Nursing a grievance
(NB The media is understandably mostly occupied today with the horrific events in Manchester. But life goes on – music websites are still talking about music, football websites are still talking about football, videogames websites are still talking about videogames. Any rational observations about terrorism made here would be screamed down as making political capital from tragedy. So let’s get on with the day job.)
If you apply to go on a televised political debate and then submit a question to ask a national leader, it seems a reasonable deduction that you want that issue to be raised and discussed. If you also make it personal by describing your own circumstances, it seems logical that you’d want those circumstances to be widely publicised, and to be asked about them so you could say more and tell your story to the country.
So it’s a bit odd that Edinburgh nurse Claire Austin has suddenly gone off the radar.
Posts on her Facebook page have vanished, such as the one where she called Nicola Sturgeon “wee Jimmy Krankie”. There are now only two posts visible for the whole of 2017, and the account is locked so that only her friends can comment.
Her Instagram account, on which social media users and the press found a number of pictures which raised questions about whether she really was struggling financially, has also been locked down.
And her Twitter feed is all but silent, save for a tweet claiming that an article in the Scottish Sun about her yesterday was in some unspecified way untruthful, despite it consisting mainly of her own tweets and pictures.
Last night’s Reporting Scotland devoted a hefty four-and-a-half minutes to Ms Austin’s comments and the wider issue of nurse’s pay and foodbank use, but we didn’t get to hear from Ms Austin herself.
Just ten seconds were taken up with reporter Shelley Jofre paraphrasing what she’d apparently said to her – that Claire Austin had been referred to foodbanks twice in a five-year period, at unspecified times and in “very specific circumstances” which oddly then aren’t actually specified for viewers.
That in itself sounds like the issue was temporary and personal to Ms Austin rather than being an intrinsic problem of all nurses being inadequately paid. The clip goes on to point out that the starting salary for Scottish nurses of £22,440 is £5,340 above what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation considers a liveable wage.
Yet the package also noted that the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland “can’t point to any specific cases of nurses using foodbanks”, and that the Trussell Trust – which runs by far the largest number in the UK, thought to be around half – “haven’t heard of any nurses using their foodbanks”.
We’re casting no doubt on Claire Austin’s story. We’re happy to believe that she may have used a foodbank a couple of times in the past due to personal circumstances that are none of our business. But her broader assertion that either she, or nurses in general, have to do so on a regular basis as a result of the policies of the Scottish Government doesn’t appear to be holding up very well under scrutiny.
Having originally missed the story because the debate was too late for their Monday editions, the Scottish press has leapt hungrily on it today, in particular a single tweet from SNP MP Joanna Cherry quoting a rumour that Austin might be the wife of a Tory councillor, which Cherry had swiftly retracted and apologised directly to her for:
Yet while most people protesting about things complain that they DON’T get a media platform to air their grievance, and despite having gone on two BBC politics shows in the space of a few days to make her point, and with a veritable army of sympathetic hacks beating on her door to give her a voice to bash “wee Jimmy Krankie” and the SNP with, Claire Austin suddenly seems strangely reluctant to talk about it.
Interesting that saying someone is related to a Tory now constitutes a “smear” and not a mistake.
I always thought a smear was calling someone a liar, a hypocrite or a thief or something else similarly disreputable.
To be fair, to be accused of being married to a Tory politician is a pretty vicious smear. It is almost the same as saying someone assisted Brady in his murders.
Or is it? :/
Poor cow must’ve realised she’s a stooge.
Typical. The Unionists don’t take issue with the other half of the story. I’m not surprised at all. As for Ms Austin disappearing. You can’t just go on TV and make claims only to go into hiding and not back them up. It just reinforces opinions that many will have about her motivations, right or wrong.
The nurse is just a pawn, forget her and ask her bbc handlers about the reinvitation and her frankly off topic question. Answers from S Smith and the plantation quay crew are what is needed now.
The bbc should be called out now as their establishment bias is now beyond a joke. In my opinion an SNP statement concerning broadcasting in Scotland is essential immediately
Take the shilling, take the consequences.
Many people would use your definition of a smear to describe a Tory.
A well orchestrated stunt in the middle of an election – BBC ‘somehow’ a participant.
She is so obviously a Tory/unionist/BritNat plant.
The higher profile characters in the SNP need to stop apologising all the time and call the BBC out on this stuff the way you continuely do on here, otherwise we are only talking to ourselves.
I appreciate the SNP, of which I am a member, are the party of government and believe they have to be seen to represent everyone the govern but the continuing rolling over to get there tummy tickled is really starting to annoy me.
They need to set the agenda instead of always having to react to it.
We all know on here that the real opposition to and enemy of Scottish Independence is the BBC followed by the rest of the MSM, the SNP MUST know that too, surely???
Gloves off please and start calling them out every time they do this and then maybe the unenlightened will start to get the message too.
Keep up the good work Stu!!!
This is not about the nurse but about the state of the media in the UK. Absolutely no scrutiny of the claims made by the nurse under what circumstances forced her to have to use foodbanks but instead all about the “nasty” SNP and the smears on social media of a poor innocent nurse.
I believe that she is innocent in the sense of being gullible and naive to have allowed the BBC to use her in they way they did at the leaders debate.
I think that this whole story is a perfect example of how news is manipulated into state propaganda as the results above show. The truth doesn’t matter at all, no instead manufactured headlines brought about by a guest in a BBC audience specifically invited by the BBC show as she could ask the question that they specifically planned to smear the SNP with.
There are other examples out there of exactly the same tactics being used in the past. We all know how difficult it is to get on these programs which are broadcast nationally.
The audience is literally handpicked so no one ends up there by accident. Fucking disgrace.
“So, BBC Scotland, what was it about the Sturgeon-hating nurse Clair Austin that made you invite her back a second time to one of to your debate programmes?”
PS Interesting that it’s apparently now a vile slur to misdescribe someone as being married to a Tory coucillor.
My opinion for what it’s worth. I don’t believe she is the type of person who would be seen within a one mile radius of a foodbank.
If she really wanted to get one over on us nasty fact finding SNP supporters, I’m sure she would be more than happy to put us in our place by providing details of her foodbank usage, rather than pulling up the draw bridge.
I’m sure you won’t, but don’t let this one go into the forgotten pile. The nurse story is just part of the wider reality that was the bbc stitch-up of the FM for the sole purpose of influencing a general election.
It should be the biggest story of the year but the media are ignoring it for obvious reasons of complicity.
“Nats and Ultranats”
What’s an Ultranat? How do I get to be one? Sounds awesome!
Its the Evolution of Independence
Nats -> CyberNats -> UltraNats
Whats next? GigaNats?
Wow. The Express is the most reasonable headline in there.
The story here is not really a political activist trying to have a go at the FM. The story is, or should be, that BBC Scotland is facilitating the asking of a question that is fairly irrelevant to the UK election campaign and is simply an attempt to say SNP bad. Facilitating to thecextent that she was specifically invited following QT where her question was not put. Why was this done? Does BBC Scotland have a remit to editorialise its programmes in this way? Why no corresponding questions designed to attack Rape Clause Ruth or the other parties?
If the Tories were daft enough to create this stushie and got found out all hell would break loose
That’s why if it is a creation it’s more likely to have been the apprentice Tories who would carry out the dirty work for their Massas
The Labour lot have form for this, 2014 lest we forget
But then again it may be the woman just had a wee agenda of her own in which case, she has to answer like the rest of us would if we went on the Telly and made accusations or complaints, call it what you will
How can a thing be fixed if you won’t tell us what happened
if you don’t it’s like shouting FIRE and running away
God help the woman if the papers find out something’s not right they’ll crucify her
Which is really what newspapers like to do anyway
Build up, Smash down
Willie Rennie called us Ultra Extremists in the Holyrood chamber one time
That was a good one
The woman is a liar full stop, you would never get food from a foodbank if you where earning over 20 grand a year, you have to be passed on to the foodbank after stating why you need to use it and giving your circumstances, i am on a pension, i could apply but don’t, and i live on just over 7 grand a year, as i said the woman is a liar
Have any of these so called reporters of the anti SNP press actually looked in this nurses claims or are they more interested in a good bash the SNP story. I KNOW WHAT I THINK.
“Have any of these so called reporters of the anti SNP press actually looked in this nurses claims or are they more interested in a good bash the SNP story. I KNOW WHAT I THINK.”
In fairness, quite a few seem to have asked her for comment but been refused.
Ahem ..
What has Sarah Smith – BBC Scotland Editor had to say on the issue ???
This is ‘clearly’ a non political issue so should should be able to comment ?
She was invited to launch an attack, not a particularly rational
one or one that holds up to any analysis.
But now there is an opening to throw mud and the press are
throwing for all they are worth.
Wow, is all, just wow! UK hacks are beyond shameless. It wasnt just Ms Austin though. There were various angry people in the audience, angrily demand Sturgeon take indy ref2 “off the table” now or how to fill your £15 bn “black hole” of independence Sturgeon and so on. All highly articulate and vocal, well rehearsed and neatly spaced out, both in the room and in the debate.
If you poke a wasp or hornet’s byke with a stick expect to be stung. It then is a a bit rich to complain and blame the wasps for your actions. This person sought her Andy Warhol moment in the limelight only to discover that it morphed into a spotlight.
What annoys me more than anything this person has said is the way she has in effect besmirched the nursing profession. Shame on her, she knew what she was doing so suck it up.
Hypocrisy from the Sun [surprise!] since they were extremely gleeful to publish these New York pictures.
Just the usual britnat BS from the bbc. Who are they kidding? There can’t be that many gullible folks in Scotland by now. The bbc in Scotland is finished.
Striking similarity to the Claire Lally episode. Even including the condemnation of an innocent SNP related tweet. In that instance the “smear” was the suggestion she was related to Pat Lally. Again – why is that a “smear” rather than a simple mistake?
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Didn’t the BBC reporter Nick Eardley tweet the “smear” too, then delete it?
IMO Claire Austin was the patsy in a BBC set-up designed to embarrass Nicola Sturgeon.
Another one for the political investigator’s casebook.
How is it that labour and others support £10 per hour living wage, which they say is enough to live one and which amounts to £24,000 working 50 hours per week but KD can shout ‘she can’t feed her family’ at NS even though she promotes £10 per hour. In some ways the minimum wage has made things worse for the badly paid since it is now acceptable that this is the rate to be paid. It should not be acceptable if it means people need to use foodbanks. But not a word about that or the seeming life style of this foodbank user which calls into question the lifestyle of everyone using a foodbank and is a terrible disgrace if people look at this and decide not to contribute to foodbanks which are absolutely essential for many.
There are many discrepancies in this story not least the part played by Sarah Smith and the BBC but as usual it is just snp baaad and no mention of yoonnuts.
“Nats -> CyberNats -> UltraNats”
Astronat?
If Sarah Smith had been operating as part of a principled, fair, and impartial broadcasting organisation *(cough)*, the question would have been shut down politely with a reminder that the debate was under the banner of a GENERAL ELECTION and that devolved issues were for another day. Also, the fact that the nurse seemed to be under the impression that Queen Nicola (long may she reign) had a seat at Westminster shows just how uninformed some members of the public really are.
I thought Neil Mackay@neilmackay was good/quick tweeting this at time on Monday eve.
“I’d love to get an interview with that nurse in the @newsundayherald #LeadersDebate …”
So there you go Claire speak to Neil and put your side of the story.
I’m ,like many 1000s of folk, managing my finances on a much lower income. Perhalps not easy but doo-able …cut yer cloot etc etc
I came to the conclusion that she naively trusted the BBC to give her a question about nurses pay (which she may well feel angry about, and no doubt she feels other nurses are also struggling with their own situations) and allowed herself to over-egg the story (perhaps with a bit of “encouragement” from BBC hacks?)
I am also sure she certainly didn’t expect the shit-storm, probably being told by the same BBC hacks that they would push her story all the way and she was “in the right”. But she pushed it too far and presented a picture of herself that was easy to be ‘misunderstood’ by casual viewers.
Notwithstanding her role in this drama, there is no excuse for hounding her on FB, Twitter etc. And the over-reaction (understandable though it is) should be focused on the BBC and not directly at the Nurse. She doesn’t like the SNP or NS (it seems) but she is entitled to hold her views.
In my view the BBC saw an opportunity to divert attention from the Tory non-campaign and get one over on Nicola Sturgeon. They miscalculated and the social media backlash (and EVEN a couple of Scottish papers) quickly undermined their “coup”.
Time to aim at the real enemy. The BBC.
This makes me so mad!
The point she was trying to make was valid! Yes! There are nurses who are struggling to live on the wage. If you look into nursing – lots of nurses started out as ‘mature’ students – ie they already have families to support when they start their training.
They get a bursary in Scotland ( not much to live on, never mind with kids). By the time they qualify they often have large debts ( run up while on a bursary – just to survive).
Nursing training is 45 weeks of the year – 13 weeks longer than most uni courses- half of the 3 yr course is spent working 37.5hr weeks ( unpaid) on placement. Childcare costs have to be paid ( they have to do full shifts).
Once qualified – they still have to be paid. You also have to go in and do training in your own time. If you work in a hospital that’s got private parking you also have to pay extortionate parking charges ( or public transport charges). Everyone knows how much rent, food, electric etc already is.
