Sharpen your pencils, readers
Because it looks like you’re going to need them.
If the Scottish Government can’t pass a budget it’ll fall, and with no majority for any alternative administration that’ll leave no option but to hold a general election.
Meanwhile, at Westminster, the UK government is running out of time to get a Brexit deal through Parliament, and facing all kinds of procedural shenanigans which may very well lead to a UK general election.
Should that happen, the UK will likely ask the EU for an extension to Article 50, which would take us past the European elections in May, which would mean that the UK would have to take part in those elections too (because you can’t have a country that’s still an EU member state having no representation in the European Parliament).
Scottish or UK general elections could lead to a new independence referendum, a new Brexit referendum, or both, sending Scots to the polling stations up to FIVE times (and the rest of the UK up to four) in a matter of months, with all the attendant campaigning, colossal expense, economic uncertainty and governmental standstill that such insanity would bring about.
Good luck, everyone.
The UK is a shambles. Time to say goodbye.
Let’s hear what Brenda from Bristol has to say …
My head hurts. 🙁
Well it’ll be a bumper year for local government CEOs taking retirement on their final salary schemes then.
I’m ready. No more second vote for Greens, mind you.
Why on earth is the Green party doing this, at this time? They know that no other party at Holyrood will support the SNP to get the budget through. On the otherhand are they deliberately trying to trigger a Scottish General Election?
Goodness, are the Greens really so foolish? Have they forgotten that most of their support comes from SNP list votes? Oh well, at least it means the SNP will win back plenty 2nd votes if there is another Holyrood election, although it’ll be a shame to see the Greens losing seats. Oh well, they’ll have no-one to blame but themselves.
Yay! Just when things were getting just a little bit boring.
I’m never usually a peddler of stereotypical typecasting, but if the Greens bring down the Scottish Government at this time, they can shove their lentils up their arse, one by one!
I would naturally be inclined towards the Greens, given the serious threat the planet is under now. But Harvie has repeatedly put me right off supportitng the Scottish Green party (green party in Scotland?)with his little tantrums at each and every Scottish budget debate.
I wonder if he sees himself as the Scottish political equivalent of Arlene Foster, wielding power over an entire government. Or does he just enjoy being in the limelight?
If this latest tantrum causes the slightest damage to the Scotgov at such a critical time, or indeed affects indyref2, needless to say he will be finished in Scotland for good and so will his party. 30 pieces of silver, Patrick?
I don’t think a Scottish General Election will faze the SNP at all.
They could possibly regain their majority – even in a AMS system expressly designed to avoid majority government.
However I think it would hurt the opposition parties.
They would all stand to lose seats; and give further impetus to the SNP on the march for indyref2.
That’s why I think a deal will be done on the budget.
One of the opposition parties will stare over the abyss and realise that a General Election is not in their party’s interest.
The question will be: which one?
Do the Greens honestly believe they will come out of this as winners if there is another Holyrood election?
They were tolerable for their stance on Indy but are making themselves increasingly unelectable.
While I despise the Greens for holding the government to ransom, I don’t see the harm in agreeing to local tax reform; the council tax is a shambles. In any event, the sensible option of a land tax would never get through a vote and we’d likely be left with the status quo, again!
Whoever doesn’t vote for it, must know they will lose
seats at any Scottish Elections. So other than 4 party collusion to game the system, I don’t see who benefits.
Especially dangerous to use a SE as a proxy Indy poll if that’s their thinking.
Only the Lib dems & the Greens were ever really liable to back the budget. Perhaps a deal to promise Willie gets an adult seat with a cushion instead of a high chair would secure the Lib dems – though they already got the SNP backing for their “Peoples Vote”, so I think the Lib Dems will push it through on that basis. The Greens know this, so a bit of posturing to the cheap seats going on in that knowledge I think.
Still, almost everyone is aff their heid nowadays, so I’m not putting money on no SE!
Why don’t we just stop paying the Labs and Tories msp wages,their fecking useless anyhow! That should make up the council shortfall the greens want!;-0
I don’t regard participative democracy as “insanity”.
The LibDems and the Greens attract a lot of support for the general mission statement and then blow it all by assisting the main Unionist parties. Crazy.
Oh Lordy! Now might not have been the best time for the greens to flex a muscle. (bangs head off table)
Has everyone in the political sphere gone completely mental?
If the SNP Government falls and a new administration (and First Minister) cannot be formed within 21 days then the Presiding Officer must call new elections and in those elections the SNP stand of a straight Indy ticket.
I’ve seen this scenario proposed before with the simple idea that the FM stands down in order to trigger a new FM election which, without any SNP or Green support, the BritNats would fail to achieve and so elections would have to be called.
But this scenario is ‘cleaner’ in the sense that the Scottish Parliament has effectively voted down the entire ScotGov (so to speak). 21 Days would take us to mid Feb for ScotParl to form a new administration – and fail. Six weeks then of SE with the vote taking place on Thurs 28th March, 1 day before we Brexit.
Delicious.
Perhaps the Greens (and SNP), as the bold George Foulkes would say, “Are doing it deliberately”??
Would the Scottish electorate forgive the Scottish Greens for bringing down the pro-democracy administration that stands between us and the British Nationalist horde?
Labour already are in coalition with the Tories in Councils, Willie said he longed for the old certainty days of ConLib coalition government.
The Greens might go for the opportunity of having a Minister, even if it was the last Scottish Parliament.
If the Greens do this…they are finished!
If we go to the polls for Holyrood, the Greens can GTF
Perhaps an SE on the following Thursday (4th April) when will know for certain that Brexit has happened (or not).
Won’t happen. The Tories will support the Budget as theu know they will be wiped out in a GE. No policies, no people and no leadership; Ruth will be doing sentry duty at the chemist on the High St
@Welsh Sion says: 27 January, 2019 at 4:08 pm:
” … Let’s hear what Brenda from Bristol has to say … “
Or better still what Brenda from Buckingham Palace has to say.
Especially when we tell her that under Scots law she, being Queen of Scots, is legally the protector of the people of Scotland’s sovereignty. Many of we Scots are of the opinion that she is doing a rather poor job of it.
We are seriously contemplating sacking her for not doing her royal duty and Scots law says we can legally drive her out and appoint someone more able in her place. She has, after all, the power to refuse to sign off any bill that Westminster asks her to sign and any unsigned bill does not become a legal act of parliament.
If the budget fails can anyone tell me what would happen to Council budgets?
Without the grant frog Holyrude will they have, to borrow money.
Now awaiting all the moaning about maybe having to vote so often.I don’t mind it at all.
After all the good work I’ve seen by Andy W., from ‘The poor had no lawyers’ to the recent ‘Revive’ on grouse moors, he is damaging himself and the Greens by this posturing.
It is possible that the Greens will attempt to bring down the SNP administration. Politics world wide seems to be working to a governing star of pure stupidity. No reason why Scotland should be immune.
The Greens seem awful keen for a change to the Council Tax yet voted against the Local Income Tax proposed by the SNP during its first term in office.
There were, at that time, practical problems with implementation of such a tax but still if the Greens believed the Council Tax needed to be scrapped…or is it a case that it only needs scrapped if you accept our, the Greens, proposals?
Donald Urquhart@4.17
“Lentils”
Raw, soaked or cooked??
The Greens “believing their own press ego” will be their demise.
I have given them the second vote previously. No More.
Green Party, Cheerio.
Patrick….Patrick……just get a grip eh?
Now this could be a plot between the SNP and the Greens that would most certainly throw the cat among the pigeons in no mistake.
Mind you that would cause a whole new meaning to, “The Pigeon Droppings Scandal”, (that is the blue. red and yellow variety of pigeon would shit themselves).
Have Nicola and Patrick been plotting together?
Nobody said it would be easy.
If there is a Scot Gov election and no party gains an outright majority,
and no party is willing to work with another party to form a Government,
could this lead to a suspension of our parliament like they have done in Northern Ireland (Stormont),
with SoSfS Mundell becoming the de facto First Minister,
or am i talking pish.
Oh bigger! My head just exploded.
I get it Patrick Harvie, you see an opportunity to flex a bit of political muscle, and maybe win something you think is important. Of course. But right now?? Seriously, right now, FFS?
As others above have pointed out, you are doing the unionists work for them. Grow the f*** up, and start acting like a mature political leader who actually supports independence. And let’s face it, if their is an election, their are a shedload of second votes you will no longer get. More for the SNP.
Greens are just getting tiresome. Maybe an election will be a very, very good thing. Talk of the the day is brexit. SNP have a very clear strategy, but Labour are clueless, Tories are all over the place, and the Libdems are just irrelevant. Might even be back to an SNP majority government, then we wouldn’t need the greens (if their are any).
@Robert Peffers
“Have Nicola and Patrick been plotting together?”
Never say never. 🙂
TBF the opportunity to clean out Holyrood of Con/Lab/Lib representation, (given they’re all pretty much of a like *shrugs*), might not be such a bad idea. 😎
If a Scottish General Election were to ensue as a result of the Greens or whoever not voting for the Budget, it’s difficult to see how that would hurt the SNP electorally amidst the almost hourly incompetence being displayed at Westminster re: Brexit. Only those with a nihilist-pedigree are likely to vote for a Unionist Party in any SGE.
My second vote has always been Green Party,
I may have to reconsider this if Harvey starts playing silly games.
IDIOTS.
GODDAMN IDIOTS.
I have bent over BACKWARDS defending the Greens over the past few years, and respecting their right to campaign for what they believe, but these are not normal times. There is a vast amount at stake here far beyond local government politics.
We’re a few weeks from the most catastrophic event in the British isles since the ’70s. What the hell are local taxes going to matter with the most optimistic Brexit scenarios, much less the No Deal horrors of food & medicine shortages, Henry VIII powers, and martial law?
Don’t give me that “one of the other three parties could support the SNP like they did in the past” garbage. We all know damn well that circumstances have changed irrevocably since 2016. Their price – be they Lab, Lib, or Con – will be “we’ll support your budget if you promise to drop #indyref2 this Parliament.” The SNP will not, cannot, and should not, accept that. So no, the Greens absolutely would be responsible in bringing down the only government anywhere in these islands that will fight against the chaos to come.
I gave the Greens the benefit of the doubt on many things: I may have disagreed with them on tactical voting, on Named Person, on the OBFA. Then, at least, they had genuine ideological & political justifications for those stances. But there is zero justification for this, not at this time, not when we’re weeks from a bad time even in a best-case scenario.
Were I conspiracy-minded, I’d almost think that the Greens were being deliberately manipulated into key opposition roles to maximise damage to the SNP, and thus, independence. I can only pray either the SNP pull out an almighty rabbit, or the Greens come to their senses when they realise what voting against the budget at this critical point would mean.
when I blow my nose it is Green. What does this mean?
If the Greens want to lose out on 2nd votes at the next Scottish Election they have found the way SNP 1 & 2.
I will vote from now SNP/SNP nothing else.
If there is a Scottish GE, seems to me that the ‘opposition parties’ will coalesce around ‘no indy ref 2’.
You can guarantee that they will adjust their candidates so that they do not compete against each other and clear up all the anti-indy votes. They will not play fair.
It will be a de facto independence referendum – Brexit will not get a look in – and despite a swing to the SNP there is every chance that the combined votes against the SNP could create a minority government again and any opportunity to use the mandate would be shattered.
Not sure Patrick is looking at the wider picture but Nicola will not risk losing either. There is too much at stake.
The Greens have a big English vote at the back of them.
Nuff said !!!
In terms the Euro Elections we may have unfortunately missed the boat.
My understanding is that the EU, on the basis of the UK triggering Article 50, already reduced the number of seats in the European Parliament to take account of the loss of one of the member states and those seats not reduced have been reallocated to others amongst the remaining 27.
An extension of A50 will not alter the practicalities of trying to reverse this in the time available. Unless of course the cunning plan is to ask the EU to postpone their elections on the basis that the UK might possibly change its mind, maybe, perhaps????
Good luck to anyone attempting that approach.
Which is one of the reasons why the “PV” is somewhat problematic. Again, even on a best case scenario (and we are in believing six impossible things before breakfast territory here) the timescales of organising such a vote will result in a campaign in which the citizenry are asked to stay in an organisation in which the UK has no democratic representation.
Again, good luck winning a vote in that context.
As with so many matters concerning Brexit we are about 18 months too late behind the curve labelled practical reality.
Quite relaxed about a Holyrood election TBH . Make it a defacto indyref .
The Greens also voted against the Scottish Government when it came to the Football vote.
They thought it was fine for a return to the bad old days of sectarianism in Scottish Football and Scottish Society.
Why???
God only knows.
The Greens have no long term vision. All they do is delay Independence by creating division.Do they not realise that the SNP is a broadchurch in which people compromise on views for achievement of the big prize. Why do this little group need to push their ideology. We will get nowhere if every group keep pushing their vision of Scotland as a.demand before we have the ability to shape Scotland.
I will never vote Green now or post Independence.
Question: Will the high ups in Westminster be wanting a Scottish general election? Surely right now SNP voter turnout will be at an all time high.
Could we be seeing the torys and or labour helping the budget pass to avoid this?
I remember in 2009 I think it was, oor wee Patrick and the other green Robin somebody, voted down the Scottish budget. Salmond said he would give it one more go to get it through, and if it failed again, he would resign and call an election. Well the others would have 28 days I think it was to try and form a government or then an election.
They absolutely crapped themselves, the budget passed at the second time of asking with support from Auntie Annabelle’s crewe.
The greens should be very careful what the wish for. Doing this with the budget, at this particular point in time won’t go down too well. Oh well as they say Que sera sera.
Don’t think the Ruth Davidson party, or tricky Dickie would relish an election right know. I reckon that the SNP would increase the number of seats that they have.
As for Rev’s article, well if requires a’ these votes, it’ll be a pain, but I would certainly go and vote. How hard can it be putting a X in a box.
The Tories and Labour are at the heart of the Brexit chaos.
The SNP will be the winners from that chaos. The Green challenge to the budget does not make sense unless it is to flush out the Tories and the rump Labour to reintroduce an SNP majority
This strategy may inevitably result in the sacrificial loss of Green AMS seats. But they will have done the cause of independence well.
The weakness of course is that the Tories will see the risk, see the potential for themselves to lose seats and in consequence come to the aid of the SNP so that their is no Scottish General election.
Sadly, I think the Labour and Tory MSPs will conspire to support the SNP government so that there is no Scottish General Election.
[…] Wings Over Scotland Sharpen your pencils, readers Because it looks like you’re going to need them. If the Scottish Government can’t […]
Is this a deliberate ploy to create the conditions for a Scottish parliamentary election which is also a de facto indyref? I’d be happy about that.
Scot Finlayson says:
27 January, 2019 at 5:19 pm
“”If there is a Scot Gov election and no party gains an outright majority,
and no party is willing to work with another party to form a Government,
could this lead to a suspension of our parliament like they have done in Northern Ireland (Stormont),…””
YES
It looks like folk forgot to read the first 3 words in sentence one
“As things stand”.
SNP throw a bone, possibly pre arranged bone, hey presto, budget passes and 3 unionist parties who were either wetting themselves at the idea of a Holyrood election or thinking they were finally able to stop an indyref for budget support, are dealt a crushing blow ‘at the last minute.
I will certainly hold off from jumping to judgement until this plays out a wee bit longer.
Oh Andy, Andy,
We won’t support the Budget but other people can. That’s a plan?
You do know you need all those second votes? Bye Bye.
Jezza@5.43pm
Sensible post for a change.
Proud Cybernat
Perhaps the Greens (and SNP), as the bold George Foulkes would say, “Are doing it deliberately”??
If the Greens are doing it the answer is Yes to your first point. As to your 2ND point re snp cobblers.
George Foulkes!! who did he mentor again?? Maybe she will vote SNP to keep them in power!!
I’m done giving Greens my 2nd vote, they always say that, the enemy is not the one staring you in the face but the one that stabs you from behind!
Interestingly, depending on how you read it, the monarch doesn’t have to sign anything in order to make law in Scotland. There’s two ways, the other being the use of the Great Seal.
Which means that the Fist Minister can not only advise against Enacting a Bill but can also do the deed herself should the monarch refuse or be unavailable.
In the event of a Holyrood election, the SNP tell us that, if Scotland returns a majority SNP led government, we shall declare the Treaty of Union over, making it a defacto indyref on the treaty.
While this will not give an actual majority of Sovereign Scots in favour (unless pro indy vote share delivers that) it will certainly reinforce the political right to declare the Treaty of Union over until such an affirmation plebiscite can be organised.
There would be every chance the SNP could easily gain the 2 SEATS required in such a circumstance for an outright majority.
Now THAT would send a shiver up the unionist parties spine.
Mark my words … I hate that phrase, but gonna use it anyway …. if the SNP enter any elections without independence as the primary policy and a commitment to call IndyRef2 shortly after the election, then they’re f’cked, we’re all f’cked!
In 2015 they got 1.5m votes buoyed up on the enthusiasm of IndyRef1 and the disappointments of Smith.
In 2017 they got ~1m votes after they appeared to back off from demanding an S30 and failing to challenge the BritNat anti IndyRef2 campaigning. That’s the way I see it, anyway!
Now IS the time. There will probably never be a better time.
I have faith that Nicola agrees and will deliver!
There is more to this than throwing bones. It is Harvey trying to keep himself relevant by pointing out he is essentially the “Kingmaker” in Hollyrood.
However he should also remember that previous goodwill and more importantly votes can turn him into dust rather than the fulcrum of SNP power.
His choice
ONCE TWICE NO CHANCE TO HOLD THE SCOTTISH GOV TO RANSOM A THIRD TIME
Clear out at Holyrood would be not a bad thing , a clear majority for the SNP on a INDEPENDENCE/EU/EFTA/EEC mandate & put a stop to political shenanigans , a wee bit of power & they think their the dugs bollocks . Scots have a way to bring those kinds of people down its called FACING UP TO HARSH REALITY .
Put the Bastwards to the test .
The fly in the ointment is that failing to win a majority of MSP’s that support Indy then I find it difficult to see how there will be a second referendum on Independence this year.
Wouldn’t you have to win a majority of seats again before you could claim a new mandate for Indyref2? I’ve no idea if a new mandate would be needed of course but without majority support in Holyrood it would be difficult to see how you could enact legislation allowing another referendum.
Stuff like a Section 30 order and I’m sure there are other laws that require passing that wouldn’t be able to be passed without majority support in Holyrood.
My guess then is that a deal will be done at least for now.
“sending Scots to the polling stations up to FIVE times (and the rest of the UK up to four) in a matter of months”
Just to help and reassure anyone who might be worried about “Voter Fatigue” or ” Electionitis”
link to eurofree3.wordpress.com
Someone is going to sit down and seriously bang heads together. That tax reform is a crying necessity under the present rules the SG does not have the powers to set-up a tax system that is fair to all and the Greens bloody well know it. Let Patrick tells how he would reorganise the tax system in his ‘Utopian’ green society or has he simply forgotten that the SG with very meagre borrowing powers must balance its books every year.
I’ve said it before but a modernised Local Income Tax with proper protections built in for the more vulnerable e.g. low wage student nurses for starters.
Not convinced that an election would be a bad idea. Manifesto commitment to stay in the SM and CU, not the EU itself. Make it clear if the UK government does not facilitate that there will be an Indy ref. Then work out whether best options depending on the Green manifesto is SNP/SNP or SNP/Green to absolutely ensure there is an Indy majority. That approach would put the Lib Dems on a hook as well to an extent.
By the way totally agree with the Greens (though an SNP member) about local taxation. Local taxation is hard to avoid, increasing Income Tax when you have no control over avoidance, exemptions, unearned income tax is a pot that you cant keep going to in a UK context. However increasing local taxation fairly and substantially would release significant central funds for education and health. And a tourist tax seems to obvious that you wonder why on earth that nots happening PDQ.
Finally central government should not be dictating council tax rise limits. Let the elected councils argue that one out.
Hamish100 @ 18:09,
I would think that if this was the plan, the SG/SNP would engineer an SGE explicitly as part of an indyref strategy, not let it happen by default as a result of a parliamentary defeat.
But it’s an interesting option, and far more attractive than a WM walkout of the SNP MPs alone.
Go to the country on an up-front high-energy pro-indyref and anti-Brexit ticket in advance of E-Day. A very likely surge in SNP votes compared to 2017 would be impossible to discount or countersay.
@ Fiona Nicholson says at 4:25 pm …. ”I would naturally be inclined towards the Greens, given the serious threat the planet is under now. But Harvie has repeatedly put me right off supporting the Scottish Green party (green party in Scotland?) with his little tantrums at each and every Scottish budget debate.”
DITTO Fiona. If he ruins one of the best chances we’ve ever had of getting out of the UK hell-hole the Scots will NEVER forgive him (them). And if it comes down to voting for them, the Greens, as advocated by wee Unionist Curtice previously, I won’t be doing so unless I get advice from someone that I trust and is more knowledgeable than myself.
”I wonder if he sees himself as the Scottish political equivalent of Arlene Foster, wielding power over an entire government. Or does he just enjoy being in the limelight?”
Just what I was thinking. He’s always got a sickening smirk on his face when he’s being interviewed on television about the budget … ”Look at me. The man with all the power.” Not for much longer if he gets bombed out at a General Election of his own making.
i have the freeing that if it comes to a stand-off the Greens will blink first. Can’t see it happening though as they will be thrown a few calculated crumbs, just like last year, and they will present it as a major concession, won from the SNP.
