get “someone” to give her the money to get her lips enhanced and her hair highlighted and fly her to New York?

Robert Christie

Silly wee lassie…!

100%Yes

I have no idea why anyone buys this Rag, I for one will be clad when it stops printing the SNP bile and goes bust and closes for good.

Both the SNP and the rag haven’t realized that its their attitude towards other Indy supporters and no interest whats so ever in Scotland, apart from 1 buy their paper and 2 at the ballot box.

Galloway Lass

Have a look on the Internet -the fawning photos of Gelly Givens with Nichola Sturgeon!

Stephen O'Brien

The Self-Preservation Society, is on it’s last legs. I would suggest taxidermy or formaldehyde. Although, mammyfication, does seem to be most appropriate.

The SNP convention may turnout to be worthwhile..

Hopefully, sabotage of the huge SNP signage, as the initial S pivots on it’s fixing, becoming a massive hook, swiping the speaker from the stage. Solidarity, at last!

robertkknight

The “problem” is that an increasing, (by the day), number of Yessers are realising that the Emperor, in the form of Sturgeon’s rancid SNP, isn’t wearing any clothes.

This results in those who remain in Sturgeon’s rancid SNP seeking to blame everyone else for their dwindling popularity. If the coats of the troughers at Westminster and Holyrood are on shoogly pegs, who’s to blame??? Salmond? The Rev? The Wings BTL collective?

Aye, right!

Look no further than the Dear Leader and her acolytes.

They don’t like it up ’em Captain Mainwaring, they don’t like it up ’em!

Taranaich

The absolutely mind-bending opposite-universe nerve of accusing *Alex Salmond* of intentionally causing political difficulty for *Nicola Sturgeon* would be infuriating if it wasn’t so utterly stupid, heartbreaking, & damaging to the cause so many of these people claim to love.

No sympathy with these people anymore. Either you don’t know, in which case you’re talking about something you don’t know about, or you do know, in which case you’re a liar.

DC

Today’s pathetic, performative nonsense in Dundee in front of the payroll will be another nail in the coffin lid. Infected by the same sense of entitlement that did for Labour in Scotland the demise now looks assured.

Breeks

I made a mistake.

For the longest time, I thought The National was just a rather amateurish and blinkered SNP fanzine, bribed by Sturgeon to flatter her ego and bury her shortcomings, but instead, I think The National itself is the full-on Daniel Defoe of our time.

Please pardon this link, it’s Wikipedia so a frequently unreliable source, but nevertheless, while reading, I would ask you to focus on the methods adopted by Daniel Defoe to subvert Scotland’s interests.

link to en.wikipedia.org

He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.

Defoe began his campaign in The Review and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an “inexhaustible treasury of men”, a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706, Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty of Union.

Then subsequently, ”…. he was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was “privy to all their folly” but “Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England”. He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported…

Just ask yourself this, isn’t the National conspicuously “party” to the folly of a divided YES movement? It purports to be one thing, yet all the time, it’s elbow deep stirring shite and sowing the very seeds of division it condemns.

Harley by the way, was Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, who facilitated Defoe’s release from prison and set him up as a spy. I don’t know who the modern day “Harley” might be, but feel confident there is “somebody” pulling the strings.

”Some of his pamphlets [Defoe’s] were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union but always having the last word for himself.”

Feeling queasy yet? Aren’t the activities of The National profoundly similar to Defoe? They fully occupy the same space in the matrix, doing the same job, using the same method. Is it any leap at all to see the same objective?

Defoe was outright enemy of Scotland, a deceiver, and the objective behind Defoe’s “Unionism” was the fullest exploitation of Scotland’s resources… a “threat” turned into inexhaustible treasury of men at the English governments disposal.

We need to up our game Scotland. Open our eyes. The gooks are already inside the perimeter and currently they evade detection and hold the upper hand.

Oh yeah, and Defoe, ”… He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by ignoring him.”… isn’t that pretty much the same way The National curiously “ignores” what ALBA, Alex Salmond, and SALVO have to say?

Call me paranoid, but when you see it, you cannot unsee it. Strange then that so many of the National’s “journalists” refuse to see it in the first place.