Nursing is a tough job ( as, I’m sure are others) but it’s continuously physically, mentally and emotionally draining and it eats into any life you have as you work very unsocial hours. You spend your entire working life continuously reassessing and re-evaluating your worth and if you did everything you could do for everyone you treat.
The money is good in comparison to other jobs ( which don’t take over your entire life) but poor for what you are expected to give.
You are NEVER off duty. If you see someone in distress you can’t walk on by – doing so could cost you your registration.
This woman is not a good example of a nurse. She has intentionally misled in order to try to score points off the FM. She lives in a very affluent area of Edinburgh, chose to send her child to private school, allegedly works in an agency ( or three different ones according to her LinkedIn) – so she can pick and choose when to work, she gets more wages ( not on Bank but yes on agency).
She lied about Scottish nurses being on strike – we aren’t. We haven’t even been balloted for strike action yet ( although we have been balloted on the route to take re: pay and conditions.
She was disingenuous in her representation. She has done irreparable damage to the real NHS nurses who DO struggle.
I agree that the govt should appear unannounced – giving advance warning gets the paint pots out and hides the real struggle on the wards to deliver safe care with poor staffing and equipment.
I think the Scottish govt would do well to actually speak to nurses on the floor rather than to ‘senior’ or management level nurses.
Pay is negotiated by govt and unions at UK level – the unions want it this way ( to try to keep parity of pay and to prevent unscrupulous trusts from cutting pay and creating a race to the bottom).
Apparently one Union is the main block to Scottish negotiations as they wont agree to local pay in order to prevent opening the door for this in England.
It is completely false to have a go at the FM when it’s the unions preventing her from being able to increase pay for Scottish nurses! Logically, it’s in her interests to do this as there would never be a vacancy unfilled in Scotland.
I don’t agree with picking and pouring over anyone’s lives – but this lady invited the dogs in and now cannot complain when they crap on her carpet and call her out on any lies she has told.
Are we not allowed to question someone’s ( very obviously untrue) versions of events now?. I’m not a ‘cyber nat’ or ‘ultranat’ ( not sure what qualifies you to be one!) but I 100% call her out on the lies she told.
It’s such a shame she couldn’t put honesty and integrity above trying to score cheap points off of the FM. She has brought herself and her profession into disrepute. Nurses have to be seen to be honest. Who would trust a dishonest nurse to look after them?
I’ve nursed for the best part of two decades – I trained with young kids and a house to run. I managed on well under a quarter of the pay I get now. I didn’t end up in debt because I did without and spent a while living on pasta. Now on over 4 times that amount of money – I don’t run a car, I don’t go on holidays, I can’t afford to help my kids ( I earn more than the threshold for help with uni costs). I manage ( just). But it only takes one appliance to break or one big bill before I really struggle. I don’t have fancy electrical kit, I don’t wear designer clothes. I’m like most other folk – I just get by. I could never afford to go on holiday to New York – because I couldn’t afford the outlay for a passport.
By all means – raise the very valid points she had buried in the attempted shakedown of the FM – but be honest while you do it – and raise it with the correct people! Otherwise you just undermine the rest of us.
And btw, i pay a contribution to my mortgage of £58 a month, i don’t get housing benefit, i have to use my pension for all repairs to my house which i am ok with, i am good at repairing houses, my monthly mortgage is about 80 quid, the only reason i bought my house was to get away from Inverclyde labour council, getting anything done by that crowd of incompetents was hopeless, they once sent two joiners to my door as my roof was leaking, the two young guys went up the loft to have a look, nothing we can do there they said, its to big a job, whole roof needs done, i asked what do you usually do if you find a leak, we usually just put a bit of polythene under it they said, i complained to the ombudsman many times about this, the letter back from the ombudsman quoted the inspector saying that i had refused to let the joiners into my loft, gave up with the ombudsman, in fact we might as well not have a housing ombudsman if that’s his ruling on the issue, yes folks we live in a crazy world
Astronat?
For those of you with long memories… # I’m a lumbernat and I’m okay…#
Is Chris Findlay any relation to Neil Findlay MSP?
@ winifred McCartney
Now that’s an interesting thought – Joanna Cherry is castigated for believing the nurse to be married to a Tory, but Kezia Dugdale can get away with “she can’t feed her family” when the woman has only been to a foodbank twice in 5 years.
Both misunderstandings (I’m being generous to KD here and assuming she had no prior knowledge), but only one is a “smear” that needs to be withdrawn and apologized for.
If its BBC Scotland, its all a set up.
Even in their press “spin” room they had Severin Carrell of the Graun. Graun’s got an almost total Scottish blackout on any actual Scottish news, of any kind, let alone a highly aggressive anti Scottish democracy and SNP bias.
And yet there’s their man in Scotland Severin, chuntering away, SNP bad, live in the BBC Scotland press spin room. To be fair, at least Seve had the decency to look shifty, or he’d eaten something that disagreed with his constitution at the buffet.
THere is a saying, If a lie is told long enough it becomes and accepted truth, so it has to be challenged, she is a liar, let me repeat that again, she is a liar, if she was ever referred to a foodbank she must have hid her true circumstances from the people who referred her, that should be invesyigated as that is a basic case of fraud i would think
Dearie is there no one in the Unionist press with just a soupcon of credibility or indeed shame in this instance. I saw the programme. I witnessed Nicola Sturgeon giving a straight forward appraisal of the situation and indeed actually agreed with this woman concerning nurses pay. Clearly someone who knew her outed her and there followed information totally destroying this woman’s credibility, mostly provided by herself. The BBC should set the record straight and apologise to the First Minister.
Does anyone know who or what generated the first tweet/FB that said she was related to a Tory?
Nick Eardley,
Political correspondent BBC News,said it was from an SNP Briefing,
Nick Eardley?Verified account @nickeardleybbc May 21
More
SNP briefing that nurse is Tory councillor’s wife.
clearly stating it was a party briefing not an individuals opinion,
he or his employers the BBC as far as i know have not apologised to the SNP for his/their error.
The question the nurse asked should have been aimed at Ruth Davidson after all it was her party that introduced the cap. Ruth stood there while Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP felt the sharp end of the woman’s tongue and said absolutely nothing.
Nicola missed an own goal there as she could have said I cannot say why the cap was introduced because it was a Tory decision and you would have to ask Ruth why the cap has been enforced on nurses pay.
She could have then continued and said that employment law and the national wage are a reserved matter for Westminster and all the SNP can do is ensure that our nurses don’t suffer as badly as the nurses in England and Wales.
Spooks at work.
The whole thing seems to have been very well organised, from the attention given to Ms Austin, the time it took for Facebook and twitter to start saying she was the wife of a Tory councillor to the howls of anguish from Yoon collective. As one poster has said, she’ll be dumped now.
UltraNat is a new one on me. What the heck is an UltraNat?
However, lesson learnt and I’m sure we’ll all be more careful.
@Madcatwumman
Thank you for that absolutely brilliant post that says it better than anyone else could have even attempted. Real honesty from a real person talking from the heart.
I hope Nicola Sturgeon reads your post I really do.
Is there not another Scottish leaders debate pending on STV soon ?
Wee opportunity for Nicola to put a few folk right.
All medical professions are bound to conduct themselves with the same levels of ethics professionalism outside of their work, as they are at their work. Ofcourse, all professions are, bar hacks. There are clear codes, standards of conduct, performance and ethics. If you breach, them and you get found out, you get investigated, for all kinds of professional reasons.
Its certainly not unreasonable to be asked to show proof, that a salaried nursing professional has been “referred to foodbanks twice in a five-year period.” And its even less unreasonable to ask for proof that “nurses in general, have to do so on a regular basis.” Especially if you’ve sat in a BBC tv debate audience and told all the viewers.
Its of extreme public concern and the NHS and the RCN needed to be asked.
My partner is a nurse and we were both watching the debate live. I also work as a health care assistant for N.H.S Scotland. We both turned to each other when she stated that she used food banks in disbelief. If she had used a foodbank its through her own financial mismanagement.
Ultranats,how about a supernovanat?
link to nursingtimes.net
“Be open and honest, act with integrity and uphold the reputation of your profession
As a nurse you have a responsibility to uphold the reputation of the profession at all times. This applies equally whether you work directly with patients and service users or in other environments such as education, research or policy development. It also applies to your behaviour and conduct outside the workplace.”
No idea if you can bring the nursing profession in to disrepute by lying in public about your own circumstances or that of your colleagues, but there was also a clear announcement that nurses are going in strike for better pay, on Sunday night.
Just watched a Frankie Boyle clip from a few years back on BBC bias.
He makes a comment on how they require a really stupid audience to get away with what the do, millions of people sitting open mouthed watching dancing dogs on the telly as if it’s the most important thing in the world.
Thankfully our population of stupid people is shrinking but the immutably content still number far to many.
The effects of Brexit can’t come quick enough to wake the up, cause only when something hurts them personally will they ever change.
Can’t wait to watch the Beeb when the shit is hitting their fan.
Whether or not these situations are engineered or not, I find it more telling that within a matter of hours details emerge which debunk the manner in which the situation arose and the context behind it (some right and some wrong)
I imagine the agenda/running order of the debates is tightly controlled by TV Producers/Execs. They decide who gets to ask what and when depending on a running order and of course what narrative is to be portrayed/followed. These Debates aren’t organic in nature where every Tom, Dick or Harry can ask a question. That approach would be very risky for any Producer/Exec.
It’s a highly controlled environment where every Claire, Eric and Clare (Eric Holford on BBQT and Clare Lally, Ordinary Mum) is invited to
smear the current administration, sorry, give the Broadcaster a modicum of balance and impartiality.The UK media doing what they do best… 🙄
OK so she was a member of Unison on a mission being advised by a union official to put a question to the panel and not directly to Nicola Sturgeon. She was coached, given pointers, and given her speaking for all nurses bullcrap seems particularly tetchy about getting taken to task by other nurses on her Facebook page.
So a Labour, not Conservative, attack on someone who’s only answer to it could be that as the cap was imposed by Westminster then the only way to oppose it would be to elect MPs to Westminster who would be able to do so. The argument might then have moved on to a stouthearted claim by all the unionist candidates that none of them would ever contemplate listening to the SNP on anything regardless of how sensible that might be, although Labour might steal it a decade later.
Regardless of which one of the many reasons someone might fall on hard times would be long term illness. The kind of thing Ruth Davidson and her re-introduction of prescription charges would make even worse. Never mind the past week where the BBC was bigging up the “gig” economy which sound like a re-branding of self employment with all the lack of sickness cover and holiday entitlement inherent in it. A bit like nurses on the Nurse Bank should it come to it.
I agree with the wasp, the nurse is a pawn used by BBC to further their smearing of SNP and trying to trap the FM.
It gave Tory elite backed press the story they wanted to discredit SNP SON as part of political campaign to support Tories.
So it is no sureprise now she has gone into hiding given it took less than 30 mins for SM sharp people to spot her and circulate whobshe really was and how much she eearned and her life style.
All of which was freely available from her own sites.
Lets hope she learns from this to not be used for others ends.
Anyone who has a personalised numberplate is a dick.
Liz White @ 12.40pm
You made some very-good and very-fair points there Liz. The problem is, the MSM and in particular the BBC has carte blanche to say what they like and smear as they like.
I agree, the SNP ought to take the gloves off and get stuck into the BBC and the Unionist media – except, if they do that, the SNP will be the bad guys, their opponents will spin it around that way.
To give you an example: 50-years ago, Celtic won the European Cup, by playing open, exciting, attacking football. They were everyone’s heroes.
Then, they got into the World Club Champions final against Racing Club of Buenos Aires. The Argentinians knew they could not live with Celtic when it came to football, so, they set about kicking them off the park.
Remember, Ronnie Simpson was stoned as he warmed-up and had to be replaced. The game was tied after two legs, and went to a third game. Still the Racing Club players spent more time kicking Celtic players than the ball.
Eventually, realising they were getting no protection from the referee the Celtic guys decided to give as good as they got and began kicking them back.
The outcome, Celtic were vilified, they had disgraced Scottish football. To some, they were the thugs.
It aint easy playing by the rules and being the guys in the white hats.
We know that the BBC is working for the British State against the independence movement. We know that the rest of the media are doing likewise. So this is just another non-story designed to give more solace to those who oppose independence and need a justification for their choice.
Nobody in their right mind doesn’t smell the bad smell. Those who want to will use it to confirm their faux outrage about the independence movement. The rest of the world will shake their heads in wonder at the level to which the BBC has been exposed.
1000 k kilonat
10002 M meganat
10003 G giganat
10004 T teranat
10005 P petanat
10006 E exanat
10007 Z zettanat
10008 Y yottanat
Still goals to achieve 🙂
The Nurse’s apparent disappearance is a bit reminiscent of the perpetrator of The Great Kirkcaldy Egg Massacre of 2014 starring Jim Murphy which was a blatant BT set-up job with cameraman perfectly placed to film the dastardly deed.
The perp having done his job of setting-up an attempt at an anti-SNP smear disappeared from the face of the earth never to be heard of or from again without saying a word to anybody except for a statement in court from his agent/lawyer that he was an SNP supporter.