Well, that’s just the way things happen and I would expect it to play out the same way this year, with the Greens posturing for a while then claiming a Pyrrhic victory.
On the other hand though, what’s wrong with reform of the council tax? The Greens’ ideas don’t look too bad to me.
PH talking himself out of parliament -just who does he think he is. What he is doing is an abuse of power and hopefully he will pay dearly for it.
I think we’ll find that the Yellow Tories will back the budget, and the Red Tories do what they do best, abstain.
The Greens will be obliterated at the first SGE post Independence which is months not years away.
What is more pressing to the Greens? Independence now, or a green Planet?
They seem to have little political nous.
The Greens website:-
Greens cannot support budget due to SNP stubbornness on council funding.
Sun 27 Jan, 2019
” A crisis in local services can be avoided, but it will require a fundamental change of position from the Scottish Government.”
Patrick Harvie MSP
Patrick Harvie MSP today (27 Jan) warned that as things stand the Green group of MSPs cannot support the government’s proposed budget at the Stage One vote in Parliament on Thursday (31 Jan), due to SNP Ministers’ “stubbornness” on council funding.
Over the last two years, constructive pressure from the Scottish Greens has resulted in the government cancelling over £300million of planned cuts to council budgets. The 2019/20 budget contains fresh proposed cuts, with councils across Scotland warning of dire consequences
link to greens.scot
The SNP could come back stronger. The Green losers.
Students do not pay the council tax. Those who can’t pay don’t pay. Exempt. Housing benefit.
On average the Council tax is £20 a week. The main money comes from government. Councils have revenues from other sources. They borrow and spend like there is no tomorrow, on wasteful projects and do not fund essential services properly.
I too would have given a second vote to the Greens, but I had my priorities in order – We have to grab our independence FIRST, and that means ticking SNP boxes at every opportunity.
The Greens are attempting to grab an opportunistic benefit from the current situation, an extraordinarily sinister bullying tactic, which they should really reconsider.
If they go ahead with this plan, they’ll be slaughtered at the subsequent election.
@fergus green: “On the other hand though, what’s wrong with reform of the council tax”?
………
Well, nothing, except that it has not been SNP policy in any manifesto since 2007.
Idiots.
@ everyone wondering about the missing voucher in The National:
link to twitter.com
O/T Posted this on the previous thread and REALLY want to know what people think , Thanks Lenny Hartley for your thoughts
twathater says:
27 January, 2019 at 5:51 pm
Don’t know if anyone else watched broadcasting Scotland with Mhairi Black and Murray Pittock and the question about indy2 arose , I’m sure Mhairi said that Scotland doesn’t have the constitutional legality to hold a referendum without a sect 30 order being GRANTED , and Murray responded that Nicola would not hold an advisory referendum because that would lead to all sorts of legal ramifications which would be foolish or some such words
I then watched Lesley Riddoch and Joanna Cherry speaking about the Nordic countries ,and Joanna reiterated the constitutional folly of holding an advisory referendum , and the measures she was attempting to formulate to overcome this blockage
Can anyone else who watched these broadcasts confirm or refute my interpretation of what was said regarding the independence situation and the possible trajectory being put forward or am I reading the runes wrong
Also if the SG are forced into an election let the SNP SG make independence declaration the sole manifesto commitment thereby carrying out the wishes of the MAJORITY sovereign Scots
I like many of the things the Greens campaign for, and I was planning to commit my vote to the Greens once Scotland dissolves the Treaty of Union.
Having said that, if I see that not voting for this budget frustrates the chances of our indyref to come to fruition within the mandate of this government, or the chances of Scotland becoming independent at the worse possible political time in UK history when we face economic ruin by a brexit we voted against but is forced upon us, a moment when our democracy is simply brushed under the establishment carpet and substituted with dictatorship by numbers, a moment when we may well witness England MPs forcing martial law over us to close down our parliament so they can steal all our powers and seize our assets to sell them as bait in some crap trade deal, are lost, the Greens will never, NEVER, get my vote, exactly in the same way that Labour will never get my vote since I discovered the McCrone report and the theft of the 6000 sq miles of Scotland’s territorial waters, the tories will never get my vote since the poll tax and their squandering of Scotland’s oil during Thatcher’s time and the libdems will never get my vote since their disgusting hypocrisy supporting tories, signing the vow and, claiming to support remaining in the EU, they cowardly side with the tories forcing Scotland to exit the EU than facing the prospect of Scotland taking control of its own destiny.
There, I said it. Scotland’s future as an independent country is my priority. Any political party or politician that frustrates or delay that loses my support and my vote and that is, I am afraid, very much an irreversible process: when my trust is gone, is gone.
Where are the poeple who were pushing on here for SNP 1/ Green 2 at Holyrood?
They were told at the time that this was not a good idea and time has bourne that out.
Regarding a change to the council tax, whatever system is chosen will alienate a large portion of the population and will be the kiss of death for whatever party that implements it.
It will be the SNP that gets the blame not the Greens – the mesia will make sure of that.
@ crazycat says at 7:53 pm ….. ”everyone wondering about the missing voucher in The National:
link to twitter.com
Did you see the singular comment after that? Twisted and nasty.
I vaguely remember a few weeks back thinking the Green vote wouldn’t be needed this time. I forget mostly, but I think I decided Labour would either support, or abstain.
Anyways, as long as the bidget gets though maybe with a small change or two, it would be good for Indy if the Greens WERE able to vote against it, to keep their distance and help keep Indy multi-party.
The EU already has already taken into account the possibility of a brexit reversal.
link to en.wikipedia.org
If we take part in this years EU elections,
the climate change scientists will be in despair at all the unnecessary hot air poured into the atmosphere over the last two years and counting!
I wonder at the Greens’ motives. To paraphrase George Foulkes “….but are they doing it deliberately”.
I’d never have given credit to Patrick Harvey for Machiavellian intrigue. But if you wanted to throw a spanner into the pond, this is the right time for the ripples to cause a serious disruption, and all to Indy’s advantage.
I don’t trust the Greens at all, on anything now. They are a tad sleekit, imo, not sure where their laurels lie quite actually, espcially with regard to Scotland.
Be surprised if Nicola Sturgeon wanted a Scottish election at the moment.
Could the Britnat parties join their dirty sleezy hands and try to oust the SNP?
There are dangerous things afoot, at the moment. The Greens should be staying onside, not pi**ing about scoring political points, once again. Would the Greens push Scotland under the bus? Stranger things have happened.
@Alan Crerar
Makes you wonder (and hope) if there’s some choreography at work, with Harvie’s question at FMQs last week.
Surely a little humility is in order. Reform of local taxation may have been a major plank of the Greens’ last election platform, but they need to remember that they came out of that election as a small minority, so they have no mandate to attempt to impose their will on the party which actually won. Expect and obtain some suitable concessions by all means, that’s the nature of the current balance of power, but that’s it.
If the Greens want their views on taxation to prevail, they have to first get the votes for it, not try to blackmail their way via the back door.
I don’t need to sharpen my pencil, I have two propelling pencils (0.5mm HB with other hardnesses available).
Three elections by the summer!
Those Russian election interferers will be having multiple political orgasms.
Or maybe not.
link to archive.is
” If you don’t mind though, the Senate and the corporate media (and anybody else who knows the secret oligarchy handshake) would really prefer you just ignore the fact that Facebook clearly stated: “…56% [of the Russian ads] were after the election” and “…roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone.” ”
It’s not a given that an election for Holyrood would be allowed. . . . Westminster has blocked elections in NI .
For a few months now the Green’s have been talking up Indy Ref2 in the National and last week in the parliament. Was this to pressurise tge FM into calling an Indy Ref. Or an attempt to gain votes from disgruntled Yessers after the FM puts off a new vote?
Who do ya trust the most the Greens or Davidsons Tories. . . . Tough call!
@orri
I think the Great Seal can be kept for the most important thing in Scotland’s history so far.
My own 8.35
This quote fits the ambience of Wings better.
Call me crazy, but what I personally look for in a Russian bot is something that is at least Russian. And if not that, then a bot. And if neither, then you don’t have much of a goddamn Russian bot, do ya? Claiming these are Russian bots is like saying, “I just met the Queen of England, except she may have been a small Icelandic goat.”
Greens lost my second vote over the foottie bill and their intransigent waythat that trans people can wipe biology into the long grass, the sooner they go the better.
Not sure the financial outlay of fighting a SGE would suit the SNP as it would leave them a bit short if they had to then fight a GE and an Indy ref. Perhaps this would be playing into the hands of the much wealthier London based parties.
In any scenario – cash is king, and the SNP do not have access to endless dirty money either.
Surely we all know that this time the Unionists are very certain to use tactical voting in many seats. It will be a stitch up to try and thwart an SNP/Green majority.
Harvey is risking losing a majority at this very crucial stage. Unforgiveable really.
Have the Green Party forgotten how much their membership increased following the Scottish independence referendum because of their support for Scottish independence?
If the greens truly believe in the Scottish people and preserving Scotland’s environment now is definitely not the time for posturing Patrick and if you think it is then you should join the Tories.
Petra
maybe the author of that comment needs to be reported for possible Contempt of Court!
Would maybe make them think twice about some of their remarks.
But then again, would the National get it for not moderating the site?
@Cyber-c: I have posted several times that no other country allows non-domestic parties to stand in elections, so why does Scotland have to have English parties standing, and sitting, in Scotland? With all the extra funding and other advantages that brings them.
But no-one ever responds and I wonder why? I don’t mean anything racist [I am nearly English myself!].
O/T
Watched the equivalent of Politics Scotland on the BBC Parliament channel, only this was Politics N Irelend.
The exact same format as Brewer presents.
And at the end they interview two journalists, asking them their opinions on a Border Poll and surprise surprise, they said that there wasn’t a great deal of appetite for a Border Poll at this moment in time.
Remind you of anything,,,Politics Scotland perhaps?
The bastards at the Beeb have every one of their “regional” stations brainwashed.
It’s the saviour of their stinkin Union at all costs.
Honestly, sometimes I almost understand the “cult” accusations slung around re some SNP supporters. I am a member of the SNP and will always vote for them but the attitude towards the greens on this and many other comments pages is disgusting. They are perfectly entitled to push for local tax reform, it was in their manifesto, they would actually be letting down their members/voters for not doing this!!
The SNP have promised reform in this area for years and not delivered. They should be held to account for that.
The greens are not just in parliament to make up the independence supporting numbers or be the puppets of the SNP/independence supporters. If you voted for them solely on their stance re independence and didn’t actually read and agree with their manifesto then you are the one who is in the wrong, not them. Contrary to what is obviously popular belief they have their own policies and are perfectly entitled to use whatever leverage they see fit to push them in parliament.
The hypocrisy of some is astounding. It’s ok for the SNP to push it’s agenda in Westminster against the largest party because it suits us, but not for the Greens to do the same in Scotland. Politics is about coming to agreements and making compromises. If throwing some more money at local government or agreeing to some reforms of local taxation is all the SNP have to do to pass a budget we will have got off lightly.
May we live in interesting times.
TM. Now Is NOT the time for a S30,
NS. We will have a vote when Brexit smoke clears,
JC & MB We have to ask for a S30 and they can refuse,
PH The Greens will not support the budget,
NS We have to have a Holyrood Election, just before Brexit day, let’s say 28 March
What’s the election mandate?
Suggest, if Scotland is removed from the EU against its will then We #DissolveTheUnion
Seems to me that it gets around all the problems and makes the offer to Scots, its either Holyrood or Westminster, but you can’t have both. 16 & 17 yr olds can vote and so can our European friends.
Whats not to like?
When the worlds climate change meetings take place you never hear the name Patrick Harvie because nobody ever heard of him, It’s Nicola Sturgeon in attendance and doing the talking for Scotland and they all know who she is
Patrick Harvie does more moaning about council budgets while claiming to be standing up for Green issues, which is it, is he in the Labour party or the Green party or just the Pay attention to me Patrick Harvie party
I exclude Andy Whiteman from this because that guy has at least done some actual good work whereas the other guy???
Nope still thinking?
Oh yes I remember now, every time the SNP announce a new climate change policy Patrick Harvie is disappointed and moans that they could go further, so that’s it that’s his contribution
The Moanalot Harvie party
@Sarah it’s a very interesting question you raise. I think the answer lies in the fact that Scotland is presently colonised.
I have no doubt once Scotland is a fully independent nation again that one of the first things to happen will be a re-draft of the electoral rules.
This should include only Scottish based, funded and registered parties being able to contest elections. I expect they’ll have a big look at the D’Hondt system too.
What will be your first priority you want to see tackled in an independent Scotland?
Maybe AS could also setup a new List party for the Holyrood election.
New party name could be
Party for Independent Sovereign Scotland To Accede from the Kingdom of England. #PISSTAKE
Never mind the pencils, sharpen your bayonets.
Robert Peffers says:
27 January, 2019 at 5:14 pm
“Now this could be a plot between the SNP and the Greens that would most certainly throw the cat among the pigeons in no mistake.”
Come to think of it, it could have been a plot by the SNP and the Greens to abolish the Offensive Behaviour Act, or whatever it was called.
Fairly soon Mr Wightman will have to have another crowdfunder in his defamtion case that is currently pending. Remember to piss off the people that might possibly fund you Andrew.
link to crowdfunder.co.uk
A SG election now is a very bad idea. D’hont system can’t be ‘gamed’ if you recall.
If it came to this and people thought well I’ll vote SNP x 2 and they can make it a sort of Indyref2 vote – Westminster would ignore the result. It would have no more clout than the current Mandates we have for IR2 just now.
Which is not to say I don’t think that now is the time for all SNP messages to be strongly about the need for Indy.
I know nothing about council tax reforms, pretty sure that the current set up pleases some and pisses off others, and that any reform will piss off others and please some.
There is no perfect method.
Timing though. Scotland and the UK face the biggest disaster (self made) since World War 2, and the Greens think this is appropriate. Bloody hell. Talk about a lack of priorities, and a lack of focus.
Not impressed with the Greens re this, and the Football laws, and the Single Named Person policy. Their moral compass seems wildly opportunistic at the most dangerous of times.
They won’t get my second vote any time in the future now.
Westminster is not going to grant another Indy referendum – why should they?
If there is to be another election, then the SNP must stand on a platform of UDI.
Otherwise it’s never going to happen.
Folks here, with their rose-tinted specs, just don’t realise how much the unionists have gained ground and how much the SNP has lost ground since Nicola squandered a once in a 1000 years golden opportunity by wasting more than a year flogging a dead horse – a separate deal for Scotland which was never going to happen.
As I have long predicted, in any future election, the SNP will lose more seats to Unionists United.
If the SNP is stupid enough to stand on an independence ticket in either the Scottish or UK “snap” elections, it will be crushed.
Looking on the bright side, one out of two SNP MPs or MSPs will be female.
Richard Hunter 10. 09.
An indyref2 is not something Westminster can grant or withold.
Section 30 is simply a gentleman’s political agreement to accept the result of such a referendum.
The big question re Westminster is what would they do if Scotland voted ‘yes’ after Westminster had declined to accept the result.
It’s been quite an achievement by the BBC today how often they have managed to say
“How will this Alex Salmond business affect this or that…….”
The only instance missing was “How will this Alex Salmond business affect the WEATHER”
What a bunch of lowlife propagandists. This is one thing that the Alex Salmond business will not affect. They are a bunch of House Scots now and they will still be after the Alex Salmond business is finished.
Repeating myself… can anybody show me anywhere, anytime, where anything has been said to confirm the EU27 will actually agree to extending Article 50 simply because the U.K. asks it too? That’s not the impression I get from Guy Verhofstadt.
I simply cannot imagine the EU opening its doors to a new Parliamentary generation of rude boy UKIP Brexiteer troughers so they can agitate disruption and poison EU business which in turn lends succour to Europe’s own far right populist looneys like La Pen.
This is the U.K. Establishment which has cocked its leg on Europe for decades, threatened war with Spain, attempted a right wing political coup to break up Europe, and routinely howls with derision at fabricated and false absurdity about what EU does.
It just takes one veto from one nation in 27, and there is no extension of Article 50.
Sorry folks. But I reckon Brexit is 29th March or bust.
Europe isn’t feeling the heat, it’s feeling pretty chilled if you ask me. Come March, I think the mood will be ice cold and distinctly frosty.
george wood says:
27 January, 2019 at 8:04 pm
“Where are the poeple who were pushing on here for SNP 1/ Green 2 at Holyrood?”
Some are right here, declaring that they will never vote Green again!
Others are too ashamed to appear right now.
@geeo 6:18pm
Following on the whole ‘Majority, sovereignty, only a referendum will do to ascertain a majority thingymy – I hope you’ll indulge me in something meant as a reply to Robert Peffers a while back which never made it cos it was gey lengthy. But I’ll give it a go this time.
Re: The claim neither the SNP, nor any other party can achieve independence for Scotland through any means other than a majority referendum. That any attempt to dissolve the Union or declare Independence, as a majority party is not lawful – as a majority in Parliament (Holyrood) is not neccessarily the majority will of the Sovereign Scots.
Via a referendum process, only those enfranchised to vote are sovereign. The definition of Scots born sovereignty is then: “Those enfranchised to vote” that would exclude everyone under 16 & currently anyone residing “at her majesty’s pleasure” (maybe that last was changed recently I haven’t paid attention) so only those enfranchised to vote, whether the majority or not, represents the sovereign will of the Scottish people.
Besides the above – in order to govern via parliament (Holyrood) enfranchised Scots sovereignty has to be leased to representatives. The Parliament as a whole, not per party, becomes a valid representation of Scots Sovereign Will – Else they act unlawfully as “Unrepresentative”
Stick with me here…
If only a majority is representative of “enfranchised Scots” sovereign will, then a single minority party cannot deliver a referendum – that requires the majority vote at Parliament (Holyrood) to carry the motion (as the representatives of the majority sovereignty) to deliver a referendum.
Otherwise it is not the majority will of the people to hold such a referendum.
Ergo : if a majority in Parliament (Holyrood) IS enough to produce a referendum, as the proxy majority will of the sovereign people, then a majority in Parliament (Holyrood) itself (or in concert) placed there with the distinct remit to dissolve the Union, acts lawfully in dissolving the Union without recourse to a referendum.
On my reasoning above, I would therefore have to reject any referendum only argument.
However, there is a further issue – that is representatives to Westminster carrying the proxy Sovereign will of the people of Scotland.
Though much like Holyrood, they are there as a majority of a seperate voting system and those enfranchised to vote in it. If anything they have less of a remit to speak on behalf of the majority of Scotland than Holyrood does.
If and only if, we consider only those MP’s to represent a lawful proxy of the majority of enfranchised Scots, then they act for Scotland at Westminster and may deliver a notice dissolving the Union etc. If a purer majority representation argument applies, then they have NO power to act at Westminster.
However, following the initial argument; if a majority at Holyrood does have the proxy sovereign power to act and that power is further ‘delegated’ to the Westminster representatives, then they have the proxy power to act.
The heart of the matter is thus:
Who represents Scotland – MP’s at Westminster or Holyrood?
Who are Sovereign Scots – all Scots or only enfranchised voters?
Does constitutional change require a majority vote of all enfranchised Sovereign Scots?
Is Parliament at Holyrood a valid proxy of enfranchised Scots Sovereignty, and if so, does only a majority of that Parliament have the lawful power to induce constitutional change (far less daily government!)
My view:
As Proportionally represented, the Parliament at Holyrood closest reachest the “majority” will of soverign Scots.
“Sovereign Scots” only constitutes those enfranchised to vote.
Their Sovereignty is loaned/delegated by proxy to representatives at their Parliament at Holyrood.
The majority of Parliament at Holyrood represents the majority of enfranchised Sovereign Scots.
A majority in Parliament acts lawfully on behalf of the majority of enfranchised sovereign Scots.
A majority of SNP (or in concert) at Holyrood may dissolve the Union/declare Independence if delegated to do so.
Without a majority (in concert or otherwise) Holyrood cannot institute constitutional change (far less government) up to and including presenting a referendum on independence.
MP’s at Westminster are not relevent unless they act in the capacity of “messengers by proxy” of the Parliament of Holyrood.
Yeah, now you know why I didn’t post it the first time – its in dire need of a Tl;dr editor!
I think it was unwise of AW to remind everyone that the greens supported the budget four times in the last twelve years.
They must be aware of the benefit they gained from second votes from SNP supporters.
mike cassidy says:
27 January, 2019 at 10:21 pm
“The big question re Westminster is what would they do if Scotland voted ‘yes’ after Westminster had declined to accept the result.”
Send in “British” troops, as they did 100 years ago?
@Richard Hunter.
UDI is legally impossible for Scotland.
Rather than me re-hash old explanations, google what is a Universal Declaration of Independence, then think how that can possibly relate to Scotland, a Kingdom in a legally equal union with just one other Kingdom, England, and what that means in relation to the Legally Sovereign Scots people.
You will soon realise it is never going to happen, and rightly so.
From memory the council tax thing is a trap. The problem was that council tax benefit is paid from WM and if there was any reform of the council tax to another system, say local income tax, or land value tax etc then the sum of money currently allocated as CT benefit would stop and not carry over to the new system. That is why the CT reforms fizzled out. Doesnt stop it getting used as a stick (CT reform) to beat the SNP every year.
For people who value the conservation of precious resources so much, the Greens are certainly squandering goodwill at a remarkable rate.
