Setting the example
In some little-noticed news slipped out last Friday, it was revealed that Kezia Dugdale is to take up a position on the governing body of the Scottish Parliament.
Our favourite thing was her quote on the nomination:
“I’m very pleased to be Labour’s nominee for the SPCB. Having argued for gender balance, I’m glad that at least two of the five positions will now be held be women.”
…which suggested that she was unhappy exact gender balance hadn’t been achieved by placing two-and-a-half women on the board. (Unless she was getting at some sort of alternative solution, we suppose.)
But since the Herald raised the subject, it seemed a good time to take a look at voters’ opinions as to whether she might be a fit and proper person for such a role.
Just over a quarter of respondents were happy with her decision to abandon constituents to appear on “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here”, with 60% believing that it was either completely inappropriate under any circumstances, or unacceptable unless the entire appearance fee went to charity (which it isn’t).
Opinion among 2017 Labour voters was barely any different to that of the public as a whole – just 33% backed the move with 58% opposed – and there were no significant variances by gender, wealth, indyref vote, EU referendum vote, football allegiance or sexuality either.
So someone the electorate believes has held the Parliament in contempt has just been appointed to oversee the body responsible for upholding its standards. It almost makes Toby Young look like a unity candidate.
Deputy Daftdale comes across a being a tad challenged in the napper department but in light of the jungle readies she pocketed for her walk on – she’s having the last laugh now. Full of surprises that yin. You never know she might jump ship(s).
Mind you out of SLAB’s most prominent female MSP’s she is sadly probably the best to be nomitated. Which is a bit of an indictment of the rest of the field. Would for eg would you like Ms Bailey of the Abacus in that position?
It will be the perfect opportunity for her to hone her critical faculties in preparation for a panel position on Strictly or perhaps X Factor.
There is a really dangerous disconnect atm between voters and those ‘up top’.
I’m speaking for myself obviously when I feel that the gulf has widened and needs sorting asap. The ‘chrimbo box’ was the final bloody straw…
I don’t expect voters to be always right, same with those we elect, but feel we aren’t being listened to at all.
If she wanted to appear as a Celebrity she should have resigned she not a Celebrity she a Member of the Scottish Parliament with a duty to her constituency that she walked away from.
Whit next Celebrity Big Bother, or should that be Big Sister?
Or, GB Bake off, Fake Britain, Britain’s Got Nae Talent, Strictly Come Morris Dancing, or Neil Oliver’s Vacancy in Coastal Britain?,Or British Medieval Monarchs?
Better and better (rubs eyes).
Could be worse. She could have claimed parliamentary expenses on the trip to Australia on the basis that it was a fact finding mission to explore how a federal system of government works in practice. You know, in line with Labour’s oft repeated plans for a federal UKOK. Those plans which never quite seem to make it into their manifesto but will solve all Scotland’s problems.
If correct, I think SPCB is responsible for ensuring that Holyrood has everything in terms of resources it requires to function day to day.
You know, such as MSP’s in place.
Monty Python you do not have a look in.
Not one who sees the reality of life as it truly is. Am sure we could find no better candidate ( slight satire or maybe even sarcasm).
Afternoon ‘Muscleguy’. You credit JB with more arithmetical than she deserves, she hasn’t got past using her fingers and toes to aid her counting and even that is usually a disaster, LOL. Also she hasn’t decided or found out if her two thumbs count as fingers.
More unionist corruption to keep her sweet in case she spills the beans. Deary, boring Dugdale continues on the list. 3rd rate rejects. Who promotes and makes these appointments? Does it carry more responsibilities payment. Dugdale once again promoted beyond her capabilities. On the take. Instead of doing something useful for a change. C’est la vie. Unionist corruption. Is she the only one available? It was her, Monica or Bailey. The unionist conundrum. Total lack of any talent.
Claudia Beamish would have been a better choice for Labour. She at least appears to be quite intelligent and well informed about the important issues of the Parliament. I guess that in itself disqualifies her as a Labour candidate.
Who nominated Kezia Dugdale?
Who says ‘crime’ doesn’t pay!
She buggered off for three weeks without permission, still got paid (although she claims to have given her salary away) by the tax payers, earned c5 times the average salary for her jolly and now thinks she can comment on the ‘standards’ of her peers!!
Why is this allowed to happen? What sort of example does her appointment set in the eyes of the electorate; we are already just a bit cynical of politicians. This does no favours to the status of my parliament.
Have a nice day.
More front than Selfridge’s the SLabour crew.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office, boosting up my bank acc on crappy tv etc I will be back at (Date of Return). During this period I will have limited access to my email.
Yours in absentia,
Kez
XXX
!st order of business Kezia FIRE PITS the electorate want to see U walking on hot coals .
A continuing key priority of the Corporate Body and its staff is to make sure that the Scottish Parliament can operate effectively and that MSPs are able to carry out their duties.
link to parliament.scot
Anyhoo! 2 out of 5 is 50% … init?
What a disgrace. Scottish Parliaments governing body. Sounds like a responsible job, is it a paid position? Is she up to the job and is it for the duration of this parliament? Want to know exactly what her role will be, presume there will be some level of decision making.
These people make me sick, elevated to positions in parliament they don’t deserve, awarded status in society while crapping on the people they keep poor. Thing is, they sleep very well in their cosy warm beds having stepped over the homeless people that they don’t give a s**t about, and take a huge wage for doing pretty much nothing unless it’s to further their own sordid careers.
Shafting Scotland gets them a few Britnat points and status as well. Sickening.
Richard Leonard abilities has raised my opinion of Kezia Dugdale significantly. She is undoubtably the best suited lady Labour MSP for the post in my opinion. Just consider the other options and she may well have very sensible suggestions on how Holyrood should be improved. It’s tended to go downhill in recent years.
The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) is not responsible for upholding the standards of the Scottish Parliament. That is the remit of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. SPCB is responsible for “ensuring that the Parliament is provided with the property, staff and services it requires”. (Scottish Parliament website)
Whether Kezia Dugdale is an appropriate individual to sit on the SPCB remains a matter for debate.
Has Kez been given the bullet re her column in the Retard?
Re possible alternatives in the ranks of Scottish Labour women I’m puzzled by the apparent continuing silence from Jenny Marra – is she just waiting patiently in the wings ready to strike for power when a suitable opportunity arises having realised that at present the Leadership is a poisoned chalice to be avoided at all costs.
Surprise, Surprise – Farage on BBC Daily Politics yet again.
I thought she needed the fee to pay her libel settlement with Wings.
Capella says:
Indeed. Those are dangerous qualities when it comes to the Unionist notion of devolution! The role of the ‘Scottish Executive’ was quite clear … make no waves.
Re;Roland rat@12.28
You’re haven’ a larf, thanks for the Monday mad hatter humour though! Lolz.
Is this a consolation prize for over-the-hill politicians like an elevation to the Lords down in that London?
Or is it the latest craze…yon failing upwards mullarkey?
Still it is remarkable that someone who has complained about the gender balance of this body, and who has in the meantime become a Z-list celebrity for drinking bull’s penis juice and a mixed-anus cocktail, who currently has a partner from a different party, recommended voting for yet another party at a WM general election which did not actually involve her, is embroiled in a defamation suit, and finally is a bit rubbish at politics…(sorry I need to stop a minute to get my breath back)…this (THIS!) no-goodnik is deciding how Holyrood runs on a day-to-day basis?
If only there was some profession who could look at this in depth and inform us about what’s really going on…does anyone know if such a job exists? Or am I just spitballin’? Anyone?
If it was right and proper in Kezia’s mind to go to the jungle in 2017, could she go on another TV gane show in 2018?
She saw pound signs and celebrity in going to the jungle. However she did not have the personality, presence and leadership skills to make an impression on her fellow contestants let alone the public.
If she had made an impression, would she have returned to the Scottish Parliamant?
No, she would be releasing a slimming video or a book and appearing on breakfast TV, etc.
Any other job, and Kezia would have been sacked. That she was not, highlights a glaring gap in Holyrood’s rules and labour morals.
The Paliament through SPCB can legislate to draft an attendance clause in MSPs contracts, as for labour morals, that gap is unbridgeable.
I wonder if her nomination was conditional with a Labour gagging order.
O/T
Nicola Sturgeon: A Spirit of Scottish Assertiveness will fight an extreme Brexit
link to snp.org
It’s easy to think there’s a massive choice in politicians out there – so many are into self aggrandisement and are found wanting emotionally.
If rumours are indicative, Kesia Dugdale is well liked by colleagues at Holyrood and this probably explains why she’s been proposed for, and accepted the job.
Your alternative solution could work if an inter-sex person (Used to be called hermaphrodite) were chosen; 2 males, 2 females and an inter-sex person. That would not get us into issues to do with genders.
The country await with bated breath on the news of Sainted Tereza’s re shuffle , the Aborigines have ah word for the assorted moothpieces Jibber-Jabber .
Your alternative solution could work if an inter-sex person (Used to be called hermaphrodite) were chosen; 2 males, 2 females and an inter-sex person. That would not get us into issues to do with genders.
Well labour does like to ape the tories, they have toby and labour has kezi neither of whom care for anyone but themselves.
Coming so close after her unauthorised absence to be asked to look after ‘standards’ is laughable. In any other job she would have been sacked and certainly not have been paid wether giving it to charity or not.
Labour lives in a parallel universe and know nothing about the people they are suppose to serve.
Their complicity with MSM and Christmas box of bad news just adds to mental ill health and stress and they should be ashamed but it does seem possible to shame labour.
Sorry IMPOSSIBLE to shame labour.
This politics lark must be a god send to all these Psychopathic Liars who gravitate towards a career in Scottish politics ,
Anyone who is a total failure and for the most part contributes absolutely nothing that will benefit society is on a winner, a dead cert to advance through the slimy ranks ,
I used to think ” The Thick of it ” and Malcolm Tucker were works of fiction and too bizarre to be believable , how wrong was i , if anything the script has probably been toned down .