I’m just not buying it that the root of the SNP’s bitter acrimony towards ALBA is resentment that the SNP’s Independence thunder has been stolen. It’s something much deeper. The SNP sees ALBA as the outright enemy, but enemy of what? Scottish Independence or the Union?

See ya later in Stirling. Let’s have a great day.

Sandra

Question: Who is Kelly Given? I’m guessing the latest poseur entryist stuck to the sole of the independence movement.

We need unity, but to achieve that we need mature inspirational leadership, something sadly absent from Bute House as Yousless continues to do his rabbit in the headlamps impression. With all that pent up potential going to waste it’s no wonder folk squabble amongst themselves.

David Hannah

Salmond has given the SNP so much advice since the conspiracy to oust him. The failed conspiracy.

This woman doesn’t want unity. She can give out the give out the hot towels and gravy down the isle of Caird Hall to her grifters. While the United yes movement march in bannockburn for Independence.

Hail Alba.

Robert Louis

EXACTLY. THIS article nails the REAL problem on the head.

It is blindingly obvious, that Alex Salmond is one of the very greatest political leaders of his generation, by some margin. Yet, all we see are the SNP dregs constantly slagging him off, and implying that he has done something terrible, that he must atone for. And of course we all know know he was entirely innocent of the charges drummed up by those women who conspired against him within the Scottish government.

For his part, all alex Salmond has done is try to work with the SNP to achieve independence, but on each and every occasion, the reply has just been more feckin shameful abuse from utter clowns who know nothing about politics – or independence for that matter.

So, how do we unite, when gimps like that lass above carry on spouting utter sh*te about the only man who has EVER in over three hundred years got Scotland even close to independence. The man is a freaking hero.

So, when I see the SNP stooges bitching and moaning about everybody else in the indy movement, then calling for ‘unity’ I know they are talking utter mince.

The current SNP are wayyyyyyy off course. They are seriously at odds with current public sentiment, and seem determined to carry on enacting and pushing UNWANTED legislation that will further secure their very own electoral destruction.

I am now quite convinced that it is the SNP that is the biggest road block to independence. Full of political careerists who did mediocre degrees in ‘politics’ but have never done a proper days work in their lives. They know nothing of real world problems, yet scream and stamp and shout their feet at any sign folk do not agree with them.

In many ways, the current SNP is the home of a pernicious form of student politics, led by the unelected ‘green’ party. It is childish, and serves nobody.

This current SNP need wiped out, before Scotland will ever gain independence. Those careerist SNP councillors and MSPs need a dose of the dole, to get their focus right again. Too, too many careerists in the SNP who just want things to stay as they are – because let’s face it, they are living a damn good lifestyle right now.

The indy movement needs to stop paying heed to the SNP. We need to move on, and if sometime in the future the SNP truly decides it wants to help Scotland end English colonial rule, THEN, and only then, should we listen to them.

Stoker

Kelly Given states in her Sturgeon Fanzine article:

“People flocked to the SNP en-masse and the uniting prospect behind that support was singular – independence for Scotland.”

Then why, Ms Given, did the SNP deviate from that very reason for their existence? Thrill us with your acumen why don’t you. Or are you just working your way into another all expenses paid free junket? Hypocrite!

Alf Baird

Breeks @ 5:06 am

“The SNP sees ALBA as the outright enemy, but enemy of what? Scottish Independence or the Union?”

The rupture in the movement has occurred but is perhaps not yet complete as a process. This weekend may be decisive, where the dregs left in the compromised national party finally realise ‘its work is to protect the interest of the colonizer’ (Fanon).

National liberation in Stirling or Devo Mk II (i.e. mair colonialism) in Dundee?

Stoker

Kelly given states in her article:

“Like any other political issue, independence looks different to different people, and we don’t all support it for the same reasons. If we are to achieve it, we have to grasp those differences and take them with us. Or we will not win.”

Dear Ms Given,
Have you ever heard of Joanna Cherry or Fergus Ewing? I could give you a few more names but i’ll resist the urge to make you think too hard. Wouldn’t want to create panic with the smell of burning.

Geoff Anderson

…..and that confirms to me that leaving the SNP was the right thing to do.

That letter just confirmed why the YES Movement must be out of the control of the SNP.