(Some of us haven’t ever really forgiven them for their role in helping Mundell keep his seat.)
The other noticeable thing from AW graphic was how the tories were more pragmatic in the past under Annabelle Goldie. It seems that the tories have their own version of the Bain principle in play since Ruthie joined the game.
Breeks says
Indeed. No extension will be forthcoming unless there a big change in the UK. It certainly won’t be given simply to allow the Tories to continue their bun fight!
There have been suggestions that the EU would extend if there was a commitment (binding in some way) to drop the red lines and aim of a soft trading agreement when that is being negotiated. That would allow the Backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement to tones down now, which might get it through WM. The bit I can’t understand is how could they trust the Tories to aim for soft trade later?
Fall of the government and a GE scheduled. That would do it. But May’s cabal doesn’t look like falling.
There a lot posh ideas flying around which are just wishful thinking. The EU won’t take any of that serious.
This week should see some attempts to force May away from ‘no deal’. Will they work? They all seem a bit woolly!
WM could revoke A50 but I reckon they are too chicken. They fear the wrath of Leave voters.
Yup. ‘No deal’ seems the likely outcome, today. This time next week? We’ll know then.
I’ve come late to the thread but – why wouldn’t the Tories and Labour and maybe also the Liberals form a coalition at Holyrood to avoid having an election?
They have done that in many Local Authorities to keep the SNP out, even where they are the largest party.
Granted nobody interested in independence will ever vote Green again. But you have to have an election to not vote Green.
‘UDI is legally impossible for Scotland.’
Nothing is legally impossible.
Capella says:
27 January, 2019 at 10:45 pm
If, as has been said further up this thread, the SG loses the vote there is 21 days grace to allow another government to be formed before an election needs to be formed then a coalition of the Unionist parties could be formed with the Greens supporting on a confidence and supply basis. But I’m not sure that would give them a majority. They still might try though.
Would not put it past them.
Robert Peffers says:
27 January, 2019 at 4:52 pm
“Especially when we tell her that under Scots law she, being Queen of Scots, is legally the protector of the people of Scotland’s sovereignty. Many of we Scots are of the opinion that she is doing a rather poor job of it.
We are seriously contemplating sacking her for not doing her royal duty and Scots law says we can legally drive her out and appoint someone more able in her place. She has, after all, the power to refuse to sign off any bill that Westminster asks her to sign and any unsigned bill does not become a legal act of parliament.”
Anyone in the whole of Scotland brave enough to go and tell Brenda?
Ian Brotherhood says:
27 January, 2019 at 10:36 pm
For people who value the conservation of precious resources so much, the Greens are certainly squandering goodwill at a remarkable rate.
————
totally, as some one who campaigned for a green 2nd vote, this is a real kick in the teeth.
it is one thing to highlight the nature of the electoral system at holyrood and point out that a 2nd vote for another indy supporting party will remove unionists list mp’s, to then find out that party is actively trying to destroy the yes movement is devastating.
if the greens force a he now, with snp support at 43% (47% we got in 2016) there is no way snp or yes supporters will now vote for them, and rightly so.
result…….a unionist majority
our movement dies
no indyref2 for at least 5 years if ever
Just putting this out there….and
I’m trying to catch up.. So.. Sorry if it’s been said..
But,if I’m remembering right..
That 2014 Referendum,the one with the section 30 order from the House of Commons…??
Well in the final days of that section thirty,ed vote.
The House of Lord’s were discussing – IF – it were indeed Legal?
And
Had the Executive the right under “Westminster” Parliamentary Sovereignty to even agree to a Section 30?
Also
What could they do about stopping the Commons accepting a Yes vote?
Now… They might not have put it “exactly” like that,but that is the substance of what they were sayin… And they All seemed to know it.
Anyhoo..
The point being that even a Section 30 agreement is no “magic Key” to Indy… And mindful that a little over a year ago the British Government signed up to an agreement with Europe regarding Ireland,then took about 24 hours to backslide..
I’d say, Section 30…. Nice but not necessary…
They will try to stymie the Yes vote anyway,so I’d go for a Section 30 ,but wouldn’t let it get in the way.
Well,unless I thought it would ramp up the Yes vote..
Who can say??
But a Section 30.. Not fussed as there has never been a definitive ruling from a Court of any Authority anyway..
Like I tell my Wee friend ( the one fleeing the Narcissist)
IF the Judge Hasn’t said it,,, You don’t need to be doing it!!
A Judge Recognised by both sides as having Authority in the matter of course..
If there is a SGE and Tories and labour do not contest against each other we should put up Independent Tory or Labour candidates to muddy the water. If they’re not playing fair, why should we?
Iain Mhor @10.26pm
Almost tempted to call that ‘gibbering pish’, but not going to indulge your expectations…(arf arf, only kidding, good enough post and reasonable ideas in it).
While it seems a fair enough post, it does appear to misrepresent my earlier post in that i have never said a S.30 indyref is the only way to go.
I do however, believe that the SG must pledge to hold an affirmation plebiscite ‘at some point’.
That does not mean there IS going to be one, depending on the means used to dissolve the treaty of Union, there may simply be no need.
Say Nicola announces indyref and treeza says no.
Now imagine that a Protective Motion to dissolve the Union is put at Holyrood. The ‘protection’ part being to protect our sovereignty and Scots Law from
WM brexit we never wanted nor voted for.
So far, so shorter than your post Iain (jist sayin’ hehe)
In such a scenario, Holyrood caveates said Motion with a pledge to hold a plebiscite to affirm the protective dissolution.
However, as we get to ask and form the question, then we word it more along these lines
Q. Do you, the sovereign people of Scotland, wish to..
A. Affirm the political dissolution of the Treaty of Union and Scotland remains an independent country.
B. Instruct us, your elected government, to enter into negotiations with WM in good faith, to negotiate a new Treaty of Union with Scotland’s best interests at heart ?
If it is B. but suitable terms cannot be agreed, then Scotland remains independent as via the dissolution motion.
That is if WM even agree to new Treaty talks, and i doubt they would, as our red lines would never be acceptable politically as their electorate would be furious at Scotland handing WM it’s ar*e in such a manner.
I know there are perhaps issues with the above, but as a thought on possible futures, what say you to that, Iain ?
BBC whistleblower revealing UK Govt D-Notice on French unrest:
link to twitter.com
if the Greens bring down Holyrood they will be hammered and wiped out forever
@ Legerwood – I regard the Greens as politically very naive. Their hearts may be in the right pace but they aren’t street fighters.
My guess is that the Unionist parties will avoid an election like the plague. But the Greens might be too idealistic to notice they are being played.
pace = place 🙂
Not posted here in a while although still been reading.
Am I wrong in saying that the Greens want an Income Tax based LA tax system to replace the CT but this has already been looked into by the SG and found that the UK treasury has put blockers against it?
Lizzy are on iLive Radio Ra now:
link to indylive.radio
@galamcennalath
“Yup. ‘No deal’ seems the likely outcome, today. This time next week? We’ll know then.”
I’d give you 10/1 that we know no more next week than we do this.
As to the likely final outcome of Brexit that is.
Richard Hunter
UDI is an inappropriate term to use with regard to Scotlands position in the Treaty of Union as a sovereign nation in a bipartite international treaty. It’s as straightforward as that.
@IB – very very interesting. Also scary. What does the BBC think it is playing at?
Can you remember if we got the facts anyway from other sources? I was otherwise engaged in December and no longer have a TV licence[!] so wasn’t following the news closely – all I knew was that yellow vests were protesting in the usual French way.
For aw your moaning about the Greens. Jist remember this:
If it wisnae for the Greens youse would aw be greetin aboot there no being a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.
Put bluntly: indyref2 would be deid.
Less centralisation and instead devolving power locally is a Green ethos, so their fight for local budget increases for Councils is no a piss-off the SNP trick, it’s simply the Greens fighting for their own policy as a political party is expected to do.
c Alexander,
if it wisnae for the greens their wood be mair SNP
Reorganising local taxation may be laudable and it may even have cross party support but it is a journey that is fraught with danger. It is the sort of thing that you do if the political weather is fair or you are in the mood for some scorched earth. Juggling Brexit, an Indyref and major taxation reorganisation does not look wise.
It is not that the Greens are wrong for wanting this it is just that it might not be the most advisable thing to embark upon. There must be other Green issues they could strike a deal over. It isn’t like the planet and our natural environment isn’t crying out for a bit of a hand up.
@ Geeo
SG asks for S30. UK refuses. SG holds advisory ref. Ref advises SG to begin dissolution of 1707 Treaty. UK refuses to acknowledge instruction of Scots. In doing this they refuse to acknowledge Scots Law, protected in Treaty. SG goes to the international courts as the 1707 Treaty of Union is an International Treaty, not domestic law. The two separate Acts of Parliament enabled the signing of the treaty and the Articles Of The Treaty law and as we all know these articles have been broken over the years.
The bones of the UK State is laid open for international scrutiny.
Down side is that it will take years while WM continues to asset strip Scotland.
Up side is, could WM stomach the world seeing it for the sham it is, especially after Brexit?
Cameron signed the last S30 simply because they thought they would win but mostly that they didn’t want it going to court.
@geeo 11;13pm
Fair enough, Perhaps I did misconstrue your initial premise.
Yes I have no argument that an ‘affirmation’ should be sought, that is proper. It’s perhaps just the form that affirmation should take.
If as I argue, a majority at Holyrood represents the majority will of Sovereign Scots, then I’d suggest a single party carrying a majority -with dissolution of the Union as a clear part of its manifesto -if returned does not require further affirmation to act.
As I understand it, you are suggesting a situation where a sitting Parliament, with a majority in concert, decides to engage in a major constitutional changes or proposals.
Then, as the majority body at Parliament probably did not collectivy have such action as part of their election manifestos – then yes, I concede that it would be perhaps be ‘proper’ to have an affirmation of that policy by eg. Referendum to the people.
That referendum would only need be advisory as it is merely an affirmation from the people of their proxy.
The form that would take is moot.
Along the lines of ‘Parliament proposes to “x” do you affirm our authority to do so.
However, my caveat is that Parliament (or majority party) is self policing here. In daily government there is no continual recourse to affirmation of policy. Policy enacted first – bubble about it later! As an example I’ll give OBFA.
Ostensibly supported by the majority of people – overturned by majority at Parliament. They decided the populace quite frankly didn’t give a shit and would let that slide. They were vindicated – no-one gave a shit. No riots, no marches nada. Perhaps the backers will be papped out at the next (or local) elections but I doubt it.
So I’m suggesting there is ample precedent for a government to act with the authority vested in it ‘first’ without recourse to any secondary affirmation procedure and worry about the repercussioms later. After all that is what daily government does.
Is it merely some esoteric acknowledgement that such an act as dissolution of the Union merits a special dispensation to the populace to affirm? – There’s a novelty *grin*
Besides, the S30 is a red-herring as we know. Either Holyrood is representative or MP’s at Westminster. WM can’t negate the authority of both. They have to pick one as legitimate representatives of Scotland (a Partner in bi-partite Union)
If both MP’s at Westminster and Holyrood state an intention to at the very least, hold some form of referendum (whether Indy” or “affirmation to act”) then there is bugger all WM can do about it.
They only argument they have recourse to is that:
Scotland & England were extinguished by Act of Treaty. But now logically, the Treaty no longer exists. Foe how can a Treaty refer to, or bind Kingdoms which no longer exist?
The UK is a Unitary State, Westminster is its Parliament, its government is Sovereign under the Crown. God Save the Queen and all who sail in Her – bugger off.
And now Mr Peffers is having a fit!
@ C Alexander
Still full of it I see. Why are your unionist LAs not claiming what they should then blaming the SG for underfunding?
I was going to go to the shops today but because of the Alex Salmond business I just couldn’t, this whole Alex Salmond business has put my entire life on hold, a referendum??? dear God that can’t be possible
If anybody falls for this media garbage they’re mentally irregular or a four year old, or they’re happy to have their intelligence insulted by the TV
@ Fran
I support independence.
Just remember: The majority of people DON’T VOTE SNP.
So, if it’s insults or petted lip to anyone who dares criticise the SNP, youse are shootin yersel in the foot.
It’s time people grew up and separated the idea of independence from the SNP’s other policies in their minds.
Independence is about taking back control for our nation. for our own country, instead of being Lorded over from Westminster. It’s no about party favourites or being a fan or critic of Nicola Sturgeon.
If Wingers want to copy the unionists and turn indyref in a party election: SNP v Labour, Tories, LibDems, then that is sheer stupidity.
“Just remember: The majority of people DON’T VOTE SNP.”
Well they have done before and might do again.
You’re looking a wee bit Green tonight. Jealousy maybe hahaha?
GO Yes Indy Live Radio:
link to indylive.radio
You keep shaking ma brain!
(leave it ON in the background readers for bgm for y’all)
BGM = BackGroundMusic (and aussi Blood Glucose Monitor)
=”Sharpenin’ like”=
Hehe… HEY! 🙂
So what if the Unionists gang up, and collude to beat SNP (& Green?) candidates, themselves then making it a constitutional battle again!
Let’s not kid ourselves, any election at this time, here or in Westmidden would be a de facto Indyref rehearsal (at least)
Going down with Britannia, or taking back control and joining the World.
Didn’t NS say something about Us deciding when the time was right?
It’s now, and if we’re feart about facing this sorry bunch of chancers…
@ Hamish 100
The constituency vote for the SNP was so high, the SNP actually won MORE seats in 2016 in the constituency vote, than in all the previous elections.
The SNP vote in the regional list was almost twice that of the Tories and was more than 2x Labour’s regional list vote but, the SNP only got 4 list seats, whereas Labour and Tories got 20+ each.
The whole system is designed to try and prevent majorities for one party and most times it has worked like that.
So, a second pro-indy party, that will also hold the SNP to account, is good for Scotland and good for democracy.
Previously on ra Indy Live Radio:
link to youtube.com
Excellent 80’s music-video.
Circa 1986.
Return.
link to indylive.radio
Fran @ 00:16
If the UK is still in the EU at that point, Brexit automatically stalls, because Art.50 requires that exit is according to the (UK) constitution, and that would be a prima facie breach.
(The remainder of the famed – or notorious – “unwritten” UK Constitution is irrelevant, since the 1707 Treaty is the founding document and it is most definitely written!)
At that juncture one might expect the ECJ to get involved, adding even more to the frustration and fury of English exceptionalist Leavers.
All to the good, I would say. The more flies we can put in their ointment, the better. It would increase political pressure down south to get shot of us.
If you want a majority in Holyrood then you need 50% of the vote. That’s “more or less” true but not far off the mark.
I voted Green in 2016 and I’m pleased they are pushing the SNP to get on with fighting for independence instead of fighting for an England’s People’s Vote 2, where English Nationalists decide what’s to happen to Scotland – again.
The simple fact that many who support Independence actually voted Green in 2016 meant that the SNP failed to gain an overall majority in Holyrood.
Well does that matter? Look now and see that it does in the fact that the SNP cannot pass their budget without support from elsewhere. That matters if you care about Independence.
That was an excellent transition to Amy, Indy Live Radio.
Twas on the hour of the seventeen, we EXPECT no less.
Sales of desktop pencil cutters begin to SOAR!
The reason it matters is that if there is another Holyrood election how certain are the SNP combined with the Greens to get a majority?
I’ve no idea, I don’t see the Greens doing much but that means the SNP need to be on 50% or thereabouts. Hey no big deal, look on it as a de-facto Inderef2 if you like.
If we do have a GE in Scotland I reckon that the only chance of the SNP winning outright is to make it a de-facto referendum.
So for that reason I’m ruling it out, Brexit has to happen first so let’s not get too excited at the possibilities that aint going to happen. My humble opinion 🙂
Thepnr
Even if the budget didn’t get passed and it triggered a fresh election, it’s an open door to stand on a mandate to declare Holyrood as representing the sovereign people, so ending the 1707 political Union.
The “sovereign” parliament can then decide to hold indyref and if YES wins declare full independence or if the people decide NO, they can try and negotiate a different union, the negotiations for that would probably fail, as England does not want a Union of equals, only domination.
So, we’d be independent by default anyway, as no new union could be agreed.
Various points:
1. UDI is perhaps technically, an incorrect term. UDD, ‘Unilateral Declaration of Dissolution’ might be considered more appropriate and has the not inconsiderable advantage of highlighting the difference between Scotland’s constitutional and legal position compared to that of the likes of Catalonia.
2. If the AMS d’Hondt system is game played by a Red BritNat/Blue BritNat electoral pact but the electoral advantages of such a pact are ignored by the much more politically aligned SNP/Scottish Greens, then that would elevate political irony to an entirely new level.
3. To get an internationally recognized plebiscite for independence, ‘>50% of Scotland needs to vote Yes.’
But what does that mean?
There is a difference here between an indy ref and a GE.
In an independence referendum, there are two scenarios.
First, an agreed referendum between Holyrood and Westminster. (Which isn’t going to happen)
If more than 50% of the turnout votes Yes then, in that scenario, that would be sufficient for international recognition. Those who did not vote would be discounted because they had the opportunity to do so but were either insufficiently decided to vote or were unable to (e.g. dead, ill, out of the country, not registered, etc.)
But in a non agreed, unilaterally driven, Holyrood generated, referendum, by the simple expedient of calling for a unionist Boycott of the referendum by Westminster, we get into a ludicrous situation where all those who do not vote for indy, including the undecided, dead, unconscious, ill,out of the country, not registered to vote etc. would be counted as No voters.
In other words a majority of the entire theoretical electorate would be required for international recognition in that instance.
However in a GE, Westminster cannot call for a spoiling Boycott and a simple majority of turnout would/should be sufficient for the required international recognition.
If international recognition is obtained for Scottish independence then even an ultra right Government in Westminster would find refusal to acknowledge Scottish independence very difficult, although preference for pariah state status over allowing Scotland its freedom is not entirely off the radar, given the predilections already demonstrated by the neo-Nazi cabal.
Colin Alexander @ 01:04,
Well, there’s your (SNP-hating) chance. Go for it! Put your efforts where your mouth is and resurrect RISE. Or whatever. =yawn=
A better strategy in this daffy system might be to fully educate every voter that the list vote isn’t a “second vote” or “alternate vote” in the sense that people are not required to vote for some other party than their constituency choice, thereby keeping the proportionality factor high enough for the SNP to achieve more list MSPs as well. (Since it is only the overall list vote region-by-region that determines the actual composition of Parliament.)
For some unknown reason, the SNP have tended to do worse in the list, so there is clear room for improvement there. If people would only stop “muddying the waters” by advocating a split in the pro-indy vote in present circumstances. =hint, hint=
Also worth bearing in mind that the SNP running on an explicit anti-Brexit ticket would make it very difficult for the BritNat parties to gang up against it, especially the FibDems. Too many disgruntled Remainers finally giving up on the useless shower.
The idea that other parties hold governments to account is for the birds
Other parties actively try to stop the government enacting the manifestos they were elected on so they can then complain the government didn’t do what they said they would thereby letting down the voters, so vote for us thanks very much, and then it starts all over again
Democracy is not what many people imagine it to be, British government for example is based on majority government rule where like the Tories or Labour they can immediately become dictators and do whatever they fancy by changing and creating laws as they go, unhindered by the very idea of democracy
then are free to carry out their particular form of ideology which in the case of Tories and Labour is in essence exactly the same ideology, but they do enjoy telling the electorate that they are completely different even though as we all know the results to the economy and standards of living by both parties are the same
The electorate votes in the hope that whichever dictators are elected is a benign party of dictators then everybody’s happy, but in UK politics that never happens
We hear often that political parties are happy to engage with other parties in the pursuit of democracy but of course that’s not and never has been true, that’s electorate voter speak for vote for me I’m a good guy, however in Scotland post Independence that might work if the opposing parties are like some of the Nordic countries prepared to work together for the benefit of the country and don’t have power crazed notions that the UK has always suffered from
The benefit of being a small Independent country is that voting wise Scotland wouldn’t suffer the gridlock political problems of our southern neighbours because in general smaller countries are more nimble and quicker to react to the voice of the voter knowing full well if the government of the day is bad then they’re out pretty quickly
England is a dictatorship ideology, not a democracy, and never has been one but the punters still after all these years don’t know it so they vote for personality politicians, after all you wouldn’t want someone who’s bad at eating a bacon sandwich would you, you’d rather have a more refined guy who went to a better school and sticks his bits into a pigs mouth, or a little fat blond man who talks rubbish but makes you laugh, even an old guy who reminds you of Obi Wan Knobi, well he can’t be bad can he…. Ooops!
Thepnr @ 01:25
The Bella strategy, neat (2 years too late) or dilute (2 months too late). =roll eyes=
If we wait till it’s all over, it will be all over, and in more ways than one, Henry VIII powers and all. “Copy the other ineffectual parties” doesn’t seem a very sensible strategy to me. If we are that cavalier with the historic possibilities, with no leadership of any worth on show, people won’t rise in rebellion afterwards, they’ll simply give up and desert in droves.
Thankfully our leadership appears to have more backbone than that, and we have a sincere promise of a genuinely “meaningful vote”. I for one am still counting on it.
And ahm aye going to continue 2 keep on promoting Indy Live Radio?
Why aye like, Yes aye fucking ahm.
Miguel knows.
😉
John Jappy ~ Hiding the truth.
NOW LIVE playing:
link to indylive.radio
Monday Jan19.
Live now.
That’s Scotlands Fucking Oil, that is.
link to indylive.radio
John Jappy kens.