Funnily enough on that occasion uncharacteristically none of our wonderful media were remotely inclined to follow up
on the guy to get more info and perhaps an interview.
No photos no nothing about the guy.
O/T
Good God, just seen that the ‘Poisoned Dwarf’ has now become Leader of Dumfries council – yikes!
Ultra, and ultras lead by word association to violent football fans, so you can be sure the word was not picked at random – supernat – sounds so much friendlier.
I’m sick fed up talking about this woman.
She is of no consequence
The hour and a half Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Sturgeon orchestrated by the Sarah Smith, the London enforcer, the BBC, and the assembled Yoon Hacks in the Spin Room is the story. A Free Press, Free Speech, and democracy died on Sunday night.
It was an outrageous declaration by the UK Establishment.
Scotland, down on your knees, you are, and always will be a colony of England.
The dreadful thing about this is also the fact that the press are not condemning the tory government’s disgusting attacks on the poorest, most vulnerable members of our society. Tory criminals, even one of them using a term, ‘low value’ to describe people! In 2017, not 1817, or even 1917.
These tory owned tory controlled, disgusting daily lying rags are not bothered about the poor or those who are destitute and who need to use foodbanks. They are complicit in creating divide, in driving hatred forward between people at any opportunity.
The nurse needs to clarify her position because to say you need a foodbank, if you don’t, for political point scoring or for your own gain, is stooping pretty low, and an insult to those that do need to use the tory government style of so called ‘welfare’.
@ Socrates MacSporran 1.11pm
Spot on.
Politicking suspended says Mrs May as she proceeds to politic in true Britnat style
Eh, and does somebody want to tell the Liberal Democrat leaflet activists in Bishopbriggs today as they deliver their STOP the SNP newsletters
How about this one try double speak.
Apply to get on BBC tell them your anti SNP question and when you get your chance ask a totally different question like what do the panel think of the rape clause I bet S Smith would crap herself what could she do stop the person or would there be a technical problem just at that time.
Just a thought on my part it would show up the BBC for what they are.
I hope I don’t get that nurse if I have to go into hospital.
Albert Herring says:
23 May, 2017 at 12:19 pm
(“Nats -> CyberNats -> UltraNats”
Astronat?)
Ok i’ll bite.
Centinats, Kilonats, Meganats, Giganats, Ubernats…..
On reading this latest false flag type attack i just graduated from Fearnat to Dreadnat. I’m (almost) beyond caring now.
It’s a shame i cant just hibernate until it’s all over.
I’m impressed how quickly the nurse’s story was torn to shreds in terms of credibility when compared to similar events in 2014.
We reap what we sow – she clearly wanted her 15 minutes of fame & now she’s got it. Just not in the way she expected 🙂
Another nail in the coffin of BBC Scotland.
shw is no need of a food bank but a health farm juding by the size of her too many
To Wings: I posted the following tweet almost 1 hour ago and it has not appeared. Why?
Claire Austin was no patsy. She was clearly well primed for her attack on the FM, which she pursued in an offensive and rude manner. She’d obviously been rehearsing for days. I’ll bet she is a well in with the bricks Tory activist who was very willing to collude with the BBC in an attack on NS and the SG.
And BBC’s excuses are laughable. EVERYONE on a BBC ‘debate’ show and the audience questions thereon are vetted and discussed by the editorial team to the nth degree beforehand to get the best out of them to fit the BBC’s agenda. So it’s ridiculous of BBC to claim the audience picked the questions about devolved matters instead of Westminster issues. BBC picked the questions from the bundle it would have received from applicants to appear on the show. Our Claire admitted she was asked back from QT by the BBC clearly because her question, which the BBC knew of, suited its purpose.
“To Wings: I posted the following tweet almost 1 hour ago and it has not appeared. Why?”
Because you keep logging in with different fucking names.
I did not watch the show (as after the Indyref attacks on the SNP by the BBC, I knew this would be another gang up on NS attack) but after all the nurse hulla-ballou, I watched parts of the show online.
The false premise of a starving nurse in Scotland was clearly rigged and known about in advance by Mesdames Bird & Smith.We all know now that she was invited back onto the Bird & Smith Show to have a pop at the SNP yet this is how Bird falsifies that the nurse’s attack came out of the blue as follows:
At end of the show Smith hands back to spin room and Jackie Bird. Bearing in mind that the nurse was invited on by Mesdames Bird & Smith ONLY to attack the SNP leader, Bird lies through her teeth that this was all as much an unexpected surprise to her and Smith as it was to our First Minister.
I have transcribed Bird’s false narrative in the show’s closing remarks in the spin room as follows:
Bird: The most memorable moment of the night certainly was the nurse who really gave Nicola Sturgeon a much more difficult time than the politicians did on the panel tonight. It was the nurse who talked about not being able to afford food on the salary of a nurse and really brought the point home over an extended period. I’ve never seen Nicola Sturgeon looking quite as uncomfortable on TV before.
David Clegg makes some comments then Bird is back to her anti Nicola Sturgeon/ starving nurse narrative, as follows:
Jackie Bird: I think that’s what is so good about debates like this, because you don’t know what is going to happen and often something very nuanced and personal can turn it.
Torrance leaps to the BBC’s defence at this point as the complaints have already started that this show was not a debate about any reserved matters, i.e. anti-SNP. Torrance clearly wants invited back onto the BBC so sucks up to Bird big time with the following excuses why this was not a Westminster election debate at all as follows:
David Torrance: And all the more effective coming from someone in the audience rather than another party leader. But it also shows you how jumbled up different policy responsibilities get, in elections these days. You know in the era of devolution people no longer differentiate adequately between devolved responsibilities like health and education and reserved issues. Which is, after all, what UK elections are all about. It just gets bundled up into the same mix and perhaps we shouldn’t even bother trying in this context, because it does not seem the voters do.
Bird then turns to Richard Walker of the National.
Bird: Richard Walker, who do you think performed best?
Richard Walker: I think Nicola Sturgeon performed best. Certainly a clear winner in the first half. Bird interrupts him (She did not interrupt Torrance or Clegg)
Bird: But do you feel she was under pressure from, most notably, the nurse in the audience? [This is now the 3rd time Bird has returned back to her planted nurse – there were no other moments in their 2 hour show Bird wanted to discuss but the ‘starving’ nurse].
Richard Walker agreed these were difficult questions about education and nurses’ pay but when Walker stated these were devolved issues; other issues should have been discussed on the show, and Labour are more concerned with the SNP’s record at Holyrood than dealing with the Tories austerity policies at Westminster, Bird quickly shut him up by cutting him off mid sentence quickly ‘Thank you gentlemen’.
Bird then spoke to a tory politician then Joanna Cherry Q.C. Almost laughably, Bird returns to the starving nurse narrative for the FOURTH time, in as many minutes!!
Bird: Joanna Cherry, about that plea from the member of the audience and her statement to Nicola Sturgeon, “Don’t come on your announced visits”. How did she react to that? Did she react well? Did she manage to rebut…
Bird could have waxed lyrical but Cherry stopped this nonsense by simply stating,
Cherry: I think what she did was she explained to the nurse that under the SNP, the Scottish government in Scotland have done more to protect pay in jobs in the NHS than anywhere else in the UK.
Bird quickly shut that down by abruptly standing up to move onto talk to more Unionists as clearly Cherry Q.C. saw Bird’s agenda and stopped it in Bird’s tracks.
THis nurse farce/SNP attack was most definitely set up and repeated ad nauseum by Bird & Smith.
They are seasoned ‘operators’ in BBC land and it is only the nurse’s admission (Bupa nurse so her pay is not from the Scots Govt at all) that Mesdames Bird & Smith invited her onto the show, that we know the role played by the BBC in trying to set up the SNP.
Remember that all important fact. The unionist nurse did not ask to get on the show. She did not apply. She was invited onto the show in advance to ask her questions of the First Minister, her anti-SNP questions, which Mesdames Bird & Smith knew in advance, from the Question Time show, where she did not get to rant about the SNP.
You have to ask how many others are ‘invited’ onto BBC shows to set the tone and narrative in this manner?
Earlier Bird had crowed, scarcely able to contain her glee, ‘I think that’s what is so good about debates like this; because you don’t know what is going to happen and often something very nuanced and personal can turn it’.
The BBC, Bird & Smith, knew exactly what they were about. They DID know exactly what was going to happen when they gave the nurse the floor. Bird also admits that she knows such personal sob stories can affect public opinion against the SNP and by her own admission, knowing they invited this nurse into the debate, it was Bird & Smith’s whole intent and aim, from the outset, to harm the First Minister.
This is not a impartial broadcaster. It is an amateur Pravda-esque production and their stunt has back fired spectacularly against Bird, Smith & the BBC.
Lastly, both Question Time & this Leaders Debate were produced by Mentorn! So Smith & Bird had full access to all the prior questions unasked on QT!
I think I would prefer to be a hypergnat please…
Definitely worth reading this to the end on our Foodbank Nurse.
link to anyvoice.co.uk
@Orri
OK so she was a member of Unison on a mission being advised by a union official to put a question to the panel and not directly to Nicola Sturgeon.
That’s very interesting and a new slant on things, something I’ve not read or heard before.
Where might I find such a statement, you have a link I presume?
Firstly my heartfelt sympathies to all involved in the Manchester incident.
Dpict – why not just become a Hibernat …… sorry, couldn’t resist!
As for nursey, it will blow over, but no matter something else will be along in a minute to villify the SNP.
I suppose we shouldn’t get so agitated by this. I think everyone understands the BBC’s game on here. Tactics like this will only backfire in the longer game that is being played out. The BBC for many is still a very credible source of information and it is those people who’s eyes need to be opened. Once they see their agenda for what it is they will start to question everything about them and probably other media outlets of Scottish politics. That can only have a good knock on effect for our aim of independence. The game has to be patiently to call these things out for what they are and not allow the likes of the BBC to portray the supporters of nationalism as somehow unhinged. If we can do that they have nothing to use against us. Sharing videos like the ones like Journey to Yes are a way to do this. Brexit and other insane English Tory ideas, like trying to prevent another vote, will be the only gravity we need over the next couple of years.
shw is no need of a food bank but a health farm judging by the size of heR.
What actually is being missed is the comment about Nicola going om about independence. saying she would lose her seat is she that ignorant Nicola is not standing for Westminster
Heil’s Matt cartoon this spring morn reaches even lower than usual, for UKOK hackdom, frightened elderly couple peeping out their window at two machine gun wielding terrorists coming down their garden path, “Oh dear will you answer the door, I think they’re canvassing for Jeremy Corbyn.”
BBC led tory media is famous for a lot of nasty stuff but they certainly don’t know any limits.
I think the BBC are absolute SH…E and don’t normally watch their programmes, but I thought I would watch their reporting on the Manchester disaster (since STV would be crap).
After the programme ending at 1.00 pm today, and before the Manchester report started, the BBC managed to input 2 adverts boasting about their wonderful programmes. No recognition of a terrible event– get your boasts in as planned.
Whoever was responsible should be sacked, but we all know they are wonderful, they tell us so.
The BBC do not come out of that debate with much credit. It was poorly moderated and the there was clear intent to have people there to ask non-general election questions. To say that the audience took in that direction is clearly a lie. The BBC invited people there just so they could ask those questions.
Joanna Cherry should have waited for confirmation about whether she was married to the Councillor but that whole stramash only lasted about half an hour. Stu was absolutely right to say evidence or STFU. The thing is who said she was related first? It wasn’t entirely clear as far as I could see. Once said it was around the interwebs in about 30 seconds and an hour later people were saying “Oh no she isn’t but look at her pictures”.
The fact that she uses the “Wee Jimmy Krankie” jibe, much loved by Yoons, would indicate she went to have a ping at the FM but other than that I think the fault lies mainly with the BBC who invited her specifically to ask that question.
First of all, condolences to all those affected by the utterly senseless Manchester atrocity.
@ Madcatwumman
Totally second Thepnr’s comment. Your psot was top-drawer stuff and I too hope that it’s brought to the FM’s attention.
Great post too from Liz White @12:40pm.
This was an orchestrated fit-up by the BBC in Scotland. No doubt in my mind about that. Sarah Smith’s appalling excuse for allowing what were clearly devolved issues to be discussed in a WM election debate was naked, unbridled bias on a truly breath-taking scale. Nicola (and ALL ScotGov ministers) must be much sharper to such clearly orchestrated set-piece ambushes.
Only a few days previously, this surfaced, “courtesy” of University of Southampton Conservative Association.
link to wessexscene.co.uk
My reply.
“I’m just gonna say it. If you’re so shit at managing your English syntax and grammar you have to demonstrate how much a fool you are on a public platform, you’re not fit to be at university, subsidised by the rest of us.”
(The Conservative Association have now apologised. Allegedly.)
Why is the BBC inviting anybody to the Leaders debate apart from Leaders?
It seems quite extraordinarily that an audience which is essentially there to bear witness to the fairness of the debate has in fact been selected and groomed to be an active participant in that debate.
Unfettered public debate suddenly becomes grubby premeditated orchestration and a contrived agenda. Good ol’ BBC eh?
I’ll just leave this here from Karen Martin.