As for Kezia her constant confusing Fact & Fiction surely must disqualify her from any official post in our parliament , I mean Ken Macintosh was one thing Kezia’s appointment is really taking the Piss .
Nicola and the SNP administration trying to be fair and not loading all the committees with SNP MSPs have given themselves a problem they dont need , i guess they assumed they were dealing with Adults , This unionist opposition Bloc dont deserve any respect , they dont want to assist , they just want to disrupt and hamper any efforts at good governance , f them all
Sounds like a wee sideline for extra wages? She’s just doing the organisation of resources side as Peter points out, but I would be interested to know whether this gives her extra dosh…what with all those outgoings on lawyers for the defamation case?
I got it in the neck from some members of the public at the time when Dugdale was in the jungle.
They were asking me why the Scottish government didn’t do something about it like sack her as an MSP.
I had to point it to them that it had nothing to do with Scottish Government and that as she was a Labour MSP it was a matter for the Labour party to deal with.
But should we really be surprised that Dugdale has accepted the appointment to the governing body of the Scottish parliament.
After all whenever there’s money to be made from a gravy train you’ll usually find a Labour politiciani
The real sovereignty is with the people of Scotland, not the FM or Holyrood. They used their sovereignty and voted to Remain in the EU.
Holyrood- based on the Scotland Act – is a devolved assembly that is subservient to WM.
If it wants to act with sovereign authority, it has to act as the representatives of the people of Scotland’s sovereignty.
The people of Scotland decided the UK should Remain in the EU. That’s the sovereign will of the people. No other position by the SNP has sovereign backing.
The SNP have no sovereign democratic mandate to argue for UK Soft Brexit. They have no mandate for Brexit.
To try to attempt a UK-wide compromise deal compromises Scottish sovereignty, it supports the idea that the UK is a unified unitary state.
The position adopted by the SNP as part of the UK – may be advantageous in the short term.
Longer term, it damages the argument that Scotland is sovereign. Undermines the position that the UK are a bipartite or 4 parts. It supports the idea that the UK is a single entity, a unitary state.
If, the unlikely happens, and the SNP achieved the goal of Soft Brexit, it would make remaining in the UK more attractive than Scottish independence.
Quite simply, the current position adopted by the SNP is a serious error of judgement.
Can anyone explain to me, Ive been asking folk this for ageas now
How can you be absent from your place of employment without permission and STILL BE PAID and also suffer no repercussion or discipline ( a quick meeting with your own party leadership isnt even close)?
The laissez-faire attitude is a disgrace from so many at Holyrood and standards seem non-existant. Its like a wee club rather than a place of graft.
Why dont MSPs and MPs have to fill in timesheets like the rest of us…im not having this “Oh they do a lot of out of hours”..so do all shuft staff and on call personnel.
That is one standard at Holyrood that need immeediately nipped in the bud…if youre not there and away on your own accord, no wages, regardless of how you paint “donating” them away for your own benefit.
And here was me thinking Rev Stu was keen on Kezia. In fact I heard he was Courting Her.
Does this post attract extra remuneration or is it like a Ken MacIntosh job for life nobody job where you’re not noticed or is it just for Scotland in Union members like Ken MacIntosh
Whatever it is it has a bad smell about it, one minute she’s being fired out of the party for wrong doings then she’s sent to Coventry, now they’ve found another job for the woman who has failed at everything else
Including the jungle
Still, small mercies and all that at least she’ll have enough money to pay the fine for slandering That Bath based controversial blogger from Bath towers Bath, who lives in Bath not Scotland
Damn his vile cybernatic eyes
Next stop for Dugdale: hoose o lairds. It’s the Labour britnat way.
With over 70 listed genders and an infinite number of possible personal options,
how the fek is two female three male in ANY way “gender balanced”,
someone should stand up in Parliament and tell her that she should be representing all Scottish citizens no matter if they do not conform to her gender binarism,
jeezo it`s the 21st Century not 1970.
Now if I was to diminish the Scottish Parliament in the eyes of the electorate, then I’d ensure it was populated by detritus. By association all Parliament would be tarred with the status of useless, incompetent and no better than a parish council.
It would not be in my interest to have intelligent and competent personnel raising its profile. Knowing the modus-operandi of Unionists is to destroy the Parliament – it is less likely that there is a dearth of ‘useful’ Unionist politicians to chose from. More probable that the plan is to ensure a general inference that the Scottish populace in general is far too incompetent to even find anyone of intelligence.
Look around. Is the job done? Ask yourself if you also think Scotland cannot produce quality parliamentarians of any colour… How then does the general populace feel do you think? You may try and convince them there is a core of talent available to govern Scotland, but are they swamped by the idiocy around them, how often do you hear “Ach they’re all the same”?
It’s quite deliberate, because of course if not deliberate, the alternative is that the mantra is true: We are too wee and stupid. No?
Try pointing that out if you are struggling for an angle.
Coco sinking in a pit of desperation…as he gets more desperate his inane witterings get longer…hahaha!!
Newsflash…SNP SG will be USING THEIR MANDATE to hold indyref2…100% FACT.
You can take that to the bank, coco.
Dugdale needs money for more than the case v Rev Stu…her ex partner has sued her for £30,000 pertaining to the property they bought together.
Oh aye…did they ever get to the bottom of the missing £10,000 from her constituency office ?
I must admit that this does come as a bit of a surprise after her dalliance down under in the jungle.
I totally believed that doing this would have cost her her job, but no. Not only is she hanging in there despite being left to sit on her tod at FMQ’s she is being given additional duties on behalf of Labour.
Still all looks a but screwed up to me as I’m sure she doesn’t want to be in Holyrood any longer, her heart can’t be in it. Maybe she has the feelers out and is just waiting on the right offer to come along?
Who knows but whatever, I can’t see her being there beyond the end of this parliament and most likely gone before the end.
Holyrood’s fast becoming the stage for the latest Ali Baba pantomime. So what on earth is going on here?
I understand that it’s preferable to have gender balance on these committees, but why Kezia Dugdale FGS? The last person, female, that should have been chosen to uphold Scottish Parliament’s standards, other than Annie Wells that is. No other women to choose from? Maybe Kezia knows too much about sexual harassment issues (that she raged about previously), etc, for their liking?
This is the current SPCB membership.
link to parliament.scot
Note that Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh MSP (chair), Jackson Carlaw MSP and Liam McArthur MSP all signed up to SiU Charter to ensure ”a more respectful and decent politics.” Why would they have to do THAT? Was that not a given when they stood for election? Even more so being a member of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body.
link to scotlandinunion.co.uk
Ken MacIntosh as Presiding Officer is supposed to remain ”politically impartial in everything that he does.” Impartial my backside.
link to parliament.scot
I give up and can’t wait for a massive ”clear out” to take place when we get our Independence.
………………………………
Meanwhile the BBC afforded Nicola Sturgeon some extra broadcasting time today. Surprise, surprise, NOT.
Subject: the public’s fear of immigration with Nicola outlining that remaining in the EU and free movement of people is crucial to our economy. That’s not what concerns the BBC of course. We’re all well aware of their agenda.
No strong views on who Labour should nominate for this position. It is their call and they have worse options 🙂
I see the farce that is the reshuffle continues. The night of the plastic picnic knives is a description that tickled me.
I’d be one of the 28%. In all fairness after being undermined by Corbyn’s flying visit and his speaking to vast crows of about 6 people and 1 dog, and then with the leadership election, I think she was better out and taking a holiday.
desimond@2.23pm
You need to take that up with the Labour party mate. They are very good at fudging pretty much everything and anything, so good luck with that.
Holyrood is brought down by the unionists to attempt to make it look like a talking shop and er not sure where you get the idea there are ‘no standards’ or a ‘wee club’, unless you mean the waste of money anti SNP, stick up for the union at any cost Britnats, sitting there on their fat behinds.
You must have got that a wee bitty mixed up, you really meant to say Westminster seems to have no standards and is like a ‘wee club’. Your Britnat unionists pals have no idea of the meaning of ‘graft’.
Trying to find out more about this, ‘Holyrood governing body’ and whether those sitting around the table are renumerated. Can’t see them doing it for nothing. If you search for HRGB, it comes up with lots of SNP bad, yoon rags and then lots of lovely info about dear Kez and her saying the guys should have been resigning last year.
It’s abit like when she slagged Alex Salmond for standing for constituency and the list, then er, went and did exactly the same thing herself. Surprise surprise, just one more pretendy lefty trougher is oor Kez.
Can’t stand hypocrites.
If she comes across to the SNP then please give her the portfolio for Waving and Smiling rather than anything more substantial.
Jeremy Corbyn announces he’ll make a decision
That’ll be a first!
re;Iain Mhor@2.40pm
Absolutely you explain that very well. What better way to take down or at least keep control of a population, a country and their resources than to portray their democratically elected government and their much hard fought for parliament. as useless and a waste. Also, as you say, keep the meme of, ‘ach their all the same’. It’s a known tactic and the US are excellent at it re Latin American countries, except they put the physical boot in there, not just a psychological boot.
O/T
And now for the non-fake news, folks. John Robertson has posted a number of excellent articles recently, such as on the dirt digging BBC, that I haven’t seen on here. Too many for me to post individually, so scroll down and take a look.
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
………………………………..
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
Michael McCabe, 2.26,
Nice one, that me chuckle!
“Oil approaches 2015 highs on fewer U.S. rigs, OPEC” –
link to archive.is
@Petra
That list of candidates for the Scottish elections in 2016 that signed the SiU charter is eyeopening. Why would any Scottish politician wish to allign themselves with such a group is beyond me. Well apart from the obvious Ruth Davidson and Adam Tomkins.
