Making your minds up
Here’s the BBC reporting Kezia Dugdale’s speech at the opening session of the new Scottish Parliament, less than three months ago:
It seems the Scottish Labour leader’s had a change of heart since then.
It’s hard to adequately convey just what a confused mess Dugdale’s position is in. She wants the SNP to work with her at Holyrood, but flatly rules out any sort of reciprocal co-operation from Labour at Westminster.
(She does this despite having no power whatsoever over what the Westminster party does. Kezia Dugdale is not a Westminster MP, and she notionally commands just one of the 232 Labour MPs in the Commons.)
Her justification for this is that she (naturally enough) wants Labour majorities in both parliaments, but that’s not how pacts work. Pacts come into place AFTER elections, when you HAVEN’T won a majority. Bumping your gums beforehand is all very well, but walking away when you’re a minority but someone’s offering to put you in power is a very different proposition.
(And Scottish Labour, of course, has NEVER had a majority at Holyrood – its only two administrations were, um, pacts with the Lib Dems.)
Kezia isn’t sure what her position is on very much. She seems to support Trident but leads a branch office committed to its abolition. She’s flip-flopped on a second independence referendum. She U-turned on dual candidacy at Holyrood as soon as it became the only way to save her own seat. Last year she wanted Scots to pay less tax, now she wants them to pay more. She voted for Named Person legislation and then called for it to be stopped when opinion polls shifted.
Dugdale is the political equivalent of Schrödinger’s Cat – you can never tell what she believes until you open the box and look, and every time it’s a 50/50 bet which state she’ll be in. Ask her something twice and you’ll get three different answers, and the chances are that they’ll all be wrong.
We’ll add this one to the list and let you get on with your day.
But, err, I mean, err, Oh fuck it…Essenpee bad…..
She certainly does not like her current boss, poor old Corbyn, that’s for sure, this afternoon. eg
link to archive.is
Kiss of death.
Kezia is playing the percentages. She knows that indy supporters are around half the electorate. The remaining half are having to choose a Unionist Party. Kezia is playing for those Unionist Labour votes which would at least guarantee ( she believes), survival of the Labour brand in Scotland.
It is stupidity of the highest order. It is akin to the Japanese soldiers wandering round jungles and desert islands after WW2 believing that the Empire and their fellow soldiers would return to carry on fighting . Delusion,false hope, call it what you will. This battle is becoming less about party politics and more about the right to freedom from the Union.
@Heetracker
Doesn’t “non-existent at worst” mean existent the rest of the time.
Yes in the last three months she had a number of telling offs from her boss resently scolded for allowing talk of any deal.
Indeed Ms Davidson was happy about that and had to bring them to heel
Sometimes trying to pin down what Scottish or British Labour actually believe in this moment I feel strapped to a chair in room 101 of the Ministry of Love being constantly told what I was just told to believe is wrong. I can only imagine any Labour supporters still in Scotland are just accepting anything they are told to think. SNP Bad. SNP won’t join a progressive alliance. We will fight the SNP in Holyrood. The SNP let the tories into power. It’s all very tiring.
Albert Herring says:
16 August, 2016 at 2:51 pm
@Heetracker
Doesn’t “non-existent at worst” mean existent the rest of the time.
Well she is the Schrödinger’s Cat of UKOK politics, so yes, no, maybe.
Google Kez hates JC and about 100 million hits pop up for just how much the UKOK media love to hear how hard Kez hates JC. But she’s probably supping with devil when likes of Pacific Quay freak fawns over her, as BBC England/Uk is hard at it day and night trying to destroy the poor old Trot. That big dope Ian Murray’s also gambled/thrown away his front bench future too. So how will it all end for the red tories of the Scotland region?
And who really cares:D
Least she had a nice holiday
Schrodinger’s Dug?
When you see this (Wings is like my memory, only better), you actually understand why Labour died in Scotland.
Only the dumbest people are in the party, at the top.
The Dug’s future lies in the HoL, sometime in the future. There she will sit with Lady Moan and Fat Boab and discuss the Follies of the North. To win their seats in the HoL all she (they) need do is cause confusion in Scotland….Say anything, do anything, just f… up Scotland and slow down the march of Independence.
Labour in Scotland don’t like to think…
That’s why they picked Kez to do it all for them!
The branch rump of a party looking for a meaning.
Oh and SNP bad… etc.
If I was a Labour Boss in England it would seem quite workable to hand Scotland to the SNP. They can produce a block of more than 50 MPs where the local branch of Labour could never.
Of course if you are a grubby careerist like Dugdale it misses the entire point of politics. To squeeze as much money out as possible into your pocket, sell favours, receive favours and expect a rich income from side jobs and appearances. Finally if you are really a good party servant a delicious seat in the Lords. Where you can ponce around being important and looking down on the worthless voter scum till your dying day. That’s teh real purpose of politics. Why hand that to the SNP? They won’t even take seats in the Lords the despicable scum.
A’bdy’s goan oan aboot schrodinger’s cat, he’ll get a right big heid wi aw this attention! He’s never aff the blogs these days
She’s a britnat so the bbc will always believe her whatever BS she says.
If there was an Olympic event called Political Contortionism, BliS would hoover up every gold available. And the BBC would be there to wave the big apron, over and over and over and over … yawn.