Karen Martin – Nurse – A Response To The Nurse Who Cried Foodbank
“Just to dispel the rapidly growing myths around this nurse and her salary I’d like to spell out exactly what she lied about in terms of that salary and why so many nurses are up in arms about it!
She works for the NHS as a staff nurse, (although she herself claims to be a charge nurse in a busy A&E), however for the sake of this exercise I’ll place her on the lowest band for staff nurses in Scotland. That’s the whole of Scotland because no matter where you work in the NHS the salary structure is identical. The least a newly qualified staff nurse would earn on a Band 5 is just shy of £22, 000. This rises year on year incrimentally for 6yrs to the Band maximum of £28,180.
She herself states that she has been working for many years so she cannot be stuck on the starting scale, it doesn’t work that way. Anyone working for 6yrs will have reached their Band max. If indeed she is a charge nurse as she claims on her LinkedIn then that would be Band 6 which starts at £26,041 and again incrimentally rises to £34,876. So you see there’s no way for a qualified registered nurse to be stuck at £22,000 as she claims.
Furthermore she also works with RMR an agency I myself have done shifts for in the past and the pay is very lucrative compared to NHS payscales, so much so that most hospitals are now forbidden to use this agency.
So no matter how you look at this then that woman is not as skint as she claims to be!
She blatantly lied about her pay and anything else that followed also has to be suspect. She lied knowing full well that nurses salaries are published and in the public domain, and also knowing there were bound to be nurses watching who would know instantly she was lying, clearly she didn’t care about that either.
That I find both particularly perplexing and shameful.”
Full article here link to anyvoice.co.uk
Sorry. @Sinky must have posted the link while I was putting it together.
@Cuilean
Well dissected and it just makes all the more obvious that the BBC agenda was to push this nurses story into the headlines in order to slag off the SNP.
A total failure though when the SNHS is devolved and they have met their commitments to NHS staff in full and in accordance with UK guidelines. The nurses that are losing out are living in England where Jeremy Hunt refused to implement the recommendations of the pay committee.
There were no Junior Doctors strikes here, nor are Nurses strikes planned unlike in England. Thank you BBC for allowing us to highlight these facts on social media. Your screwed up propaganda will be your undoing in Scotland.
The majority are getting wise to the crap you broadcast. Give it up.
@Dpict
Youre officially a HiberNat!
🙂
I avoid the term nat, or whatever.
I never own up to being a nationalist when debating with Yoons, I always say I am a pro democracy activist and lack of democracy is the problem.
Yes, I know. Good guys like Ghandi can be nationalists. And yes, I am a civic nationalist. But the word comes with so much baggage it’s best to go for an uncomplicated version.
I tell Yoons (focusing on the nasty side of nationalism) that historically most nationalists believe in the superiority of their nation, that it is special, and therefore entitled to rule over neighbours and others. Obviously I paint a picture of British Nationalism and they often do get the message!
Ultra-Nat?
Could be a whole lot worse. They could be calling us BritNats.
Madcatwumman @ 12.24
In the interests of accuracy:
Student nurses and midwives in Scotland do not pay University fees in Scotland and still receive a bursary. Neither of these things happen in England. The bursary may not cover all living costs but, taken together with free tuition, it does mean a much lower level of debt at the end of the course than their counterparts in England.
Mature student nurses and student nurses with dependents can apply for enhanced payments. After a review in which student nurses were consulted, no the SG does not confine itself to talking to the high heid yins, these payments have been enhanced and include payments towards childcare costs.
Details of enhanced payments below. (Taken from SG Web site) here:
“”Enhancements to financial support for 2017/18 academic year, in addition to the standard Nursing & Midwifery Student Bursary:
• Single Parents Allowance to be increased by £1,000 – from £1,303 to £2,303 per academic year
• Childcare Allowance to be increased by £1,250 – up to £1,216 is available currently to meet the costs of registered childcare, this will increase to £2,466 per year
• Dependants Allowance to be increased by £1,000 per year – maximum amounts that eligible students can receive through this income based allowance are currently:
• £2,640 for a spouse or cohabiting partner
• £2,640 for the first child where there is no dependent husband or wife, or other dependent adult
• £557 for each other dependent child.
• The maximum available for the first dependent will increase to £3,640
• The total cost of funding pre-registration nursing and midwifery training and the Nursing & Midwifery Student Bursary is approximately £130 million.””
Work placements are now part of ,many courses and usually involve the student taking up a 1 year paid placement before going into their final honours year. I don’t see why student nurses should not be paid for their placements although the length and duration seems to vary between universities. I believe the issue is under discussion. Student nurses can claim travel expenses and in some cases accommodation expenses when on placements.
Parking charges for visitors and staff have been abolished at most Scottish Hospitals. Not so in England.
I think the swipe at the FM during the programme for visiting hospitals was a cheap shot. As a former, successful Health Secretary, Ms Sturgeon knows how potentially disruptive these can be and I am not aware of her making an excessive amount of these visits as FM. When she does visit it is usually confined to a small section of the hospital and usually to highlight developments or initiatives in a particular area.
It should be noted that the SG did institute unannounced inspections by health inspectors as part of a raft of measures to reduce hospital acquired infections.
I think there has been some black flag comments on this forum the past couple of days. JMO.
I seen a Nurse, but I’m feeling worse.
I watched a debate that I didn’t rate
BBC hate and grim ideology
Westminster politics corruption without an apology
@Chick McGregor
I think you’d be right JMO too.
For what it’s worth this article has a response to this nurse from another nurse who sets out the pay for nurses throughout Scotland. It does not make any difference whereabouts in Scotland you are a nurse you are paid the same.
link to anyvoice.co.uk
Sorry to be O/T but Willie Rennie takes the opportunity to mention divisiveness in his statement to parliament about Manchester – bloody opportunist.
There’s another angle to this that I haven’t read much comment on.
I devote of a fair bit of time to volunteering in my local foodbank. I also very lucky to be able to provide weekly cash and food dontations. I am not looking for any thanks or praise for this whatseoever; but I do feel it gives me the right to make this comment.
Foodbanks are under extreme pressure to find donations and funding in order to meet the shameful growing demand for their service. What this lady has done could very well effect their ability to operate.
Firstly, people seeing her lifestyle (private school, convertible car, 5 star hotels, expensive tastes) would be entitled to ask why they should be donating to a foodbank if this is the sort of person who is using them. Most people will know that she is in no way indicative of a ‘normal’ foodbank user, but donations – time, money and produce, are absolutely vital given their scarcity. Foodbanks can’t afford to lose ANY good will from the general public.
Secondly, the service from top to bottom is stretched with record numbers of people using the service. People could very easily see her story and think ‘if she’s on £22k, living like that and still getting help from a foodbank, I’m for a shot, too’. Even filtering out the people who don’t need help is a time intensive task which bites on already limited resources.
She has completely undermined the foodbank service through her thoughtlessness (I’m fighting hard not to say ‘lies’) and actions. She won’t suffer through it, she’ll keep her head down for a few days (probably with the help of a fine Champagne) and then carry on as normal. The folk who will suffer will be the ones who can least afford it.
heedtracker says:
23 May, 2017 at 12:53 pm
Correct. Nurses work to a code of conduct which covers how a nurse should work and conduct his/herself. It’s published by the NMC, the governing body for nurses/midwives. The RCN is the union.
I have been quietly thinking about this – I don’t want to be accused of being an ultra-nat or being part of a witch hunt. I in no way want any part of this or raking over her social history – that’s not who I am and would never bully anyone. I am simply a very pissed off nurse who feels this has done the profession I love no good. I want to point out that when this nurse stated she spoke on behalf of all nurses, she doesn’t. How dare she. I feel she has used her position as a nurse to make political point for personal gain.
I am concerned the nurse concerned has not stuck to the code in these areas:
20 upholding professionalism and trust:
20.2 act with honesty and integrity at all times,treating people fairly and without discrimination, bullying or harassment
20.3 be aware at all times of how your behaviour can affect
and influence the behaviour of other people
20.7 make sure you do not express your personal beliefs
(including political, religious or moral beliefs) to people in an inappropriate way
20.8 act as a role model of professional behaviour for students and newly qualified nurses and midwives to aspire to
21 – Uphold your position as a registered nurse or midwife
21.4 make sure that any advertisements, publications or published material you produce or have produced for your professional services are accurate, responsible, ethical, do not mislead or exploit vulnerabilities and accurately reflect your relevant skills, experience and qualifications
21.5 never use your professional status to promote causes that are not related to health, and
21.6 cooperate with the media only when it is appropriate to do so, and then always protecting the confidentiality and dignity of people receiving treatment or care.
I watched the debate and was struck with the inaccuracies re strikes and also regarding the FM losing her seat. I felt it gave the impression that nurses rely on food banks and this is simply not true – as far as I am aware. I also felt this was not doing anything to help promote the profession in a good light.
I also am perplexed as to why a nurse would state she was a charge nurse when on £22,000 – this is perhaps an error but makes no sense. Paygrades for Scotland are available to check on the RCN website.
On a personal level, I felt the photos – made public via SM on linkedin and FB were also unprofessional. She linked being a nurse (stating where she worked and also her handle – ‘nursey’ with them) Posing in a corseted top with ample bosom on display on Linkedin isn’t a good professional choice.
Talking about politics via media whilst stating you are a nurse is frowned upon by the NHS. It could cause issues in the future when nursing a patient who may recognise you from media and could affect the nurse-patient relationship.
So, like I say. This isn’t personal. I, like many, have questions and some concerns. Perhaps she came over badly due to nerves and got verbal diarrhoea? Who knows. I also note that she may have been used by the BBC or political party as a plant. Sorry, but as a nurse, you are aware of your boundaries and would be well aware that discussing issues like this on TV would rake up questions and enquiry.
I do wonder if the NMC are aware of peoples’ concerns regarding this episode.
Apologies for the rant.
These accusations of being divisive really piss me off!
If they hadn’t bought a victory in 2014 with lies, deception, and false promises then we would be an independent nation making our own future by ourselves, for ourselves. It would be a settled done deal and the time for any division would have passed.
Instead they perpetuate the situation and given the chance will try to maintain division in this nation for as long as they can get away with.
Every cloud has a silver lining or maybe not
I like many jumped on the twitter high speed rumour mill I am ashamed to say. But in the heat of battle and this is a media battleground. With MSM twisting story after story to suit their Yoon agenda,
I like many are sick of especially BBC Scotland.
Wiith their hatred of The SNP the fact they are in government makes them deliberately on debate shows and Q time keep placing stooges in already nominated and identified seating giving them a free hand to have a pop at The SNP representative.
the BBC saw a chance to get a frothing Yoon to attack Nicola Sturgeon on a relevant but not relative to GE subject .
Sarah Smith manipulated the staged managed scene and the compliment of MSM journos bought it
They miscalculated however the social media backlash because they have been exposed good and proper this time
Q is will the SNP take a more assertive stance in calling out the BBC I expect not.
What would it be like. To have even 25% of the media on our side.
Thank God Stu shines a torch into the Yoon propaganda machine.
Apologies if this has been posted before.
Question Time Edinburgh 11th May 2017.
Check out the nurse sitting in the front row in a group of three with South Lanarkshire Tory Councillor Eric Holford to her left and could that be Tory Councillor Alex Allison SLC sitting to her right?
Dimbleby commences the programme by taking a question from Eric Holford and returns to him twice more (7.30 – 24.37) during the programme.
At around 34 minutes in he takes a question from the man to her right. He brings up the subject of independence. ”Divided families, divided communities” with nursey nodding away in agreement.
And as we know later that night she could tweet that there was a Tory plant in the audience. Was it the Councillor / s? sitting next to her, the man who fired in the £15 billion black hole comment (no comeback allowed) or the teacher complaining about falling University standards?
What about the MSM questioning her about that? Who was the Tory plant(s)?
link to youtube.com
Wonder how much the nurse was paid? champagne’s no cheap!
Has Claire Austin apologised ‘personally’ to Nicola Sturgeon for falsely accusing her of being “Wee Jimmy Krankie”?
Vestas 1.22pm. Yes,a lot more of these yoon plants will think twice about coming on live TV and spouting their lies,when they know in this technological age if they are lying,they will be quickly outed.
spectator
Claire Austin, a nurse who landed a direct hit on Nicola Sturgeon. She said that she has had to use food banks
turned into a snp cybernats hate peice
a Neil Retweeted it
The next time kd or Rd spout their lies,the retort should be ‘where’s the nurse?
@winifred McCartney says: 23 May, 2017 at 12:16 pm:
“How is it that labour and others support £10 per hour living wage, which they say is enough to live one and which amounts to £24,000 working 50 hours per week but KD can shout ‘she can’t feed her family’ at NS even though she promotes £10 per hour.”
You are right of course, Winifred, but I see it as even more basic than that. In the period that the Westminster Government, backed up of course by Labour and the LibDems, have imposed austerity upon the people of the United Kingdom and claimed that “We are all in this together”, the top strata of the most wealthy people in the United Kingdom have more than doubled their own personal wealth.
Now I’m not a great one at mathematics but it seems to me, if the top strata of the United Kingdom can double their personal wealth while the rest of us are under austerity conditions, the truth is that the wealthy ones are not in austerity measures with the rest of.