I mean Wullie Rennie also signed up the the SiU charter and the only Unionist leader in Holyrood who didn’t was Kezia Dugdale. I’m hoping now those that did sign their charter have a bit of a riddy after recent revelations about SIU. What a beamer LOL.
link to scotlandinunion.co.uk
Meanwhile some Yoon on the Rev’s twitter feed is trying to “name and shame” SNP politicians who follow Wings Over Scotland on twitter. FFS you couldn’t make it up!
link to twitter.com
Stuart – for goodness’ sake, it’s different FROM, not different to ! Otherwise, keep up the good work !
Slipping the Leash…
link to imgur.com
Here’s a short video clip of Nicola Sturgeon from this mornings interview on Radio shortbread GMS. Class act is Nicola.
link to bbc.co.uk
Thepnr @ 15:23:
Money, for one.
That’s the real issue behind SiU. It’s not that the last-gasp landed gentry are defending their perceived self-interest, which after all they have every right to do. It’s that desperate puir wee starved NorthBritLibs and NorthBritLabs are so cravenly willing to be their complaisant shills.
While in the case of Labour, also pretending to be new-born Socialists. Hah! (That needs to be remembered at the next elections, whenever they are.)
Plus assiduously courting Tory support where Lib or Lab was the main contender against the SNP. Which was the secret of their “success” at the last UKGE.
Contemptible or what…?
This, and indeed the general conduct of the opposition ‘parties’, is a farce, from top to bottom. The yoon ‘parties’ have zero autonomy from London. Presenting themselves as Scottish, is an affront to transparent democracy. If elected, just how would these puppets of Westminster uphold HMG’s “Seven principles of public life”?
Colonial practice doesn’t generally support ethical practice.
Ethical Standards for Providers of Public Services – guidance
link to gov.uk
O/t .i see the first minister and health Secretary has apologised “according to the ebc ” to patients who have faced delays for treatment as a result of winter strain on the health service. I think the F**KER who should be apologising to the scottish people is jeremy hunt. Its his party who control the purse strings .JC what will it take for the people of Scotland to awaken from their 300 yr plus coma.
Confirmation from the Rev that Kezia has the essential quality of all BLIS______d members: shamelessness. She is now on the governing body of the institution she completely disrespected for her 100,000 shekels from her outing in Oz.
Is it just me or has Yoon behaviour in the Scottish Parliament since ex-BBC, SiU member Ken Macintosh took over as P.O.? Don’t recall all the braying and desk-slamming when Tricia was on the case. Just more Yoon disrespect towards our parliament which they despise and undermine but are desperate for as much remuneration as possible from it.
Michael McCabe says:
“And here was me thinking Rev Stu was keen on Kezia. In fact I heard he was Courting Her.”
😛 😛
@Robert J. Sutherland
Plus assiduously courting Tory support where Lib or Lab was the main contender against the SNP. Which was the secret of their “success” at the last UKGE.
Contemptible or what…?
Totally contemptible, there are no longer 3 separate Unionist parties in Scotland. They’re all one and the same and the voting patterns among many of their supporters in 2017 shows that to be true.
For Labour in particular there were 26 candidates who signed that SiU charter. I very much doubt that many ordinary supporters of Labour know who SiU are or what they stand for, nor that the people they were voting for supported such a group.
They stand for the protection of the wealthy landowner types in Scotland never mind just Dukes and Earls. Their supporters have been conned, even worse it appears many of their candidates as elected members of Holyrood have been conned when they should have known better.
I’m scunnered with the lot of them, Labour socialist, my arse!
@RJS
You say that something “needs remembered at the next election”.
What election would that be exactly ?
The next vote will be indyref2
When we return a Yes vote, EVERY uk unionist party politician operating in Scotland, at EVERY level, will be thrown out of office with immediate effect.
Those uk unionist party politicians can no more remain in office in an indy Scotland than our SNP MP’s could remain in place at WM.
This is the simple reality as to why all 3 unionist parties are dead set against even holding indyref2, if they lose, they are DONE as politicians in Scotland.
As ever, it comes down to self preservation over any principled position.
Vote Yes to get rid of Murdo Fraser..
Vote Yes to get rid of Wullie Rennie…
Vote Yes to get rid of Ruth Davidson…
Vote Yes to get rid of Kezia Dugdale…
Vote Yes to get rid of Jackie Baillie…
And so on….
There is NO Downside to voting Yes !!!
As Kezia Dugdale is now on the corporate body I assume one of her initial roles will be to introduce MSP’s to media agents. She can advise on how to maximise your media earnings outside Holyrood without having to represent your constituents or risk losing your seat.
She should really be at WM, much better media potential, especially from Scotland and not SNP. Although she is no heavyweight like Davidson who knows how to ride the media bull.
@geeo
I feel you are being over optimistic here, never known many politicians to give up a golden goose. After all many are never directly elected anyway but they don’t see this as a hindrance to their careers, the sales of brasso at Holyrood is still high.
geeo @ 16:21,
I was including that very possibility in my use of “election” (since it’s hard to find a generic-enough alternative that doesn’t sound pompous). Heh.
Yes, indy is likely to be a seismic shock for the current generation of the Unionist Party. (Which is what they now collectively are.) So many bridges burnt in desperation now!
I know nothing about the inner workings of these branch offices, but one imagines there’s a younger lot who aren’t tarnished and who could step up to fill the void. (Hint: Could be quite a career move for them to keep their hands clean right now.)
Or naughty thought: the SNP is a very broad church, so maybe it would be readily able to furnish several new parties after independence! =chuckle=
But I’m definitely getting ahead of myself now…
…first things first…
@artyhetty
Trust me I have no Unionist pals in or outside Holyrrod.
I reckon Kez and her actions should have been held accountable to Holyrood, not to the Scottish Labour party..do her wages get paid to them before handed over to her?
It should be Parliament – Member not “Party – member” recourse.
In that respect is an Independent given carte blanche to do heehaw etc by current Holyrood rules ( or lack of)?
Holyrood should hold our people to a higher standard and we could ignore “aw the same” comparisons with the clowns down south in theestminster trough.
Nicola. To quote something from her statement …
“Boxed in by the EU in phase one of the negotiations, facing the realisation of the importance of the single market in resolving issues on the island of Ireland, and with a business community ever more vocal in its opposition to the economic harm that is about to be done, there is now a more than evens chance that a hard Brexit can be stopped.”
A fair enough position to take tactically, but I can’t share her optimism that we are actually odds to stay in the single market/customs union.
My problem with this is UKIP, mad Tory right, the Fascist gutter press, and a fair chunk of the English electorate will simply not be content to accept anything short of ‘leaving the EU’. A soft Brexit won’t appease or stop them.
By the summer we should see what the EU wants/offers, and that will dictate the outcome.
o/t Having destroyed the English NHS Jeremy *unt is now being given the chance to wipe out people in their own homes!
There is no beginning to this man’s talents – he has a touch for uncaring destruction that sickens even surviving moderates Tories.
Nicola, again.
“… first few months of 2018 … “
” These next few months … “
” … decisions taken in the next few months … “
Sounds like a not too hidden timescale for the UK to show clarity on what it intends should happen next.
link to news.gov.scot
Stu,she has no constituents.having been trounced at constituency level.
She got in the back door as a list MSP.
If any of us in the real world just fucked off without getting permission from our boss and our work lay undone for three weeks, then two things would happen.We would be summarily dismissed and would forfeit any pensions redundancy payments, and the obvious question would be asked. If a worker can disappear for 3 weeks and slip back into their desk later as though they hadn’t been away, what the fuck were they doing for a living in the first place?
In Ms Dugdale’s case we know what she has been doing.
Putting the final nail in North Britain Red Tory Branch Office’s coffin.
You may recall she fucked off to the US for a 4 WEEK SEMINAR run by the US State Departnent(The Rand Corp/CIA) during the Ineos crisis.
I’m her employer.
Ms Dugdale, you’re fired.
Wonder who’ll be new north of Ireland secretary. DUP to decide? Will Westminster immediately impose direct rule?
I must admit when i heard she was going into the jungle i was outraged . but didn’t comment due to not wanting to embarrass her parents who apparently are indy supporters .
I don’t give a shit what party you are a member of , YOU have been elected by your constituents to represent them in the Scottish parliament ,to do your best to implement or oppose rules and regulations that impact on their lives , not swan off to further your own financial ends making out that you want to encourage support for your parties agenda .WHAT A LOAD OF JACKIE BAILLIE
To be perfectly honest it should not have been up to her party whether she could return to her duties , it should have been determined by her constituents and if i were one of them she would need to watch the door didn’t hit her on the arse on the way out .
Politicians in general have lost the plot , they forget who they are answerable to e.g tRuthless , Ross the ref ,dugtail , they are contemptible towards the electorate .
ONE of the reasons i want independence is to hold lazy arses like these to account , make these self serving twats work for the people who elected them , if they don’t like it join the dole queue
In an indy Scotland there should be a ban on MSP’s holding second jobs , are you listening Tomkins and co. and there should be a rigid RECALL law to get rid of perpetrators
I know that there are doctors and lawyers within politics and they have to keep abreast of their current professions but there is also the chance to do pro bono work to keep fresh
To give dugdale any kind of promotion only sickens people more as they think they politicians are all the same , when we know it is only certain politicians from certain parties who have no integrity or dignity
Geeo
I usually ignore the mince that you write, but credit where it’s due.
I agree, we should be campaigning for YES for independence, instead of cheerleading for the SNP, as if there was going to be an election.
YES to Independence is for anyone of any party political persuasion or none.
You can vote for indy, even if you never vote for the SNP. For those that hate the SNP ,for those that hate the SNP a winning vote for independence could even be a way to get rid of the SNP.