I’d love Nicola to make her squirm in Holyrood by repeating that third last paragraph the next time Kez gets uppity during FMQs. Could just about finish her career.
Slab are stuck trying to perpetuate the myth that Blair was good for Scotland and the UK. He got into power by duping long term labour voters that he would represent their interests all the while pandering to those Tories who loved his neo-liberal policies. All those ‘reluctant ‘ Tories could ease their Tory conscience and vote Labour. His political term was a disaster for UK and world politics but most of all for Scottish Labour.
Once Scots saw what he and his cronies were all about he was dumped but Slab won’t give up and keep trying to relive the glory days and secure the shy Tory vote.
Well Tories aren’t shy anymore and in Scotland the only way they will vote Slab is to keep the SNP out because what really is the difference? By competing for the yoon vote Slab are essentially reduced to taking Tory sloppy seconds.
There are so many people in the rUK who do not vote and who it seems Corbyn may appeal to and that UK Lab are ignoring in the unseemly fight for Tory votes. No wonder the electorate feel worthless and disenfranchised, your vote only counts to Labour if you were once a Tory!
the scottish branch office have nothing whatsoever left to redeem them, no policies, voice, vision for scotlands journey of onwards and upwards..they are full of spite, venom and cant accept their days are over and the electorate have wakened up to their ineptitude…hope nicola tells them to take a long walk off a short pier, and reject anything these charlatans have to offer…
When was Labour ever “progressive”?
And yet, the most puzzling aspect of it all is that a sizeable proportion of the Scots population still vote for the ignorance that is BLiS.
Bangs head off desk several times…..
She knows she wants the First Ministers shoes and her office and all her great power in it’s big hugeness so’s she can save all the wittle babies that she came into pawitics to do
Coz atz wot the Wabour party stands for…today!
Tomowow.. who knows
So….if Kezia Dugdale is the Schrodingers Cat of politics,what is our very own Schrodingers Cat the Kezia Dugdale of?
Labour has to play for votes in England so they are taking this line.
The problem is that it just isn’t believable.
No-one in their right mind believes Corbyn and Labour would turn down the chance of power even if they had to make a few concessions to the SNP.
They would have more credibility if they were just honest about it. Saying we will make reasonable deals with anyone to get the Tories out.
Their position backfires in Scotland too. It just makes them look like red Tories who would prefer a Tory government.
What a depressing sight. SLab are dead in the water. British Labour are busy lynching themselves. The Tories are in chaos but, with no opposition except the SNP, who don’t even want to be there, the Tories will be in power for a decade.
When will this farce end? Or should that be how?
Keep it coming Rev C..
Some folk are only seeing this for the first time.
For some others, who know many of the links off by heart, are scunnered to understand why there’s still no logic to their behaviour.
In political terms she’s a child stumbling about looking for a parent (mentor). Totally facile.
What she actually has is a shell of a party with probably a dozen labour careerists ready to plant the knife after next-years council elections.
Unionists will vote Tory because there’s no possibility of Tories changing their minds about independence.
SLAB are dead, but like a dinosaur its taking a while for the “brain” to realise that
Naw. She’s more like the little puppy that has poohed on the stairs and ripped up the cushions, your slippers and your newspaper and thinks all she has to do when you get home is wag its tail, yelp excitedly, roll over, put on it’s most adoring look and point at the cat.
Looks like Dipity Dug has been instructed by some American coach to come out with this latest piece of garbage!
She has never made a firm decision in her life!
She just grabs any passing opinion and makes it her own, well for a day, a week, a month, before changing it again, and again, and again!
That’s a real beauty ” Parties like hers, rather than the the Tories”. Her party are Tories!
Labour did the Tory Dirty Work for them at the Scottish referendum, they paired of all their ranked leaders with a Tory Pal on the Brexit Vote, they at best abstain when Tories put forward swinging cuts, as they don’t want to
make it too obvious they are carbon copies of their brothers in Blue.
We have just witnessed the Red & Blue Tories working together at the North Ayrshire Council elections.
The one and only difference between the two parties is that the Red Party are unelectable and just about to be split in half.
Petition now at 90,825!
link to you.38degrees.org.uk
“My opinion is this ?????, but if you do not like it,…….I have others!” That’s the Dug.
Schrödinger’s Dug, claimed! its about time I killed off Mr McLean
Long before the Scottish Election in May, the M.S.M lost interest in the Labour Party in Scotland realising that they were a busted flush, and instead concentrated their considerable fire power in promoting Davidson as the saviour of the Union.
And with some success, unfortunately, for the tories are now the second largest party in the Scottish Parliament.
While the Labour Party will never disappear completely, they now have very little relevance to what is going to occur in Scotland in the near future, but of course they will, with the help of their media pals, get the occasional headline, no doubt contradicting their previous postion, which will be obvious to anyone with a reasonable memory.
No, our biggest enemy in our struggle for independence isn’t what’s left of the Labour Party, it’s the M.S.M, led by their cheerleader the B.B.C , and it’s they who will make it difficult for us to reach our goal. But never fear, we’ll get there.
@Proudcybernat
‘And yet, the most puzzling aspect of it all is that a sizeable proportion of the Scots population still vote for the ignorance that is BLiS.’
From time to time I get wistful that I am not a cynical wee bad actor.
I couldve taken those fuckers to the cleaners like a Slab yoon and had a great career talkin shite ad infinitum.