Yet the only place for them to double their personal wealth from is by taking it out of the pockets & purses of the people suffering austerity measures for Westminster tells us there is not enough funds to sustain government services and pensions.
Someone is telling lies – I wonder who they could be?
Regarding the nurse matter, I really don’t know how she came to be on the programme or whether she was a plant as some folks seem to think.
I think that is just the usual paranoia which, understandably, tends to rear its head on such a single minded website.
However, I find her remarks quite repulseful as there is no way she needed to attend foodbanks based on the salary she must have been receiving.
For once in my life, I felt a bit sorry for NS as it must have been almost impossible to deal with such comments.
In general, I do know that foodbanks are frequently abused by people being fraudulently authorised to receive help.
The police are aware of a trade in food bank supplies for drugs and alcohol.
However, there are occasions when people are caught in benefit bungles and are genuinely in need of help.
I, for one, would like this woman to be exposed for what she is, as asking a question based on false facts does no one of whatever political persuasion any good.
@Legerwood – in the interests of accuracy –
I never said at any point that student nurses pay uni fees – I said I lived on a bursary with kids ( ran 2 houses on 6 grand as I didn’t qualify for dependants allowance or single parent component as my kids father was still around but unable to get any money as I got a bursary so he couldn’t get any benefits. At that time you got nothing for a spousal dependent unless you were married and your children were not included as ‘dependents’ if you lived with your partner. I don’t know if this rule has been changed or not. Couldn’t even get housing benefit as I was classed as a student. So when I was on placement – I had 2 houses bills – NO money towards placement accommodation, no childcare help and no subsistence help. This was MY experience.
I still have students regularly – they DO get mileage allowance for their cars now – but none of them are given help with placement costs. ( I’ve recently had 2 who came from across the country and they had to pay accommodation costs out of their bursary). They can claim for the cheapest form of travel to placement but not if it is in their ‘base area ( which can actually involve a placement miles away but still technically within ‘base’. If this help you highlight is CURRENTLY available – it obviously is not known about in some uni’s. Or maybe they are just being brought in for this years intake – in which case – it’s about time!. Certainly – no student I’ve mentored in the last 10-15 years has had childcare paid, or accommodation.
No – Scottish student nurses are not ‘as badly’ off as the rest of the U.K. ones ( and if you are young and single, with no responsibilities – then, yes – it’s not too bad!). But that doesn’t detract from the fact that a few grand will NOT cover childcare costs for your 37.5 HR week ( 18 month) placements, and that doesn’t mean you can live on the bursary if you have dependents.
The NMC has minimum hours of placement for entry on to the register – they are non negotiable. ALL students do these hours.
There is definitely no uni in my area that does ‘paid’ placements. No student on the support boards I mentor on has ever mentioned this either. They may be on the way but I have never come across any students actually doing it. There was talk of a fourth ‘apprentice’ year in the training ( it was out for consultation) but it certainly has never been brought in to any of the uni’s that place students in my area.
Parking charges originating from the NHS hospitals has been abolished – many car parks are owned under PFPI so still charge – I can guarantee you this – Ive paid them!
I agree that this nurse was taking a pot shot at the wrong person. I also agree with folk that say Nicola Sturgeon could easily have deflected this by pointing to Ruth Davidson and national pay awards! She could also have asked the unions to participate in local area negotiations.
I totally disagree about the SG visits! – I was once ‘kept well out of the path of a Scottish secretary by my boss as I wanted to highlight a few issues to her. That is the problem – the SG will have a skewed idea of what is ACTUALLY going on because they don’t just turn up!. It’s not about fault finding – it’s about realism! It’s about asking those who DO what they need to be able to DO properly.
Announced visits are absolutely pointless – that involves bigwigs prettying everything up – and hiding problems – instead of trying to deal with them – we are supposed to be open and transparent!
I want to be able to do my job properly! I want to do it safely! I want to feel like my opinion and input is valued and that I am being listened to! – as do all my colleagues.
It’s little wonder there is so little goodwill left in nursing.
I’m not having a go at the SG – I’m well aware of the constraints they work within – I lay the blame where it should lie – with the Tories and their running down of the NHS. BUT – the SG can help by LISTENING. They may not be able to do – and if they explain why then they will move forward with staff onboard, instead of them feeling ignored and frustrated.
I love my job! I’m proud to be a nurse, but if you have a conscience, you go home feeling like you were prevented from being and giving your best. Usually it’s things that would be relatively easy to fix – IF ONLY the staff were asked!
I’m NOT talking about announced and unannounced inspections ( they only EVER usually result in staff on the floor being rollick end for things they did ‘wrong’) – I’m talking about members from the SGs health brief coming and speaking to nursing staff ( be it by email, phone, survey or in person). Just turn up – no entourage, no fine lunch – just turn up and speak to staff!
I’m an SNP supporter and fully support the SG – but in trying to ‘refute’ my LIVED experience ( not taken from the SG website- but my actual, personal, continuing) experience of training and working as a nurse – it lends credence to the assertion that nobody is allowed to criticise them.
I totally agree that students in Scotland are far better off than those in England, Ireland and Wales ( as are nurses) – BUT being better off than someone else who is worse off should never be used to mean that you are fine. Some nurses live in high cost areas, DO pay parking charges, do have to pay a fortune in childcare, work lots of unpaid, extra hours and squeeze every last drop out of themselves on every shift.
I know my personal experiences and that of my friends, colleagues and students. I KNOW what they currently do and don’t get in relation to recompense ( irrespective of what’s on a website – I speak to them daily about their struggles). understandably, your view of nurses may be skewed by false claims by those with an agenda – my only agenda is to get nurses voices heard by all. I have no axe to grind with the SG.
Folk also need to be riding the BBC on why this lady was invited back – has anyone else ever been invited back?
I wish the SNP would take the kid gloves off and start refuting instead of apologising all the time. Don’t drop things – sling them back with aplomb. They let folk walk all over them. You can be polite and firm at the same time.
The information about her being in Unison comes from one of the links in the article.
Said it before but reading her linkedin entry link to linkedin.com shows either she’s been recently promoted or is lying about her job title. She’s on there as a Staff Nurse.
In addition she’s perhaps only been full time for 3 years assuming the bit before the 2 years on the NHS Bank was after she qualified and all the bits before were during her training. The 3 employer line seems odd but never mind.
The first university she mentions now charges £12,000 per year but that was in 2009 so after the Credit Crunch and before the LibDems capitulated on fees.
Think people need to realise that if you think she might be putting on a front that the way she portrays herself on social media might also be more of the same.
‘Oh yee of little intellect’Do you really think that a monster called “Unionism” from all sides and genders is not combining to destroy a very special asset called Nicola Sturgeon who’s very background they hate after all these rats can’t have a council tenant running their cosy fiefdom,don’t let the makeup and eyelashes fool you just remember what Neil Oliver thinks of Independence and its voters well Jackie Bird and Co. think the same the media is rotten to the core and the decay is caused by unionism.
@Orri
Sorry mate your first link is broken.
Error 404 – Not Found
@Orri
One other point, I never asked about her being in Unison as that would be expected for many if not the majority of nurses.
I was specifically referring to your statement that she was:
“being advised by a union official to put a question to the panel and not directly to Nicola Sturgeon.”
Where’s the evidence for that if you don’t mind.
As NHS pay is a devolved issue for Scotlands pariament and government why is this even being made an issue of, in a UK wide election if not to deflect from Tory policies at westminster . Ruth Davidson is spending more time talking about independence and devolved issues than Nicola Sturgeon
Am I missing something, I thought that you had to be referred to a ‘Food Bank’?
Auld Rock
OOPs, i’ll try again. the link was labeled ‘air their grievance’.
The jingoists answer to each terrible terrorist attack is to call for more security and more Union jack waving jingoism. Nowhere in the British media is there analytical attempts to source the cause of these grievances to explain why we will keep on getting more and more of them. Like the poppy day fascists and jingoists no one is allowed to voice an alternative to Imperialist wars and notional charity, instead of guaranteed rights. Britain and the US have upset the Middle East and ruined any stability or good will for hundreds of years to come.Trump and May are selling billions of arms, to the Reactionary Saudies to bomb other Arab States. Plus reinforcing a European capitalist, imperialist, colony in the Middle of Palestine
It seems Florence Nightingale is an agency nurse with three employers and making a mint. No mention of why she left t English NHS for better pay and conditions in Scotland. The whole show was focused on devolved matters and attacking the first Minister, rather than dealing with Westminster Parliamentary issues?
Patrick Harvie was allowed to get away without mentioning the other candidates, including the sitting SNP MP, Patrick Grady, or why he is prepared to split the vote and maybe let Labour in?.
Scot,
there is a lead time from asking questions til broadcast, so no chance of a try to change the subject,been on QT, you’re told this at the beginning.waste of time going on,no chance of voicing your opinion if it’s out of their preferred agenda.
Stravaiger
“What’s an Ultranat? How do I get to be one? Sounds awesome!”
You would have to ask XSticks
but it is essentially any winger who was at the Aiberdeen wings nicht oot who got so drunk that they ended up on an Aiberdeen fishing trawler and woke up in Tromso getting their face licked by a seal.
ULTRANAT!
or so the story goes 😉
@donald anderson
She trained and qualified as a Nurse in Edinburgh according to her Linkedin profile.
This is as bad as some who don’t get what her joke about the choice between poor and happy and rich and miserable was about. She’s saying she’d settle for being moderately wealth off not that she is.
I find it quite funny that a lot of the articles who use this story to attack the SNP also mention the fact that this nurse went on holidays to New York.
It’s like they’re saying “We’re just going along with this story for laughs”!
My impression when I first saw the nurse ask her question was that,Nicola realised very quickly that the moderator was going along with this.
She I thought (although I have no way of knowing) looked like she debated with herself if she should give the correct answer about it being Westminster’s remit,but decided not to.
Quite rightly in my opinion, because I assumed that all this was intended to open the door for a Ruthie rant about Nicola blaming everything on Westminster,and pointing out she is in charge of health bla de bloody bla.
But Nicola didn’t bite.
I think that’s why kezzia dugdale sounds a bit desperate…..well a bit more than usual…. because they were probably all geared up to accuse Nicola of blaming Westminster for everything.
Well that’s how I read what was happening anyway.
@fletch49er
I mean she really shouldn’t be name calling. She must have had a hard time when Shrek came out…
shiregirl says:
23 May, 2017 at 2:39 pm
heedtracker says:
23 May, 2017 at 12:53 pm
I’d go along with all your comments. What are professional codes of conduct for, if they have been completely flouted here?
It’s perfectly legitimate to criticise Nicola Sturgeon publicly about pay and conditions for your NHS profession, and that goes for all public sector employees. If you want better pay, who else are you going to go lobby?
But you have to stick to the facts, as Legerwood has laid out. Legerwood has done what no hack has and shown that there are very clear differences in nurses training funding and pay between Scotland and England.
Does her professional code of conduct permit her to claim publicly to Scotland’s First Minister, that her pay is so low she uses foodbanks?
Can a nursing professional announce on a BBC tv debate, that there are nurses strikes coming? I mean are there!
All it would take is for her to name the foodbanks she needed to use. If what she’s stated publicly is untrue, this is a clear breach of her professions state codes of conduct, that are enforced, although maybe not.
Who knows what really goes on in these professional codes of conduct bodies though. Look at how Ms Austen behaved on live tv, BBC too, shocking.
See how it goes. One rotten, unprofessional, disreputable apple…
O/T
In today’s Guardian:
“UK joins Greece at bottom of wage growth league
TUC found that between 2007 and 2015 in the UK, real wages fell by 10.4%, the joint lowest in OECD countries”
UK – like Greece without the sunshine.
“HandandShrimp says:
23 May, 2017 at 11:47 am
To be fair, to be accused of being married to a Tory politician is a pretty vicious smear. It is almost the same as saying someone assisted Brady in his murders.”
Your tunnel-vision view of politics seems to have overlooked Natalie McGarry, one-time SNP MP for Glasgow East. I carry no torch for Ms McGarry but to compare her to Myra Hindley is beyond the pale.
I never heard of Ultranat before. What are they? I have read ultranat unionist trolls calling the FM jimmy krankie though
Petra, that is not Alex Allison at last week’s Question Time. I doubted it was at the time, I’m good with faces, but he later confirmed he wasn’t there on facebook. Sadly, the tweet and new tweets saying it was him and maybe she was related to him (ffs!) were doing the rounds after Sunday’s debate. Not just Joanna Cherry was caught out.
Ledger wood are you sure parking charges for staff have bee abolished at the New Southern General, last time I was there the nurses were still being charged. It’s a disgrace, six pounds a day if I remember correctly.
Any medical staff at the new hospital abe to confirm no car parking charges for staff at QE2 university hospital glasgow?
@Orri
Thanks for that, however a facebook comment from an individual member of a group should not morph into
“being advised by a union official to put a question to the panel and not directly to Nicola Sturgeon.”
Do you know for certain that he is a union official?
His comment was “I’ve given her a few things to mention but I’m sure Claire will do just fine on her own” there is no mention of what the question should be or who it should be addressed to.
Let’s stick to known facts.
Phil Robertson says:
You’re quite the a lert WoS reader eh Phil, sitting there, scoping every and any comment, leaping in on anything at all to make your psycho tory yoon point.