PacMan

@ Northcode says: 24 June, 2023 at 12:25 am

Another behavioural trait that seems appropriate here is Law of triviality AKA bike-shedding:

link to en.wikipedia.org

The concept was first presented as a corollary of his (C. Northcote Parkinson’s) broader “Parkinson’s law” spoof of management. He dramatizes this “law of triviality” with the example of a committee’s deliberations on an atomic reactor, contrasting it to deliberations on a bicycle shed. As he put it: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.” A reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it (see ambiguity aversion), so one assumes that those who work on it understand it. However, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to implement their own proposal and demonstrate personal contribution.[4]

After a suggestion of building something new for the community, like a bike shed, problems arise when everyone involved argues about the details. This is a metaphor indicating that it is not necessary to argue about every little feature based simply on having the knowledge to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.[3]

The law of triviality is supported by behavioural research. People tend to spend more time on small decisions than they should, and less time on big decisions than they should. A simple explanation is that during the process of making a decision, one has to assess whether enough information has been collected to make the decision. If people make mistakes about whether they have enough information, they will tend to stop too early for big decisions. The reason is that big decisions require collecting information for a long time. It leaves more time to make a mistake (and stop) before getting enough information. Conversely, for small decisions, where people should stop early, they may continue to ponder for too long by mistake.[5]

It’s a lot easier and within these individuals mediocre talents to spread blame against others as a solution to the SNP’s problems than it is to actually listen to those who disagree with them and come up with genuine solution to move forward.

Dorothy Devine

The National was never an independence paper , it was just there to mop up what the Herald had lost by pretending support.
Had it been a real indy paper it would have found its feet before 2014 not after.

For that reason I bought the first copy and none thereafter – can’t say I have missed anything in not buying any papers for many years , and I saved myself roughly 15 quid a week.

Beauvais

Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kelly from the Isle of Flam

Liz

Excellent comments on the truly vapid Kelly and The National.
Scotland has too many (tractors).
I know this is because we’re a colony, I learned that from Alf Baird , thanks.

The reason the SNP hate Alba is the same reason that Scot Lab hated the SNP and gave Winnie Ewing a horrible time at WM.

They think their prize has been stolen.
These charlatans know they would never get the same money, privilege anywhere else and they will fight to keep it.

SteepBrae

No shortage of last minute trickery to try to lure the unwary independence supporter away from Stirling today.

PR companies have already been working overtime to produce crunchy new Caird Hall carrots such as “members’ contributions” and speakers practised in the art of sleight of hand.

And suddenly the pointless, divisive SNP conference/convention is being hailed as a SUMMIT – dictionary definition: “an important formal meeting between leaders of governments from two or more countries”. Two or more parties maybe… Certainly a puffed up choice of word for an anaemic, inward-looking meeting.

Then there’s the inevitable photo of the sea of saltires from the earlier Glasgow AUOB march with no mention of today’s 12.30 AUOB march and rally from Auld Stirling Brig to Bannockburn Field.

Breeks’ brilliant observation of The National as modern day Daniel Defoe, “sowing the very seeds of division it condemns” sums up the trickery perfectly. And, yes, once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it.

Scotland’s heart will be in Stirling today, remembering Winnie and all those who have gone before. Marching for independence.

Cynicus

23 June, 2023 at 11:45 pm
Kelly Given?

Are we supposed to know this person already?
=======
Ten minutes ago I’d never heard of her
In ten minutes time I’ll say “Who?”

Ian McCubbin

Who is this Kelly Given?
She just becomes the type of grifter anti indepenence alliance person she complains about.
SNP only thinking the woke group have the answers.

Republicofscotland

Who the f*ck is Kelly Given, is she another National newspaper, SNP mouthpiece, a kind of female WGD, the so called columnists of the SNP fanzine (The “National”) don’t half spout some shite these days.

Oneliner

What was Kelly given and who gave her it?

Stuart MacKay

“A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society.”

So, so out of touch and grasping desperately at whatever angle is likely to keep the gravy flowing.

Incidentally, poor Kelly apparently didn’t get the memo. Yousaf is the leader of the SNP, not Sturgeon.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on The National to see whatever mouthpiece gets rolled out in an appeal to the faithful. Either Givens has decided this is her moment to jump in save the SNP for her vision of independence or she’s the bottom of the barrel as the party grandees can already smell smoke and are staying out of the limelight in the hope they might just hang on at the next election.