Mbe even been Baron dakk of Pishville by now.
I coulda been a contender,a contender I tell yaes !
Donald Anderson,
poses this conundrum “When was Labour ever “progressive”?”
I remember my maternal grandfather telling me about the labour movement after the war, the Great one, he said by the end of the second one, they were just the establishment.
O/T
“By the time of the independence referendum, and fully seventeen years after Scotland voted for devolution, the BBC remains firmly controlled from London. News and current affairs output at BBC Scotland had regressed in terms of quality and quantity… Scotland is the only country in the world which has a government that has no authority over its own national broadcaster.” – G.A. Ponsonby, London Calling.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
What is all this talk of Labour in Scotland’s policies?
Since when did Labour in Scotland have any policies?
What is more even when they did have a policy they just parroted what Labour in London ordered them to say.
What other self respecting party would slope shoulders when the man from London came to Glasgow and ordered branches to deselect their choice of candidate and forced upon them the candidate chosen by London?
What other party would allow the parliamentary members to over rule the wishes of the rank & file membership as to who should lead the party? A political party is only as strong as the rank and file membership allows them to be. Take away the rank & file are there is no party.
Labour played their part in keeping the McCrone report hidden for 30 years. Labour led the ammendment to the 1979 Devolution referendum that turned an overall Yes vote into a No. The Tories are honest about who they look after. Labour aren’t. That’s the only difference between them which makes Labour much worse and the real enemy of independence.
Surely she is past her sell by date.
Dear Keiza
If you are elected to represent the mere mortals who are still gullible and still so very yoon blinded to still vote for you and your party and who bow to your unjustified political superiority and undeserved privileged place within society…..then is it too feckin much to ask that you actually have a coherent and consistent plan to help steer your party with policies and ideas for the good of the people of Scotland……that is…. the electorate.
Well not if you are the Labour party in Scotland. When you are controlled by those others i.e. HQ Blairites whose mandate expired within Scotland post Indy Ref and who now, thankfully, are exposed as the backstabbing, power hungry, self serving, nasty and more right wing than left Twits .The English voters are now very much enlightened to the Dark side of your party #RedTories, something some of us Scots have known for a long time.
Keiza Dugdale please just keep on this course you are following and you can sink with the rest of your unprincipled colleagues. You are probably right re pact with SNP as you are NOT to be trusted as you are way too indecisive and your loyalty has proven to be questionable….. to the say the least…..that’s me being polite…..unlike some of your party members.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out ….though I believe a revolving door is more to your liking .
Labour, Scotland’s third party
And to think, kez is the “best of breed” in Scottish labour!
History will not treat kez well, it will state she was a light weight completely out of her depth and a figure of fun.
How far can the labour party sink, there is still a bit to go yet!
“Dugdale is the political equivalent of Schrödinger’s Cat – you can never tell what she believes until you open the box and look, and every time it’s a 50/50 bet which state she’ll be in.”
Bang on for Schrödinger’s Cat as the very act of observing, forces a position into whether the cat is alive or dead.
However Dugdale’s Cat is somehow a new political conundrum in which observers still do not know the party position – but can be sure that Scottish Labour is dead.
Quantum Physics is easier to explain than British Unionism, it seems.
The only pact her party seem to be be enthused about, is their apparent suicide pact; with their membership shenanigans.
Kezia’s brain is still on holiday.
Proud cybernat 3.46pm. I think we all know what persuasion the sizeable proportion of the scottish population are!
Marcia says:
16 August, 2016 at 5:55 pm
Kezia’s brain is still on holiday
She must have been on an odyssey for years with her brain in lost luggage.
It’s the Samuel Adam’s haircut.
Samson’s locks gave him strength but when you look like the logo on a brand of mid priced American beer, it’s no wonder she’s dizzy.
Is it not the case that like so many others at the top of the Labour Party who been given permission to run that franchise as though it were a fiefdom she has recently gone through the reprogramming process on the other side of the Atlantic.
Robert Peffers wrote:
“What other party would allow the parliamentary members to over rule the wishes of the rank & file membership as to who should lead the party?”
As you well know, Bob, the same party whose beloved puppet master considers the grassroots an irrelevance. Labour strategist John McTernan is quoted as saying: “Who cares about the grassroots?”
Holyrood – Did Labour’s big beasts eat the party?
link to archive.is
_____
As for Dippy Dug, she’ll always do what her London masters instruct her to do. Everything else is a room full of BUM spinning smoking mirrors.
It looks like Billy Bragg has been stitched up by the right wing press (Times,Telegraph,Herald),
red tory journalists like Tom Harris trying to sow discord amongst supporters of Corbyn to help Blairite Owen win Labour leadership election,
Billy should know not to talk to the vermin media especially newspaper journalists,
there can be no profession outside dentists that have caused citizens so much unnecessary harm and pain than newspaper hacks.
For all McTernan lovers worth a couple of minutes.
link to thinkceaseblog.wordpress.com
There is no doubt, that should there be a 2nd Referendum within the next year, that Kezia will be a leading figure in the Better Together campaign. She will be one of the leading lights. She will view as a last chance to redeem her career, honour, character …well …everything!
And for such a campaign, therein lies the weakness. I can see Kezia being a major figurehead, because the question is, is there anyone of real character and substance able to lead it from a Scottish point of view?