Heed posted a link to SiU with a list of 75 Unionist MSP candidates that backed SiU’s charter back in 2016.
link to scotlandinunion.co.uk
What’s noticeable is the absences, and Kezia Dugdale’s name is NOT on the list.
I personally don’t agree with hounding a potential YESser.
galamcennalath @ 17:01:
Me neither.
In fact, I’m mystified by the continuing emphasis on this UK-only approach. I get the advantage of “open UK borders” to some subsequent indy campaign, but if the expressed hope were to come to pass this year, it would nullify the very justification for a timely IR2.
I can only hope from the rest of her statement that she is playing a more subtle game, and is fairly sure that the wished-for SM/CU just ain’t gonna happen. Corbyn’s arrogant (or cowardly?) reaction to Blackford’s invitation would appear to conform to (and confirm) that expectation.
So maybe “in the next few months”, in the wake of the UK having yet again to recognise the harsh reality of the EU terms on offer, we’ll see the BritNat camp fissure even further, public opinion in Scotland shift even more against Leave than it already has, and the SNP finally switch into attack mode.
@yesindyref2
This has been pointed out on the thread today already yir2
Your personal hatred of the snp is what drive’s your agenda on this forum. Stating the fucking obvious doesn’t make you insightful you dimwitted numpty.
A bit o/t but political so it probably sneaks under the wire,
As if by magic and right on cue the Unionist Bloc in Scotland join forces in criticism of our health service , and brass neck of the day goes to the Tory clown who has the f/n cheek to quote the English health service and their sterling work in having a few more staff being immunised against the flu virus.
Absolutely hee haw about the health services in England almost grinding to a halt with patients waiting in ambulances unable to be admitted to non existent beds ,
attended to by non existent staff , This lol take top spot for regurgitated pish assisted by the ever watchful BBC in Scotland , we are surrounded by cheating liars who offer nothing more than a daily deluge of total mind numbing crap designed to sap the soul of everyone here, they are the sickness that holds people in this country down, they offer nothing, what are they for ? Would anyone miss the b/rds if they disappeared tonight , I doubt if anyone would notice appart from the silence when their winging stops
colin alexander @ 17:47,
True supporters of indy may disagree with one SNP position or another, but readily accept that we’re all in this together.
“Hang together or hang apart”, as Ben Franklin once put it.
The only people who “hate” the SNP are BritNats, poisonous stirrers and false friends like you, Coco.
Please, coco…I campaign for independence, YOU most certainlg DO NOT want independence you utter fanny.
@Thepnr
Yes sorry, saw your posting after I posted mine.
@RJS
Everything she does is aimed at the “don’t know now with this Brexit thingy”, and even the harder NOes who are wavering.
Vote SNP until we get independence, then you can vote for anyone you like.
Until then the only party to vote for is SNP.
Robert J. Sutherland says:
While I accept the SG would genuinely accept the compromise of staying in the single market, either all UK or special Scotland deal, I believe they must know it’s unlikely. It’s just not what Leave means to too many people.
It’s a good tactic, say you are willing compromise, offer plans which you believe are credible, then be in a position to say “We were reasonable, you wouldn’t play ball forcing us to move to our fallback plan.”.
That’s certainly the way I have always read it. Of course, there may be important factors I am unaware of!
BBC making big headlines over May replacing a bunch of unknowns with another bunch of unknowns. A sort of night of the blunt knives, none of the big names changed. she still doesn’t have the power to sack any of them. Long meeting with Hunt who probably reminded her of this when she thought she could move him.
The SPCB? She’s become nothing more than a purchasing manager. Still in above her head, though.
People in England are DYING in ambulances which cannot take patients out of them, when arriving at the hospital.
Our Scottish NHS is wonderfully run, despite incredibly difficult challenges.
Imagine if an indy Scotland meant even another £2bn spent on it, the difference would be truly transformative.
Ditto Education…and so forth.
The SG do an incredible job with a small budget compared to the budget an indy Scotland would have.
Independence immediately returns around £24bn to Scottish coffers, just in general taxation.
Throw in VAT receipts, Whisky receipts, properly taxed oil revenues, a land tax on the rich, landed gentry thieves and rogues, and so on…and the £billions soon add up.
Throw in no more debt interest payments, no more paying for london centric infrastructure pet projects, like HS2 (Did we all notice that Centrilla are on the verge of going bust despite not an inch of track being laid yet, but millions and millions of pounds of public cash going down the drain with them) and again, an indy Scotland looks a very strong entity right from the get go.
It is not the case that Scotland cannot afford independence, it is however, ABSOLUTELY the case that Scotland cannot afford NOT to become independent !
All achieved by putting a simple X in a wee box marked YES….!
When the time comes, you know what to do folks.
Re, Jeremy Hunt still being in a job…
Anyone else thinking that when Theresa “lost” the ‘paedo files’ as Home Secretary, Jeremy Hunt ‘found’ them…?
Guy is bulletproof it seems.
ot
BBC Scotchland interviewing the Scottish political leaders.
Normally the government leader speaks last.
No not the snp.
It allows the FM to speak today on the day the PM arranges a new cabinet. What comes first on the news?
Look at the bbc Scotland website would you know the first minister was interviewed today?
Wise up SNP.
Coco – I presume you must have BUTCHER’S APRON underpants to catch all the constant diarrhoea you manage to exude.
Awa ye fanny! You have become so obviously a (concerned) Yoon troll that it’s actually almost hilarious.
galamcennalath @ 18:27,
I think you’re right that the SG is genuine in being willing, given the opportunity, to accept an all-UK SM/CU Brexit-Lite and defer indy for another day. Politics being the art of the possible, that could arguably be an reasonable position to take, even though it wouldn’t conform with the 2016 EURef result in Scotland, to the great disappointment of people like me on both counts (indy and continuing full EU membership).
But the irony is that the UKGov and its cowardly shadow Labour fellow-travellers just won’t accept this compromise solution. In that sense England and Scotland (to ignore the others) are completely at odds. And it’s BritNat intransigence and plain stupidity in the face of EU force majeure and the ensuing economic carnage which is quietly “charging up the batteries” of the indy case.
As I’ve said many times before, the worst enemies of the Union are yer actual Unionists!
Robert J. Sutherland says:
Oh me too. I would have declared the Union a bogey, declared all promises made to win IndyRef1 have been reneged on and the result is null and void, and stuck to the hard position of …. any Brexit at all and we hold IndyRef2.
But I’m not the astute and smooth political operator Nicola is ! 😉
OT – defence
“Babcock, Thales, BMT, Harland & Wolff and Ferguson Marine have teamed up to form ‘Team 31’ a consortium to bid for the Type 31 Frigate.”
link to ukdefencejournal.org.uk
“The proposed Type 31e frigates will be built in a modular way, which could see the construction work shared between yards around the UK and assembled at a central hub, most likely in Scotland.”
Good chance this one will win I think, the design will be a cross between Babcock’s Arrowhead 120 and BMT’s Venator 110, with BAE the other main tenderer. I think the MOD want to get away from being dependant on BAE. Babcock have huge docks and yard, but Ferguson have spent or are spending £12m on site to be ready to build 140-150 metre long ships – current limit just over 100 metres or sticking out the back doors!
I hope this tender is successful and the great thing of course is that it would give Ferguson experience with naval ships, which would be good for the future Scottish Navy. Thales are a key part of the tendering consortium.
Indyref 1 was rendered void because more powers were even offered in the first place, NOT because they were renaged on.
It is a subtle difference, but crucial.
I see that the BBC are gagging women reporters that supported Carrie Grace’s equal pay protest. Apparently in the interests of balance. Never stopped them using reporters in favour of the Union in Scotland.
The BBC is not a nice organisation. I suppose we knew that from the Savile et al revelations but they really are not a nice organisation.
@Robert J and galamcenalath
The FMs doing her job basically. Representing all of Scotland’s population. It’s what makes Ms Sturgeon fit for the job at all. You, me and most other folk in the YES movement would’ve called an indyref long since for any number of reasons by this point and almost certainly the day after UK gov called an EU ref, nevermind the day after the result. It was always a clear breach of assurances given to Scotland’s electorate near as I can see and the result was always headed toward constitutional crisis.
How and ever, we’re not the First Minister of Scotland and we don’t carry the responsibilities of that office. A lot of folk forget that leader of the SNP and Scotland’s First Minister are two entirely different hats. We’re so used to LabLibs abusing the office and Tories basically acting like Tories, that in this day and age someone actually looking out for everyone’s interests instantly triggers suspicion, cynicism and/or disbelief.
Most folk reckon there has to be a cunning political or selfish angle. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. Regardless, the First Minister is sticking to the very letter of procedure and prior agreements. (shrugs)
Frustrating? Hell yes. Correct and proper? (sigh) Yeah, that too.
Is this Colin Alexander for real. You can still vote for indy says he even if you don’t vote for the only party offering it.
I discount the Greens because they don’t know what they want tomorrow and I don’t know if indy is high on their list of priorities to be honest.
Colin, I try not to class you as an imbecile, but the evidence is mounting up.
Nicola Sturgeon is smarter than your average bear. I’m certain she is doing EVERYTHING for and on behalf of the Scottish people and as far as I can see she is on the right path.
Her one mistake since being elected? In my view she may have underestimated the power of the media and the Unionist parties with their “No to Indyref2” message in the 2017 GE.
There was genuine shock on her face the day those results came in. As far as Indyref2 and the date for it goes?
She’ll choose it right because it’s hers and our last shot at it.
O/T .
link to businessforscotland.com
Only fools rush in and the FM is nobodies fool.
geeo says:
In theory I agree because I am adamant that the only meaningful way to run a referendum is for it to be status quo VERSUS a set of well documented proposals for change.
The Alternative Vote referendum of 2011 was of this form. The proposal was crap, but I think the referendum was valid.
However, declaring a referendum null and void based on it not being status quo versus changes can only be done before voting.