@Breeks The National as a Defoe figure might be right. However if you take a look at The Telegraph, they also try to play both sides (Leavers/Remainers), though to a lesser extent, to rile up the readership and generate some traffic for their ads.

Dorothy Devine

Oneliner , God knows but like a squeaky toy given to a dog someone should take it away pronto.

Frazerio

Stu, can Breeks get his comment tarted up into a standalone post?

Ms Given’s central message, ‘unity’ is exposed as a sham under the merest scrutiny. No mention of AUOB. No mention of Salmond’s genuine attempts at maximising indy support. No mention of Sturgeon using free nationally televised health broadcasts to attack the decision of a jury trial and an innocent man stating she’d never work with a giant of the indy movement.

And to clarify for Ms Given who is obviously one if these people who doesnt understand the definitions of words, this is not abuse, its criticism.

To paraphrase Jim Royle; Kelly Given, unity, my arse!!!

Stuart MacKay

Dorothy Devine

I think that describes nicely the attitude of the SNP leadership to their members. “Who’s a nice membership. Sit. Beg. Rollover.”

Frank Anderson

It continues. That’s why Believe in Scotland are trying to muscle in on organising marches. BiS are a mouthpiece for the SNP. They control many YES groups and now want to control marches. It is all about control and being ‘ on message’ for the SNP.
BiS do quite good literature ( copying the Wee Blue Book) so should stick to that. Why do they want to organise marches? Do an imaginative event like Chain of Freedom, copy some of the Catalan pictorial demonstrations.
Like a lot of groups/organisations which played a pivotal role in the lead up to 2014, they have been attacked, vilified and ostracised by the SNP. ( WoS, Common Weal, RIC and SCG to name a few). It now looks like AUOB are the bad guys to be opposed!
Unity and principles are not bedfellows of the current SNP.

Geri

Breeks 5:06 spot on.

This zoomer thought a forensic tent in Sturgeons garden was a marquee inviting transparency like it was some lemonade stall LOL!

The reason there is supposed SNP division is because genuine Independence supporters have left & the Green deviants & thier cohorts see their free meal ticket coming to an abrupt end along with the powers to force through thier warped & depraved legislation. I’ve lost count of the deviants on my twitter feed say ‘fuck Independence, trans rights first’ Now the little darlings are having a fit that will reflect at the ballot box so try paint Salmond as the devil incarnate.

The SNP staying exactly where they are only suits the Greens (who are not pro indy) for queer theory & the Unionists for continued stalemate until they lock us in permanently while we all disband exasperated.

Get rid of the SNP. They’re a dead weight. It’s finished. Ppl will be voting for Greens if they mark thier x for the SNP. They’ll not be voting for Independence. They’re completely captured all round.

I hope Dundee is a massive FAIL.

Frank Anderson

Well that’s a surprise. Humza, as FM, will address the BiS yes rally in September. Having avoided all attempts to get him, or a high heid yin, to address AUOB rallies the SNP find time for this. It is an attempt to control all that happens within YES, going forward. Glad there is a good turnout here at Bannockburn. It’s a long march.

Lorna Campbell

She means unity around the SNP, so yet another version of vote SNP 1 & 2. When and if the SNP agrees to a proper one independence candidate per seat based on ability to win, based on properly-conducted polls and results therefrom, we might start to get somewhere. We should be starting with the GE, then making the SE our target goal for legitimacy.

In the end, the question must be asked: what holds the Union together (apart from SNP/Green collusion and cringing obeisance?). The answer is simple: the Treaty of Union. Repudiate the Treaty with a water-tight case citing breaching, cynical overturning and hostile exploitation. The evidence is in Hansard and its archives for all to see and, furthermore, it always has been there, hising in plain sight.

We will soon discover just how extant the Treaty still is when we challenge it because Westminster and Whitehall know, and have always known, that it is the linchpin of the UK, hence the quite cynical and deliberate attempt to inform us, via the Professors Crawford and Boyle Report, commissioned by David Cameron, that we had been subsumed in 1707, an argument comprehensively destroyed by Professors Walker and Campbell.