There will be no Alistair Darling next time round. He got his ermine robe as a reward. Why the f*** would he want to get involved in another campaign when he came within a whisker of losing it the last time round?
Can’t really see Gordon Brown leading it. The clunking fist was also rewarded for his dodgy input with days to go in the last Referendum. Would he intervene in a 2nd Referendum? Maybe not! He might view the post-independence landscape as a fresh start in Scottish politics. Why get involved in a 2nd campaign that has literally no arguments and looks like a lost cause? There might be something in trying his luck afterwards in a new Scotland, therefore, why get tarnished in a dodgy 2nd campaign?
Ruth for all her dancing about in front of cameras and seeking the limelight may take a big step back from such a campaign too! If she leads it and then loses it, then she too will have to fall on her sword. Ruthie may view that opportunities could be garnered whoever wins the Referendum. Thus, she may speak out for the Better Together campaign, but will hold herself back from leading it.
Not Kezia. She will see it as a golden opportunity. I can see her and the likes of wee Willie Rennie leading Better Together …only to cause an even bigger car crash of a campaign that will make the last one look rather half-decent.
For Kezia, time is ticking down to the inevitable; her sacking or resignation …and basically, the real end of the Scottish Labour Party.
Labour had it handed to them on a plate. They were already in decline, true, however in 2013 the opportunity of backing DevoMax and giving themselves a meaningful niche in Scotland was there to be grabbed.
They were still popular(ish) and DevoMax was definitely popular. Instead of being the Tories’ cannon fodder they could have been the party of the middle way.
What did they do? Begin to commit harakiri in slow painful steps!
Personally, I am glad they are in meltdown! It would have been a disaster for Scotland, if we had tried ‘a middle way’. It would have been the worst of both worlds – we’d still be servicing UK debt and paying high defence bills. I want the choice to be DevoBuggerAll with WM rule versus full Indy.
I believe that is the actual choice we will all have to face … thanks to Labour!
regarding Dugdale, to mis-quote that old witch Thatcher, ‘the lady is for turning’.
The sad fact is that Dugdale has zero authority within the Labour party. All the supposed influence she has is a charade, designed to make gullible Scots think the Scottish branch office of the British Labour party, is somehow ‘Scottishy’.
When will it stop. Seriously, when will the idiotic wishful thinking by those in the Labour Sottish branch office stop deceiving themselves, sniff the coffee and wake up to political reality 2016. Gone are the heady days when Labour controlled Scotland. Gone are the days when a red rosette on a proverbial donkey could win a landslide at the General election.
Labour have lost ALL their MP’s in Scotland bar one, yet they carry on regardless, seemingly oblivious to the harsh fact, that those heady, Labour glory days are long gone in Scotland. Nobody seriously expects those days to return. Except Dugdale ,and her exceptionally stupid coterie of list msp’s.
I may be wrong here but I think oor wee Kez believes that this is the way to do things in politics these days.
link to youtube.com
I wonder how Ms ‘Grasshopper Mind’ (as my Dad used to call me) will try to turn this story into SNP BA-A-A-AHD! ?
“Scotland remains only government in the world to hold the Triple Standard, which recognises efforts to tackle carbon emissions, water use and waste levels
The Scottish government has retained its status as the only government in the world to hold the Carbon Trust Triple Standard certification for carbon, water and waste reduction.”
link to businessgreen.com
“Man posing as good Samaritan robs elderly man near First Minister’s official residence” Herald
Gosh. Better close Bute House. Clearly it’s been tainted. And the Book Festival too, that’s nearby.
SLab
Incapable of understanding Scotland,guilty of teaming up with main political enemy of Scotland’s people,I have heard them appropriately described as “institutionally torpid,culturally atrophied,morally bankrupt and socially stratified” to me they are just cunts.
They will never be forgiven,Scotland’s people,usually are neither vindictive nor stupid,but we know what they did,bore witness to it,are the victims of it and yet,still they persist….’progressive’….have they no shame ?.
I do not normally,hold political grudges,but in this case an exception is made and those many grudges will continue to fester, until every last one of them get their jotters.
Just Go….Get Out.
P.S. And take your pals on the EBC gravy train with you.
Dipity Dug rates herself as hiving won the pretend Scottish Labour leadership contest with 72% of the vote, and Corbyn is identified as inferior, as he only got 60% ?
The real difference is Kraz, he got hundreds of thousands of votes, you got around 7,000.
(The Real figure is to embarrassing to be revealed)
Corbyn’s closest rival, Andy Burnham, only got 19%.
Kraz had nothing to compete against in Scotland.
SLab are a pretend unit, with no autonomy, no policies, and no talent, but they are very good at putting Westminster first and last.
To understand the unionist parties you’d do a lot worse than look at how Republicans behave in the USA: They too often talk about bipartisanship; but only in so far as they expect their opponents to agree to everything that they demand. In terms of actual compromise they are utterly opposed to any.
Dugfail gets a mention but Sturgeon gets the ball rolling.
link to indyref2.scot
Strange rathe BBC has not mentioned these contradictions
I will watch the news tonight, I am sure it will be mentioned
Perhaps call Kaye will run a story on it
Ha ha but it’s the BBC no news here move along
I know I don’t know what Kezia stands for but I have sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t either
If they didn’t SNPbad they would have nothing at all.