Cameron’s EURef was a total mess. His changes versus unplanned even bigger changes. Insanity.
Both the 1979 devolution referendum and IndyRef1 suffered from the status quo option being changed to a something else. 1979 the Tories offered more, if only it was rejected, although the result was YES it might have been YES with >40%. 2015, well we all know about DevoSuperFederalMax.
So yes, changing one option after campaigning has officially begun should be outlawed.
However, although I think 2014 was flawed, if YES had won against the last minute DevoSuperFederalMax I would have expected it to be honoured. Similarly with EURef, if Remain had won I would have put aside the way it was run and accepted a remain win.
Once the vote takes place, and you lose, it’s hard to claim it was held invalidly. That should be done prior to it taking place! We need laws governing referendums to stop meddling.
@Thepnr
Pretty much. 🙂
For ladies,the secret to exiting a car I am told is to always keep your legs closed,sadly the opposition Ladettes seem to have not heard of this advice.
Or they simply don’t care,whether it’s astride a buffalo or having a wizz in a tank and all the while,smiling and waving,they will always get good press.
(or guzzling some dead animals anus in cockaburra).
There is no hope,no future for these heavy footed,lightweights in Scotland (and they know it) but perhaps one day we can reflect on these ‘characters’,look back fondly and wonder if they did ever become ladies ?…but I doubt it.
Thank goodness we have proper FM who is proud to work hard every day,for us,in addition to promoting/representing our country on the International stage,this is one Lady who has earned our respect,who knows not only how to exit a car in style but also knows how to exit a political union with class.
#WorkingClass
Whatever happened to the Rev. Stuart Campbell’s libel or defamation case against Dugdale?
Had a peek into the abyss, the Daily Heil very unhappy with May’s attempt at a reshuffle.
I have give the Tories their due, they don’t shoot their feet, they are so practised they can take out individual toes to order.
2014 referendum was illegal according to the UN Charter on interference from the state being seceeded from in any referendum of the state seceeding
David Cameron and pals offered the Devo Max deal after agreeing the two option answer in the Edinburgh agreement
but the Electoral Commission who’s supposed to oversee these things did nothing and niether did the UN
David Cameron like all Brits changed the rules when he realised he was losing
Folk who fell for this will hopefully understand when it comes to promises you can not trust the word of the English ever, how many hundreds of years does it take to learn this
They’ll do it again because that’s the level of respect they have for us
So do you want to be laughed at as thick for falling for it the first time or laughed at as being totally stupid to fall for it again
You can not trust the English on anything, they lie consistantly then apologise and move on saying they thought you understood it’s their nature to do it and the Scots are naive
Nicola Sturgeon on Scotland Tonight (STV – 10:30) being interviewed by John MacKay.
@Bob Mack says: 8 January, 2018 at 8:29 pm:
“Is this Colin Alexander for real.”
I don’t know, Bob Mack. for the one you reply to signed in as colin alexander. There thus seems to be at least two of them.
I think he must be a Westminster Establishment agent but that’s only my personal view. Let’s face it anyone who so bitterly hates the SNP/SG yet claims to be a supporter of independence has to be somewhat suspect in the thinking department.
Jist wonderin’ – Kezia gits paid an MSP Salary + Paid by the Daily Ranger fur wee column, assumin’ that’s awe PAYE okay dokay. Noo when it comes tae £100,000? fur bein’ doon the jungle (Fureign Country) wad that bein’ paid straight intae an overseas account ? Surely Naw ? Wad ye expect onythin’ less fae hur ! I’ll jist go an’ git ma coat !
Does la Dugdale represent the people? She was chosen as a list MSP by Labour. She didn’t win a constituency so she doesn’t directly represent any voters. She does do a number of Friday surgeries, but that leaves her plenty time for swanning around.
Would Lothian voters have been heartbroken by her short visit to Australia? A hae ma doots. They have their own constituency MSPs.
PS has anyone got attendance figures for her surgeries?
@ Rock 9:23pm The Defamation case is later on this Year. You will be able to read all about it in the National.
Hahaha Michael 😉
@Michael McCabe
Touché LOL 🙂
@galamcennalath.
I DID declare the 2014 referendum null and void BEFORE the vote !!
As soon as a 3rd option was introduced, it became null and void.
Thats not theoretical.
What does it matter what type of job she has in the scottish parliament, personally i can’t see what talent she has for any kind of political post, but you never know, maybe she will surprise everyone and be quite good, the ex/leader Mrs J, seems to be doing a decent job on different committees as far as i am led to believe, i allways thought that Mrs J was deep inside quite a decent woman, but unfortunately she joined the wrong party and had to spout their bile with no real conviction
She proved to me her heart was in the right place when she resigned rather than sack a guy she respected just cause London demanded it, as she said at the time, she would not lead the scottish branch of the labour party, she used to annoy me quite a bit, but i did believe at the time her heart was never really in the job, and she proved me right
O/T Looking ahead and I do believe we will be independent before the next Scottish elections. However if we are not would it be legal to have ‘Yes’ candidates standing who only contest the list seats?
Still no good news about Brexit and the irony of it costing £350 million/ week. Scotland should demand its % share of that monies as compensation because Scotland didn’t vote for Brexit. There is no ‘British’ position only the calamitous misjudgement of WM with its arrogant assumption that Scotland wants to be dragged along too.
‘The British position on the final status of its future relationship with the European Union must be clarified in the coming weeks…the UK side is now under pressure to reach an agreement in time to allow ratification proceedings to be completed before the final deadline of March 2019…
According to Brussels, the red lines defined by Theresa May are only consistent with a trade agreement that follows the pattern of the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada…it will not be possible to include provision for financial services within the Canadian model. Therefore, the City will be obliged to maintain a significant degree of regulatory equivalence with the European rules in order to operate in EU territory without losing the level playing field. Otherwise, the loss of access to EU markets could seriously harm the most dynamic sector of the British economy…
Taking back control” also applies to Westminster. But on the other hand, as MPs will not be able to amend the agreement reached by the negotiators, a No vote when the two-year deadline established by Article 50 comes to an end will mean that the UK will be obliged to leave the Union in the worst way possible. This means that pro-European MPs, even if they are unlikely to reverse the referendum result, can exert strong pressure in favour of a deal close to their demands…The FT has estimated that the British economy has already lost, in terms of lower GDP growth, the £350m a week that the Brexiteers promised to the NHS during the referendum campaign…
If the UK is unable to reach a good agreement with the EU, the negative economic consequences will dramatically increase…
Unless it clarifies its position, negotiations cannot advance, and the time pressures will increase every day. Businesses will start implementing their contingency plans, investments will be postponed, and people will feel more of the economic consequences. Politically, the internal tensions within the government and the Tory party will lead to a crisis’
link to socialeurope.eu
Had a look at a BBC Show earlier with the tile “Workers or Shirkers”.
Toady Ian Hislop narrates the show, a new angle on trying to convince the masses that the poorest members of society deserve all they get.
As he smiled his way through the starvation, homelessness, and illness of our Victorian ancestors, he ploughed on to have a chat with Ian Duncan Smith, Tory Creep with bells on.
He actually managed to act as if choked with emotion when speaking about a single teenage Mum he gave his time too when visiting a housing estate.
The poor girls was brought up by parents on benefits and as she failed at school she had no skills to offer an employer- Queen fake emotions as he tries to squeak out that his own daughter was the same age but she had the world at her silver slippered feet.
He said to himself, what can he do to help her?
I presume he came up with the idea of stopping her benefits, humiliating her and ensuring that she and her child can familiarise themselves with Dickensian UK 2.
Private Boarding School educated Hislop smiled and sniggered throughout, safe in the knowledge that he has £Millions in the bank and his kiddies are doing well at Daddies University, Oxford.
Last Rant concerns STV news that advised of the Tories Blaming the SNP Government for not warning people about this nasty Flu virus????
Anyone on Wings ever call their boss to say the Scottish Government has advised them not to go to work just in case they catch something.
They failed to mention how the people of Tory England never got a warning and never got near an A & E Dept, unlike the Scots!
STV News:
Cabinet reshuffle. Strong and stable Theresa May over-ruled by Jeremy Hunt. What a shambles. Philippa Whitford was spot on when she said that he should have been reshuffled to the back benches to prevent him from further damaging the English NHS.
…………….
Well done to Carrie Gracie, Scot, for telling the BBC to stuff their job (China Editor) and an offer of an additional £45,000. Taking a stand and calling them out for breaching Equal Pay Legislation. Easily resolved for the BBC (before they hopefully get taken to Court). Just lower the wages of all male employees to bring them into line with their female comparators.
…………..
Medical staff in England complaining that patients lying around in corridors is now the new norm, as is medical staff spending their shifts treating patients in ambulances (with doctors running between hospital and ambulances). The so-called English NHS, technically abolished in 2012 with the objective of escalating privatisation, at crisis point once again under the Tories in England and Labour in Wales. Nicola Sturgeon, with on average control over 20% of powers and dealing with constant financial cuts from Westminster, is doing an absolutely amazing job. Let’s see what the Unionist cabal at Holyrood will have to say about that. Following calls from them to sack Shona Robinson what do they think should happen to Hunt? Send him to the Tower? And what medical model do they suggest we adopt? The English or Welsh?
If you really care about our NHS in Scotland, and don’t want to see it being privatised like it’s English counterpart, please support the SNP and vote for Independence when the time comes.
John young.11pm. Sounds good to me, Yes candidates contesting list seats.
Oh Dear.
Jeremy Corbyn insists UK cannot remain in single market after Brexit
Jeremy Corbyn has insisted the UK cannot be a member of the single market after Brexit, disappointing some of his pro-European Union MPs.
The Labour leader told colleagues that it was not possible to stay in the single market, as he set out his Brexit policy to the parliamentary party on Monday night.
link to archive.is
That’ll be that then Indy Ref 2 here we come.