With the latters’ arguments, we would have an initial basis for our case, although neither meant those to be the repudiation of the Treaty, but, they most certainly are fundamental and prima facie evidence of all manner of political, constitutional and legal fraud and ultra vires actions by successive UK governments – evidence that we will need to back our repudiation of the Treaty.

We don’t have to be tied up for ages either, in finely-tuned arguments with Westminster and Whitehall. We repudiate the Treaty and present our case to the world for so doing, via on-line news and a general invitation to foreign media to peruse our evidence, and we declare ourselves independent on the basis that the Union no longer exists. because of the cynical manipulation of our country, our people, our resources. Then we carry on as an independent country, offering Scottish citizenship to everyone in Scotland who has been here for a set number of years, regardless of origins.

Set up a central bank under state control immediately and declare that we will use the pound for six months maximum, before switching to our own currency, or propose our own currency from day one. Refuse to pay another penny in taxes to the Treasury unless the UK comes to the table for negotiations. They will, naturally, do everything to bring us to heel, but they are doing that anyway over a host of issues and, belatedly, we need to call their bluff. They have treated us, with the connivance and compliance of Scottish politicians of every party, including the SNP and the Greens (the latter having a very tenuous feel for independence, using us, just as cynically as Westminster and Whitehall, in pursuit of power for their own ends.

Let Westminster and Whitehall make the running and come to the table and provide evidence that they have acted in our best interests and not just their own. They can’t, and the breaching of the trade Articles is just the latest shenanigan to be clocked. We need to stop kow-towing to Unionism; it is rotten to the core. Just do it – now. With the internal market framework already operating against our interests, time is of the essence, and what do we have to lose that we will not lose, anyway if we do not do it?

Ian lecoup

She’s just another trougher!
As we know Wings likes his music so here’s one that comes quite close (though not close enough) to capture the modern day SNP.
The band for starters, Dire Straits and the song, of course, Money for Nothing (and the Gravy is FREE)!

Matt Quinn

Michael Laing says: 23 June, 2023 at 11:29 pm

At this point, I’m struggling to tell the difference between the SNP and the Tories.

Quite so Michael… and they have descended rapidly to that point just as Labour did before them; particularly since 2014.

Now, for the record I (for one) wasn’t particularly happy with the Salmond regime; I felt let down and disappointed. And I’ll be honest; there was a point where Sturgeon had me fooled – she was for example very supportive of my TV production students at Stow, giving of her time etc. Easy to talk to, didn’t grudge the time of day to talk to folk and (apparently) not self-serving arrogant egotist like the obnoxious Constance or Hyslop – who I’ve also had the misfortune to deal with.

What a fool I was to imagine therein lay ‘hope’… as later dealings with her and Freeman were to prove; the tacit backdoor privatisation of Primary Care in West Lothian, coupled to management more reminiscent of the mob behind the Glasgow Ice Cream wars would, you think, concern anyone with a shred of moral fibre. – It created a situation which almost cost my life, was/is unlawful etc. etc. etc. – To this day not properly resolved.

– Brought to the attention of Sturgeon’s office (where Freeman’s had closed ranks) it was ignored, ranks further tightened; if I need to see a trustworthy GP I need to go private. The only way I can access NHS services (aside from prescriptions) is if a medical emergency occurs and I am taken to hospital…

It’s a very ‘Tory’ picture… where as one of the great unwashed you might die before you see a GP; while certain entirely mercenary ‘Medical Groups’ (I’ll draw short of naming and shaming; but they operate in Glasgow and West Lothian – no better than plazzy gangstas) get to hold entire communities to ransom; granted fiefdom by the ‘Authorities’ with all elements of ‘Patient choice’ (as supposedly enshrined in law) denied by both Health Boards and the SNP administration.

– No-one here will be surprised to here of the SNP/Scottish Government breaking and/or ignoring the laws it put in place!

Of course, as a mere pleb my concerns are trivial and no concern at all. And, as much as I have tried to stand up for my rights (as a Citizen of Scotland) and upset the little Neros of Holyrood; the situation I’m in is increasingly common as practical access to Primary Care is being ‘frog boiled’ off and more and more people are forced to go private for routine … As I said: a very TORY picture

Look at the treatment of Craig Murray (no, I’m not a fan) for further evidence of how the infantilised crooks of Holyrood rail against anyone who dares hold them to morally-justified account; ‘perverting the course of justice’ seems to be a valid management tactic in the mind of the cheap thugs who run this country. – And the SNP seem to reach for it as easily as others might reach for a pen!