O/T visiting friends Bbc on program about making bikes, cue history of bikes, it’s a german invention no mention of Kirkpatrick Mcmillan. Then program about british army in Helmund Provence , Afganistan, British unit in place in remote base with large Danish contingent.
Everything hunky dory until Danes are moved eslewhere, Brit Army struggles to replace Danes, but eventually cobble together a company. Taliban sense weakness and move in for the kill.
I thought the British Army was the best in the World and here is poor we Denmark a country of about 5 million people with better equipped and trained soldiers?
@Effijy says: 16 August, 2016 at 4:29 pm:
” … That’s a real beauty ” Parties like hers, rather than the Tories”. Her party are Tories!
Not quite right there, Effijy, but you are on the right lines. I’ve been saying for many years that the whole Westminster opposing party thing is just a false front and it always has been.
The truth is all the Unionist parties, and that is at least since before 1706/7, and includes those parties like the Whigs, are really just a front for public consumption.
The Westminster Unionists are all parts of, “The Establishment”, and that harks back to the Royals who used the ignorance of the people by claiming they were appointed by God as God’s Earthly representatives.
Can you imagine monarchs, who used the power of life and death, actually believed there was a God? If anything they probably thought themselves God. To believe in God you must believe in God’s teaching and all Gods of any faith, have a first law of love thy neighbour. You cannot love thy neighbour if you want to kill him or her on your own little whim.
When the English/British royals found themselves under threat of being swept aside by their peoples who desired republicanism they established, in the Kingdom of England, A Constitutional Monarchy. Thus neatly sidestepping being swept aside by republicans.
So the English Kingdom became nominally a democratic government but the salient point is the monarchy was preserved as were the House Of Lords. This last was first populated by the hereditary peers, the Church lords and the Law Lords. Remember, though, as Dukes and Earls these were also the heads of the armed forces.
In other words the same mixture as before and to this day the Monarch still legally owns everything including their subjects. It is, after all legally still, “Her Majesty’s Government, no matter which party is in power.
So there’s the truth – they are, “The Establishment”. and today The Mixture as Before is the Tories. Which is why they will all always close ranks and stand united when under threats from without.
Happened to notice with this article that instead of the Crap Media splurging on just one day their pro Slab story and consequently SNP bad headlines all over the front pages, it is now being drip fed, bit by bit.
This story starting with the BBC headline on 12th August, next up with the same story is Daily Record on the 14th closely followed by the Courier on the 15th August.
Just to make sure that the story doesn’t disappear entirely, up pops LabourList today with the same old crap. And they call this news?
I’m thinking that up till now at least, all the newspapers printing the same story front page i.e. SNP BAD on the same day was starting to smell a bit iffy with the public, yeah us and questions were beginning to be asked.
The media chiefs have got wind of this, so instead of thundering one out, the’re squeezing it out very slowly in the hope no one smells the stink.
Their problem is all farts stink and the Scottish public smell their crap a mile off. I can smell the shit in their pants from here.
Dr NO strikes back. It is rather important for red tory SLabourites up here, that JC is crucified by the BBC in particular
Scott Arthur Retweeted
PoliticsHome ?@politicshome 2h
Majority of voters believe Owen Smith should be Labour leader
This is Dr NO’s JC must go poll, from the Evening Standard, possibly as barking mad toryboy as the Daily Heil too.
link to politicshome.com
Dugdale only gets away with this farce because of the corrupt and partisan BBC Scotland led media. Its a Scotland black out now across all English media but its still weird watching rancid The Graun’s you love Kez and Ruth dont you propaganda, as its exactly the same.
Seperated at birth.
” Kez Dugdale was the star at Wembley. Can’t we have more politicians like her?
Susie Boniface
Along with Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader is so normal and competent that she puts her colleagues south of the border to shame”
Ruth Davidson: I have a five-year plan to turn Scottish Labour around
Leader hopes result in Scottish elections on 5 May will allow her to rebuild party as she prepares to unveil Holyrood manifesto
She said: ‘The problems with the Labour party didn’t happen overnight and they won’t be fixed overnight.’
Severin Carrell Scotland editor
Tuesday 26 April 2016 16.51 BS
Same liggers, I switched Kex with Ruth but it makes no odds for uninonistas.
The old adage still applies: “follow the money”.
It applies to Labour in Scotland and it applies to Labour in England too.
They are all hanging together because none of them want to be deprived of all that nice trade union dosh that Labour still gets handed on a plate.
This desperate need for a piece of the money pie seems to have made them deaf and blind to the increasingly contemptuous public reaction to their ongoing self-obsession, which their pals (or Tory faux-pals) in the Scottish media can no longer hide away, no matter how much news management they attempt.
“To shoot grouse you have to be exceedingly rich: it costs around £7,000 per person per day. The owners of grouse moors, who are also exceedingly rich, justify these fees by ensuring that there are vast numbers of birds to shoot. This requires, across great tracts of our uplands, the elimination of almost everything else.
“Our uplands” [my emphasis] the possessive description of the Scottish Highlands coined by the Guardian’s Oxbridge educated Englishman and resident intellectual, the normally precise conservationist, George Monbiot.