Great news Thepnr !
Now labour cannot pretend to be the Brexit lifeboat for Scots angry about being dragged out by the tories..
If you are Scottish and want to remain, or at least try to …you can ONLY do so with a Yes vote.
Lovely.
Effijy @ 11.04pm
Flu jabs.
I believe it is the WHO that decides which strains are used in the flu jab each year – not the Scottish Government as the MSM like to imply. That decision by the WHO has to be taken early in the year so that the vaccines can be manufactured and distributed.
The flu virus has one of the highest mutation rates of any virus therefore it is not surprising if a new form appears after the flu vaccine is in production. But that does not negate the usefulness of the vaccine because the strains of the virus against which it is effective are still in circulation. Therefore it is still offering some protection.
The SG has run adverts urging people in the at risk groups to get vaccinated. The cost of this runs into several million pounds. In addition letters are sent to these people about the need to get vaccinated and I believe the SG fund this. But again the MSM don’t report this.
Local health centres also publicise their vaccination arrangements. If I remember correctly I got a letter, a text message and there were notices in the local shops reminding people.
Once more the MSM choose the SNP bad route rather than give a full and accurate account.
Dr Jim @ 10.03 pm
IMHO …. I would have Prefferred if you replaced ” English ” with WM or Establishment.
I accept the jist of the post excepting the word “English”
I am friendly with several “English” Yes folk and I’m sure you did not mean any harm, just IMHO wrong choice of word.
A few conversations recently with folk have had me trying to remember where I read a post regarding how the Act of Union was because England was broke etc etc
Robert P , if it was one of yours please don’t be annoyed , I’m merely trying to get revised on the detail.
Anyone got a link or know where I can get some facts as I want to debunk the “Scotland was broke” theory that seams to be the accepted position by many in our wider community.
Thank you
@Tackety Beets
Here’s one along those lines:
link to bbc.co.uk
For instance: “English feelings that Scotland was acting as a rogue nation contributed greatly to William’s willingness to sabotage the Darien Venture …”
Like I say sometimes, the BBC is kind of a split personality. You have documentaries and website articles which expose the English formation of empire in all its nastiness, then you have the BBC news and political programs designed to indoctrinate. And never the twain shall meet.
Lot of good stsuff on the BBC website about the Acts of Union, you’d be astonished, I learnt a lot ovewr the last years.
o/t – If anyone from the SNP management are looking in can I suggest a change in approach to interacting with STV & the BBC, I believe it was Angus Robertson who first raised the subject when he objected to UKIP being involved on the panel of a question time episode , and he was obligingly jumped on by the supreme socialist George Galloway , you know the one, the one that wants democracy for everyone except his own country , a total fraud who probably is in the pay of the security services.
Anyway back to the point , it’s time to bring this matter to a head the next time this Unionist Bloc present the three tag team approach to the usual stage managed event that is presented as a discussion between political parties , when we all know it’s the Union against the SNP .
The SNP need to make it plain what is going on and the opposition parties are actually acting as one so are not entitled to three representatives , unless these conditions are met they don’t get involved , if that doesn’t work and their reason for not being involved is distorted or ignored , then go round them any make it clear on Air , then walk . This media in Scotland are not friends but a poisonous vicious enemy out to destroy independence .
@Tackety Beets
I am Half English on my mothers side so half my family is English and live all over the world but mostly in the Midlands and when I say English I mean the English who represent England because that’s who voted themselves into the position of their version of democracy, which is might is right and there are more of us than you
It’s not about individuals it’s about a nation of people used to getting their own way by any means possible then justifying it by calling it democracy as a God given right to be superior because they know no different
In any population of any country there are always varying views on everything but the majority of any country usually depend on their government to be hopefully right and truthfull, but when that government repeatedly lies to it’s own population those people will never know better until they move to other countries to learn another perspective
In Englands case in the now modern age that is happening but the sense of entitlement to ownership of other countries is a leftover fact of being a once controlling
Empire and the loss of that control is difficult to swallow when your whole life has been filled with triumphalism and the denigration of other nations in order to make you feel that your life is better and your customs and culture more important
So yes many English folk who move to other countries learn that they didn’t quite notice that people in the rest of the world have valid opinions and begin to question the propaganda they were brought up with
You don’t learn these things on a fortnights holiday to Lanzarote that’s why many English folk in Scotland are now supporting Yes because the facts are being revealed to them here
But not in England
@geeo
Lovely indeed!
Lets face it if Corbyn can’t stomach the thought of remaining in the Single Market what chance has May got?
Nowt! and we are out. It’s the hardest of hard Brexits coming.
Can’t help but laugh at their idiocy, they deserve to “lose” us.
Scotland run for it run and save yourselves while you still can.
Tackety
Scotland was not broke because Scotland did not have a central bank or a national debt at the time. These were relatively new concepts in the early 18th century.
However, individuals lost money on the Darien Scheme and this made them susceptible to the money dangled in front of them by Westminster in return for a vote for Union in the Scottish Parliament. The personal indebtedness caused by Darien and some fairly awful harvests in the 1690s was about one year’s GDP. (Not a huge sum for a largely agrarian country of 1m people). In return for receiving the said payments, Scotland agreed to take on a share of England’s national debt because they had in 1694 gone down the central bank, national debt route in order to modernise their navy.
So the Union didn’t save us from a national debt it gave us one. The great and the good that were persuaded to vote for the Union did see their personal situation improve though. However, the Union did little for Scotland until the industrial revolution 70 or so years later. Independent we could have, of course, had our own industrial revolution. We had the water and coal and men of innovation. However, as a path untrod, what might have been can only be speculated upon. However, Union was neither essential nor inevitable it was engineered. Westminster wanted it and were prepared to pay for it.
Flu Jab. Tories stating that the SNP Government didn’t warn people about the nasty flu virus? Staff at my surgery were phoning patients up until 7:00pm at night, every night over a few weeks, to arrange appointments. They also kept at it if they didn’t receive a response to messages left on answer machines.
Anyone in the MSM considering putting this right? Telling the truth for once?
If not, it doesn’t really matter as every solitary person, in risk groups, in Scotland plus their relatives and friends will know that the Tories are telling porkies again with the backing of the BBC / STV propaganda machine.
Tackety Beets
link to wingsoverscotland.com or link to caltonjock.com
Could this new appointment for Kezia be a cunning plan on Slab’s part to bring down Hollrood?
Dastardly.
Sad to see that daft wee lassie still seems to have no sense of shame.
@Tackety Beets says: 8 January, 2018 at 11:57 pm:
“A few conversations recently with folk have had me trying to remember where I read a post regarding how the Act of Union was because England was broke etc etc”
The actual historic facts prove that to be the case. I regularly post to that effect.
At the time of the Treaty and acts of union The Kingdom of England had been at war all over Europe and in many of the colonies. The English Coffers were not only bare but they had massive national debts. Which was why William Paterson, a London Scot and a paid English Undercover agent, (and his friend Daniel Defoe)m were in Edinburgh.
While Paterson, set up the Darien Scheme it was previously he who was instrumental in setting up the subscription scheme to bail out the Westminster Government that led to the creation of the private company of, “The Governor & Company of the Bank of England). Defoe had the trust and ear of the wealthy landowner/parliamentarians of Scotland. Both were friends and both in the pay of Sir Robert Harley – the English Spy-master. There is documentary proof to that effect.
Thus Westminster engineered the disastrous Darien expedition, prevented the Royal Navy and the Royal Army from aiding the expedition and had also colluded with the Dutch to pledge 50% funding for Darien and then both pulled out leaving the expedition underfunded and doomed to fail.
The truth is that on the day of the union beginning England’s kingdom was up to its ears in debt and Scotland’s kingdom was debt free.
The bankrupted Scots were just the landowner/parliamentarians who sold Scotland’s birth-rights for English Gold, not to mention others who were coerced, (that’s blackmailed in English law), and yet others threatened but many for no other reason than their own personal gain.
Our Bard had it right, “Siccna paircel o rogues in ae nation”. We still suffer from their descendants loyalties to London Rule today.
hammer blow to Doosan Babcock workers who, according to Tricky Dicky Leonard, are being made redundant BEFORE they have even applied for their jobs…!!!
link to mobile.twitter.com
FMQ’s will be a bloodbath.
@Thepnr
link to archive.is
Ayup! That is indeed that.
So, kinder, more honest, politics snubs the other progressive parties in favour of his preferred option. Pretty much the same view as yer hard line Brexiteers in parly. No CU, no single market, but somehow magically retain the benefits of both. Even though the EU have made it perfectly clear that there will be no cherry picking for UK gov.
link to archive.is
How Mr Corbyn’s negotiation strategy would achieve the very opposite of what has been clearly stated as the EU position hasn’t been made entirely clear of course, but I’m sure any day now…
I mean, for all the world it appears Mr Corbyn’s strategy and end result mirrors the incumbent Tory government’s. The only discernible difference being a slower pace (probably wearing slippers, rather than running shoes) and the appearance of a sad face when approaching the self same cliff edge. Oh, and that slower pace? Mr Corbyn seems blissfully unaware that the EU are fully in charge of the ‘pace’ of negotiation. The UK has near zero input. It can request, but the EU members decide. Brexit for Labour apparently means… well, Brexit.
Who knew?
UK politics feels more and more like “foreign” politics every day.
Meanwhile, in Foreign news, the English PM is left weakened by a backfiring Cabinet reshuffle and inapproptiate appointments, but a vote of no confidence is unlikely because the shadow Cabinet is in greater confusion and disarray than the government over policy.
It is so dreadfully tiresome. The frustration I feel seeing this slapstick puppet show in the “National” media is not the continual loop of lightweight political incompetence, but that time and again it emphasises that for some Godforsaken reason Scotland is watching somebody else’s news media, but there is no home broadcasting alternative.