…Then there was what was done to Salmond. As I say, a man I found to be deeply disappointing; he didn’t save Scotland’s FE system, he cosied up to Trump. – The rest was at best ‘tolerable’. – But to try and fit him up for sex offences? If Bevan was justified (and I think he was) in calling the Tories ‘lower than vermin’ God-knows what phrase he’d have to reach for to describe the SNP in that regard!

To Kelly Given… a name I’ve never heard before. You accuse SNP critics of ‘trolling’ – which is all of an infantile, dishonest and intellectually-weak tactic. Sadly typical though. Rather than offer legitimate counter, you simply trot-out the party script like an obedient little trougher. You make no legitimate point, you address nothing. – Just another politico ‘repeating the lie often’ – just another Judas Goat.

The cold hard fact is that the DRS was not just inflationary – likely to hit the poorest hardest (a disgusting move at the height of a cost of living crisis); but impractical and blatantly an attempt to privatise the more profitable aspects of recycling; undermining existing council-run initiatives, lining the pockets of the chosen few.

Big money for those with cronies in mechatronics and ‘recycling’; especially those ‘recyclers’ who want to cream off the profitable bits and leave the real dirty work to others – i.e . the public purse.

Privatisation and profiteering… if there was any real interest in keeping the place clean (or in social justice) the obvious answer would be to better fund the public service of collecting and recycling waste.

Slater is nothing more that a chattering-class, opportunistic grifter. – Certainly incompetent, with relatively-little industrial or life experience; a parachuted-in self-serving rich kid – as so many of our politcos are! – Not a clue as to what life is actually like as an ordinary Scot!

To ‘whip’ a vote of no-confidence is dishonest… rancid open corruption; to comply, weak. And you, madam, expressly towing the party line as you did are (to draw a paradigm) no better or any different from those that defended the likes of Boris Johnston. That is why you received the response you did Kelly.

Did you actually imagine you would be on ‘the winning side’ here? That you would fool some of the people for some (or all) of the time and that would do? – That independence supporters and the general public are all mindless bloody sheep to be led up the ramp by Judas Goats?

Are you really so deluded, living in a bubble, that you think ordinary Scots are taken in by ‘happy shiny eye-candy’ Lorna; the pretend ‘Engineer’ who probably couldn’t be trusted to put a nut on the end of a bolt without crossing the thread?

Why is it Kelly that people like you fail to realise that eventually the Judas Goats get slaughtered too?

You weren’t ‘trolled’ Kelly ; and though I do not doubt that some of the rhetoric you (and others) experienced was somewhat ripe, inarticulate and perhaps even inappropriate (I’m not defending or justifying that) it is nothing more than the consequence of the SNP’s and your own actions.

If you bother finding the old ‘Business For Scotland’ pre-referendum declaration – as published in much of the national press back in the day, you will find my name on it, right next to Michelle Thompson’s. I’m a life-long died-in-the-wool ‘small n’ Scottish nationalist, and proudly so…

You talk (laughably) Kelly of the ‘community spirit’ apparent in 2014… bearing in mind the word is not a profanity; you are quite literally talking bollocks here.

For the ‘crime’ of endorsing that declaration back then, I was physically threatened and intimidated by Unionists; and actually had to close down one of the brands I used at the time… That, madam, is abuse! …’Bitter abuse’ in the sense of being both actually harmful and Sectarian in nature (among other things I was called a ‘Fenian bastard’ – a charge which is inaccurate on both counts as it happens).

Neither BFS nor the SNP were of any help or support to me back in 2014; couldn’t have cared less.

– What has happened since has utterly disgusted me.

I’m of the opinion that what I’ve seen since is openly criminal behaviour. I’ve seen contracts handed out to (and engagement with the operators of)’businesses’ that I strongly suspect are basically money-laundering fronts linked to at least one notorious criminal-underworld family.