There seems to me something wrong with quite a lot of folk who are banging on about not having a referendum until certain questions have been answered or assurances have been given on currency or borders or whether it’ll rain every monday morning, can I just remind some of those folk again that within the UK there are NO choices, NO assurancies, NO answers to anything, we don’t get a say, we have to wait to have the politics of “Look whit they did tae us again” from the Tories, both Blue and Red thrust upon us
Borders! Northern Ireland doesn’t have to have one, so the BBC can squeek that one out all day every day it’ll still be a stupid argument
You might have to have a guy with a torch but that’ll be about it on the job creation front for that one
As for currency it’ll be the £ as long as it’s good for us and then we might decide something else, but that’s the whole point, we get to decide
I’ve no doubt the media are going to invent crap after crap all over again but this time all of their arguments have no basis anymore, all previous deals went bust and the United Kingdom of England has barely got the bus fare to Brexit let alone mount a halfway serious objection to Scotland going on it’s own can (remember that phrase) what’s the strength of their case “stay with us we’re shite but at least we’ll be shite together”
Most of this wee rant is for the viewers at home and lurkers to the site, for the Wings folk, not so much, they know all this stuff
Yoons, it’s time to put away your dark sore keyboard fingers and come into the light you’ll like it, it’s like winning the Golden ticket in a Wonka bar or dancing with the Lollypop guild
It’s Grreat!
HandandShrimp
“I don’t know what Kezia stands for”
Keep Every Zoomer In Agitation.
Radio shortbread this afternoon. Going on about how the bbc had discovered the scandal of the Edinburgh schools. No mention of labours involvement.
Neither Laura Trott nor Jason Kenny sang the national anthem and they complained about Andy Murray ‘mouthing the words’.
GB @ 22:54,
I guess you’ll be adding that wee slip to the offence list on your blog, then. Many English people in the media do try their best these days, but sometimes it just slips out anyway. Back in the supposedly liberated 1960s it was far, far worse in print, I can assure you. (My personal bête noir, though, was before my time: Field Marshal Douglas Haig, a serial offender who left a trail of “England”s in his military dispatches to London from the Western Front during WW1. And he was a Scot! =cringe=) So this one is a minor infringement in comparison.
As for Monbiot, I don’t care a fig about his background, he has been a real friend to indy, with articles like:
“Scots voting no to independence would be an astonishing act of self-harm”
and
“How the media shafted the people of Scotland”
What’s not to like? On the big things re Scotland, he’s got it right every time.
Grouse Beater says:
“Man posing as good Samaritan robs elderly man near First Minister’s official residence” Herald
That’s quite an astonishing headline really. Implementing a connection between an act of robbery with the First Minsters residence takes some doing. It was an elderly man too, those nasty Nats!
Does the Herald employ someone specifically to come of with this type of headline?
Maybe it’s just pin money and a sideline from their day job.
A metropolitan bubble-ist called Ian Dunt, of politics.co.uk, has just informed us on Sky News that the SNP ‘lie’ when they say we don’t all embrace Britishness. This was vis-a-vis Team GB’s latest exploits in winning bronze in the shove ha’penny in RIo. God knows what he must think of the people who vote for the SNP.
Instructive to watch the casual, unapologetic racism of the colonial media as it flows into a single slurry of self-righteousness. Hate cleric bad, Team GB a shining light to all the world, SNP and hate cleric bad, more good news from Team GB..
@ Robert J. Sutherland
George Monbiot’s article refers to grouse moors in Yorkshire as well as Scotland, so his use of “our” is not purely proprietorial.
He could perhaps have written “our uplands – and Scotland’s -…”, or “the UK’s uplands..”.
But as you say, he’s basically on our side.
Sutherland: “On the big things re Scotland, [Monbiot’s] got it right every time.”
Oh, rest assured I am aware of his ability to stand out from the English colonial crowd. And I’m aware Grouse Whisky distilled in Perthshire among the grouse hills and slopes demanded staff vote against independence, before you add that to your mild correction.
As for Yorkshire ‘uplands’ – that’s what I thought he was referring to, but I can’t find a game resort charging anything close to £7,000 a day to shoot grouse. Arabs and Russians fly to Scotland for that expensive privilege, a wholly different topography and experience.
Alex Clark: “That’s quite an astonishing headline really.”
Indeed!
As our own Stuart would say, definitely trolling.
Oh bloody hell not another change of policy. The Brit Nat Raving Loony Labour Party can GTF!
GB,
(Not sure what that little spat was about re “Grouse Whisky”, but let it pass…)
I thought we were all friends here, so why the frosty surname?
I’m not looking to nitpick, if that’s what’s troubling you. I just think we need to publicly cherish our real friends, whomsoever they happen to be. For what’s to come, we will surely need every last one of them…
Are 99% of us on this BTL festival Wingers, or are some of us not quite convinced about the case for Scottish independence?
Minor bickering about TACTICS can be subsumed; STRATEGIC differences can create a problem…
Sutherland, you have a way of stating the obvious.
I punctuated my original remark about Monbiot with the phrase, ‘normally precise’ meaning, he is normally careful to avoid ambiguity.
To point out his slip isn’t to condemn the man, but to show how deep runs a dominant nation’s inattention to cultural sensibilities.
I know him to be the kind of person to correct errors if shown them. On the other hand, he has no vote in a Scottish referendum or election.
He remains a commentator of events, one able to defend his integrity without help.
My energies are therefore directed at those with a vote to vote for self-determination.
Grouser:
Err, isn’t that also rather “stating the obvious”?