Are you being turned Phil, as you absorb every last Wos article and every last comment too?
What a sad life yoons have online right enough.
Is this why you do read everything on WoS Phil? Every last UKOK BBC tory hack trying on any and every SNP bad trick, hour by hour, it all certainly looks like the SNP are finished, your farce union really is saved but best have look at some actual other opinions, to keep yourself grounded maybe Phil:D
Tony Little @ 12:22,
I agree with you. As part of a campaign group for better pay for nurses, she is perfectly entitled to campaign for that, and unfortunately for her she over-egged it with the foodbank story. It may have been personally true, but it wasn’t representative, as it was clearly meant to imply. She also has a personal record of anti-SNP antipathy which came out in the very first thing she said, which was against a referendum and had nothing whatever to do with nurses’s pay (except that they might actually be better off in an independent Scotland). So she has certainly brought her case, if not her profession, into disrepute.
But as you say, the question should never have been asked in the first place. Not because nurses’ pay isn’t worthy of discussion, but because it concerned a devolved matter and thus irrelevant to a UK election. And this was entirely the fault of the BBC, who most definitely knew that.
And now they BBC are adding insult to injury by pretending it’s all the fault of the SNP for simply saying mistakenly that she’s married to a Tory councillor? FGS! This has given the lead to a number of Tory rags to try to make some belated capital out of this exposure of a fix by distorting the story out of any reasonable representation of the truth into some kind of hypernat (?!) witch hunt of this
poorunfortunate nursey.If it’s Ms Austin’s perfect right to campaign for fair pay, it’s also our right as licence-payers to demand the truth, and the whole truth, from the broadcaster whom we are forced to fund.
Phil-a-pish.
The nurse intended to do damage by an aggressive attack implying failure by the FM/SNP Government.
Attacking the FM was intended to damage the SNP despite the claim of “fighting for others”
The future of generations of Scots to come depend on a strong SNP and Independence movement.
That is why the nurse deserves the same focus as the BBC. If she had a justified truthful case to champion then she should get on with it. She either lied or blew her money by poor financial management. In neither case is the FM accountable.
…and if the BBC want to use people in this way then blame them.
Madcatwumman
Excellent posts, which I fully agree with. I trained around the same time as you I think, mid 90’s on a bursary. Thankfully I was single, and got the dog end of spartan but cheap in-house accommodation at the Glasgow Royal for the first 18 months of my training.(it closed either that year, or shortly afterwards) which was a lifesaver, things got much tighter when out in the real renter’s market!
And yes, the SG should talk to floor staff directly. It doesn’t take long off the floors for people’s perspectives to totally change. Floor staff should be consulted on work conditions, and their perspective on what could be done to make their ability to deliver care better. Not the only people to be consulted, but they certainly should not be kept out of the loop. Having the senior staff come around, ask questions of the floor staff and then ‘pass along’ concerns does not work well, as those senior staff may well only hear and see what they want to, in my opinion. And then say what they want when meeting with government officials. My recollection of the nursing high heid yins at the GRI is not fond, I’m sorry to say. Hopefully that crop has all retired and not passed along their attitudes to those who followed! If only!
@Phil Robertson
You don’t do irony do you Phil? There is no greater tunnel vision on show on Wings than yours.
You almost always fail in getting your point of view taken seriously on Wings but almost always succeed in making a fool of yourself.
Keep up the good work, Theresa needs you now more than ever.
If one can make a point on national telly, one can be prepared to given slightly more scrutiny than none at all, and especially in light of the BBC’s recent lack of vetting.
@ Petra 2.56 – welcome back! I sat through that QT and agree that those Tories in the front row on either side of The Nurse were probably Alex Allison and Eric Holford. Here’s a pic of them both on the night of the Clydesdale East election:
link to tinyurl.com
I’m sure, like me, you are stunned to find Tory plants sitting in the front row being invited, more than once, to ask questions and comment. Next time, the entire panel should be just Tory MPs, MSPs and Councillors. Why waste everyone else’s time.
Liz g. That thought crossed my mind – explaining that it is a reserved issue would appear to be a cop out so Nicola took it on.
Interesting you picked up on Kezia’s behaviour in this.
I listened to the debate on you tube yesterday. You’ll remember that the nurse asked her question quite early on (34minutes in) but Sarah Smith deftly defers it till later in the programme when we will come to discuss the NHS. So I posted this exchange between Kezia and Nicola :
Here’s a curious thing…
Kezia is the one who brings the issue back to the nurse @ 1hour 6 minutes.
Kez accuses Nicola of voting against a pay rise for nurses.
NS: not true, Kezia.
Kez: you are not listening to the nurse here in the front row. “SHE CAN’T FEED HER FAMILY”
but our nurse friend didn’t say, earlier in the programme that she couldn’t feed her family, she said :
I am a nurse. I can’t manage on the salary I have. I have to go to food banks. I am struggling to pay bills. .. no mention of any family.
Did Kezia know about her and her circumstances in advance?
Just wondering, is this a S Labour stitch up?
I think when the BBC selects their next patsy, they should advise them to wipe their whole past clean, and then tell them to got into the Recycle Bin and delete it again, just to be doubly sure.
I personally don’t understand all of the fascination with this Nurses’ life. She asked a question. Got an answer.
In fact the SNP have a strong record on nurses pay, having raised it year on year since they’ve been in power. Why don’t we talk about that? I feel the prying into this woman’s lives and the attempts to delegitimise her story just make us seem petty and plays exactly into the hands of the Unionists.
Question one. How many foodbanks were operating in 2012
Question two. Which foodbank(s)Did Claire Austin attend
Question three. Who authorised her to attend the foodbank
Question four. Did the BBC ask others who never got to ask their question on QT to attend the leaders debate.
I my opinion the BBC have brought democracy into disrepute shame on them
We all know what goes on. As for this lady she needs to realise if you fly wi’ the craws, you’ll get shot with them!To go offline only emphasises the guilt!
May be a wee’it wissnae’ me! It wis’them is a comin’. If only she would surface from the champers!
Nae chance.
@galamcennalath says: 23 May, 2017 at 2:02 pm:
“I avoid the term nat, or whatever.
I never own up to being a nationalist when debating with Yoons, I always say I am a pro democracy activist and lack of democracy is the problem.”
Funny you should say that, galamcennalath, for just the other day I was out by my front gate. I’d seen Postie coming and I have a broken gatepost I’ve not got round to fixing. So to save postie struggling with the gate I went to meet him.
Postie stuck a handful of bumpf in my hand and the top one was a Tory leaflet. At this point a, (known to me), unionist came along and saw me reading the Tory Leaflet and said, “I didn’t think Cybergnats read our leaflets in case they learn the truth”.
I’m a quick thinker and had a ready reply for him, “Oh! I’m not a Nationalist”, I said.
He pointed to the YES sticker in my Window and said, “Then why have you got a YES sticker on your window”?
My reply was – “Oh! No problem there, my friend, I’m a Scottish Patriot you see”.
This was the Tory leaflet where tRuthless waffled on about how much better good and true British/English patriotism was than that nasty, evil Scottish Nationalism.
How I managed not to laugh I’ll never know – the look on his face was a picture.
@ Cuilean 1.29
Good analysis.
@skintybroko 2:31pm
Did Rennie really say that?
Meg Merrilees @ 4.56
It’s no impossible Meg,but whatever was going on Ruthie couldn’t look up,and Nicola gave quite a glare to Sarah Smith.
I am going to go look again to see what Willing Rennie was doing.
Madcatwumman @ 12:24,
Thank you on behalf of all nurses (and indeed all other hospital staff) for the invaluable service you perform for us. Anyone who has benefited from your tender mercies, or had relatives who did, knows what it is truly worth.
Ms Austin’s point, as you support, about high-level announced visits seems very plausible, and one hopes it will be noted and acted-upon.
But it’s an imperfect world, and the SG has to balance the books (despite the £15BN libel) and it’s not easy for them to deliver all the justice that ideally they would wish, especially while still in the Union. It’s a wonder that they have been able to do it as well as they have, despite attempts to discredit their efforts with this latest attempted fix.
And talking of “unions”, which one of them is causing the “sticking point”, if I may ask? (You or anyone else.) Would it be Unison, by any chance? =grin=
It has occcurred to me that this situation would not be the first time where a union is attempting by its activities to cause difficulties to the SG in particular because it is driven by a hardline UK-wide agenda. And therefore maybe it is to the large unions that we need to look for the motivation for Labour’s rigid adherence to a Unionist stance.
Who pays the piper, etc., etc….
Question for Claire Austin. Do you regret getting involved with the corrupt and partisan BBC?
@Rev. Stuart Campbell says: 23 May, 2017 at 2:31 pm:
“To Wings: I posted the following tweet almost 1 hour ago and it has not appeared. Why?”
Because you keep logging in with different fucking names.”
That, Rev Stu, is the best laugh I’ve had for over a week. I’m just very glad I hadn’t just taken a swig from my coffee mug.
@ harry mcaye – so you are certain that is not Alex Allison? I thought it looked very like him except without the glasses.
Another of Petra’s links is to Claire Austin’s Linkedin page. She quite clearly states that she is a staff nurse and has been for 7 years. Strange then that she is earning so little.
link to linkedin.com
What this episode is highlighting is the devious methods of the BBC in manipulating the optic in an election campaign.
When we come to the referendum we must insist on OSCE monitoring, exit polls and watertight control of ballot papers. The purdah period must be enforced (who does that?) so that last minute VOWs can not influence voters.
@skintybroko says: 23 May, 2017 at 2:31 pm:
“Sorry to be O/T but Willie Rennie takes the opportunity to mention divisiveness in his statement to parliament about Manchester – bloody opportunist.”
Doesn’t the silly wee nyaff realise that it takes at least two sides in a divisive situation for it to be a divisive situation and in fact if one side is attacking the other as creating division then they are the prime reason for the division being a problem.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong but, I cannot recall any independence supporters going on about divisiveness.
Slightly o/t… The FM has been pretty much monstered in recent days about this and gets some vile abuse from people daily. But when I see her today making a speech regarding the atrocity in Manchester, her voice cracking with emotion, I am grateful to have her leading the country. I am no SNP fanboy and they certainly don’t get everything right but I believe we have a decent and honest human being as FM.
Any honest and fair person watching the leaders debate could see that the fact that the bbc had to lie as they always do , to try to appear to win any argument is a failing on their part they will never change because to have an open and honest debate they know they will never win so they resort to lying and twisting the facts but what they seem to forget and ignore is that in doing so they insult our intelligence and bring more people on to our side
The Herald is implying that Jeanne Freeman …egged on Joanna Cherry to say that the Nurse was married to a Tory Councillor .. …
The witch hunt against Cherry reminds me of the witch hunt against the SNP candidate in Edinburgh at the last election who passed on some joke …… Blew up into a disaster and resulted in losing a seat to Ian Murray…….
I don’t want to p!ss in the pickles here but this recently appeared on the Greater Manchester Police Federation twitter feed:
“THE Home Secretary has promised to visit police forces to get a true picture of the unacceptable level of demand facing the service.
Amber Rudd, appearing at the Police Federation of England and Wales’ annual conference for the first time, heard of a service on its knees. She spent much time during her speech promoting Conservative Party policies and claiming cuts had not affected crime levels.
Nick Smart, West Yorkshire Police Federation Chair told Ms Rudd: “I turned up at work this weekend to find my response inspector breaking down, going off on stress because of hundreds of unanswered calls.
“Custody looks like more like A&E. I have staff at the hospital looking after suicidal people and officers working extended hours and taking no meal breaks. That is the reality of policing day in, day out. Not just in West Yorkshire, but in the West Mids, the Met. Everywhere.”
Ms Rudd said she was “sorry to hear this description”, adding: “I have been visiting forces. I haven’t seen a situation like that.
When challenged, she conceded: “I accept your invitation to come up to West Yorkshire. I do not just sit back and listen to my advisors, I do go out and visit the places myself and I will make sure I will do if I get elected.”
A representative from Norfolk Police said: “Since I have been at this conference I have had three texts begging officers to go in on overtime. We are firefighting, we have had enough.
“I am going to guess that when you go to a force, you are going to have quite a few officers on overtime that we normally wouldn’t have and some jobs withheld so you can go on a walk around. I implore you to put in a surprise visit.”
I know Stuey has thrown on a moratorium, but we might as well get the ball rolling.
If she is employed by BUPA it may be that we are doing her an injustice, as I am sure they will tie their salary scales to the English NHS pay scales and so it is a UK parliament topic. It would also explain her comment about nurses supporting industrial action. If this is the case, it is a pity she was so confused that she went after the wrong government!
when I saw this item I told my wife it was a set up. I also noted that Andy Nichol (of the Sun, I think) said he would like to know more about the nurse.
My instinct was right:-)
Wee question sent to Kezia on her facebook page (no hope of a response) and via email (not much more likely).
Nor will she respond to your questions on this, her own page.
……….
Dear Kezia.
The SCOTTISH ELECTORATE mandated a second referendum in 2016.
The SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT further mandated that electorate mandate just a few weeks ago.
If you INSIST on IGNORING those DEMOCRATICALLY won mandates, then you are ABSOLUTELY NOT a DEMOCRAT.