Love ur i.
Time.
This could come and become a very cool habit:
link to youtube.com
YOU know where U heard it first:
link to indylive.radio
Gimme it skin deep.
Yes2019!
For the pleasure of those who miss this in the morning:
link to youtube.com
GO Yes Indy Live Radio of ra NOW.
You’re SO cool xx.
.
Changing 2nd vote from Green to SNP won’t work as Stu., explained in an earlier, well written forensic post. The D’hondt/AMS system will ironically work against the SNP if folk change from 2nd-Vote-Green to 2nd-Vote-SNP. The political economics of diminishing returns.
A far better idea at this time is to consider Stuart Campbell’s thesis of a NEW pro-indy party, It was a genius idea. Remember Stu’s article on “SNP Classic” as one pro indy party and “NewSNP”.
The only way to get a majority SNP government at Holyrood if the McGreens become extinct is for a second pro-indy party to be established. That would mean a BIG majority for pro-indy.
So homework for someone on here. A new Pro-indy party in Scotland will require a great deal of effort, but the stability of a solid and reliable SNP majority long-term at Holyrood is something that would be prized and a political game-changer.
Hey Scotland!
We have NOW a new radio station… that’s AWESOME!
Can we get some window stickers printed up?
Alanis knows:
link to indylive.radio
Ready to vote and vote and vote =)
On the budget choices.
I think we can not give the Councils more power and more cash until there is evidence that Councils can run their affairs with the true interests of their communities at heart, working well within the overall Scottish concerns on the national level and behave with honesty, intelligence, accountability, honesty again.
Most councils seem to quietly get on with doing a great job but there are notable exceptions who behave like wrecking balls in their domain and for now, I would not like to see them having even more power to cause even more damage.
Was watching one of these movies earlier today…
This is how ah feel… sometimes:
link to youtube.com
Howsabout you, do YOU feel same?
Feeling green?
Just the tip.
SHAME on you, SiU, shame on YOU, SiU.
Naw fair fa’ yer dishonest glib coupon ye.
Return to Radio…
Re-enter.
link to indylive.radio
Get used to it.
ARISE Sir Archibald MacPherson of them Suckas in Union…
Whit’s the fitty score ssson?
Glib windswept wager.
Yeah U yah.
They (the Tories) may not have a Plan B…
But we sure as hell got an A-team.
We are soldiers of fortune.
You gotta problem?
Circa 1972.
link to youtube.com
March 2, 2017.
Did y’all see this at the time…
link to grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com
Ahm re-sharpened NOW.
@ Al-Stewart and if that new Indy party had Labour in the title like say the Scottish Independent Labour Party it would, I’m sure, capture many disenfranchised Labour voters.
One of the Rev’s aborted posts mentioned one crucial criteria that this party would need to follow, but I think the nitty gritty and when this idea joins the meta-narrative is best left up to him for a time of his own choosing.
These are the results for the two pro-indy small parties, who got no seats on the list, that’s null, zero, zilch. I didn’t bother with UKIP, who would after all.
Solidarity – Seats 0 – Votes 14,333 – Vote Share 0.6%
Net percentage change +0.5
RISE – Seats 0 – Votes 10,911 – Vote Share 0.5% – Net percentage change +0.5
The Greens got +4 seats with 150,426 votes and a +2.2% percentage change in vote.
Add it together and you get those three parties +3.2%. The SNP were -2.3%, and lost 12 seats on the list – that’s 12. I have no idea how many more seats they would have got with that extra 3.2% if it had gone to them rather than RISE and Solidarity.
But more to the point, would they have got more list seats with the +1% from Solidarity and RISE?
And what would happen if the Squiffy New Pro-Indy party took another 1% away from them, maybe even 3 or 4%? The SNP got 4 list seats, perhaps they would get NO list seats, nor would the Squiffy party. And maybe Squiffy would take Green votes, so instead of 6 seats they’d only have got 2. That would have totally screwed up 2016, the SNP + Greens would be a minority.
Unless you’re a Green supporter or voter, or RISE, vote SNP with your list vote. Simple as that. And any new pro-indy party purely put there for the list vote, will NOT get popular support at all. In that respect the grassroots YES are all individuals.
It would be another splitter.
To make that more plain, UKIP with 46,426 got no seats, zero, nada zip. That’s 3 times Solidarity and 4 times RISE votes in 2016 and almost certainly double what Squiffy would get if it was lucky. I wouldn’t vote for Squiffy, I prefer Mail-lite.
Worth a listen to this weeks MMT podcast which touches on Scottish independence…
link to pileusmmt.libsyn.com
WGD: ‘What Happens Next.’
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
We need a new pro-indy party to contest the list seats only. This would protect and even guarantee a pro-indy majority at Holyrood, but the SNP would have to take a pragmatic decision to allow this to happen. Not unlike what the unionist parties did in 2017, standing aside in certain seats, or keeping campaigning to a minimum, in order to support their ‘opponents’ and damage the SNP.
The names Gordon Ross and Lesley Riddoch spring to mind as pro-indy, non-SNP candidates. Any others?
Professor John Robertson:- ‘Demonising Alex Salmond…’
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
Podcast indy conversation starts at 32 min..
yesindyref2 says:
28 January, 2019 at 5:00 am
These are the results for the two pro-indy small parties, who got no seats on the list, that’s null, zero, zilch. I didn’t bother with UKIP, who would after all.
UTTER BOLLOX
Links
link to gov.scot
Scotland Brexit Minister Mike Russell says “the sheer cost” of planning for a no deal Brexit is “enormous”.
video
link to twitter.com
link to indyref2.scot
Naming the day – Independence Day.
link to facebook.com
DENNIS Canavan has called for a second referendum to be held soon otherwise he says the independence movement could “miss the boat”.
link to archive.vn
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
Very good thread
Here is 101 reasons and powers that Scotland will gain with dissolving the union with England, and these are real facts..
link to threadreaderapp.com
link to peterabell.blog
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
link to barrheadboy.com
link to marksimonfrankland.blogspot.com
link to stirlingsnp.com
link to taxresearch.org.uk
link to farminguk.com
England can be better than the Brexit caricature. We have to make the case for it
link to archive.vn
link to irishpost.com
Peers and MPs receiving millions in EU farm subsidies
link to archive.vn
link to politicshome.com
link to vanityfair.com
If you are seriously interested in what is really happening in Venezuela set aside the 25 mins required to watch this film instead of swallowing the right wing bullshit sound bites from the thoroughly biased BBC, Sky News, Fox & others
link to twitter.com
in 7 out of the 8 regions, the snp got 1 msp elected
i’ll repeat that for the hard of thinking, the snp 2 vote managed to elect 1 list msp in 7 of the 8 regions
fact
ps, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts
@Iain mhor says: 28 January, 2019 at 12:23 am:
” … And now Mr Peffers is having a fit!”
I think that there are quite a lot of well kent faces (names) that could stand as independents on the list, former MPs, etc.
After John Finney and Jean Urquart resigned from the SNP, John stood as a green, the ballot paper saw John Finney for the greens. Whereas Jean stood as RISE who did not put her name on the paper, just RISE and whatever it stands for.
John won a list seat easily, Jean was nowhere near. I feel sure that if she had stood as an independent in her own name she could have won a seat. (any opinion on that Sarah?)
Well known names can beat small parties easily.
@schrodingers cat: “Utter bollox”
Dear me, the bit you quoted from my reply is completely correct. Go down the page and click the regions tab
link to bbc.co.uk
So the appropriate reply to you is 100% bollox.
Angus Robertson, Tommy Sheridan, Lesley Riddoch, Alyn Smith will be oot a job soon too.
@Robert Peffers says: 28 January, 2019 at 7:29 am:
“Iain mhor says: 28 January, 2019 at 12:23 am:”
” … And now Mr Peffers is having a fit!””
Mr Peffers doesn’t have fits – doing so clouds the brain and prevents logical thought. You do not win debates with a fogged brain.
Want a good example? The many here on Wings who damage the cause of independence by their constant efforts to undermine the First Minister and pressurise her into acting prematurely by calling Indyref2 – and losing it.
The FM, and her many advisors, have a great deal more information than those who claim they know best. Much of that information her detractors have no access to. These detractors are allowing their inpatient feelings to cloud their reason and their logic.
All evidence points to the FM being very well aware of the feelings of the general public. Note her announcement today that expresses the feelings all to evident here on Wings that the Westminster attempts to disrupt the SG/SNP over the Alex Salmond accusations are not about to derail the cause of independence.
As May pompously declares Indyref2 ‘the last thing we want’, let no one be in any doubt, the wealth of the English Establishment and the ‘stability’ of the UK economy, in very large measure, comes from the plunder of ‘British’ colonies, continuing with Scotland’s vast energy wealth. And always has done.
After centuries of theft and ‘posh’ criminality, it’s time the British Empire faced reality.
Hail Alba.
Marital law -when a state of war exists where the military is not limited by domestic law but by the laws and customs of war. When civil government is suspended e.g India during the Mutiny, S. Africa during the Boer war. Imposed during periods of crisis to suppress rebellion, insurrections and living proof that in the 21st century after a creating a number of constitutional crises by its own demented machinations that the UK govt has completely lost the plot. It is the continuation of the UK govt that is the ‘emergency’ –it should put itself under curfew;
‘emergency” means—
(a)an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the United Kingdom’
Is the UK Govt seriously suggesting curfews, using the military to intimidate or turn its weapons on ordinary citizens many of whom did not vote for the Brexit Fiasco and the predicted economic and social harms. Perhaps imperial policing, Coercion Acts (perfected in Ireland) and repressive legislation to subdue the population in the ‘defence of the realm’ quaintly repackaged as the ‘Civil Contingencies Act’ might do the trick as supplies of food and medicines dry up, businesses fold. There is a particular section for Scotland, the country, that did not vote for this ridiculous situation;
‘Subsection (1) enables the Scottish Ministers, a Scottish Category 1 responder or a Scottish Category 2 responder to enforce duties under the Act by way of proceedings in the Court of Session. By virtue of subsection (2), the Court of Session may grant any relief or make any order that it thinks appropriate’
link to legislation.gov.uk
History suggests that wherever the Empire imposed martial law independence followed e.g.
Martial Law declared in Canada 1837-1838
Martial Law Jamaica 1831, 1865
Martial Law Natal 1906
Martial law South Africa 1899, 1902
Martial Law (entire) Cape Colony 1901
Marital Law Ireland 1798, 1803, 1916, 1920, 1921
The WM regime is composed of incompetents who are not fit to govern, the union is not united, it is not one kingdom, Scotland will go its own way.
galamcennalath says:
27 January, 2019 at 10:40 pm
…There a lot posh ideas flying around which are just wishful thinking. The EU won’t take any of that serious.
…WM could revoke A50 but I reckon they are too chicken. They fear the wrath of Leave voters.
Yup. ‘No deal’ seems the likely outcome, today. This time next week? We’ll know then.
When Europe makes a determination, they will stick to it. If the UK doesn’t call off Brexit altogether, then it’s soft(ish) Brexit with May’s deal and Irish Backstop, or a no deal cliff edge Brexit on 29th March.
The Europeans in my opinion are perplexed by the UK’s dithering incompetence, fantasy politics, and breathtaking failure to decide what it actually wants. We may be hearing but we are not listening. I believe the UK, and even ourselves here in Scotland, are guilty of failing to recognise that May’s Deal and backstop, No Deal, or No Brexit is as close as makes no difference to a final ultimatum from the EU.
a) Call off Brexit.
b) Brexit on the agreed protocol with the Irish Backstop.
c) Cliff Edge Brexit, with consequential sanctions and embargos for threatening the Good Friday Peace Agreement.
We are passed the negotiation stage. It is finished. The EU is now impatient for a decision. If we cannot decide, the default for no decision is primed, ready and in place.
If a cliff edge Brexit is disaterous for Scotland, if a soft Brexit with May’s Deal is a disaster and humiliation for Scotland, then that leaves Scotland with the Single option of somehow calling off Brexit contrary to the will of Westminster. Scotland must seek to revoke Article 50 under unilateral Sovereignty.
It is too late for our IndyRef. It is too late for a People’s vote. I confess a Scottish General Election is a wildcard option, but if it can save us, it has to be concluded before March 29th in time to formally sever us from the United Kingdom Government before Brexit.
We Scots thus have the option of an impromptu Scottish General Election on an “Independence in Europe” ticket, and prey to God to we win, OR, we seek similar salvation through the Constitutional route and a test case for recognition from the EU / ECJ.
I confess the first option has an uncomfortable “pucker” factor given the mess of politics and media indoctrination, but the second option seems a no-brainier open goal. Why we continue to dither is bizarre and exasperating.
If we don’t like Europe’s 3 choice ultimatum, with Westminster imbeciles making such decisions on our behalf, then we have 60 days to dig our escape tunnel. We do not have any longer. To believe and maintain that we do is a dangerous fallacy.
Thanks for the links Nana. That’s a “keeper.”
link to threadreaderapp.com
Great to see so many people working their butts off in support of Independence. Business for Scotland’s Ambassadors, as another example, are beavering away to reduce key issues, such as GERS, pensions, defence, oil and so on, to one page informative documents.
…………………….
I wonder if one of the London controlled, Unionist parties in Scotland will now support the budget rather than risking a GE? If so Patrick Harvie will have sacrificed his party for nothing.
While I largely agree with what Robert Peffers says at 7.50am, the SNP is not providing an outlet for the frustration many feel. Constant talk of indyref2 now or wait a bit longer does not in any way stop the SNP promoting the case for independence but the truth is they do not.
As I have said before indyref2 is a mechanism to achieve independence and it carries no message whatsoever. If I was previous No voter why should I change my mind simply because another independence referendum was being held? I believe the SNP have wasted vital years by not promoting the real benefits of being an independent country. It’s never too late to start, why wait until indyref2 comes along?
The SNP has changed from PROMOTING the belief of self determination for our country (I know they believe in it) to an organisation churning out statistics and then defending them, an impossible task.
In last Saturday’s Herald Magazine,Fidelma Cook wrote a great piece on why we should be independent and we need much morte like that. You can read it here if the link works:
link to heraldscotland.com
UKIP stood in more seats – 600+? So got more votes but % got less. 4,000,000 of 600+
Or whatever they stood in.
The SNP stood in 59 seats. Got % much more.
The SNP got much more votes per seat. (Thousands more) That is why they got so many seats. UKIP did not,
It is a myth to say UKIP got votes but no seats % wise. Totally wrong.
The SNP this time could increase % votes at Holyrood and get more seats a majority again. They did it before. Even though D’Hond’t weighs against it. ie the SNP just need to get a few list seats to get a majority. (Instead of the Greens)
When Annabelle/Tories helped Alex Salmond get the budget through. The SNP had less of a majority. Than now?
An IndyRef will be held when it can be won.
Footsoldier
Fidelma lives abroad however good her piece. Too many running snp down. Why? Labour tory lib dem and green reasons?
ie GE
If more people vote SNP in Holyrood election (+ second vote) the SNP will get an outright majority again.
Once the unionists are voted out. Change at Westminster? 2+ years. There will be no opposition to an IndyRef.
Greens are playing games and will lose Maps if they force early election.
Scotsman letter pages even more regressive than usual today while Pinstripe more vitriolic towards Snp in Herald.
Does anyone know who Pinstripe really is?
However Lesley Riddoch talks sense on Ireland in Scotsman.
schrodingers cat at 7.15
Which is why the SNP should not contest the list if we retain the same system. For 850,000 list votes the SNP got a ridiculous 4 MSPs because of the huge preponderance of SNP seats won on FPTP.
The fact also was that the pro independence list vote was divided over SNP, Greens, SSP, Solidarity meant that we got electoral rejects like Annie Wells and several others in on a tiny Tory vote.
The list should be contested not by the SNP but by an Independence Coalition,which would not be limited by the large SNP FPTP vote.
@Dave McHill 9.23
Exactly this. There are enough non-aligned quality pro-indy candidates out there to make it happen. The SNP have to go along with this though and not place candidates on the list, as this would muddy the waters and lose pro-indy seats.
@Dave McEwan Hill
Dave, in the 2016 Holyrood election, the SNP got 953,587 votes on the List – for 4 seats. In the 2011 elections the snp got 16 seats for 876,421 votes – 77,000 LESS votes.
Who can seriously actually definitely predict the constituency seats, turnout and share of the vote?
SNP 1+2 is safe, and I’m not even an SNP member for over a year.
If this idea of not voting SNP for the list (8 regions) had been put forward for the 2011 elections the chances are the SNP would not have had an overall majority in 2011 and *** THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM IN 2014 ***
Might be the Torres will vote it through to stop an election up here
Last time the monarch didn’t give consent to a bill according to radio shortbread professor was in 1708.
Queen Anne refused permission to arm Scots militia on advice on the very day it was to pass into law.
Seems the French fleet was reportedly sailing to Scotland to support possible new ‘rebellion’.
Jings! First interesting thing I have heard on that station for weeks.
I can’t see this being part of some grand scheme to get the SNP re elected on a straight indy ticket. Too high risk, particularly considering the triple mandate they apparently have already.
A compromise will be reached. The budget will get through.
The fact that there is talk of an snp2 party
Which in theory would be beneficial
Shows how unfit for purpose the Holyrood voting system id.
Let me be the devil’s advocate here and point out that it would also be open for the unionists to have a sponge party or parties to ‘soak up’ second votes.
The SNP are a political party and got 4 list seats making a total of 63 seats. The chances of them giving up 4 list seats are nil. They also have to have list candidates in case their expectations of constituency wins falls short, as it very easily can.
In addition they have to be very careful with the Electoral Commission – a party is a party, and can’t fiddle the system.
Anyways, I really have little interest in 2021 Holyrood, unless 1 of the following:
1. Indy Ref 2 was called and happened, and lost.
2. Brexit is cancelled and no good reason couldl be found to use the mandate for Indy Ref 2.
3. Brexit is delayed and delayed again, for a valid reason.
Where I personally would be looking for a new pro-indy party is if the SNP betray the voters by not keeping the 2017 election manifesto which cleary states that Scotland should have a Choice. If the UK Brexits, leaves the EU without Indy Ref 1, the SNP are tractors and can’t be trusted.
However. As far as I’m concerned, Sturgeon is STILL on track, the plan is intact. Indy Ref 2 could not have been called before now.
Yeah, and the SNP are the only viable vehicle for Independence. The Greens – who I personally trust for their support of Independence – are not a big enough party for it.
I am really beginning to get tired of this constant annual blackmailing from Patrick Harvie.
The Scottish government is doing what it can to protect services and those on low pay.
Also we and we have yet to feel the full impact of Brexit, if it happens.
And here’s Harvie grandstanding about not supporting the Scottish Government’s budget, if it doesn’t provide more funding to local government and replace the council tax with a fairer system of taxation.
How do you say ‘Schadenfreude’ in German?
link to thenational.scot
link to thenational.scot
For your delectation. Courtesy of a Wings twitter link.
“If you had to distil into one personage the British people’s gibbering historical deference to terrible ideas advanced by low-to-middlebrow post-feudal shitlords who openly detest them, this plastic aristocrat would be it. Rees-Mogg is the logical end of whole centuries of barking up the wrong tree”
link to archive.is
mike cassidy says:
27 January, 2019 at 10:21 pm
Richard Hunter 10. 09.
An indyref2 is not something Westminster can grant or withold.
Section 30 is simply a gentleman’s political agreement to accept the result of such a referendum.
The big question re Westminster is what would they do if Scotland voted ‘yes’ after Westminster had declined to accept the result.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts.
Beware BritNats bearing S30 orders!
You just cannae trust em – look how they are treating the 17 million who voted for Brexit (Scotland is another matter).
No – we just request a S30 order out of politeness (cause we are nice and that’s what grown-ups do). If and when they refuse (or attach ridiculous strings to it), we tell them where to go and go ahead with our IndyRef (at a time of our choosing anyway). We get a YES vote, and WM refuses to acknowledge it.
Then it goes to the international courts – and that’s when the brown stuff really hits the fan. By then, old Blighty may have decided it has suffered enough humiliation and let us go peacefully. 🙂
Joanna Cherry seems to be the next target of the Yoon press – there have been a number of low grade attacks on her since she has emerged as a force to be reckoned with.
Imagine being Neil Mackay, taking over from Richard Walker with all that goodwill only to find you have Hutcheon undermining everything you try to do?
I remember when The Sunday Herald ran that piece on the Yoon trolls which apparently had Hutcheon phoning up people like Jill Stephenson and asking ‘did you say that?’ The article came over as half-hearted and superficial and I guess we know why – Hutcheon was never going to do an in-depth exposé on his core readership, the people he agrees with. He just doesn’t need to hide it now.
The Independent… “Theresa May is under pressure to seek further concessions on the Northern Irish backstop”
Guardian… “Theresa May will commit to insisting EU replace backstop”
… what is this pish! It took two years to get to the current Withdrawal Agreement and everyone knows why Ireland and the EU insists on the Backstop, don’t they?
Moves could be made for further negotiations but the Backstop is not going to be modified or toned down without huge changes from the UK. It’s all too little too late.
What get’s me is the media are just letting May waffle on and can kick! They are being full complicit in the deceit and subterfuge. The UK population are being treated like idiots!
Is the objective just to twiddle thumbs until Brexitday? Or, perhaps May won’t U-turn but hopes others will force it upon her?