And I for one wasn’t assuming you were “condemning the man” either, actually, so no need to be so prickly about it. (Though your description of his background did carry at least the teensiest hint of some kind of disapproval.)
I’m not interested in any kind of limitation on who genuinely speaks up for indy. You direct your energies where you please, but if Monbiot or the Man in the Moon happened to convert even one former “no” voter for “yes”, that would be a worthwhile win for me. (And hopefully in the end for you too…)
Should get George Galloway back in Labour and have him lead Scottish Labour
Looking Forward to the Special wee treat that’s lined up for us later Today.
Who suggested a pact? What would a forward looking government have anything to do with a stale, festering backward looking excuse of a once semi-respected group. Imagine Kelly, Grey, Sarwar, Baillie, etc. let loose. The mind boggles.
O/T : Is Kez a betting person. Did she put an each-way bet on the singles tennis final?
@Training day
Im sure that fella on Sky spells his name with a C, not a D
Grouse Beater says:
17 August, 2016 at 1:34 am
“Sutherland, you have a way of stating the obvious”.
What a tremendous ray of sunshine you are Team GB.
BDTT is correct when he says Strategic differences will cause
problems,this has been proven in the past and will prove so again in the future.
We are I hope All on this site for one reason and one reason only,Independence and self Determination for our Country.
Arguments and bad feelings amongst ourselves only gives ammo
to our real enemies.Peace to All Always.
Sutherland: Err, isn’t that also rather “stating the obvious”?
You asked for an explanation, so no, it could have been obvious.
Breeks: “What a tremendous ray of sunshine you are Team GB.”
Whoopee! An intelligible sentence.
Robert J. Sutherland wrote in response to Grouse Beater:
“I guess you’ll be adding that wee slip to the offence list on your blog, then.”
Robert, you’ve genuinely spiked my curiosity, what’s that all about?
O/T Angus Robertson was blamed for being out of touch in Moray in not knowing that the MOD had SECRET meetings with Local Authority officials.
The Moray Unionists with their ex Grampian Police leading light really know how to spin and lie.Disgusting!
Scotland you are being taken for mugs. The Money we pay for defence is not being shared fairly.
slab to be renamed the schrodingers cat party……..
i’m just away to kill masel
I see from the WOS Twitter that The Red Tories, having conjured up a defeat for Nicola’s dad in North Ayrshire, now plan to go after her mum?
Let’s give these filthy Tory turncoats the proverbial political kicking of their lives. Lets not only hand them their rattles back but ram them down their throats. Spoilt brats!
Slabber: Take our seat and yer maw gets it, boo fricken hoo!
um.. GB, Breeks, Rob
link to youtube.com
I suppose a ‘Wee Red Book’ would be out of the question, but what about a leaflet with all her flip-flops and a list of which policies that they have ‘supported’ the tories on?
Big leaflet?
Sutherland and Beater – whit a pair – as my ma used to say “Now, now children – play bonny”.
Brexit is one thing but it shouldn’t be the only reason to go for indy2. We should not lose sight of what the tories are/will do. They have the bit between their gnashers now and folks are going to suffer.
O/T ? Having a blether wi’ some folk a couple of days ago re. local elections – they thought you HAD to fill the whole form in wi’ your preferences!
Why would we need to ‘publicly cherish out real friends ‘?
If they are indeed ‘real’ friends, then deep down they see through suspicion or pedantry as thoroughness.
S.C…
Money Python magic, thanks.
‘oh..I thought you came here for abuse’
Louis B. Argyll: “Why would we need to ‘publicly cherish out real friends‘?”
Neat.
It’s a myth promulgated by our tormentors that the SNP impose strict closed ranks on all issues, whereas this site is a daily battle between people who disagree on tactics, historical facts, and the right to tell those who patronise them to bugger off.
Notice my essay on nuclear war is getting lots of hits and argument. link to wp.me
Here’s the companion piece: link to wp.me
In September all hell will break loose for Labour and its Branch Office Up Here.
There will be a schism Down There, and the Umunnas, Hunts, Kendalls and Coopers on the Red Tory ‘Left’ will vie with The Militant Loons to retain the Brand Name, ‘Labour’, the loser emerging as either the Independent Labour Group, or the Socialist and Democratic Workers Co-operative.
The Branch Office Up Here will suffer the same fate.
Neil Findlay and the Corbies will by osmosis emerge as the sub Branch Office of the Militant Wing, and Dugdale, Gray, Sarwar (FFS Sarwar!) and Mara, will continue as the evil spawn of Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Darling, Reid, and Robertson, the Red Tories.
Dugdale forgets that at the last UK GE (last ever) Miliband Clegg and Cameron (remember them?) stood on a £32 billion Austerity Cuts programme, and she, and Murphy (I try not to remember him) fought a losing battle of Cuts denial, £12 billion in cuts to unemployment, sickness, and pensions benefits and allowances, £13 billion in cuts to public services and 100,000’s of sackings in public service jobs, and a measly £5 billion in tax hikes, but not to Mandelson’s ‘filthy rich’ who got a 5% tax rebate.
I’m sure many recall Jim Irn Bru’s public humiliation by Chuka Umunna on the Grand Old Uncle Tom of them all, Andrew Neil’s BBC Westminster Village Tittle Tattle programme.