I challenge you, Kezia Dugdale to respond to this comment, where you can try to explain, why you believe you can be a democrat, and DENY the DEMOCRATIC choices of the people of Scotland , especially from your own party position (in relation to Scotland) of having ZERO MANDATE at HOLYROOD, ZERO MANDATE at WM, and virtually ZERO MANDATE at COUNCIL level across massive swathes of Scotland.
Of course, you will not response, because you, KEZIA DUGDALE are a COWARD.
………
Breath not being held…..
Thepnr says:
23 May, 2017 at 4:49 pm
@Phil Robertson
You don’t do irony do you Phil? There is no greater tunnel vision on show on Wings than yours.
Well certainly not like you. In a post about how a question gets ignored and the questioner is subject to false and unsubstantiated smears, you ignore the question being made and ….
heedtracker says:
What a sad life yoons have online right enough.
Not as sad as the wee laddies hiding behind their (unamusing) pseudonyms who can do no more than indulge in personal abuse.
Of course the britnat bbc ignored this question:
link to thenational.scot
@Phil Robertson
What question Phil? You never asked a question. You talked about Natalie McGarry
“I carry no torch for Ms McGarry but to compare her to Myra Hindley is beyond the pale.”
What has that got to do with the comment from HandandShrimp you were referencing?
HandandShrimp says:
23 May, 2017 at 11:47 am
To be fair, to be accused of being married to a Tory politician is a pretty vicious smear. It is almost the same as saying someone assisted Brady in his murders.
Or is it? :/
The irony that HandandShrimp referred to was that the media gave the same prominence to an innocent mistaken tweet by Joanna Cherry that they might have given to someone as notorious as Myra Hindley.
You just never saw that though did you? Anyway what was your question and just maybe I can help you out?
I see the Brit Nat trolls have crawled and slithered out from under their rocks.
I don’t care what anybody says, the Yoon reptile is a lying Yoon bitch. I wouldn’t want her as a nurse but then I don’t do BUPA!
So all political campaigning has stopped has it, the way the Yoons are going on you wouldn’t think so!
I’m a Guga Nat today. Hate guga myself but I would sooner eat it than have that ahem nurse anywhere near me or mine.
A useful idiot who has now passed their usefulness, IMHO. It does look like AC is being opportunistic in exploiting particular events in her life, in order to advance her political outlook. I’m guilty of that myself. However, I know that utilitarianism needs to be tempered or it turns to fascism. So it is the underlying principles being supported by the actions that are the relevant issue. I use my life experience in order to advance the common good. CA?
“I think foodbanks are absolutely fantastic…it’s what human is all about” – Jacob Rees Mogg
A true zen master of his art, managing to combine with exceptional efficiency, a paternalistic, 19th century, social Darwinist understanding of how society works, along with the philosophical underpinning of the politics that resulted in Nazi death-camps. Well done that man for spotting that the most important thing in life is the control and containment of wage-rates. Give him a gong for his services to humanity.
heedtracker says:
What a sad life yoons have online right enough.
Not as sad as the wee laddies hiding behind their (unamusing) pseudonyms who can do no more than indulge in personal abuse.
Fair enough Phil. Are the famous Phil Robertsons Phil, or the non famous ones?
I’m not that wee Phil.
I pointed out yesterday that the BBC had previous regarding ‘planting’ nurses.
You won’t like the source – and you may be surprised by the beneficiary
unless you consider it was done with ‘backfire’ in mind.
link to archive.is
But it is more clear evidence that the BBC cannot be considered an honest source of news and opinion.
Madcatwumman @ 3.36
My points were made to give a fuller picture of what is happening now because criticism during the programme was aimed at what is happening now. In your original post at 12.24pm you wrote of your personal experience but did not indicate when that had happened therefore I considered it worthwhile to give the current position with regards to additional payments, uni fees etc.
Everyone would like the payments to be more so that everything is covered in full but that is unlikely to happen in the current set up.
It is not being defensive about the Scottish Government to do so. I prefer that criticism is made based on the fullest evidence whether that evidence supports or dilutes the case for criticism. But that is a personal quirk of mine.
The information on the additional payments came from official web sites not someone’s blog and therefore is relevant. The web sites are given below:
1. Student grant awarding body in Scotland. Note the section at the end on Clinical placements and expenses for travel etc. There is a link within this
link to saas.gov.uk
2. Scottish Government increased spending for dependants
link to news.gov.scot
Parking charges do still exist at some hospitals in Scotland – 3 I believe – mainly because the parking is the responsibility of private companies and involve PFI deals. Just how you scrap them when they are tied into PFI deals is anyone’s guess and is a wholly unwarranted charge on health workers.
Details here
link to news.gov.scot
I did not say that some student nurses were paid for clinical placements but that there seems to be some discussion of the issue. For example, a call for payment for student nurses when on clinical placement was made at Unison’s annual healthcare conference in 2016 and delegates at the event passed the motion. A campaign was to be launched to rally support for this but I do not know how it is progressing. Not well perhaps given the UK Government’s attitude to paying bursaries to student nurses and midwives and making them pay Uni fees.
The nurses and midwives as well as other health professionals have a strong case for pay increases after years of 1% increases as do many other public service workers. I don’t think any reasonable person would disagree with that apart from Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May but then they would never be described as reasonable.
Health Improvement Scotland carries out announced and unannounced visits to hospitals and as their name suggests they are about improvement. If they did not visit, inspect, write reports, make recommendations and then follow up with further visits what do you think the infection rate would be in hospitals? In a professional capacity, as a visitor and as a patient I have seen things going on in hospitals that deserve a rollicking.
I think we shall have to agree to disagree on the subject of official visits.
The actual truth of this could be much simpler than you could imagine. If perchance any of you have studied employee engagement you would realise than no matter the size of your company there are three types of employee.
1. Fully engaged with their employer and their job. Around 80% of any workforce.
2. Those who are indifferent to any changes or improvement. Around 15 to 20%.
In the latter group however there is always a minority around 2% to 5% who are actively hostile to the company and everybody else in it. They are in fact destructive to a large degree either directly or indirectly.
I think this woman fits right into the last category, and totally reflects that behaviour. Normally you will find workers very defensive of their role and organisation even if they occasionally feel put upon.
P.S. I’m not suggesting CA is a knowing fascist. More likely she has a partial, common-all-garden, general knowledge understanding of how things work. That’s partially how ideological British nationalism has survived for so long,IMHO.
Thepnr says:
23 May, 2017 at 5:57 pm
You talked about Natalie McGarry …
What has that got to do with the comment from HandandShrimp you were referencing?
Are you serious or merely being ironic again? The clue is in the phrase “being married to a Tory politician”.
It’s the same as being told “you have no taste or common decency”. 🙂
Ignore the troll. He has contributed nothing but distraction, as he fully intended to do from the start.
Here’s another from the Greater Manchester Police Federation Facebook page:
GMP Federation
April 28 at 3:02am ·
GMP has ‘felt the burn’ of Government’s austerity agenda, says Police and Crime Commissioner.
Tony Lloyd was responding to the recent HMIC report in to policing in Manchester.
The report published earlier this month … did find the force still needed to improve in some areas.
Mr Lloyd said: “That the HMIC has recognised and highlighted the immense pressure placed on police officers as a result of cuts to public services can only be welcomed.
I would question, however, why it has taken so long to come to this conclusion.
“Since 2010, £180m has been axed from GMP’s budget and there are 2,000 fewer officers patrolling our streets. A further £44m needs to be saved by 2020. And it’s not only policing that has felt the brunt of the government’s austerity agenda.”
Seems like Strong and Stable Mayhem has some ‘splainin’ to do.
You might want to take part in this survey by my trade union Unite. (Unfortunate name)
They have a drop down list which automatically assumes that you are Labour Supporter and so ask for your 2nd Choice. lol
They ask about your top priority that would improve your life but it looks like Independence was too tough to spell?
Dear *****
Life is tougher under the Tories – work is becoming more insecure and austerity is having a terrible impact on our communities. A Labour Government will stand up for our communities and ensure protection for workers.
They will do this by taxing only the top 5% and ensuring corporations pay their share.
Click here to tell us your views on what would improve life for you.
link to unitepolitics.nationbuilder.com
Thank you for being a member of Unite the Union.
In solidarity,
Pat ************
Scotland Unite the Union Secretary
P.S You can see 10 reasons to vote Labour by clicking here
We are losing the plot over this.
The nurse may have had to use food banks, her attachment to it being about nurses pay is the problem. The entire public sector has had to endure stagnation due to the austerity measures imposed from Westminster.
The SNP government has done it’s best to protect the NHS Police, Local Government but is under attack from the right wing, who would privatise and cut services.
The unions know only too well the truth of it but has to support the Labour Party and in turn attack the SNP, despite them knowing only too well it us the SNP who are protecting the services we all rely on.
I normally dont like it when everything is compared with theirEnglish couterpart but on this occasion we need o look at the bigger picture.
Jobs and services have been protected by the SNP, lets get that fact out their.
Well done rev. I work in financial inclusion and refer to food banks. Shes not typical. And I’m being charitable there.
But you know what the solution is? Don’t slag that person off on the net – no matter how much it’s deserved. Go out there and canvass for the snp. Or the greens where they are standing – up to you – although I’d suggest the snp is a more realistic horse to back.
Don’t like canvassing? Deliver leaflets or rock up at a stall. Failing that donate to a food bank. Channel your energies in useful ways and leave the rev to do the needful.
Got myself confused by which membership Chris Findlay was talking about.
link to archive.is
Has some choice morsels….
Mr Findlay added: “We aren’t going to go away, this is only the beginning. We are going to have more protests, petitions and we will be getting our MSP’s involved.
“We want thousands of people to be taking part, not just hundreds.”
And
Unison branch chair, Tom Waterson, said: “I’m delighted Chris has taken the initiative to get so many nurses from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to protest against the Westminster imposed one per cent.
“Unison Scotland does not agree with the pay review body and has taken a conference decision that we can remove ourselves from the pay review body and would urge all trade unions to join us in getting back to proper collective bargaining with the Scottish Government.”
Sounds a bit like the decision for Labour controlled councils to withdraw from Cosla so they could moan about not getting enough funding despite having removed the method for applying for it.
Phil
Indeed, so why is making the mistake that someone is married to a Tory Councillor the basis for such a fevered “evil ultranat smear” frenzy.
Is being married to a Tory the mark of the Devil? Clearly, not as we were quite relaxed about McGarry.
There are many things one could say or ascribe to a person that would be upsetting, damaging to their careers, damage marriages etc., but I am not sure that mistaking someone for a wife of a Tory Councillor is one of them…being mistaken for Myra Hindley on the other hand probably is one of them.
I despair at the lack proportion in the press. Indeed in this instance it is so disproportionate as to appear utterly contrived.
It should be a condition of SNP membership that you undertake to cancel the BBC tax. I did in 2014 out of disgust at the BBC referendum campaign and would urge all Indy supporters to do likewise. The BBC is simply a state propagandist organisation that North Korea envy.
Orri @ 18:41,
It must be galling for unions to know that they would get a better deal from the SG than a Tory UKGov, yet somehow just can’t recognise that there will be a Tory UKGov receding into the distant future and just can’t help themselves from vainly pouring money and support into Labour, even north of the border where the party is slowly withering away to insignificance.
Curious too to see via one of those links upthread that Corbynites down south now seem very keen to attack Greens and other remainers, despite all that “progressive alliance” talk. But I suppose it wasn’t very likely that Labour exceptionalism only existed north of the border.
To be honest, the fiasco over Claire Austin is nothing but a side show now. It’s pointless. The lady went on to air a grievance, but didn’t expect the tsunami of questions, investigations, accusations and trolling. She’s gone. She’ll never stick her head above the parapet again. To do so a second time without explaining her grievances properly to the public (and with proof) will only lead to a volley of deep anger and serious accusations. We’ll never hear a peep from Nurse Austin again.
However …there is the BBC. They caused all this and it they who should be held accountable. And it now makes Donalda MacKinnon, the BBC Scotland’s director who was appointed last year and who ‘promised to address the lack of trust felt by a ‘significant number’ of people following the independence referendum’ …especially Scottish nationalists. Well …that promise lies in tatters. She’ll never be trusted again by half of the Scottish electorate.
The SNP to be honest, really need to bring the BBC to task over this, and do so publicly. Even many Unionists mistrust the BBC (my parents are Unionists and they hate the BBC. They believe the Tories get too much airtime and that the focus is always on London).
Hopefully, this issue with the BBC isn’t allowed to just dissipate. Hopefully, Donalda and Co will be dragged to Holyrood to explain exactly what happened last Sunday. And why not …lets bring Jackie Bird and Sarah Smith along too. They might just be able to shed some more light on who told them to do what. I’m dying to put Smith in front of a committee and have questions put to her asking why she gave permission for questions around devolved issues to be allowed. If she says she didn’t realise, then she’s just admitted publicly that she’s incompetent. If she said she was told to allow the questions to be given airtime …then who authorised it?
@ Cameron Brodie, 6.02pm
“I think foodbanks are absolutely fantastic…it’s what human is all about” – Jacob Rees Mogg
I caught this on Rev Stu’s twitter feed. The YT vid seems to be some sort of local GE hustings.