A thought. If Labour are losing a great many members across the UK by being pro Brexit, at what point does the SNP become the UK’s number one political party by membership?
The answer to all this debate about the List second votes in the 2021 Holyrood election is simple.
The SNP/Scottish Government uses its eisting mandate to hold a second independence referendum before 2021 – we win independence, then, in an independent Scotland, we can get rid of the discredited and hopeless d’Hundt system and put in place an electoral system which works for the newly-independent Scotland.
Oooh let’s have another SNP but call it a different name or put Labour in the title
Are they putting something in the water, what are folk smoking
Re Article 30 and Indy ref
On the one hand, there is a belief that the people of Scotland are sovereign. On the other hand, there are those who believe that this sovereignty was ceded to the U.K. parliament as a consequence of the act of Union.
The establishment of the Supreme Court by Tony Blair was a measure put in place to establish the latter position and any occasion when Scotland refers matters to or accepts rulings from this court, reinforces this position. In other words, the sovereignty of the people of Scotland is not universally accepted even in our own country.
In pragmatic terms, the result of an independence referendum, organised by the Scottish people (as opposed to U.K. parliament) will require international recognition – particularly from EU countries and the EU as an institution has shown a great reluctance to support the rights of what it regards as “separatist” movements.
Their response to Catalonia, even to the extent of ignoring the jailing of political prisoners and lending no support to the natural justice of their case is indicative of their stance. Their preference is not to interfere in what they regard as “internal matters”.
While I recognise that the situations in Scotland and Catalonia are different, we may well be put in a similar situation – having to hold a referendum without a section 30 order – and while you and I may believe that we have every right to do so, this will undoubtedly be disputed and international recognition cannot be regarded as a given.
It is suggested by Breeks that there should be an approach to the ECJ to determine whether Scotland has the right to unilaterally revoke article 50, given that its people decided overwhelmingly to reject Brexit. The approach to the ECJ has already resulted in a judgement re the right of the U.K. to unilaterally revoke article 50.
If the approach was successful, then this would firmly underline the legitimacy of the Scottish people’s sovereignty in an international court which would be instrumental in ensuring the internationally recognised legitimacy of any further decisions we might take (eg independence). If unsuccessful,would we be any worse off than we are now?
The purpose would be to secure and strengthen international recognition for something many of us believe is a self evident truth. However, such truths are not always evident to others. As Breeks says, We only have a limited time to secure this since we move away from ECJ jurisdiction with Brexit. But it would require someone with the wit, ability and finance to pursue it.
@Dr Jim
It’s quite strange, I guess we should get rid of the SNP, not trust the Greens, vote Tory and wrap ourselves in UJ’s for ever.
Hip! Hip! – Hooray!
I am David Mundell and I claim my pension, Lordship and 300 smackeroonies a day.
Luvly jubbly.
Scotlands National football team, National rugby team, National hockey team
Nobody ever suggests removing the word *national* from them because any opposition once said it meant Nazi so was bad, because you’d laugh at them, yet in a political party it’s definite it must mean Nazi so replace or add in something completely tarnished in Scotland like the word *Labour*
If we just only had a *Lavender* party or *Vanilla* party to vote for
That was an interesting link Nana provided to a Telesur video on Venezuela. The film was made in 2017. Since then, Telesur has been closed down due to US sanctions against Venezuela which have frozen their banking facilities. Telesur was financed through Venezuela’s banks.
I used to watch many Abby Martin videos “The Empire Files”, so I miss them now. Alternative sources of news are essential IMO to counter the narrow world view of state funded, Westminster controlled broadcaster the BBC.
The Bank of England has been refusing to return Venezuela’s gold for months. BBC have only recently discovered this. If you starve a country through sanctions and steal their gold then you are complicit in the poverty and deaths which follow.
Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly: Dictatorship or Democracy? 25 mins
link to youtube.com
Fergus Green said at 10:27 am
How do you say ‘Schadenfreude’ in German?
link to thenational.scot
The Times is also running with the Scottish Labour story:
link to tinyurl.com
@Yesindyref2
The opposition did a good job on creating mentallness around a word and folk needing white sticks for their brains fall for it instead of being irritated by the insult of being thought of as stupid by the opposition
Must be a bit of quandary for the EU, here is the UK Government wanting to basically renege on the GFA but expects them to remove the backstop because they can be trusted not to renege on any agreement.
Well they conned a number of Scots in 2014 with unfulfilled promises, in fact they reversed the power of the devolved parliaments and made Scots MP’s a second class version in the UK parliament.
I wonder if they can fool the EU, they believe they can because they have this inbuilt belief in their superiority. You just need to look at the sneering faces of the likes of May, Rees-Mogg and Fox to see it in its full glory.
@Dr Jim
There’s an article in The National “Nicola Sturgeon: Alex Salmond allegations will not harm the case for Yes“, I had a look, yoon comments and that’s the first time I’ve used that word as these are yoons, not unionists, and thought “yay” the yoons are doing our job for us. The article is now closed to comments, not surprisingly.
And here we are looking at the 2021 Holyrood Election with the following based on the 2016 with the spankingly brilliant new plan:
1. SNP reduced from 63 seats to 59 seats because, err, reasons.
2. Greens reduced from 6 seats to 0 because they might not support the budget.
3. The new Squidgy pro-indy party not surprisingly fails to get the required 7 seats on the list to get a pro-indy party because the pissed-off SNP don’t support it, the Pissed-off Greens don’t support it, and the yoons are laughing laughing laughing and we’re all fucked forever and a day.
I’m off to my bed, at least the year-end accounts are going well! Nearly ready 3 days early 🙂
Perhaps when I return, sanity will rule KO. Migrating to Ireland is looking very promising.
My Herald comment responding SNP bad Unionist propaganda:
Nationalists / separatists?
The pro-colonialism commenters need to get new pejoratives, since Brexit has exposed the UK Govt and Westminster as British / English nationalists and separatists from much of Europe.
How good or how bad the UK’s colonial Scottish Govt administer the health service or anything else proves nothing about the merits of independence v the Union.
Is a hospital acquired infection in England proof the Union is bad? No.
The killing of the Continuity Bill and robbery of devolution powers from Scotland’s democratically elected parliament by unelected Lords, EVEL, broken promises of devo-max etc, Brexit and a litany of other abuses against Scotland’s people by UK Parliament is what proves the Union is unequal, unfair and unfit for purpose.
It’s time the people of Scotland took back control for our nation from unelected Lords and the 91% of Commons MPs who do not represent Scotland or her people.
Those who support this Union are not unionists, they are colonialists, as Scotland is treated like a colony.
Analyse the Highland Council, Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh by election result on 6th December last year. When the Green candidate dropped out a bus load of transfers went to the Tory. Not all Green voters interested in Indy?
Not contesting the list is a fantasy given that at best it’ll lead to even more Green MPs as they’re the other established pro-independence party. It’ll also make it impossible to gain the list MSPs that actually gave the SNP their one and only majority. To top it of it’s simply the same shite RISE tried regurgitated. There’s no way the SNP could officially endorse another party for the list without it being taken as a partnership for the purpose of D’Hondt and making no fucking difference. Except for SMPs holding the balance of power who aren’t taking the SNP whip.
I just read in the National that if you declare you vote for a particular party your name is removed from the polling companies register
Now given that Scotland predominantly votes SNP that means they’re removing SNP voters from the results of polls so how on earth can anybody pay any attention to polls when they don’t poll the SNP voters because they admitted they were
Even if Unionist folk admit who they vote for it still doesn’t balance because there are far less of them so at best the polls will always look as though there isn’t much movement one way or another
I guess we’re all supposed to trust Sir Professor Pish Poultice who *in truth* never tells the truth, that’s why he got a Knighthood
Although his wife says he never wears it….Boom Boom!
Hi @Robert Peffers
A wee jest sir, no more, when I was regurgitating the WM argument about its Unitary state and Monarchy and the English & Scottish Kingdoms ceasing to exist.
I was pre-empting a possible ear bashing, but I was actually attempting to show in my post that such an argument by WM was bollox.
Again I’ve never understood how that particular argument was never demolished by the simple logic, that a Treaty and subsequent acts cannot refer to bodies which no longer exist.
To reiterate: what were the last acts passed by both Parliaments? To pass their sovereignty to a UK Parliament and the creation of a new State and dissolve both Kingdoms? I don’t read that anywhere. United yes, dissolved no – At a stretch the passing of Sovereignty to a new parliamemt, maybe…
But supposing such a thing was enacted and said as such in the Acts of Union – Then that dissolves the Treaty – It must, the Treaty cannot exist any longer where the parties to it no longer exist. It was enacted out of existence, superceded, whatever. There can be no longer any statute or act under the UK Parliament from that point on, with any reference to the Kingdom of England nor Scotland nor such a binding Treaty.
There are many such things – ergo those Kingdoms as entities still exist. If not the various acts and statutes currently referring to them are erroneous. They cannot bind what doesn’t exist.
All the constitutional (Crawford/Boyle/ MacCormick/ Lord Advocate) etcetera is so much m’learned drivel and a dry legal wank flying in the face of all logic.
There was a monarchic title “Of Great Britain, Ireland and etc..” Latterly it is the vague “Of this Realm and etc”
The various titles of the monarchy are pliable and amorphous. They tend not to have renounced other titles of Kingdoms which apparently no longer exist I note. They’re quite happy (like Idi Amin) to just take anything at all and tack it on.
Lord Steel referred to the current monarch as Queen of the United Kingdom and she was happy with that too, as well as Elizabeth the 1st of Scots (as opposed to Scotland)
Who is going to tell Lizzie her spawn and a plethora of Lords Spiritual and Temporal that their various honours and titles are empty and worthless. They may as well style themselves Monarchs and Lords of Hy Brasil or Brigadoon.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Kingdoms of Scotland and England still exist eh?
Chicmac@1.30am
“UDI is perhaps technically, an incorrect term.”
In relation to Scotland terminating the treaty of union 1706/7 it is an incorrect term. There is nothing perhaps or technically about it.
Re my post at 9.23 I believe that in the longer term a serious look at the d’Hondt system is in order. We can do better.
Actually the present list system persuades some folk that they are supposed to vote for their favourite party FPTP and for their next best party on the list. I know this is NOT the case,before anybody jumps in, but that is what some people think.
Just as adequate proportionality can be achieved by one FPTP vote using regional lists but it would therfore be confined to candidates who stand by name FPTP which would be a much better idea. The way we elect councillors is probaly better as well as we now have Parliament full of list MSPs without individual electoral support and without specific seats to serve and service and many of them are doing a lot less on the ground than the FPTP MSPs.
“List” can also presently be a pretty cheap way to get elected without campaigns in the communities and round the doors with no need for leaflets and public meeting and coherent organisations in these communities and no networks maintained (I’m looking at you, the Greens) as is the obligation of properly functioning parties. It would do the Greens a lot of good to actually have to get together the tools for fighting elections FPTP.
Then we’d maybe get politics from them that understand the realities.
@ Iain mhor
Another more obvious argument against this extinguished nonsense, is the law. Scots law, as you know, is preserved in the Treaty of Union. Why would it be necessary for Westminster tho denote the boundaries of English and Scots law in the Wales and Berwick Act of 1746, if both or even one of the Kingdoms had been extinguished. One ring to rule them all surely.
Nor indeed would there have been a need for even a Treaty, Acts of Parliament would have been more than sufficient to have ended the jurisdiction of either Parliament.
Really a bit disturbed to see some people posting that we surrendered our Sovereignty in 2014.
Phronesis@8.07am
A post well worth reading and remembering.
“Analyse the Highland Council, Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh by election result on 6th December last year. When the Green candidate dropped out a bus load of transfers went to the Tory. Not all Green voters” @Des says at 12:08 pm
You are correct Des a lot of them are NIMBYs who don’t want inward investment or 21st Century Infrastructure if it spoils their view.
They vote Green to kill planning but are BritNat Tories who either vote for the Blue or FibDem varieties.
The Lockerbie trial had to be conducted under Scots Law.
Socrates MacSporran @11.21am
Spot on post.
Not heard much from Stu today.
All ok?
“Senior EU intelligence officials fear there could be violence on the streets of Britain which, they claim, will be “unstable” for decades due to Brexit. In a secret report, EU officials are believed to have warned that civil unrest and rioting is almost inevitable, regardless of the outcome of the current political deadlock… It predicts independence referendums in Scotland and Northern Ireland within 18 months of Brexit.”
link to archive.is
Riots on the streets of England, definitely. Scotland? Not so much I don’t think.
All the major food retailers just signed an open letter to the Government warning of food shortages and much higher prices for the food we do get should no deal win the day.
Still, we will have back control.In a country where food poverty is becoming de rigeur, this is not good news.
I can see martial law approaching as I write.
@ Scotspine – Stu’s just tweeted, so still on the case.
Rather surprising attitude coming from the Greens. But with everything else going on, is it surprising to be quite honest? The Scottish Greens just add their ten pennies worth to feed the shambles and deepen the fog of British politics.
For the life of me …I just can’t see how the UK can return back to a period of over 13 years ago (No SNP, No Referendums on the horizon, Everyone OK with the EU, everyone is ‘British’). That’s gone …completely gone. It’s history.
The UK at the moment resembles the madness of Charles I’s reign prior to the Civil War in the mid-17th century. Parliamentarians at each others throats and the home Kingdoms all glaring at each other as they seek to protect what they have and resisting any sort of change from any of the others. Even if the Tories drag the UK over the March 29th deadline without a deal …do they honestly believe folk will go ‘ach well, that’s it. Might as well just accept what the Government says’. If anything, it’ll ramp up!
Half of England will go nuts at being saddled with right-wing nutters and 19th Century Establishment members; Northern Ireland will explode as the IRA come out of the woodwork with a vengeance (that bomb that went of 2 weeks ago – that was a message to Theresa warning her of what comes next if there is a hard border); Scotland screams for an Independence Referendum; and the Welsh will be looking around going ‘WTF is going on?!’
Yep …it will be very interesting if we decide to have a GE. Long may the carnage continue.
Why do the BBC never refer to Labour and Tory groups as Labourists or Conservatists but seem quite at ease using Nationalists when referring to the SNP group of politicians. Is it editorial policy or just their editors natural inbuilt unionism on display?
Because the use of the word Nationalist is a loaded description, and even the thickest BBC editor would know this.
If SLab have lost,according to the Times, 1,000 paying members and that is 9% then SLab had a paying membership of 11,000.
Think that ties in with some if Stu’s estimates in what seems like a political eternity ago.
@Footsoldier says: 28 January, 2019 at 8:27 am:
” … Constant talk of indyref2 now or wait a bit longer does not in any way stop the SNP promoting the case for independence but the truth is they do not.”
Oh! Great idea, Footsoldier. Now where exactly do you suggest they promote the case for Scottish independence? Perhaps in the SMSM, MSM, BBC TV or some of the commercial TV companies or even on the local radio stations like Radio Scotland? After all look at the many positive articles in these media outlets about Alex Salmond’s show on RT TV? They all fell over themselves in praise of that – didn’t they?
Let me explain something to you, Footsoldier the name of the party is, “The Scottish NATIONAL Party”. it is not the Scottish Nationalist Party. It doesn’t represent just the working classes. It doesn’t represent just the business or wealthy people nor just big international business. It represents all the people of Scotland and that is not just those born in Scotland either.
Maybe they can mention Scottish independence during their many appearances on BBC Question time on the occasions when the BBC Question Master is one who is sympathetic to Scottish independence or perhaps get Kaye Adams to aske them to guest on Call Kaye?
Aye!
Richt!
I’m sure that Gary and Hayley will give them a fair hearing and not interrupt them like Garry and Hayley do all the time to their Labour, Tory and LibDem guests.
Aye! Sure they will., (but I’ll not be holding my breath waiting for that day.
The SNP are NOT a top down, dictatorial political party and there are no Trade Unions or Big Business donations flowing in to fill their coffers.
The SNP are led from the bottom up and the members both fund it and lay down party policy. There is only one way to make or alter party policy. By delegates sent to national conference by the rank and file members. Nicola is not a one woman band. She cannot dictate anything and wouldn’t survive as leader if she did.
Your intentions might be for the best but you just have not thought this through before commenting, Footsoldier.
The SG as the government and the SNP, as a party, have web sites but they get little or no chance to promote anything from an almost wall to wall Britnat media who, if they do not ignore the SNP completely, will find some way to turn even the most innocuous news item into an SNP BAAAAAD story.
It’s a funny old world – part 3256. Odd what you see in Edinburgh at times:
I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o’er Redford barracks. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of black dark riot troops. Beside the stables, in the lanes, roaring and charging in the freeze.
(all resplendent in all the proper gear too)
With apologies, of course, to WW.
dramfineday
It’s a funny old world – part 3256. Odd what you see in Edinburgh at times:
I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o’er Redford barracks. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of black dark riot troops. Beside the stables, in the lanes, roaring and charging in the freeze.
(all resplendent in all the proper gear too)
With apologies, of course, to WW.
********************************
Woody Woodpecker was a poet ?
yesindyref2 says:
28 January, 2019 at 11:34 am
@Dr Jim
It’s quite strange, I guess we should get rid of the SNP, not trust the Greens, vote Tory and wrap ourselves in UJ’s for ever.
Hip! Hip! – Hooray!
Ha! Ha! Laugh?? I nearly did.
The tremendous momentum established in 2014 was achieved reaching out to converts and a great many people who hadn’t bothered to vote before because they were so utterly disenfranchised and passed over by news and politics in general.
Success isn’t a question of polarising debate and then sickening people so much they turn to us or the Tory Nut Jobs, it’s about capturing the imagination of the silent majority, giving them hope, persuading them they have a stake in having their own country, and that it’s actually worth voting in the first place.
The Scottish electorate have repeatedly returned big SNP majorities and one mandate after another which have given the SNP all the power it was practicable to give them. For what? A referendum we’d have won if they hadn’t cheated? Returning an absolute majority to Holyrood wasn’t enough to do anything. Returning wall to wall SNP to Westminster wasn’t enough to do anything. Is it best out of 5? Best out of 7 maybe?
How about a wee reminder to the good people of Scotland what it is they’re actually voting for? You know? That wee “Independence” notion that was all the rage back in 2014? A wee cause and effect breakdown of what the actual plan is? Is it a great wee local government party we’re electing, or the cage rattling Constitutional stormtroopers who can bring this damned union to the point of fatal collapse BEFORE we’re all sh…ged up the a…se by the full English Brexit?
In my humble opinion the SNP is dangerously close to being the glitzy Rocky type prize fighter who talks a good fight, carrying the hopes of the common people to put their life savings on the champ to win, but then won’t get off his stool when the bell goes. It’s already round 11, and we now need a knockout before March 29th, and unless something happens, the boos you don’t like hearing are just going to get louder, and the chance of a majority or mandate for anything will be walking out the turnstiles long before the end.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Whatya gonna do? Vote Tory? Giggle snigger. Wrap yersels up in Union Jacks? Tsk! Tsk!
Naw mate. I’m a patriot until death. But I am gonna throw ma giant paper cup of Irn Bru at you to see if I can hit you in the coupon with it, then see if I can get my fkn money back at the gate. Champ eh? 12 rounds and you can’t even land a single blow on the fat one legged knackerbag in the UJ trunks?
Here endeth the warning lesson from Christmas yet to come… Hopefully somebody with a brain cell listens. It’s not too late… but getting mighty close to it.
Seconds out for the 12th and final round… Ding! Ding!…
@Jockanese Wind Talker and Des – FAKE NEWS!!
I have the Ward 4 Highland Council byelection figures in front of me:
Green candidate dropped out at Stage 5 and transfers were: SNP 178, Independent [a well-known and thought of local called Greene, confusingly]120, Tories 39.
The Green candidate is in our Yes group and is far from a Nimby.
Apologies – Green candidate dropped out at Stage 7, not 5.
Does anyone know why that scruffy bugger Paul Masterson MP sits on the RHS of the commons-well away from the other Scots tories?
I’ve noticed this for a good few months now?
And it was the Independent named Greene who dropped out at Stage 8.
His transfers went SNP 223, Con. 188.
2016 fife and mid scotland
of the 7 list msps
6 were unionists
1 green
had everyone who voted green on the list instead voted snp
then the unionists would have won all 7 seats
you can check the numbers, if you understand how they count and distribute the seats you can do the sums yourself.
snp was on 46.5% of the vote in 2016. we are down about 43% at the moment.
if the greens bring down the government and cause a he, I doubt many yessers will vote for them. we will lose our indy majority, we will lose the mandate that we already fought and won.
the unionists will jump at the chance to form a grand coalition to keepout the snp, as they do at council level.
and the yes movement will be dead in the water.
Robert Peffers at 2.04pm. My gawd what a thin skin. As an SNP member for over 60 years and held various posts, I am perfectly entitled to have a view that differs from yours – as if you are some font of wisdom on the subject. Like you, presumably, I have knocked the doors and done foot slogging all over Scotland in lots of elections but it is now physically difficult.
I certainly do not like your condescending pomposity telling me it’s the Scottish National Party not the Scottish Nationalist Party and I standby my previous comments.
As to your many long boring comments on sovereignty, give it a break it’s taking us nowhere.