Murphy was lying through his teeth courtesy of the Scottish Dead Tree Scrolls and a compliant BBC and STV, that a vote for Labour would stop the cuts.
Umunna, resplendent in New Labour Savile Row elegance, looking every inch a Dim but Nice Tory Boy, confirmed that New Labour, Red Tory Labour, Ed Balls ‘difficult decisions’ Blair New Labour, would stick to Gideon’s( whit the feck happened to him?)Austerity Plan. After all the Red Blue and Yellow Tories met one wet winter evening at the beginning of 2015 and voted through the £32 billion Cuts to the Working Stiff Package together, ‘Better Together’, in fact.
Nicola Sturgeon was the only politician during the TV leaders’ debate to put forward a plan to halt austerity, and invest a modest £180 billion in the economy and tackle institutional poverty, an approach which received the backing of the ‘respected’ IFS, for once.
Dugdale is one of New Labour devil’s spawn. She is,IMHO, not up to it; this intellectual political thing seems completely beyond her.
She is a walking New Labour Pamphlet, uttering the most banal ‘social justice’ crap, which a devoted MSM churn out as tablets of wisdom from the mountain.
I doubt that any SNP supporter would relish their Party having anything to do with this sub standard bunch of opportunists, the charred and battered dregs of Labour in devolved Scotland.
Davidson’s Dim but Nice ‘LisTory’ Boys are no better.
Qualifications for the job? Able to sit upright and not nod off for a few hours in the Chamber. Talk with a bools in the mouth posh voice helps too. Sends all the ‘right’ messages.
Rennie, Liar Carmichael, and the Four Just Made It Men are a pathetic joke.
We need the Revolution, and we need it now.
Alex Clark says:
16 August, 2016 at 11:38 pm
Grouse Beater says:
“Man posing as good Samaritan robs elderly man near First Minister’s official residence” Herald
That’s quite an astonishing headline really. Implementing a connection between an act of robbery with the First Minsters residence takes some doing. It was an elderly man too, those nasty Nats!
Ruby replies
link to archive.is
Divide: Homeless man finds shelter next to First Minister’s house
Everything that happens within half a mile of Bute House will be reported as being connected to First Minister’s House.
‘Lympic News – another one for the infamous Ledger: link to wp.me
louis.b.argyll says:
‘oh..I thought you came here for abuse’
I only do abuse on days of the week with a Y in the name
Well, the visit to Band Camp in the USA seems to have paid off. Ms Dugdale is quite the statesperson now.
schrodingers cat
the poor mans kezia dugdale……
what a bummer
I wonder if we will see Kezia Dugdale hange her mind again, if Corbyn gets re-elected as is looking likely.
How many U-Turns can she make before the branch office decide to dispense with her services?
Vambomarbeley said at 11:26 pm last night:-
“Radio shortbread this afternoon. Going on about how the bbc had discovered the scandal of the Edinburgh schools. No mention of labours involvement.”
…….and Reporting Britain Northern Branch last night at 6:30pm didn’t mention Labour AND MORE IMPORTANTLY ANY DATES AT ALL !!
Could have been last week!
BBC Northern Branch is a disgrace and and deserves the criticism it gets.
Lifted from the Commons,1940, in an altogether different context:-
” In the name of God go!”
Jack Murphy@ 12.18 pm:-
According to BBC Scotland and STV the schools were closed after ‘problems were discovered’.
No, walls came crashing down, which ranks more in the ‘whit the fuck was that?’ category, than the nonsensical ‘were discovered’, and only a cursory ‘Public Private Partnership’ mumble.
.
No mention of Labour Councils, and Gordon Brown’s grubby wee PFI/PPP schemes that are costing us tens of billions to private landlords/speculators for decades ahead.
‘Lessons will be learned’, we are assured.
Jail the bastards responsible should be lesson one.
Roll on the LA elections 2017.
Re. Monbiot’s progressiveness? I think he’s remarkably progressive given his life has been spent absorbing the colonialist culture of Scotland’s dominant ‘partner’, England. Not everyone can boast an education in post-colonial theory and literature*. He does appear to at least acknowledge the hybridised colonial relationship between England and Scotland. Nobody’s perfect.
* I’m annoyed I’ve forgotten most of mine. ;(
Stoker @ 08:29,
Nothing much really, one of Grouse Beater’s blogs collects various English insensitivities towards the Scots. Some of the utterances are truly cringeworthy. (The Beatles’ contribution is a particular longstanding bugbear for me.)
In deference to schrodingers cat for his link to the wonderful Monty Python sketch, and just for the record, I have visited GB‘s blogs from time to time and always found them interesting. Even contributed (positively!) to the btl on one of them (under an alias).
So I’m still not sure why he was so grumpy with me, but maybe the spat he had going concurrently in the other thread had something to do with it…
POOR WEE LASSIE SHE HUSNAE A BLOODY CLUE WIT SHES DAIN
I FINK SHE GOAT WAN O THUM SPLIT PERSONALITIES
“…maybe the spat he had going concurrently…”
Readers interested in a concise, reasoned ‘spat’ – from both parties – might like to look at the comments at the end of the essay here: link to wp.me
I trust my adversary is not Sutherland using his alias!
Is the new Secretary of State for Scotland Kezia Dugdale’s boss? Or is it the other way round? Who is higher up the hierarchy? Does it matter? Is there anyone left who cares?