My first reaction was “what century is this person on?” Second reaction, why do so many people want to be there with him?
He, while being a real person in the here and now, comes across as a caricature of an entitled upper-class English person c. 100 or 200 years ago.
That’s key. He represents “the good old times”. Besides his rich aristocratic and “landed gentry” friends, he appeals to fans of Downton Abbey, people who like the old order, who (mistakenly) think they’d be “upstairs”, not “downstairs”, like 95% of people were.
J R-M represents a fantasy that people can be like him if they vote for him, join the club… But you can never join the club if you aren’t born into the right family and wealth. Well, you could (grudgingly) be accepted if you’re fabulously rich enough and accept all the social norms and snobbery and marry your kids in the right families. Trying to “social climb” into the elite.
I’m no great fan of the monarchy but I feel a teensy bit sorry for the rich middle-class girl that married the prince. Especially the way the tabloids and the public who take their lead from them, treat her family. English snobbery at its finest, perpetuated by working classes, lower middle-class. Jesus wept.
The same attitudes are present in Scotland but to a significantly lesser degree. Due to history, due to universal education, due to old clan ties, whatever the reasons are, but modern Scotland’s outlook is once again different from the English outlook.
I mean, who in Scotland would take Jacob Rees-Mogg seriously? Not even tory unionists, I bet.
sassenach says:
23 May, 2017 at 1:13 pm
“O/T
Good God, just seen that the ‘Poisoned Dwarf’ has now become Leader of Dumfries council – yikes!”
How did that happen? SNP newcomer Trcey Little gets to be Provost though.
@AlbertaScot
It’s not just the police who are failing due to falling numbers nor the English NHS. Prisons and the running of them are now an absolute disaster area.
From the Guardian this month:
“Suicides reached 119, the highest since records began in 1978. That means a prisoner kills themselves every three days.”
“Since 2010, according to Full Fact, the number of frontline prison officers has been cut from 19,900 to 14,700 full-time equivalents, as the prison population continues to climb.”
“The government has allowed prisons to become dirty, frightening and dangerous. Since 1990 the number of prisoners has almost doubled to around 85,000.”
link to archive.is
The bbc loves Mogg, Johnson etc. What larks!
And this just in from the MI5 website:
“Current threat from international terrorism
The current threat level for international terrorism in the UK is SEVERE.”
Doesn’t seem like the best of times to whack 2,000 FTEs from the Greater Manchester Police.
But what do I know, I’m just a dumb Canucklehead and not a genius like Therese Mayhem.
There are a bunch of grieving parents today who likely deserve a few straight answers. Just sayin’.
I quite like JRM in an English archetypal sort of way – like Bertie Wooster. Paul Nuttall also. Of course, they should never get anywhere near power. But a good TV sitcom built around their personas would probably be very popular – in England.
Did the “independence supporting” The National put the record straight and ask the right questions?
Robert J. Sutherland
If true, that suggests to me that someone has decided that competing with the Tories for the votes of English isolationists, is more worthwhile than a progressive alliance with other parties. I would associate such a decision with the Fabian society. It pretty sure it would get the support of “Bomber” Ben.
Capella says:
23 May, 2017 at 7:58 pm
I quite like JRM in an English archetypal sort of way
I agree Capella, it’s the ‘hangers on’ like IDS etc who I despise.
A question needs to be asked of another participant in the TV debate, and unlike the nurse, that person is not mysteriously unavailable:
Kezia Dugdale, did you have advance knowledge of that nurse questioner and her question?
And for that matter, did you also have advance notice of that teacher and her own off-topic question?
Capella says:
‘I quite like JRM in an English archetypal sort of way ‘
I agree, I think he is quite entertaining, its almost like watching a different species.
@Robert J. Sutherland
Naw no way, never, never in a million years. Well OK mibbee.
I predicted a couple of weeks ago that a ‘top’ journalist at the Herald would produce a story on Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh at least once a week, I have not been proven wrong so far. The current one is the mention of a lawfirm going into liquidation (a few lines), then a full review of all the previous stories. This person seems to have an unhealthy pre-occupation with female SNP MP/MSP’s.
@ thepnr above
Prisoners kill themselves, isn’t that a tory policy, or at least their desired outcome?
One REALLY big gripe I have is that prisoners are denied the vote in the UK. That last happened in my country (100 years independent this year) shortly after our civil war (1918). Known Red leaders were denied the vote, the communist party was outlawed.
A few years later, civil rights were restored, on EVERY citizen. Even prisoners. In my country, denying voting rights to prisoners would be an outrage. Fascist. They’re one of us, one of our citizenry, our population. A tiny proportion, denying their voting rights won’t affect GE results, the parties trying to gain power. Most prisoners don’t vote, anyway. But the idea is to treat them as members of our society, engage them, give them voice.
The British way (and Scotland is part of it) seems to be to punish and punish and exclude people from society.
From GMP’s North West Counter Terrorism Unit page:
“Intelligence is gathered by both overt and covert methods. It is then assessed, evaluated, analysed and disseminated and is used to inform both Police Forces and the Security Service about threats from groups and individuals regarding national security and domestic extremism issues.”
Can’t seem to crack just how many of these guys are still on the job today following the Tory’s England police cuts. Hen’s teeth and all that.
Before and after would be a valuable stat to have to put May-Day May-Day Mayhem’s election campaign in perspective. No?
JRM is a PG Wodehouse character straight out of the 1920s/30s.
He is actually good TV and he can articulate an argument. I like him but only as a commentator Heaven forefend he might ever be in power.
You have to check the Project Fear dates but anyone for another vote No or else Graun slam?
Graun ligger says Scotland’s was bust 2014 and even more bust today. Why does nation state Scotland have to have a balanced budget, yet the UK certainly doesnt now and hardly ever does, is not addressed by this fiscal genius. The terrible burden of all that not Scottish oil.
link to archive.is
“Back then, the Scottish National party said a post-independence Scotland would continue to use the pound sterling. The economic logic looked weak at the time, and remains so: Scotland would be embracing a currency union that could damage its own competitiveness at the moment of separation and make balancing the budget harder, especially if the oil price was low.”
Heedtracker – also read just the other day that Moody’s have set a junk status on an iScotland
Whatever these guys are on, they’ve been had.
I notice that nobody has mentioned the latest report from the School inspectors in England. Boy is it a doozy.
I think it is the OEPD, which found that more children than ever in England are leaving school totally illiterate. Of course it seems to be a Scottish problem only doesn’t it ?
Rees Mogg’s just another rich tory that dumped the bed room tax on the poorest, his family’s net worth is only £150 million, meanwhile his house needed renovated so,
link to thecanary.co
Just to add that they found 17% of 17 to 19 year old youngsters left school functionally illiterate in England
re;Lumilumi@8.25
Actually the SNP Scotgov I presume have no power to give prisoners the vote. Is it devolved anyone know?
Also the SNP Scotgov do in fact attempt to reduce the prison population and to rehabilitate where possible. Levels of crime have gone down in Scotland in the last ten years. However, we do not really have any effective maritime police guarding our waters, so that is a problem, again, that side of things is reserved to WM. We are surrounded by sea.
The UKGov have never been keen to tackle the actual causes of crime.
Re;jfngw@8.22
Maybe the Herald ‘journalist’ is on performance related pay, or special bonus pay for scraping the barrel. Hopefully they will find it is just full of their own dirt though.
I think that in the present crisis we
should seriously consider suspending the upcoming
election until things have settled down
and we all find out what is “TRUE” or “not”.
After all these are, “serious” times we are living in.
@ Clydebuilt 5.27
We should know if there is any truth in this. The great white hope of Unionism, Andrew Neil, should be tasked with publicly interrogating Jeane Freeman about this. Then we could all enjoy watching him getting his arse on a plate like he did the last time he interviewed her. Lol.
Shinty at 8:44 pm
‘also read just the other day that Moody’s have set a junk status on an iScotland’
where did you read that? They have even Greece at Caa Stable. One of the agencies gave us AAA in 2014.
@HandandShrimp, Capella and others.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is not amusing. He comes across as a total throw-back. A twit/twat character from Downton Abbey or some BBC costume drama.
However, he has power. He’s an MP, a backbencher who gets more media exposure than most backbenchers, even some frontbenchers. He gets his message out there. He’s helped by the BBC and other MSM, who try to train us to think the JRM way. Oiks in their place (foodbanks are good), Jocks in their place, etc.
We might well laugh at the ridiculousness of JRM but we’re the minority. He’s been so bigged up by the UK media that he’s practically a hero. Someone who stands up for the Empire and the good old times.
I wish it all would backfire, but I’m not all that hopeful, what with the UK press.
re credit ratings, having read a bit more, Greece is Caa3, ‘in default with little prospect for recovery’. Ouch.
Ive found the ‘junk’ warnings in the Express and Times. Seems a bit harsh as a change from AAA in 2014.
Glamaig -https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/3006760/moodys-warns-scotland-exit-could-leave-country-facing-junk-rating
@ Effijy at 6.33
I also received that survey from Unite.
Did you click on the link to “10 reasons to vote Labour”?
There are only 5.
(Only Labour deserves our vote, apparently.)
I replied to Pat and told him there are in fact 0 reasons for voting Labour. I doubt if he will respond.
I recall Jocob Rees Mogg’s father defending another of the corrupt Tory boy, a Lord King, who was caught out on a fraud that sent a percentage of phone calls that were intended for Virgin Atlantic Airways, to British Airways, who Lord King was Lording over.
Old Rees Mogg said that the fraud was justifiable as British Airways was part of the fabric of the UK?
Being a crook when you are an old Etonian is fine.
Old Branson has now weaselled his way into the cabal as he has already received a couple of £Billion of NHS Contracts
for his Virgin Care Company.
@lumilumi
Well BBC 4 does still run repeats of ‘The Good Old Days’. JRM would make the perfect replacement for Leonard Sachs (all that vocabulary nonsense he so enjoys), maybe it would be a better place for him.
Shinty says:
23 May, 2017 at 9:13 pm
Glamaig -https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/3006760/moodys-warns-scotland-exit-could-leave-country-facing-junk-rating
Who gives a toss. When our Independence comes we’ll be fine with our new currency the “smackarooney”.LOL The Chinese and Japan will love them and buy loads.So will the Yanks. The pound will be dead.
Totally O/T – just waving wildly and blowing kisses at limilumi.
Re Credit rating for an Independent Scotland, take all talk now with a pinch of salt. Here’s what Moodys said in 2014
link to archive.is
Also Standard and Poors in the same year
link to archive.is
The fact is that these rating agencies are basically worthless when it comes to actually rating the financial strength of companies or countries.
In the run-up to 2008, a staggering proportion of mortgage-based debts were rated AAA, when in fact they were junk. The same goes for groups such as Enron, Lehman Brothers and AIG. Days before they went bust, Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch all still rated these failing companies as safe investments.
link to archive.is
Eek all embarrassed – typo *hides*
And Lord King wiped Air Caledonia off the map, at the behest of St Thatcher, cant allow the jocks their own national airline. He was a ferocious tory thug that one.
Look what Aer Lingus has done for Ireland. You can check in to the USA, at Shannon airport. Nation statehood really is another world. Wish they all could be Caledonian.
Robbo says: at 9:24 pm
cheers. More research (always recommended *before* typing) tells me ‘junk’ actually means ‘speculative’ and we only got ‘A’ in 2014.
Anyway I would rather be a bit poorer temporarily ‘with a bit of pride upon the shelf’ than be a nation forever cringing. I think we would spread what we have a bit more fairly than the UK currently does.
Well there you have it, here we go. Threat level increased to critical and troops on the street supporting police. TM just said on telly.
You won’t see much or get near her noo i fear during the election campaign if it does go ahead??
@Phil Robertson says: 23 May, 2017 at 5:34 pm:
“Not as sad as the wee laddies hiding behind their (unamusing) pseudonyms who can do no more than indulge in personal abuse.”
For someone complaining about personal abuse, Phil that seems rather like a very childish, primary school style, “My Dad’s bigger than your Dad Na-na-na-na-nanna!”, kind of retort.
I cannot recall a really adult, clearly stated, and reasoned comment ever made by you on Wings.
Ah, hahaha. Paula Rose, I was getting all puffed up with indignation that you spelled my nic wrong… but you corrected yourself, and I’m left with all this fake indignation with nowhere to go… Direct it at the SNP, as the MSM tells us to do?
Hahahahaaah haha ha.
No, I’ll direct it at the BBC, the woefully inadequate, incompetent unionist politicians and their toadying Scottish MSM. That I can grimly laugh about.
And this from Comrade Jeremy’s Election Manifesto:
“Labour will recruit 10,000 more police officers to work on community beats, equivalent to at least one more for every neighbourhood in the country.”
I know JC is a goofy old 70s Lefty and quite capable of stepping in a pasture pizza before the election runs out of gas.
But if he doesn’t exploit this one after the campaign is un-paused then he really is thicker than a brick.
C’mon the hung Parliament. With Queen Nik the king maker.
And how ’bout Sinn Fein lying in the thistles somewhere.
Is it just me but doesn’t Michelle O’Neill have a lot of mo going for her?