You are of course entitled to your opinion and right of reply but I will not be saying anything further as it may upset the coterie to which you belong.
robbo @ 2.53pm
Come on mate, would you sit beside Ross Thomson, Douglas Ross, Stephen Kerr etc., if you had the choice of sitting elsewhere?
if there is a he stu, would you consider moving back to scotland and standing on the list in fife and mid scotland as a YES candidate?
ric/ssp/solidarity/rise and now the greens……….. how is it possible that these people, who are not stupid, are unable to see just how unpopular their actions are with the vast majority of yessers.
do the greens really think they will win votes by bringing down nicola?
unbelievable.
regardless of wether or not the snp win an outright majority or not, i am extremely confident in predicting that the greens will get wiped out. not so much an foot mark or a stain in electoral history, more a skid mark
schrodingers cat says:
28 January, 2019 at 3:21 pm
The 3 parties of union in Holyrood are voting against the SG’s budget unless they abandon indyref2. So they have no problems with the budget. I hope the people of Scotland will make them pay.
@James Caithness
I hope the people of Scotland will make them pay.
hear hear james
@cearc 07.00 or so: I’ve only just seen your post re. whether if Jean Urquhart’s name had been on the ballot paper would she have done better/got a list seat.
I’m sure she would have done better but whether standing for RISE she would have attracted enough votes I’m not sure. For Green, perhaps yes.
How odd they didn’t put her name on the ballot paper!
@James Caithness
if the greens bring down nicola’s government, I hope the people of Scotland will make them pay as well.
Foot soldier at 8.27am
I agree with you AND Mr. Peffers.
I believe we want the Independence drive to come from the people and the support and to a certain extent the enablement to come from the SNP but not those in the government of the day.
To assist the people in the drive to Independence the assistance of the almost invisible groups allegedly set up to achieve this would be a positive step. I apologise to those groups if I am in error but, from where I am standing in Falkirk (and admittedly a not too ‘hands on’ follower) I have not seen so much evidence of these groups. Awaiting peters from those in the know.
Awaiting pelters NOT peters whoever they are.
Idea of list candidates for a yes party sounds an excellent idea, don’t think the British parties in Scotland would like this idea. That being the case maybe non SNP yesers might consider standing on a unified yes party for Scottish independence? Is this idea possible? because if it is then an Independence majority at Holyrood will be assured.
Socrates MacSporran says:
28 January, 2019 at 3:04 pm
robbo @ 2.53pm
Come on mate, would you sit beside Ross Thomson, Douglas Ross, Stephen Kerr etc., if you had the choice of sitting elsewhere?
Aye a ken, but it jist puzzles me why he does it? It awe seems a bit weird. I have seen Thompson over that side a couple of times too!? Hopefully none of them lot along with a few others will not be sitting anywhere in HOC in the near future.):
haudonthenoo says:
28 January, 2019 at 2:23 pm
dramfineday
” … Woody Woodpecker was a poet?”
Dinna be silly, he meant Willy Wonka.
Could it be that Nicola Sturgeon has had private talks with EU people, maybe even european lawyers, UN people, and together they have come up with a plan?
Maybe she has discussed our sovereignty with them and has defended in law Scotland’s EU citizenship and Constitutional Sovereignty? Maybe she has discussed with them how the Treaty of Union has been broken over the years?
And maybe we are having to wait until the exact right time to announce the outcome of these discussions. Who knows what has been going on behind closed doors.
Robbi 2.53
Paul Masterson is a europhile and likes to be with Grieve, Soubry et al.
The others are much more eurosceptic.
I thought people might have learnt from the lunatic and inevitably doomed mad plans to cheat a proportional voting system in 2016, which cost the SNP its majority
Apparently not. Rolls eyes
Old Pete says:
Idea of list candidates for a yes party sounds an excellent idea, don’t think the British parties in Scotland would like this idea
————————–
i couldnt really care what the unionist think and if single issue parties like the pensioners party can stand, why not a yes party? as long as the candidates are not snp members.
as for a unified group? not sure this is possible or necessary, if 4 yessers in glasgow were to form a party called YES, then pay their deposits, (£500 each), then the people of glasgow will have the choice to vote for them.
a far as i can see, this is none of my business or anyone elses for that matter (including the snp), any issues would lie between them and the voters
Pete@4.11pm
Well his constituency East Ren did vote 75% remain. Perhaps that is a Scot Tory idea of honouring your voters – move to a different seat but stilll vote for Brexit.
If you want Independence you vote SNP X 2 every time
Neither the Greens or any other party can implement Hee Haw if they’re not in government
Vote for the party that can actually do something, any others who SAY they support Independence can only do just that *SAY*
Opposition at Holyrood is the easiest job on the planet, most of them got in on the freebie collect their wages on the freebie and complain on the freebie because they don’t have to do anything else but complain
The SNP broke the mould of the *do nothings* by working their socks off in opposition that’s how and why they won and are still winning, the rest of them still haven’t learned that and it’s too late for them now anyway because they’ve been
*Funoot*
Derick fae Yell says:
28 January, 2019 at 4:16 pm
I thought people might have learnt from the lunatic and inevitably doomed mad plans to cheat a proportional voting system in 2016, which cost the SNP its majority
———-
bollox, in 7 of the 8 regions, the snp got 1 list msp elected
in fife and mid scotland, 6 of the 7 list msps elected were unionists, 1 green msp was elected, if everyone who voted for the greens in this region had voted snp instead, then the unionist would have won all 7 seats.
you can have your own opinions derek but you cant have your own facts,
i am under no illusions about convincing all snp supporters to back a yes party on the list in this region, that wont happen, but I believe the voters should be given the choice. you are of course under no obligation to vote for a yes party on the list, or indeed anyone else for that matter,
but neither do you get to tell anyone what they can do.
and dont say we will split the vote, I repeat, in 7 of the 8 regions, the snp managed to get 1 list msp elected? (833,370 snp list votes)
how do you intend to split Marie Todd? up the middle or across the stomack?
“I have long said to my self, what are the advantages Scotland reaps from this so called Union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her independence and her very name?” – Robert Burns, April 10, 1790.
Meanwhile, 229 years later …..
Two observations:
+ The attempts by alternative pro-indy parties such as RISE all flopped spectacularly. Was that solely due to their highly-unpopular far-left political stance, or (given that realistically the SNP will never relinquish fighting on the list, for safety’s sake as well as a matter of self-respect) is there just no room for another pro-indy party, even on the list?
+ What did the SNP do to succeed so spectacularly in 2011, despite all the odds against? And why could it not be repeated again when the right time comes? (Genuine questions.)
Furthermore, given the situation with Brexit, why would we expect the SNP, fighting on an explicit anti-Brexit ticket before E-Day, to worsen its standing? Surely the converse is far more likely, if a campaign is fought full-on on core issues? Aim for a massive increase in turnout in a high-stakes contest. For converse example, look at what’s currently happening with NorthBritLab, bleeding membership by failing on that account.
Seems to me that the most risky option by far is to stall, do nothing and be overtaken by events. It’s keep moving forward or die…
It’s heading towards this:
1) Independence in EU?
2) Brexit Britain under Martial Law?
Place an ‘X’ in one box.
Footsoldier@3.02pm.
The only people who use the term Scottish NATIONALIST Party are unionists who use it as a slur, to try indicate our nationalism is of the ‘blood and soil’ fascist version rather than the inclusive civic nationalism we are world famous for.
Anyone not using their actual name can claim to have been this and that within the SNP.
I do not use my real name to post, but if anyone wants to know it, they just have to ask.
Robert (Peffers) keeps repeating his message, as it is obvious that many folk, even in the pro indy camp, STILL do not understand the importance of what he posts.
More power to his elbow.
OT we have just been brought home by a taxi driver I would happily clone so that everyone could have a most entertaining , welcoming , wonderful welcome to Glasgow and Scotland.
I have never enjoyed a journey more! He writes poetry and recites his poetry and I would wish him on all of you should you ever need a Glasgow cab!
Robert J. Sutherland
the snp got 46.5% of the constituency vote in 2016, this was the highest % that any government in europe was elected on
presently, the snp is polling at 42%, which could very well rise given the circumstances, but if a he is called there are only 3 things that can happen to the constituency snp msps
1. the snp will increase the number of constituency msps elected
2. the snp will retain the same number of constituency msps elected
3. the snp will decrease the number of constituency msps elected
the only senario where having a yes party on the list will effect the number of snp list msp elected is option 3. but if option 3 happened, the snp winning an over all majority would be extremely unlikely and the unionists would form a cross party coalition. game over.
we could ask peter bell @berthanpete to stand in fife and mid scotland on a promise to vote with the snp every time and then stand 4 YES cardboard cutouts in every one of the 7 regions. result
geeo says:
28 January, 2019 at 5:06 pm
The only people who use the term Scottish NATIONALIST Party are unionists who use it as a slur, to try indicate our nationalism is of the ‘blood and soil’ fascist version rather than the inclusive civic nationalism we are world famous for.
Indeed, and it is done very deliberately cos it is effective.
Which is why I cannot understand indy politicians and other reps continuing to use the word “unionist” or even “yoons”. Believe me, it is far too respectful – there is no proper union, so there are no real unionists.
Let’s start calling them out (all of them, everywhere, every time) for what they really are:
BRITISH NATIONALISTS
Believe me, this little expose’ will sting them where it hurts. Get into the habit. 🙂
Surely cardboard cutouts are used by labour and tories already?
The term “unionist” provides the BritNats with a comfort blanket, a veneer of respectability to hide behind. Are we afraid to offend them? They love to paint themselves as nice unionists against nasty Scottish nationalists – why let them get away with this?
Folks, I will repeat this from time to time until it sinks in – develop the habit.
Call em out continually – BRITISH NATIONALISTS
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, – give em a taste of their own medicine:
Refer to em as:
British nationalist reporters
British nationalist parties
British nationalist politicians
C’mon SNP politicians, start getting under their skin. If the MSM challenge you about this in public, argue the case – there is no union.
@Iain mhor says: 28 January, 2019 at 12:21 pm:
” … A wee jest sir, no more, when I was regurgitating the WM argument about its Unitary state and Monarchy and the English & Scottish Kingdoms ceasing to exist.
Let’s just, as they say, keep the heid.
The treaty of union is a written document and is such it is composed of words. Words have specific meanings to the extent that they are listed with their meanings in dictionaries. That makes, “The Articles Of Union”, in the, “Treaty of Union”, the actual, “Written Constitution”, of the United Kingdom. i.e. The Treaty of Union constituted the United Kingdom.
That being so there is no legal way for either of the two, equally sovereign, partner kingdoms that are the only partners in the United Kingdom to legally make any change whatsoever to the constitution without the express permission of the other partner in the United Kingdom.
Which brings us right back to that little matter of legal sovereignty again and here’s the rub – the legal sovereign in the Kingdom of England is the Queen/King of England but only in her/his capacity in the Kingdom of England.
Conversely the people of Scotland are sovereign in the Kingdom of Scotland but only in the Kingdom of Scotland. These two facts are rather complicated by the simple fact that the Kingdom of England had rebelled against the rightful monarch of England in 1688, (before there was an agreed united kingdom), and had English law changed to compel, the then newly invited foreign royals, to legally delegate their God given, “Divine Right of Kings”, to the parliament of the Kingdom of England. The rub being, whether you believe on Gods or not, that the parliament of England cannot assume the will of God, (I’ll leave you to figure THAT one out for yourself), but this was in direct defiance of the 1688 acknowledged God’s Earthly representative – The Holy Roman See.
Here, though, is the point – In the Kingdom of Scotland sovereignty was a quite different matter and was verified, (in 1320), by God’s acknowledged Earthly representative, the Holy Roman See, as being the people, not the monarch of Scots.
This is all there in the actual Treaty of Union that states the law, (sovereignty), of both partner kingdoms cannot be reconciled with each other and in consequence the two, Rules of Law, must forever be independent of each other in the parliament of the United Kingdom.
That being so, devolution, (if not the many other breaches of the Treaty of Union), negate the Treaty of Union. That being so – what the hell are we still doing under Westminster rule for Westminster made itself the de facto Parliament of the COUNTRY of England and assumed sovereignty over the other three countries of, the two kingdom, United Kingdom, treating them as three dominions of the country of England. If any doubts remain in people’s minds – what then is EVEL?
The truth is, as usual, Westminster has changed the definitions of words and terms, by oft repeating them, to mean something quite different to the actual meanings. There actually is no such thing as a current United Kingdom. It is factually England but still named as The United Kingdom.
Hamish100
lol
absolutely, but i’d rather they were our cardboard cutouts. we could funnel their wages into the yes campaign, 21 x £70k is £1.470 million
kerching
we could put images of the people we support on the cutout, eg, the catalan prisoners, stu campbell etc, and pete could read out real questions emailed to him by the actual people represented by the cutouts 🙂
Luigi@5.21pm
Well into the habit stopped saying Unionists a long time ago. Britnats that is what they are. Britnat separatists since they want to leave the EU.
The real Unionists are the people who want to stay in the European Union. Now that would totally confuse the media in Scotland. Can you just imagine the Britnat media in Scotland referring to the SNP as the Unionists.
Tories = Britnat separatists
SNP = Unionists.
LOL
.
Luigi@5.27pm
“….there is no Union” There is you know it’s called the European Union. The Britnats are taking us out of the only true and decent union the European Union. They are the separatists.
Britnat separatists.
lol
link to bbc.co.uk
guy standing in 6 ft penguin suit in a dead straight face saying he can be the change people are looking for and that he, dressed as penguin, is just the person to deliver it,
so there is a precedent 🙂
Off topic
Have you had problems accessing the National website? They say they have been experiencing repeated DDoS attacks since Jan 9th
link to thenational.scot
UK Parliament in meltdown, not just the Tory government and it’s a shambles out there. Neither May nor Corbyn have a clue what they’re doing. Fantasy politics.
Effing useless the lot of them in Westminster, and it’s well past time that Scotland did her own thing. We’re better than this.
The Scottish Nationalist Orchestra, Scotlands Nationalist parks, Scotlands Nationalist Monuments, Scotlands Nationalist Bard
Nuff said I think
I have always been slightly uncomfortable about the word ” independence”.
Scotland was already independent when it joined the Union and now it simply wishes to return to its former state by leaving the said Union. So I have always felt that desiring “independence” was a tad demeaning.
I have often thought what term Westminster would use if it decided to take England out of the UK and I am certain it wouldn’t use the term independence as its arrogance and pride already regards itself as the UK, but would rather see itself dumping the rUK as it would a colony.
Just a thought.
Lets stop fighting amongst ourselves and save it for them, YES.
£1,4 million quid should not be sniffed at
cat got yer tongue?
snigger
the silent whirr of brains 🙂
it’s either that of we call this new party……………
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
wait for it……………..
SNP2
it’d save us a fortune in advertising and campaign literature, just carry on delivering snp leaflets 🙂
whats not to like?
Beware shortages of perishables post-Brexit.
Get ready for The Duke of Rothesay and Alan Titchmarch fronting a Dig for Victory campaign.
Luigi
Sorry but the term ‘Britnat’ or ‘British Nationalist’ may be a true definition but it is forever tainted by anybody who reads these pages by a certain individual’s obsessive use of the term.
Unfortunately, ‘Britnat’ is Cubby’s leitmotif, obsessively used to denegrate any commenter the nanosecond they put forward a point which deviates even slightly from ‘The World according to Cubby’.
He’s made it into a term so loaded with self unawareness that it invites the derision of anyone who uses it, in a similar way to ‘wimmin’ and ‘comrades’ being overused by militant feminists and trade unionists.
Unfortunately, because of this, it now only invites negative judgement of the person using it rather than the intended description of our opponents.
I’m not usually a pedlar of veiled threats of violence but, whether all the five possible, near-future elections come to pass or not, can I offer advice to Labour canvassers?..
You’re abstaining on the Immigration Bill – a disgusting piece of right-wing legislation – which you should be opposing tooth and nail.
So if you’re planning to knock on my door, best wear helmets and come in a sizeable group.
Luigi says:
The term should always be BritNat. There is no Union, there can be no Unionists.
Even the concept of ‘Britain’ being anything other than a big island off Europe is dodgy. BritNats are of the most part adherents to the concept of a Greater England – a state spreading across these islands in the cultural, political, and philosophical image of the Home Counties.
But BritNats will however do!
Evenin’ Cubby ~
Aye, that seems to make sense…
The EU is a functioning ‘International Union’ (Good union for Scotland)
The UK is a malfunctioning ‘Inflexible Union’ (Bad union for Scotland)
Beyond there, is the rest of the world.
The People of Scotland need the certainty and clarity of function.
How many Britnat labour and Tory politicians stood on a mandate of a crash out no deal Brexit.
ZERO
Colin McKay report on STV news faiks to point out that Yvette Cooper’s Brexit amendment has not got support from many in Labour Party.
Keep your hair on folks, could be a good ploy. Greens force an election, not the SNP. Use the election as a mandate for Indy. Continue greens for 2nd vote, who else is there?
@Golfnut 12:47pm
Yes indeed, another nail in the coffin of that old argument.
Essexexile@6.04pm
Dr Doom or Essexile – spell it ok. Only a British Nationalist would complain about it’s accurate use.
these cardboard cutouts wouldnt be able to vote vote but then again neither will the unionists they replace.
they would be entitled to ask questions, since each cutout would have a name, and as long as one real person (eg wgd) is elected, he can ask the questions on their behalf.
they would also be entitled to a office in their region plus the staff to run the office. im sure there are a few yes hubs who would welcome the funds
if yessers actually backed a yes group like this, there is no doubt that they would be the official opposition.
the tory msp’s would be halved and forced to sit in the cheap seats behind 21 cardboard cutouts
i propose a certain Ronald MacDonald sits next to or in front of ruthie
ha ha ha ha ha ha
and they would never fall out with each other and their twitter accounts would have field day.
lets see the bbc try and dig the dirt and smear a cardboard cut out
wull2 says:
28 January, 2019 at 5:52 pm
Lets stop fighting amongst ourselves and save it for them, YES.
————–
who’s fighting? i’m having a whale of a time
Watching Euronews on Brexit,nice to get an unbritified view from a station that isn’t scared to lose a licence from those who award broadcast licences.
btw
list msps can retire and we would be able to chose who we liked to replace them.
one week it could be lesley riddoch, the next alex salmond. and the next time dugdale tries to smear stu campbell in the safety of holyrood debating chamber, we could draft in stu to answer her back from the floor of the house
link to electoralcommission.org.uk
cant see anything about cardboard cutouts not being able to stand
Cubby @6.18pm
So Luigi and galamcennalath are Britnats too now eh?
To me the term is right on a par with ‘cybernat’. That is, a broadly accurate description but specifically used by individuals of one side as a slur to their opponents. For those who use either term it is a disguise for their own impotence at being unable to either produce or analyse a cogent argument.
OT
Just finished reading Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor about what happened in India during the time the British Empire ran India. India went from the richest country in the world to an extremely poor country. Britain sucked the wealth out of the place before leaving. So much of it resonates with what is happening to Scotland today. Well worth a read.
Thanks to whoever on here recommended reading it.
@galamcennalath
I’m not even sure calling them BritNats is even accurate, after all they believe that England should control Scotland and it’s MP’s should be able to change Scottish laws (the unelected Bishops in the HoL seem to have more power over changing the devotion settlement than elected Scottish politicians). I see them as English Nationalist in Scotland.
ahem
link to bbc.co.uk
An Aberdeen woman charged after a mannequin was entered as a candidate in last year’s city council election has been acquitted.
Renee Slater was taken to court over the name Helena Torry being put forward to stand in the May election.
She was charged under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and went on trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court this week.
A sheriff ruled there was no case to answer after two days of evidence.
Deputy returning officer Crawford Langley had told the court he had taken nomination papers from the accused an hour before the close of nominations.
Ms Slater was charged with adding a candidate she knew was, in fact, a mannequin.
Ms Slater did not seek to belittle or demean the electoral process and is glad that, on this occasion, common sense has prevailed
Gregor Kelly, Defence lawyer
Speaking after the trial, Mr Langley said he believed the prosecution failed on a technicality.
Ms Slater told BBC Scotland she had wanted to represent the voice of the silent majority in the Torry area of Aberdeen.
Her defence lawyer, Gregor Kelly, said: “My client is grateful that this harrowing ordeal is now at an end and is pleased to have been vindicated by the court.
“She told the police that she sought to inject humour into an austere process.
“Ms Slater, who has worked tirelessly over the years in various community projects, did not seek to belittle or demean the electoral process and is glad that, on this occasion, common sense has prevailed.”
‘Obviously disappointed’
Mr Langley said: “I am obviously disappointed that the case against Renee Slater was dismissed by the court on the grounds that there was no case to answer.
“It is important to understand that this decision was based on a strict legal technicality in the way that the charge was framed and that the court did not consider the facts of the case or give a ruling on legality of nominating a non-human candidate.
“As I understand it, the prosecuting authorities chose to bring the charge under section 65a of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which is the provision which applies to general elections in Scotland and local government elections in England.
“The equivalent offence in a Scottish local government election is section 65b. Since section 65a does not create an offence at a Scottish local government election, there was no case to answer.”
Reunited with Helena
He added: “The decision to prosecute and, if so, on what charge, is entirely a matter for the procurator fiscal and the person making the complaint has no control over it, nor even formal knowledge of the charge.
“Since the decision was on this narrow technicality, it has not changed or clarified my understanding of the legal position in relation to the nomination process.
“If faced with the same situation again, I will have no hesitation in referring the matter to the police.”
A Crown Office spokesperson said: “The accused was acquitted after trial following legal submission. The Crown is currently considering the decision of the Court.”