@Breeks
You can see why the media in Scotland is so useless because they base their entire technique on the English reporting model of yester year which was to denigrate everything Scottish or not report it at all instead of moving with the times like our Irish cousins who actually are kinda proud of their country but report everything warts and all as news and not one sided propaganda
@geeo says: 9 January, 2018 at 2:50 am:
hammer blow to Doosan Babcock workers who, according to Tricky Dicky Leonard, are being made redundant BEFORE they have even applied for their jobs…!!!
link to mobile.twitter.com
FMQ’s will be a bloodbath.”
Having read most of that twitter cite you posted, geeo, I came away thinking that Colin/colin Alexander/alexander and the rest of the current batch of SNP bad commenters on Wings were working an overtime shift together on Twitter.
Same idiotic mantra. Even with a central figure on Twitter being an SNP MSP who was quite obviously hitting back these numpties are claiming the SNP is idle and doing nothing.
While the SMSM, (Scottish Main Stream Media), have been shown to be following a, “London Labour Accountancy Unit In Scotland”, pre-festive season list – as revealed by Derek Bateman:-
link to newsnet.scot
These SNP anti-Scottish people keep up the pretence that the SNP are sitting idle while twiddling their thumbs. The only thing these false flag unionists prove is that they also either are unaware of what the SNP elected to office members do at Holyrood, Westminster and in local councils.
These numpties seem to imagine the voters are too stupid to realise that there are not going to be reports in the SMSM, either in print or on the airwaves, by the combined SMSM and unionist lackeys and if they do not seek the truth elsewhere then they are also unionist lackeys working hard to discredit the SNP and Scotland.
They too are thus the enemies of Scotland and the people of Scotland.
Note that they too follow, almost word for word, the unionist mantras. They must imagine the Scottish electorate button up the back, while all the evidence points to the truth that an ever increasing number of the electorate are learning the truth and the Westminster Establishment mantras are failing. Once the eyes open to the truth and the lies become apparent the unionist mantras will always fail to win those with newly opened eyes back. I long ago lost count of the number of people I have personally heard say, “I used to vote Labour but I’ll never vote for them ever again.
Their collective jaikits have been drapping aff afu shooglie pegs fir a rather lang time noo.
This weeks Labour leader in Scotland caught out lying again
Jeremy Corbyn must be so proud, a man after his own heart
And if you don’t believe him Neil Findlay will come round and threaten to punch yer head in
Grown up politics in Scotland from Labour, oh how they learn
Just listened to the Richard Leonard interview, and heard the same old labour recycled rubbish. Very noteable is That Jeremey Corbyn is not even keeping him in the Loop regarding Labour Policy. A puppet with strings missing.
I’m one of the people who said, I used to vote Labour, but I will never vote for them ever again.
Vote SNP until we get independence, then you vote for anyone you like, until then the only party to vote for is SNP.
NHS England now the worst performing health service in Europe
maybe that’s one of the reasons they want to leave so they can’t be compared to anything other than themselves which would then be the best performing health service in England
Zero to galactofeck within 24hrs… impressive.
link to archive.is
link to twitter.com
link to twitter.com
link to archive.is
link to archive.is
Reminds me. Need to get more popcorn and choccy raisins in.
David Davis, who lied to everybody about Brexit Impact studies being done, before admitting they didn’t exist, has written to Theresa May to complain the EU are threatening UK interests by making contingency plans for the possibility of a No-deal Brexit.
There were theories about Napoleon being poisoned by the arsenic in the wallpaper on the island of St Helena.
I begin to wonder whether the inner sanctums of the Palace of Westminster might have some primitive 18th or 19th Century wallpaper which exudes delusional mind altering properties…
In regard to Neil Findlay accusing the Scottish Government over its lack of action in holding an inquiry into the miners strike.
Every time he opens his mouth about this issue, he should be reminded that Labour were in power at Westminster for 13 years and eight years at Holyrood,
Why then didn’t Labour hold an inquiry into the miners strike when they had the power to do so?
PETRA 12-36am
Scottish government gave out plenty info on the Flu Jab. I was notified twice, once from Government and again from local surgery.
@wull2 says:
9 January, 2018 at 8:57 am
I’m one of the people who said, I used to vote Labour, but I will never vote for them ever again.
I too am the same. Looking at the current BLIS it seems to me they act as if they believe if they can only – by hook or by crook, definitely crook – get rid of the SNP all the ex-Labour voters will flock back to them. I won’t and like you I’m sure most of the rest won’t. Why would we when the SNP has done many of the things Labour talked about but did nothing? Like the other unionist parties PR has taken the place of principles and they talk about what they would do but when you look carefully it amounts to nothing. If the SNP disappeared overnight I certainly wouldn’t vote for any of the 3 big unionist parties. But it won’t of course, because too many people will keep supporting it. The one thing that could set back the SNP would be a sudden dose of honesty and principle in one or more unionist parties but how likely is that?
The Phrase ” cant walk and chew gum at the same time ” suits Leonard exactly ,
He sounds like an old time shop steward in a bad comedy sketch . and for someone that has barely mastered english his appointment must be baffling to Labour supporters , because he manages to baffle everyone when he opens his mouth .
It’s just been revealed on The Wright Stuff 40% of frontline staff in the english NHS haven’t had the Flu jab so much for the scottish tory muppet criticising the scottish government for their failings , one day these people will tell the truth .
Breeks says:
WoS Twitter for anyone who want to read it.
Nicola tweeted, “This letter is extraordinary”. It truly is. What is going on is Davis’s mind, he really seems to have lost it. He needs a long long holiday away from it all!
As far as I can make out, he’s saying there IS going to be a transition period, so the EU are jumping the gun preparing for the worst.
But he must know the transition period is not guaranteed and is subject to broad agreement no what we are all transitioning to i.e. An outline trade deal.
If there is no deal then there is nothing, nada. He MUST know that. So why a letter to his boss moaning?
Maybe he has become a LeaveMoaner.
The Doctors get paid a for meeting flu jab targets. Two letters sent. One then a follow up. Cost effective. The flu strain coming from Australia) epidemic? Is not/affected prevented by the flu jab that has been given. The SNP Gov had to divert extra money to the SNHS when Westminster unionists cut the budget. That is why it is doing so much better. Minimum pricing will cut the SNHS budget of release funds that can be used for better outcomes. May 2018. Well done SNP finally. More improvement.
Leonard/Corbyn and Labour are a threat to,the Scottish economy. They are dangerous imbeciles. Ingnorant and incompetent. They can’t count or read a balance sheet. Just as bad as the rest of the unionists. Vote NO get nothing. Leonard is a dangerous liar. The unionist lying and using SNHS figures whivh shows how well it is doing to try and bring it down. Disgusting. They can’t count or read a balance sheet. Analyse or calculate figures. Appalling behaviour.
Corbyn/Labour could have voted May out 12th Sept 2017. The EVIL vote. May would not be there to continue in the disastrous dangerous policies. Killing the citizens and millions all over the world. An absolute disgrace. £Trillions in debt. Things change but everything remains the same, The lying Tories bigots and racists. Destroying the UK/world economy. The farces goes on. Even though the pantomime season is over. A complete shambles from a lame duck UK Gov. A disgrace.
starlaw says:
9 January, 2018 at 9:22 am
PETRA 12-36am
Scottish government gave out plenty info on the Flu Jab. I was notified twice, once from Government and again from local surgery.
Agreed – plenty info available.
Due to underlying health conditions, I have to have the flu jab each year.
My GP surgery sends a reminder each year to all patients who need the jab. I have always made an appointment immediately and had the jab.
There are people who either choose not to bother or go the lengths of making an appointment but not bothering to turn up. GP surgeries don’t have masses of underemployed admin staff who can constantly chase patients. If someone chooses not to bother, that is their right.
You see posters and other info re the flu jab in GP surgeries, pharmacies and other health premises.
Over 4,000 readers so far for:
Scotland’s own Mafia family: link to wp.me
Plus a review of
Ridley Scott back on form: link to wp.me
Cameron was elected to protect the NHS and Education?
The Tories are cutting the NHS £4Billion a year from 2015 to 2020. They should have increased it by inflation and allocated extra cash because of an ageing population. A £20Billion cut. It is reported that they have put in £2Billion to relieve A&E crisis. Too little too late. Did Scotland get the differentials? Doubt it.
Since 2010 The Tories have cut Education spending £6Billion a year. £3Billion a year that will never be refunded (English loans) but will hang over young people making money for unionist loan fund companies. Unionist politicians and there associates making money from public education funding. Sythoning off money which should be used for education. Not profits for private loan companies. £30Billion++
The Tories have cut £3Billion a year from welfare funding. Over 6 years. £18Billion+ This is why their increasing people sleeping in the streets in the rest of the UK. The Tories are sanctioning people and killing them off. Especially the elderly and vulnerable. They are a disgusting disgrace.
They have cut tax for the wealthiest and the wealthiest tax evading companies. They tax evade with impunity. Creating increasing inequality and injustice.
The most important thing for a successful society is investment in Education and Health. To have a healthy well educated skilled population everything else follows. With Gov intervention to create fairness, These are the most prosperous,happy societies.
The Tory are spending £30Billion year on Hickley Point, HS2, Trident and Heathrow. All with no credible business case. All a total waste of money with cheaper, more cost affective alternatives. A total waste of public money. The Tory slush fund syphoning off public money. Illegally into the pockets of Unionist politicans and their associates who fund them. Cameron, Carrington and rest. Milking the Chinese- British consortium. Cameron has bought a third house in Penzance on the proceedings. £Millions/Billions.