There is the current criminal investigation of the SNP which – whether it is eventually whitewashed out of the frame or not (as I suspect it will be) leaves a STINK around that resembles the stench from a barrel of rotted fishguts; of the type used by certain Anglers to attract Shark!

On GRA and its associated issues… The SNP categorically hasn’t engaged with genuine Trans or LGB people. Instead it has gathered around it a raggle-taggle collection of paraphiliacs and predators; many of whom are violent, openly threatening individuals – some of whom present a very real danger to our children and young people.

The genuine Trans community… Well thanks to the SNP and others there are people who now to refuse to believe it exists at all – because you gave the whole of the stage to one peculiar faction of it. That has done great harm; because many of those people are descending into depression and agoraphobia – wanting no part and fearing being conflated with Paraphiliacs.

Why would any sane person engage with or platform sex-obsessed deviants who spend large parts of their life obsessing over what bizarre paraphilic practice they are want to indulge in. You wouldn’t give the time of day a middle-aged male heterosexual creep who spent time ‘promoting himself’ on sex-obsessive platforms… so why do so with ‘alphabetties’?

Or is it that the political word has become so perverse that there is a pressing need within that world to defuse the bizarre and perverted practices that might otherwise lead to Kompormat?

It strikes me that this ‘selective platforming’ was/is actually designed to ignite and fuel bigotry against the respectable and largely unheard (as are the public generally) LGB community, trans people and others who are routinely (and often unwillingly) added to the ‘alphabet soup’…

‘Moral panic’? No… simply actual public morality in play.

You talk disparagingly Kelly, about the ‘self interested’. – Well here’s the rub; who can possibly be more self-interested and self-serving than a nose-in-the-trough Politician, desperate to keep the gravy train rolling along?

…I’m an ordinary vote; a former staunch SNP voter. Someone who has never been a member of any political party.

It strikes me today that the the last thing the SNP are remotely interested in is Scottish independence… Alba? Well that’s the independence movement as it was in the 1950s. – Any other also-rans? – And if there are, of what relevance are they?

When you defend the SNP today you defend a party that truly is nothing more than a raggle-taggle mob of ‘Tartan Tories’ which has abandoned Scottish independence in favour of the Federalist gravy train; and has done that in the interests of the ‘elites’ and cronies associated with it…

The SNP – A tawdry Quisling party led by a classist racist; infested by a (classist) chattering class elite that neither knows not cares about how ordinary Scots get through the day and is captured in the orbit of dangerous paraphiliacs, criminals and spivs. – No different from the Tories or Labour…

“What do you do when democracy’s all through?”

Vote Blanc!

Lorna Campbell

Addendum: you do not require a massive majority either, to repudiate a treaty that is not working for one side. The actual legal work can be on-going way after you have repudiated said treaty. We need to get the Unionists to tell us how it is working for us – for us, not them – because all the evidence points one way and it is not in their direction. It will have to come down to this at some point. The sooner, the better. The political aspects – elections – will lend added legitimacy to the repudiation, but as long as we talk about majorities – seats or votes – and so long as we dither, the feet are being cut from under us. The longer it is left to ferment, the closer we will come to conflict. No way exists – or exists timeously – to get us out of the Union before the whole devolution process carries us into the barred cage from which it will become impossible to escape without conflict and having to cut our way through a hundred new laws that will bind us. Next march, carry banners saying: we repudiate the Treaty of Union. If we don’t repudiate it, what are we doing here?

Northcode

PacMan @ 24th June 7:48am

That’s an interesting point you raised, PacMan, when you said:

“It’s a lot easier and within these individuals mediocre talents to spread blame against others as a solution to the SNP’s problems than it is to actually listen to those who disagree with them and come up with genuine solutions to move forward.”

As you point out, Northcote’s – no relation 🙂 – ideas on the expansion of triviality driven bureaucracy within an organisation seem pertinent to what’s happening within the SNP right now.

Dumbarton Rock

Folk aren’t daft. No more votes to keep that lot wasting their time at Westminster. What’s the point?! They’re achieving zilch. Neale Hanvey for one has done more to promote the cause of Indy than the whole of the SNP squad!

steph

Just a note to register my pissed-offness that she’s used the pic of me (in my WBB t-shirt no less) and my daughter for her shite article.


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