As for Helena Torry, the mannequin has been held in storage by Grampian Police and is due to be reunited with Ms Slater at a later date.
the case against Renee Slater was dismissed by the court on the grounds that there was no case to answer.
schrodingers cat says:
28 January, 2019 at 6:22 pm
“”lets see the bbc try and dig the dirt and smear a cardboard cut out””
……
Non-recyclable?
Foreign wood used in manufacture?
They would find something – or make it up.
CH4 news just now showed the one of the EU lead negotiator at a press conference today talking about the negotiations/withdrawal agreement.
She did not mince her words. Example, on the ongoing debates in London she said ‘they are uninhibited by any knowledge of what is in the Withdrawal Agreement’ Direct hit.
Not sure if it is on their website yet but definitely worth watching once it is up.
Cubby says:
28 January, 2019 at 6:18 pm
Essexexile@6.04pm
Dr Doom or Essexile – spell it ok. Only a British Nationalist would complain about it’s accurate use.
Just what I was thinking – must be close to the mark, judging how concerned Essexile seems to be about it. “BritNat” is a bit slang for MSM, but absolutely nothing wrong with using the term “British Nationalist” on TV IMO. Boy would the red, blue and yellow tories hate it. lol.
Afraid that it just may take off, Exile?
I bet you are. 🙂
British Nationalism as a political entity – no problem there. It’s the perfect description, in fact.
Britnat though is meant as a deliberate attack on an individual, not their politics. We should rise above that sort of thing. That’s just my opinion of course.
Galamcennalath 4.41pm. Likewise in a letter of August 26th 1787.Burns wrote, this morning i knelt at the tomb of John the Graham, the gallant friend of the immortal Wallace; and two hours ago I said a prayer for old caledonia over the hole in a blue whinstone where Robert De Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of bannockburn. Aye the proudscotbuts who celebrate our national bard on burns night are not fit to mention his name.
For those not going to WoS twitter a link you might want to read.
link to gofundme.com
To Robert Peffers.(and others)
Has WM the right make a law such as EVEL? If England has no parliament, how could it make a law for England, ignoring/not allowing Scottish votes.
Do you agree that Scotland, under the Treaty, should have a veto of some sort, at least until we become a self-governing soverign country.
Opinions, please.
Bobp says:
28 January, 2019 at 7:48 pm
‘ Galamcennalath 4.41pm. Likewise in a letter of August 26th 1787.Burns wrote, this morning i knelt at the tomb of John the Graham, the gallant friend of the immortal Wallace; …’
Sir John De Graham was killed in the first battle of Falkirk and was from Falkirk. Probably Burns went to the tomb when he stayed (passing through) in Falkirk around that time.
We lost the first battle (1295?) but won the second in 1746 just before Culloden. Information thanks to the authorities in Falkirk.
don’t do it, revstu
it’s a set-up
overloathing will ensue
call me dave just donated & I would encourage everybody who can afford a couple of bob to chip in , if not Share the Link to all the Yes Pages , lets shut these Bastwards up for good .
It is unclear what the grouse beater fundraiser is for. Assume he is not going after the SNP for suspending him?
The usual Labour shambles:-
link to politicshome.com
Cardboard cut-outs are extremely dangerous.
They can easily catch fire dontchakno.
Luigi@7.25pm
I only use Britnat as an abbreviation of British Nationalist. Quicker to type obviously but if using the term Britnat pisses of the exile then I’ll obviously just keep on using it.
When we leave the EU well be abe to call them British Nationalist EU separatists.
Sandy @ 8.16
I too have often wondered about the legallity in UK Parliament both EVEL & those “Henry VIII powers.
Cactus@6.11pm
I enjoyed the Metallica vid – cheers.
Corbyn migrant family. Johnstone migrant. Hunt migrant family. Cable migrant family.Tomkin migrant family Etc, etc. Reported by Neil migrant family, Nelson migrant family, Bruce migrant. Etc etc.
Clegg migrant family. £7Million US mansion. Zuckerberg. Migrant family. Murdoch migrant (family) Scottish/Australian/Chinese/American.
Essexexile – spell it ok for you Dr Doom
Here’s something to remind you of where you say you come from -Scotland- you talk a lot of f…..ing
MINCE?
Looks like the West has its eye on Venezuelan oil,
destabilize,infiltrate,control.
@Scot Finlayson
The oil Aye!
Lucky for us that the unknown territory ‘extra-regio’ is looking after Scotland’s oil eh! 🙂
Big Labour…what are they like…don’t have a clue about what to do or how to vote in the mother of parliaments. 🙁
What a useless twat Corbyn is, wouldn’t be surprised if Labour get rid of him before the Tories have gotten rid of May.
First he whips his MP’s to abstain on the immigration bill and then:
Labour MPs have been ordered to vote against the Government’s post-Brexit immigration plans after a looming backbench rebellion forced Jeremy Corbyn into a humiliation U-turn.
link to politicshome.com
*God has convinced me I’m doing the right thing* says Theresa May
From the Independent
@ Gfaetheblock
He has ‘become a causality of defamatory accusation.’ AKA he’ll never work in Hollywood again.
jk
Dr Jim@9.43pm
She is obviously referring to her husband as I’ve never seen a burning bush in Downing st.
If I was reading about all this Brexit carry on in the history books instead of living through it, then I’d have great problems in believing it.
Even after all we now know, it’s still jaw dropping to believe we have a Prime Minister of the UK who is so incompetent as to not yet to have an acceptable deal but is still though totally deluded in remaining wedded to her deal if only she could get rid of the backstop.
The women is an embarrassment to the UK and a dangerous one at that, for all our sakes she needs to be shown the door.
Just have a read of this article from Robert Peston of which this is but a snippet. Demented is probably more appropriate than deluded as to her mental state, sadly for us.
link to archive.fo
schrodingers cat @ 18:30,
Beautiful thought. At last a very nifty advantage of the party list system!
I’m almost convinced now, heh, heh…
Immigration Bill passes at 2nd reading.
Looks like BritNat Labour are as Anti-Foreigners as the Tories.
Devastating for Scottish economy.
🙁
GSTQ & Her Fascist Regime is becoming more apt FFS.
BBC News:-
Outlined the Tories and Labour’s amendments to the Brexit deal tomorrow. No mention of the SNP’s amendment of remaining in the EU. Scotland and the SNP don’t exist, as far as the BBC is concerned.
They were also discussing the supermarket bosses writing to T May about their concerns of empty shelves, rising costs and so on, if there’s a No Deal Brexit. One old English f*rt was interviewed and said “No Deal, no problem. It’ll do us all good in the UK if we don’t have any food for a while.” That’s what we’re up against.
I also wonder if anyone has worked out how much of the limited supply of food will actually make its way through England to Scotland? Maybe that’s part of the long term Unionist plan? Starvation and cannibalism would rid them of even more pesky Scots.
link to facebook.com
@Tackety beets 9:13pm
The short answer is EVEL is a “procedure” and not statute law.An agreed way of proceeding. Albeit only agreed by one side! So is neither ‘legal or illegal’
The long answer is that the fundamental principle holds that any act a Government passes into law is ‘legal’.
The judiciary do not make laws they merely interpret them.
The judiciary do not enforce laws either – Governments do and they may make and change any laws, even retrospectively as they see fit.
The power to enforce the laws lies with a Government’s ability to literally enforce them. The legitimacy to do so comes directly from the people. Ergo, any law a Government enacts which is not opposed by the people is lawful, as well as being ‘legal’
What happens when a government passes laws or acts in contravention of or contrary to international laws, or mutually agreed laws with other Governments? Well that’s a another variation of the above.
Again the judiciary of the seperate parties are only involved in an advisory capacity. When two Governments go to war over whose justice has supremacy – The law which is enforced, is the law which prevails, is the law which is “legal”
Holyrood and Scotland may also do as they please enacting laws, if they are sure of the backing of the populace and also, to a lesser degree, the ability to physically enforce their laws.
Recently we watched the two Governments do precisely this; battling over the ability to try and enact and pass into law both the EU withdrawal Bill and the Scottish Continuity Bill. “Legal had nothing to do with it, as the definition of what was legal was changed retrospectively (in the case of the continuity bill) such that the delegated judiciary tasked with giving a ‘judgement’ had to throw its hands up and say ‘well it was ‘legal’ up til today then it became illegal as of last week. Sorry about that chaps”
Such shenanigans are referred to as ex-post facto laws*.
Used very frequently by UK Governments but seldom or never in most democracies because their constitutions specifically prohibit such perfidy – albeit generally for criminal laws – Most governments do tend to keep some clause where they get to retrospectively alter “legislation” in ’emergencies’ just in case they are on the wrong end of a court judgement.
You may recall the case where the UK Government was found to have acted illegally in witholding DWP payments and ordered to repay. Suddenly legislation was passed into law retrospectively, such that when the the Government appealed it was found to have acted “lawfully after all and didn’t have to pay a bean – the Judiciary could only throw its hands up in the air.
*Though not to get too technical the continuity bill situation wasn’t a pure case of ex-post facto legislation but near as damn as makes no difference.
The Greens will no longer be getting my 2nd vote.
Bobp says:
Nae doot Burns would have some choice words to say about the kilted ‘tractors’ who see Scotland as a quaint northern region renowned for tartan, shortbread, and grouse. Their idea of what it means to be Scottish would not have impressed him IMO.
Here’s a few Proud Scot butts (sic) LOL celebrating Burns.
link to scotlandinunion.co.uk
Essesexile@6.36 pm
read your own post again Dr Doom – too stupid to see you are using the term Britnat in your own post. What does that make you then in your words – oh yes. ” For those who use either term it is a disguise for their own impotence at being unable to either produce or analyse a cogent argument”
Hung by your own petard.
Thepnr @ 23:13,
So by his own admission, that pathetic über-twat Cole-Hamilton believes in the
1000600-year Britisch Reich.One can only hope that when IR2 gets going, the BritNats appoint him their spokesman. An indy win would then be a stroll in the park!
Solved the food scarcity problems post-brexit.
We’ll just reintroduce border-raiding again.
link to archive.is
Bound to have left one window unlocked!
link to twitter.com
@Robert J. Sutherland
Cole-Hamilton’s effort at Scot’s poetry there will become infamous 🙂
The lot of them though at that Burns Supper were actually paying to celebrate the birthday of a man that obviously despised the Union. Yet they support Scotland In Union.
It make’s as much sense as Cole-Hamilton’s shitty attempt at poetry.
@mike cassidy
That twitter link was a cracker. Shows the difference between the haves and have nots. The haves don’t give a shit about empty supermarket shelves, their wealth will protect them from any of that shit. In fact they can just pay people to stand in queues for them if it comes to that.
Does anyone think May gives a shit about medicine shortages despite her own health problems and requirements for Insulin injections up to 5 times a day?
I don’t think she has anything to worry about at all on that front, some of her constituents might though and it’s time they started paying attention to just what the fuck is happening in the UK.
Thepnr
And its not our problem if a rich tory mp just across the border has broken the first rule of Hoarding Club.
Don’t tell anybody you are hoarding!
@mike cassidy
That is true, and now I understand your reference to the border reivers. Ach well you’ll reap what you sow right enough 🙂
Unbelievable – how at this stage in the proceedings can Labour even contemplate the possibility of ABSTAINING on anything the Tories are trying to do?
Have they learned NOTHING!!!!
I take my hat off to Ian Murray for once for being prepared to reflect the views of his constituency and vote against the government.
Cannot believe that T May is now trying to force through her deal on the basis of altering the backstop. The woman is seriously deranged and wasting even more time.
Beam us all up Nicola – only a couple of weeks and by then the fog should have cleared.
Panic buttons being hit right left and centre – all the more for making people realise that Scotland has a lifeboat.
It’s time we all got a bit more serious as to what a no deal effectively WILL mean. This is no project fear for Brexit, this will be real.
There will undoubtedly be a shortage of critical medicines and a scarcity of certain foods. In the short term it will be even worse as it will be everyone for themselves and everyone will stockpile.
Why wouldn’t they? That’s what’s causing the problems with medicines now, some worried people are asking for prescriptions earlier than they actually need them just to make sure that THEY don’t run out.
What if ALL people want their prescriptions next week instead of next month? Well answer is obvious and the chemists run out of medicines.
So this really is a problem that the UK government aren’t taking seriously enough as far as I’m concerned. More people might actually die because of Brexit even if it hasn’t happened but because of a belief it will happen without a deal.
This government needs to end the uncertainty now by taking no deal off the table. They still think it’s a negotiating tactic apparently. Fucking arses, their bluff was called a long time ago and that that is happening now is damaging to the lives of ordinary folk.
Bet you Davies, Gove, Fox, May, et al will be hunky dory though.
“ Sandy & others @ 0816 pm “ How on earth can the “ supposed” U.K. parliament “ devolve” a legislature to Scotland ( as a one partner of the 2 kingdom signaturies to the treaty of union,), without devolving an equivalent legislature to the other signatury . In other words where is the DEVOLVED ENGLISH PARLIAMENT??. As Robert P has emphasised on many occasions the answer is that they use the “ so called” U.K. Parliament as the de facto Parliament of England ( now reinforced with EVEL.). Also how is not ,that if the sovereignty of the Scottish people is ( currently) vested in our Scottish MP’s elected to Westminster that with regard to laws drawn up and passed by the “ so called” U.K. parliament ,in so far as changes to Scots law is concerned ( guaranteed in perpetuity under this 1707 treaty ) that SOLEY & ONLY elected Scots MP’s should vote to accept or reject legislation which relates to changes to Scots law? The claim of right and the sovereignty of the people of Scotland is unequivocally legitimate. If our MP’s currently represent the sovereign people of Scotland under the 1707 treaty then surely only a majority of this body can change our laws and not the body representing the RUK within that legislature??
Again I ask “ Where is the devolved English Parliament . ?? RP has the answer.
From Wings twitter, this totally destroys any hope May has of getting rid of the “backstop”.
link to twitter.com
The risks are real and we should be getting very angry about this.
link to thelondoneconomic.com
If and when the shortages happen surely it should be England and Wales who go without, they voted for it to show those Johnny foreigners how the *British* love a bit of hardship
Dunkirk spirit and all that
I’m 70 so I remember when I tasted my first orange and banana so folk older than me should remember better when we didn’t have this stuff, now we’ve got food from all corners of the planet and because of the eejits down south we’re going right back to the 40s when I was born
@ Thepnr at 11:13pm …..
Ian Murray must be one of the strangest politicians in the UK, imo. He hates the Tories and his Labour leader. He wants to remain in the EU and no matter who is in power both want to drag us out. He’s aware of how rich Scotland is in its own right (must know) and the catastrophic impact Brexit is going to have on the UK, in particular Scotland and yet there he is at an SiU event ….. chockablock with Tories, landowners, millionaires and so on. I don’t get it … him.
@Petra
Ian Murray is exactly like ME! LOL I am all those things other than a supporter of the Union. Mibbe it’s something as daft as an allegiance to a football team for him. Who cares?
Here is Ian Murray on his way in to the SIU Burns supper where there were some Wingers waiting to welcome all the guests 🙂
link to twitter.com
@Dr Jim
It’s no longer a case of “if and when” as the shortages are here now if you believe the BBC Hmmm?
For once though it could be they’re telling the scary real truth.
link to bbc.co.uk
Last paragraph of the BBC link tells you all you need to know about Brexit and the why of it in my opinion.
“Martin Sawer, of the Healthcare Distribution Association, which circulates 92% of medicines in the UK, said some businesses could be “speculating on Brexit” – investing in stock in order to make money from it later.
“That’s the nature of the market,” he said.”
There you go, somebody will make a profit holding back drugs that people need. Brexit is all about GREED.
Next round …. Ding, Ding.
Brexit Amendments:-
link to inews.co.uk
@ PNR 1:54
It’s not that there are shortages. It’s more a case of stockpiling for the privileged few and their friends and family. The medicines are not making it to the pharmacies that’s for sure but, there are no shortages yet. They are being stored.
Inside info from a major pharmacy outlet btw. 😉
North Cheil @12.41 am
My tthoughts entirely. Further, bearing in mind the Treaty, in this day & age, shouldn’t democracy prevail? After all, we are, purportedly, an equal partner in the bi-part UK union. The assumption of WM that English MPs have complete control of all of these Islands by virtue of greater numbers, is to all intents and purposes, illegal.and would not stand up in a bone feda court of law.
This is why I believe we in Scotland (& N Ireland & Wales) should have the power of veto as in the democracy known as The European Union, not the dictatorship we are presently in.
THERE APPEARS TO BE A LINK-UP BETWEEN THE TORY PARTY – THE TORY GOVERNMENT – CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA – ELECTION MANIPULATION – BREXIT – INDY2014.
But the big secret is how the UK Government manipulated the Scottish Independence Referendum, in which the very existence of the British Establishment was at stake, reliant as it was and still is, on Scotland’s vast wealth being transferred daily to English coffers.
link to opendemocracy.net
“I spoke on the phone with Kaiser shortly before Christmas. “I was being too nice,” she said. “It gets worse every day. You can’t fix it now, it’s not fixable, not in its current form. Break it up with anti-trust laws. Pull away WhatsApp and Instagram… reorganise their business model. It’s completely out of control, and they never thought anything would happen. They’re not really keeping any of it secret; it’s all in the open, but they thought nobody would notice or care.”
Instead of the scapegoat, Cambridge Analytica should be the canary in the coalmine. The urgency is clear: we must secure and renew our democracies. That means closing every loophole that enables the laundering of money and data; encouraging mass participation; and establishing strict safeguards against political meddling by billionaires and underworld operatives (both foreign and domestic). We also have to start building a social contract around data that properly respects the digital human rights of citizens, giving us ownership individually and collectively.
If data is the new oil – a social resource of extraordinary value and danger – then we ought to put it in the hands of the many, not the few, with appropriate safeguards against abuse. If we can build a new wave of technologies that are more deserving of the public’s trust, we will be laying the foundations of a 21st-century commonwealth: a future in which this cornucopia of technology can finally start to be harnessed for the good of all. We need a New Deal for the internet age.”
Here we go…
Indy Live Radio
FIRST LIVE RADIO SHOW
Tuesday 11am – 2pm
Tune in the NOW, or later at eleven.
link to indylive.radio
Get used to it.
Currently playing on Indy Live Radio ra noo:
link to youtube.com
A shade of a colour.
Some result.
Poll shows 86 per cent of people in the Republic opt for a united Ireland over a hard border
#cblive link to t.co
Petra says:
29 January, 2019 at 2:15 am
Next round …. Ding, Ding.
Brexit Amendments:-
The only Brexit Amendment I care about is making sure Brexit is irrelevant to Scotland because we have exercised our sovereign prerogative to stay in the EU.
Stopping Brexit, or having a People’s Vote might save the UK but it cuts the legs from under our near perfect Constitutional stand off, the existential paradox which the Union cannot survive.
Exactly what is the objective here? Nullify Brexit BEFORE we have used its leverage to secure our Constitutional Independence and you are letting the Union off the hook to survive another day.
Suppose you succeed. What kind of Pyrrhic Victory is it to save the United Kingdom from its own stupidly, but in so doing, forfeit Scotland’s most potent existential binary Constitutional argument to present itself for 300 years? Jesus H. It’s like watching Alec Guinness with his damned Bridge Over The River Kwai.
Breeks
supporting a PV appeals to the remain voting no supporters.
It is the job of the SG to represent everyone, not just yessers.
a PV and/or stopping brexit is the most popular option for the majority of the scottish electorate.
but yes, supporting a PV does rather undermine or case for indyref2 and our chance of independence.
but a PV only undermines our case for indy is it actually happens and since corbyn doesnt support a PV, nicola’s support remains empty rhetoric. Popular empty rhetoric, but empty rhetoric none the less.
thats the point. when in opposition, as we are at wm, supporting the most popular option with the general public is always a good idea, especially if it has no chance of happening.
perhaps this is just a calculated risk?
link to bloomberg.com?
Election manipulation not going away.
“Google said it will roll out new policies in Europe to provide more transparency around political ads, ahead of European Union elections in the spring.
The announcement Thursday by the Alphabet Inc. division follows a year of intense global scrutiny over how popular internet services were used to spread misinformation during elections. A lack of disclosure about who pays for political ads has been a particular sore point.”
Tuesday has just begun Indy Live Radio:
link to youtube.com
DAB radio no more.
Tis gone awa’ wae ra wind hehe.
Agh, my IPad went dead on me and I lost my post to manandboy and Breeks. I’m having to leave now so in brief.
Manandboy: With what the public in general know alone, the lies, IndyRef1 and EURef should have been made null and void.
Breeks: We’ll probably get a short extension and because No Deal has become such a threat (BBC really pushing that now to help T May out) a Big T revamped deal of staying in the CU will be accepted. That won’t be accepted by Nicola Sturgeon. She’ll outline how catastrophic that’ll be for Scotland, IndyRef2 will commence and we’ll win it, IMO.