£Billions are being taken out of Scotland illegally. Funds and resources. To be spent against the majority in Scotland’s wishes. Scotland has to pay interest on loans not borrowed or spent in Scotland. Average £4Billions a year. Trident £1Billion. The Tory policies and mismanagement ruined the Oil industry, Taxed too highly when Oil prices had fallen since 2010. Losing exploration and production. 40% since Jan 2016. Losing Scotland £Billions (£4Billion+? ) a year. 120,000 jobs. Lose £28Billion++ UK health and safety Law have been ignored in the Oil & Gas industry causing deaths. There have been no Inquires just a cover up. No penalties or justice. The perpetrators getting impunity. A public disgrace.
These Unionist politicans are just milking the system to line their pockets while sanctioning and illegally killing millions of people. The reshuffle is just another part of the pantomime. Little changes, everything stays the same, A lame duck administration.
The sooner Scotland is Independent in the EU (or as near as) The sooner Democracy comes to Scotland. Stop £Billions of funds and resources going to the Westminster Treasury to be mismanaged and wasted, Destroying the Scottish economy. Preventing growth etc.
Scotland will become a more prosperous, equal, fair healthy happy country.
admiral says:
Indeed. With talk of a bad flu in Australia over their winter, my wife and I paid for jabs at Boots. It was the quadrivalent one and claims to give protection against said Ozzy flu.
Been reading a lot that the main cause of virus spread is our culture of turning up at work while unwell. Kids are sent to school ill because parents can’t stay off to look after them, as a profession teachers appear to be particularly prone to going into work ill, and many other employers perversely encourage ill staff to come in.
This all needs to end. Containing viruses by avoiding contact has to be good for society and the economy.
Scotland needs to develop a different culture about staying home when you are ill.
Been reading a lot that the main cause of virus spread is our culture of turning up at work while unwell.
Its not a culture. Most, if not all slave wage employers do not pay sick pay. They do eventually have to pay something but they do not legally have to pay sick employees for at least three days of absence from work.
If you’re a slave wage earner, losing three days pay at least, is a taking a very serious hit.
Three days bed rest is probably enough to get over the worst symtoms of flu?
Why should our noble slave wage payers pay people to lie in bed all day?
And guess who could have changed all that, the greatest living socialist worker around today, Gordon Brown.
Red or blue, its a toryboy world.
The Miner strike happened in 1980’s. Before Devolution before the Scottish Gov was founded. They do not even have a remit. Do they have the powers? It should be Findlay’s unionist Gov that does it. They caused it. Funny he is not calling for them to do it. Ignoramouses.
The Scottish Gov do not have the relevant papers. Or access to the papers? needed for an Inquiry. They would not even release them. They denied access to or release the papers on Lockerbie, Dunblane Iraq etc. Labour Party corruption. Kept under the Official Secrets Act for 100 years. To protect guilty Unionist politicans.
What a dunce. Just an aggravation. What an annoyance.
Many people were off work over Christmas/New Year holidays. Kids on holiday. That is when they had the flu. Spoiled their holidays but many were not out and about working or at school. Contain the outbreak? Less festivities, drinking and carry on. More people housebound because of it. Stopping the spread. Healthcare was very busy for more extreme cases. Complicated conditions.
A shop assistant was coughing all over food products at check out, Thry should have been on other duties. Poor management? Only encounter.
The people who turn up drunk at A&E over Christmas and New Year are the same folk who turn up drunk in July and August at Spanish A&E
Bet ye a £
Better weather is coming soon. Hopefully,
I’m not surprised by the spread of the flu in hospitals. I know of hospital staff at work that have the flu. They are too scared to stay at home because of the disciplinary process for taking time off.
Watching Sky news in downing st , cameraman giving the reporter the heads up as ministers leave , she turns round & names them Mundell comes out no comments . IRRELEVANT in the scheme of things in London as he is in Scotland LoL .
BBC News 24 are reporting slightly less than eight people in ten were seen, treated, discharged or admitted to hospital within four hours in NHS Scotland’s A&E departments in the last week of December.
People living in the rest of the UK must be wondering why Scotland’s worst weekly figures since 2015, are still better than their NHS’s ‘average’ figures…
@Ken500
9 January, 2018 at 10:53 am
I couldn’t have put it better myself,
But then do we really expect anything else
from the likes of Findlay?
You are correct for many of the low paid on crap contracts, the word there probably should have been regime.
We need better employment laws, not more relaxed ones a la Brexit.
However, it is a culture for salaried staff who do get sick pay. They should stay away because it is in everyone’s benefit they do, included their employers. Too many feel obliged to turn up when it should be an expectation sick people will stay away.
I see that BBC London News Channel is now reporting on the Scottish NHS Waiting Times in isolation without comparison with the situation in South Britain.
Fraser Nelson a few minutes ago on big auntie’s Radio 5 trying desperately to defend Toby Young “a victim of the digital inquisition” he says. Just some bad jokes and it’s all in the past a person should not be defined by a few bad tweets… etc etc.
But Dawn Foster (Guardian) is a not having it the tweets were fairly recent and tears Fraser a new one or two even! 🙂
Laura Gordon on BBC there, supporting piece on A&E waiting times.
Paraphrased our FMs/SHMs (mitigated) apology..into merely ‘..have apologised’
Ended with line that ‘..opposition leaders said it was a disgrace’
The disgrace, if any, is how much of a
TOOL OF THE GOVERNMENT the BBC has become.
This “Flu-Jabbery!” do U folks mean “Flu-Jags?”
@ geeo says at 2:50 …. ”Hammer blow to Doosan Babcock workers who, according to Tricky Dicky Leonard, are being made redundant BEFORE they have even applied for their jobs…!!! FMQ’s will be a bloodbath.”
link to mobile.twitter.com
I see that the British Brainwashing Corporation has been pumping out the Labour party’s lies again.
Maybe Kezia Dugdale could do something about this when she takes over the SPCB ‘information management and governance’ remit from David Stewart?
………………………………….
@ starlaw says at 9:22 am …. ”PETRA – Scottish government gave out plenty info on the Flu Jab. I was notified twice, once from Government and again from local surgery.”
This lying is getting out of control now, Starlaw. A sign of desperation setting in? Too bad that the Scots, that is the Electorate in a future referendum, have first hand experience of this and know that it’s a load of old guff.
……………………………….
@ Robert Graham says at 9:35 am …. ”It’s just been revealed on The Wright Stuff 40% of frontline staff in the english NHS haven’t had the Flu jab so much for the scottish tory muppet criticising the scottish government for their failings, one day these people will tell the truth.”
Thanks for that Robert. Worth reposting. Maybe Theresa has an agenda, that is bumping large numbers of vulnerable people off.
Thanks for all of the ‘Darien’ links, folks.
Robert points out often the part that Daniel DeFoe played in this. He used the same strategies that are being used now, that is using his propaganda leaflets and the Review to tell the Scots one thing and the English another.
Too bad that the ‘mobs’ in Scotland didn’t find out that he was a spy and ”pull him to pieces”, as reported on here.
Note that he says that when he visited Scotland in the mid-1720s, he claimed that the hostility towards his party was “because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against”.
Seems that after 300 years nothing has changed.
………………………
‘Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707.’
‘Title page from Daniel Defoe’s: The History of the Union of Great Britain dated 1709 and printed in Edinburgh by the Heirs of Anderson.’
‘In despair during his imprisonment for the seditious libel case, Defoe wrote to William Paterson, the London Scot and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darien scheme, who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster in the English Government. Harley accepted Defoe’s services and released him in 1703. He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself.
*This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.*
In 1709, Defoe authored a rather lengthy book entitled The History of the Union of Great Britain, an Edinburgh publication printed by the Heirs of Anderson. The book was not published anonymously and cites Defoe twice as being its author. The book attempts to explain the facts leading up to the Act of Union 1707, dating all the way back to 6 December 1604 when King James I was presented with a proposal for unification. This so-called “first draft” for unification took place 100 years before the signing of the 1707 accord, which respectively preceded the commencement of Robinson Crusoe by another ten years.
Defoe began his campaign in The Review and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an “inexhaustible treasury of men”, a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706, Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty of Union. He was conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such as The Letters of Daniel Defoe (edited by G. H. Healey, Oxford 1955), far more is known about his activities than is usual with such agents.
His first reports included vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. “A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind”, he reported. Years later John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that it was not known at the time that Defoe had been sent by Godolphin :
… to give a faithful account to him from time to time how everything past here. He was therefor a spy among us, but not known to be such, otherways the Mob of Edinburgh had pull him to pieces.
Defoe was a Presbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, and as such he was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was “privy to all their folly” but “Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England”. He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported,
Having had the honour to be always sent for the committee to whom these amendments were referrèd, ”I have had the good fortune to break their measures in two particulars via the bounty on Corn and proportion of the Excise.”
For Scotland, he used different arguments, even the opposite of those which he used in England, usually ignoring the English doctrine of the Sovereignty of Parliament, for example, telling the Scots that they could have complete confidence in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union but always having the last word for himself.
He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of the Duke of Hamilton, the official leader of the various factions opposed to the Union, who seemingly betrayed his former colleagues when he switched to the Unionist/Government side in the decisive final stages of the debate.
Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehement for its independence from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and of course no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union was “not the case, but rather the contrary”.
Glasgow Bridge as Defoe might have seen it in the 18th century. Defoe’s description of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a “Dear Green Place” has often been misquoted as a Gaelic translation for the town’s name. The Gaelic Glas could mean grey or green, while chu means dog or hollow. Glaschu probably means “Green Hollow”. The “Dear Green Place”, like much of Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the Union. The local Tron minister urged his congregation “to up and anent for the City of God”.
The “Dear Green Place” and “City of God” required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty at almost every mercat cross in Scotland. When Defoe visited in the mid-1720s, he claimed that the hostility towards his party was “because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against”.
link to en.wikipedia.org
@ Petra, Glesga could have a Welsh origin like many of the place-names in the area, pre-dating Gaelic by some time.