Links
First Minister’s speech – Mansion House, City of London, Monday 28 January 2019
link to news.gov.scot
link to helensburghsnp.scot
Scotland hurries legislation to protect against no-deal Brexit
link to archive.is
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
Indycar Gordon Ross – 28 01 19 – Tories actually THINK Europe will cave in…
link to yestv.scot
link to celticlanguagesnews.blogspot.com
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
link to graemedey.info
Brexit has revealed that the Scottish Parliament’s will could be overridden, says @joannaccherry – a concern that brings unionist and independence politicians together
link to twitter.com
link to politico.eu
Just noticed that the way much of our media treats/reports Ireland re Brexit has given me a much deeper appreciation of the Scottish independence movement.
link to twitter.com
link to thesonsofwilliamwallace.home.blog
Tory peace plan!
link to twitter.com
The EU’s Deputy Chief Negotiator for Brexit Sabine Weyand says
“There’s no negotiation between the EU and UK, that negotiation is finished.”
link to twitter.com
link to propublica.org
The supermarkets and take-away chains have, until now, held back from voicing fears about Brexit. They didn’t want to alienate customers who voted to leave the EU. But with the distinct possibility of a no-deal departure in just 60 days, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, KFC, the Co-op, and others joined forces to warn of the effects of delays at ports.
link to youtube.com
link to taxresearch.org.uk
link to evolvepolitics.com
1. Why don’t we have a trade deal with India, for example? That’s a good question.
link to twitter.com
Oddbins owner blames Brexit as it ?lines up administrator
link to archive.vn
link to opendemocracy.net
link to ukconstitutionallaw.org
link to skwawkbox.org
UK corporation tax cut to cost billions more than thought
link to archive.is
@ manandboy 5:43 – that open democracy article on Cambridge Analytica is revealing – except for one area of particular interest to us i.e. the independence referendum 2014.
Voter suppression is a possible explanation for the lower SNP turnout in 2017. The example of their methods in Trinidad is well worth a read.
link to archive.fo
When will the whistleblowers spill the beans on the Scottish dimension. We can’t just be hosting derelict factories for fake addresses and fake companies which funnel dark money.
NOW is the time for Indy Live Radio!
Your inaugural LIVE show kicks-off at 11am this morning, Scotland.
Be excited, it’s allowed, remember this day. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Just TUNE IN and let it play away in the background, excellent music.
Return to radio.
link to indylive.radio
With regards to Ian Murray’s dichotomy @Petra says 29 January, 2019 at 1:25 am
Is Ian Murray the living embodiment of “The Bain Principle” writ large?
Good grief, another one with God on her side.
Bush , Blair and May – religion used as an excuse for causing misery and mayhem.
See if ye’ve no opened yer curtains yet Glasgow…
It’s snowing outside again.
Gie yersel plenty o time.
It’s Live-a-thon day.
Love it.
Mr Churchill will be turning in his grave. He seemed rather fond of the European Project;
‘The movement for European Unity must be a positive force, deriving its strength from our sense of common spiritual values. It is a dynamic expression of democratic faith based upon moral conceptions and inspired by a sense of mission. In the centre of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law’
‘It is impossible to separate economics and defence from the general political structure. Mutual aid in the economic field and joint military defence must inevitably be accompanied step by step with a parallel policy of closer political unity. It is said with truth that this involves some sacrifice of merger of national sovereignty’
‘I believe myself to be a good European…We must try to make the Council of Europe into a really effective League, with a High Court to adjust disputes…this Council , when created, must eventually embrace the whole of Europe’
Winston S. Churchill His Complete Speeches 1987-1963
Just watched Piers Morgan on Good morning England.
He was “interviewing” Ross Grier MSP. And was in full Colonial mode slagging off anybody who dares to criticise the Greatest Englishman who ever lived. It was an absolute disgrace and shameful “interview”.
Know your place Jock !
There is no possibility, zero, nil, none, of altering the Irish Backstop without renegotiating the Good Friday Agreement Peace Treaty. If the UK Government maintains its determination to unilaterally alter the Backstop, it is tantamount to saying it is prepared to renege on Theresa’s Deal with Barnier, (kill switch right there already), but more important still, it reneges on the Irish Peace Treaty itself, and that is going to see the UK potentially suffering international sanctions and trade embargos, seeing foreign assets and bank accounts frozen, possibly movements restricted, investment frozen, – all the toys in the box appropriate for one nation’s flagrant violation of established International Agreements. Even the UK government surely isn’t that stupid. It is possible they would even forfeit their permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and that is bound to make the warmongering bastards sit up and take note.
There is nearly no possibility, zero, nil, none, of extending Article 50. Europe will not endanger itself by allowing the influx of disruptive UK Brexiteers to poison the next Parliamentary Session, primary for that direct disruption, but also for its potential to inflame further far right disintegration policies from other factions in Europe. If there is an extension, it will run from 29th March to 22nd May, the eve of the EU elections, but that is fanciful I think.
Back in October, Guy Verhofstadt, the Leader of the European Parliament’s Brexit Steering Group was already saying that the EU should not allow an extension of the Article 50 process, and remember too, that all 27 EU Nations would have to agree.
Please, do not place your faith in Article 50 being extended. I firmly believe it simply won’t happen. March 29th is D-Day…. or “B-Day” day which seems wickedly appropriate for a Nation circling the drain..
Piers Morgan is an ass hole. Churchill advocated gas as a war weapon, soldiers coming home from the war dotted against him.
Cubby @11.14pm
Whether you have poor eyesight, poor literacy or are pathologically incapable of reading a piece of text properly, it amounts to the same thing.
This is why you always misconstrue people’s comments on here, then reply clearly showing that you have demonstrably interpreted a poster’s comment out of context.
This is why so many people find you so obtuse. Please, Please try to concentrate harder when reading posts. The fact that I’m by no means the first person to mention this should be ringing a bell for you.
Voted not dotted.
Just having a wee laugh at this one by stewart_langdon Jan 25:
” … Who in their right mind gives a fuck what Robert Burns thought about independence? You do realise he lived quite a long time ago? What’s next? What would Robert the Bruce have made of the currency question?”
This from an idiot who espouses the doctrines of a union that is using an ancient law passer by an ancient English king against Scotland.
Not to mention the idiot doesn’t know that in the Edinburgh-Northampton, (1328), Robert Bruce paid £100,000 sterling, to the English Crown who agreed to recognise:-
You just have to wonder at unionist exceptionalism and sheer pig ignorance. The payment was in sterling so Scotland was using the pound sterling in 1328 long before the Treaty of Union.
In any case Sterling is an international trading currency. i.e. Sterling is a commodity that is bought and sold on the open currency market and anyone can buy it and use it as they can every other international trading currency and the Westminster Parliament has no control of who can, or cannot, buy and use it.
If you need any proof of that truth just open any newspaper or TV news broadcast and read how the Pound Sterling is costed in relation to every other international trading currency in the World. Like, perhaps how the days pound has slipped or gained in relation to the USA Dollar or the Japanese Yen.
Are you TUNED IN to your channel yet…
link to indylive.radio
Just 2 hours remaining to go.
Text in NOW!
Your transitional timing is excellent #IndyLiveRadio
Proclaiming it on the oor o seventeen. 🙂
Sweet.
BBC news online listing and explaining at length each of the Brexit ammendments, except one. No prizes for whose amendment they are ignoring.
For Diane to able to stand at the dispatch box and state her support for Labour abstaining on the Tory immigration bill.
Is quite frankly beyond belief
Though I wonder if this bill passes into law, how she would feel if she was to find herself being deported back to Jamaica.
Nana says
This is a very good piece from WGD. I believe his analysis is stop on …
“The UK is an expression of English nationalism dressed up as Britishness”
… totally agree. It’s Greater England.
“In the dreamscape of the right wing English nationalists who have seized control of the British government, their country is special and not to be subject to the rules that other lesser nations must obey”
… Brexit in a nutshell.
@Nana
Mornin’ Nana. And no, Commons chamber didn’t cover itself in glory (yet again) yesterday. That immigration policy vote was appalling. The fuckwits (‘scuse the swerries) driving this idiocy really don’t care about the fallout among populations. The ramifications for human and civil rights across the board, with these monsters driving the show, don’t bear thinking about.
Also? So very sick of this horseshit dispersed by the upper echelon Brexiteers and government over their false choice. Hard brexit or No Deal Brexit, makes precisely ZERO difference to those it will affect most. It’s going to be devastating. No economy on the planet can lose 6-8 (possibly 9%) of its GDP across the board and shrug it off.
The barstewards driving this know it. They know it’s going to cause not one or two years of difficulty, but decades of hardship for massive swathes of the populations. They simply don’t care about the damage. They know and knew that the UK was nowhere near ready for any kind of Brexit. Their Brexit sales pitch was a lie that will hurt populations for the benefit of a few. Suddenly these… (fill in as appropriate)… discover a love of democracy they’ve driven a horse and cart through forever. It’s all about the will of the people. If it goes south (AND IT WILL) these sociopaths have their list of fallguys to hand. Primarily ‘we wuz just following orders’. It was the Irish wot dun it. It was the sweaties wot dun it. It was the EU wot dun it. It was the wrong sort of remainer wot dun it…. BUT IT WASN’T US.
Beelin’. 😡
Nana says:
29 January, 2019 at 7:08 am
Indycar Gordon Ross – 28 01 19 – Tories actually THINK Europe will cave in…
link to yestv.scot
Gordon is right but wrong. We already have a critical date. Not to begin a campaign but to end it by. It is Friday 29th March, 59 days from now.
It is too late to prevaricate on the instigation of a campaign when we know the campaign needs to be begun, settled and victorious inside of 59 days.
But why? We already have our vote. We voted by clear majority to remain in Europe in 2016. It is the overturning of that result which requires both Scotland’s Sovereignty and Democracy to be subjugated, and thus gives Constitutional arguments to repel that subjugation. The legitimacy for Scotland to reject Brexit is extant already from our democratic expression of will in 2016.
It’s not the date we need for some “new” Constitutional starting gun Mr Ross, it’s the inspired progressive initiative that delivers Scotland the sovereign autonomy to stay in Europe, remain under ECJ jurisdiction, and avoid being Brexited. The United Kingdom ceases to exist, but at the ultra vires instigation of a reckless misadventure blundered into by deeply illinformed and misguided Westminster Parliament.
Good luck to anybody getting IndyRef launched, campaigned for, and won before March 29th. Meanwhile, where do we stand with the real campaign to save Scotland from Brexit?
My own suggestion is to revoke Article 50 unilaterally, and have our sovereign prerogative respected at the ECJ. Given how critically short of time we are, we must hope the ECJ will hear us in emergency session.
Open to the floor… What other options do we have?
The EU and the Irish have REPEATEDLY told Treeza that the Irish Backstop is NOT up for negotiation.
Yet, Westminster today will be voting for the EU to re-negotiate the Irish Back Stop.
What bit of “The Withdrawal Agreement is not up for negotiation” do they not get.???
Round and round and round we go.
No Deal now certainty,,,it’s time we started preparing ourselves for it.
Even the French are building massive lorry parks in preparation for No Deal.
What a fucking shambles this is.
Over to you Nicola,,,it’s time to load the starting pistol.
@sandy says: 29 January, 2019 at 3:31 am:
” … This is why I believe we in Scotland (& N Ireland & Wales) should have the power of veto as in the democracy known as The European Union, not the dictatorship we are presently in.”
Well no, sandy, N.Ireland and Wales are not partners in a two partner United Kingdom. Both are integral parts of the Kingdom of England and thus came into the bipartite United Kingdom as parts of the Kingdom of England. There are no Welsh or Irish signatories on the Treaty of Union.
Having said that, as Westminster has illegally imposed upon the actual bipartite United Kingdom a system of devolved ENGLSH powers handed down three other countries it thus made Westminster the de facto parliament of the country of England as the masters and all other countries within the United Kingdom, (including their only legal partner kingdom), becoming the Country of England’s dominions. The correct way of a quadratic union of countries is as you describe it – first of all England should have their own devolved parliament and secondly the united union of countries should be a proper federation of four countries.
What it is not now is a bipartite United Kingdom. That means, in effect, there has been no Treaty of Union since devolution began and even the so called devolution is not devolving the powers of the United Kingdom, (as defined by the Treaty of Union), but the assumed de facto parliament of the country of England that actually has no devolved powers as these are retained by Westminster which has never, (since 1707), been the elected parliament of either the kingdom or country of England.
The Treaty of Union itself was an illegal con trick engineered by Westminster in 1706/7 and is has remained an ever more increasingly illegal con trick until today. However, there is one overall solution to this illegal setup and it is that the People of Scotland before 1706/7 were internationally recognised as being legally sovereign under Scottish law.
Today, the international community, still recognises that Scottish Law has international jurisdiction over Scottish Territory, (e.g. under the International Law of the Seas). Furthermore the Treaty of Union itself plainly states that both English and Scottish law must forever remain independent.
All it needs now to correct the totally illegal assumption that Westminster is not only the de facto Parliament of the country, (not the kingdom), of England , but is sovereign over both of the only two kingdoms that form the actual United Kingdom, is for the majority of the legally sovereign people of Scotland to declare the union is over, and being legally sovereign, we need no one’s permission to do so.
jezza says:
The aspect of all this which makes me especially angry is the way the MSM report all this nonsense as if it’s credible. In a real democracy, the media would be all over the stupidity, incompetence and underhand scheming and call politician out.
You would expect some partisan publications to run with daft policies through loyalty, but you also expect those with different views, or even impartial ones, to give chancers a hard time.
Nope. The UK MSM seem totally compliant with the lunacy.
Nana
Betting those Brussels Scots are Unionists.
Are we all looking forward to Jamies Brexit Britain Cook Book, stuffed full of 30 second powdered egg recipes. If you can’t get the powdered egg the book itself is edible.
Breeks says:
29 January, 2019 at 9:34 am
I’d second that. I really hope that’s Plan A.
The latest piece of news that had me wondering if I have really slipped into some Twighlight Zone-like parallel universe is that P&O – Pacific and Orient that flagship of British Imperial history – is moving its base of operations to Cyprus. There will be no more ships on cross channel routes flying the red duster. Which means the UK Government can’t commandeer them in times of trouble Like oh, I dunno, half the population running out of food in a few weeks? Unless the’ye going to take the Cal Mac fleet down south…
Thinks: maybe that’s why the Maid of the Loch was getting that overhaul recently.
link to bbc.co.uk
Part of Gayling’s masterplan for a Dunkirk like fleet of little ships scuttling across the busiest waterway in the world piled high with boxes of veggies.
Breeks says:
29 January, 2019 at 9:34 am
I’d second that. I really hope that’s Plan A.
The latest piece of news that had me wondering if I have really slipped into some Twighlight Zone-like parallel universe is that P&O – Pacific and Orient that flagship of British Imperial history – is moving its base of operations to Cyprus. There will be no more ships on cross channel routes flying the red duster. Which means the UK Government can’t commandeer them in times of trouble Like oh, I dunno, half the population running out of food in a few weeks? Unless the’ye going to take the Cal Mac fleet down south…
Thinks: maybe that’s why the Maid of the Loch was getting that overhaul recently.
link to bbc.co.uk
Part of Grayling’s masterplan for a Dunkirk like fleet of little ships scuttling across the busiest waterway in the world piled high with boxes of veggies.
galamcennalath 9.55am
Why disturb the UK MSM?
Let them get on with running with the fantasy that the EU need us as much as we need them mince.
A Hard Fucked Up Brexit will suit the Scottish Independence cause just fine.
The little Englanders are so blinded by their racist desires to leave the EU, they don’t even realise Scotland will vote to leave the UK and Ireland will vote to Unify.
Churchill the complicated man, well if he’d done everything he wanted to do we’d have needed Iron man and the Avengers to stop him, fortunately the people surrounding Churchill kept him too drunk to kill everybody
@Breeks says:29 January, 2019 at 9:34 am:
” … Open to the floor… What other options do we have?”
What’s the point, Breeks? Your anti-SNP credentials are showing again? Your consistent and obviously wrong, use of the term, “Unilaterally”, says it all. The people of Scotland are, under Scots law, legally sovereign and that is plainly stated in the Treaty of Union.
A legally sovereign people cannot unilaterally declare anything for the simple reason they are sovereign and a sovereign’s word is law.
If the majority of the people of Scotland decide the Union is over they instantly change the independent law of Scotland.
Westminster has never been legally sovereign in England never mind in the United Kingdom for the monarch of England is legally sovereign but NOT in Scotland and the Treaty of Union says the Monarch of England isn’t sovereign in Scotland.
Mr Peffers – in your opinion, can Scots – being sovereign – reject the 2016 EU referendum result and remain in the EU regardless of the outcome of that referendum?
Listen to Sabine Weyand spell it out in perfect English so that you can better enjoy the debate in HoC later.
“There’s no negotiation between the EU and UK, that negotiation is finished.”
The EU’s Deputy Chief Negotiator for Brexit Sabine Weyand says that the controversial ‘backstop’ was heavily shaped by British negotiators and that it will not be amended./i
link to twitter.com
Macart @ 9.28 am
Beeling with you.
Essexexile@8.38am – spell it ok for you?
More Britnat MINCE from Dr Doom.
Still hanging from your own petard. Britnat.
Labour’s Northern Ireland Secretary pearls of wisdom on the 29th March date.
If I was religious, I would say
Jesus wept.
link to youtube.com
Ross Greer should tweet with more circumspect. However Morgan is a vile individual so I struggle to care if he is upset or not.
Churchill was a heroic rallying point at a juncture when one was needed. He was nevertheless a shabby human being. The two are not mutually exclusive. Yes, Churchill was a Victorian and his views on race, empire and gender were of a different era but many from the same era were a damned sight more enlightened than Churchill was. I worked with an old soldier back in the 70s who had fought in Burma during the war. He loathed Churchill (and used colorful language to make his point). He said many soldiers felt the same and the 45 election was two fingers to Churchill and the Tories. The sentimental attachment to Churchill is something more common among those born long after the war when myth replaced the clay feet of the man.
It is not entirely off the radar that Westminster could use failure to pass the budget as an excuse to suspend Holyrood.
BTW unrelated but great article by WGD in the National today.
Oil “UK central North Sea”
link to archive.vn
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
SNP MP hits out over lack of Scottish voices on Board of Trade
link to archive.vn
Of course they have
link to twitter.com
That’s all for now
Liam Fox wants the Withdrawal Agreement text changed. He speaks with forked tongue!
He must know that’s a non starter. He and his far right loonies just want to cause problems so their hard Brexit becomes guaranteed through a ‘no deal’.
Cubby
at the risk of being called pedantic. OK I am.
A petard was an early type of mortar, prone to blow up and kill the gunner. The expression “hoist with your own petard” means just that.
Your own mortar exploded and threw you in the air.
You cannot be hanging from your petard. Sorry.
@ Cactus – thx for the link to indylive radio. Listening to a very interesting discussion with Callum Baird, editor of The National. Great stuff in spite of set up glitches.
https://indylive.radio
Treasury Questions live Now
Endless number of Tories claiming they are reducing debt etc. They are of course lying and they know they are lying. They have reduced the annual deficit so they are reducing the rate at which the UK national debt is increasing.
Britnats lie and they lie all the time about almost everything.
“fortunately the people surrounding Churchill kept him too drunk to kill everybody”
Yes Dr Jim, Not forgetting his visit to the USA (during prohibition) with his doctor’s note prescribing the required X units per day of alcohol for ‘medicinal purposes’.
I am not a stickler for formal dress or business attire, but their is surely no clearer sign of the English Government’s arrogance and utter contempt for people, than the chief Secretary to the treasury, Liz Truss, standing at the despatch box, wearing a freaking leather biker jacket.
Seriously, take your f***ing job seriously, or let somebody else.
Liz Trusss is likely paid in excess of 150k per year, plus expenses. I do not care how ‘cool’ or ‘trendy’ she thinks she is, such dress is not acceptable. Imagine if a male member of the cabinet turned up at the despatch box wearing a leather biker jacket, would that be ok?
No, this is a sign of the utter contempt and arrogance of this wholly dysfunctional and out of control English government. It is also a sign of double standards.
Fireproofjim@12.02pm
Come on.
Thanks for that but I was aware of the literal meaning but of course, as I am sure you well know, I was using the phrase as it is commonly used in modern times – an idiom – not the literal meaning of the words. E.g. Kick the bucket.
Proud Cybernat at 1050am,
I have raised that very point many times. If the people of Scotland are sovereign, and the people have already given a clear democratic decision by rejecting brexit, by some considerable margin, then surely that is all the mandate needed.
You cannot say although the people of Scotland are sovereign, we need a referendum for indy, but then at the same time, the referendum rejecting brexit is NOT sufficient mandate for action to keep Scotland within the EU.
I still cannot see a difference.
6
Re: churchill
My grandad fought in WW2, leaving an eye in a foreign land and bringing home a souvenier lodged in his brain.
His view of Churchill went along these lines (from his diary).
“The men would have been happy for Churchill to be the 1st sent ‘over the top’ to meet his fate, then the actual soldiers could fight a tactical war, not a slaughter on the orders of political fools”
………..
Wise old man was my grandad (He died mid sentence talking to me in 1973 when I was 7) told me to never join the armed forces, as the government will use you, then drop you as soon as you are no longer a functioning killing machine.
Dorothy Divine @ 7.29 am
Which is the exact opposite of how religion should be used 🙂
Peace and Love x
test
Great article in iScot mag about Prestwick airport…
link to iscot.scot
link to youtube
interesting
give up
Cubby
A tweet by the Rev re ideology Vs intelligence you might want to take on board. Have a look.
“…… can Scots – being sovereign – reject the 2016 EU referendum” you ask @Proud Cybernat says at 10:50 am.
I’m not as knowledgeable as our RP but the way I see it:
1. People of Scotland are Sovereign (as per 1320, 1688, 2018)
2. Treaty of Union upholds the fact that amongst other things the People of Scotland are Sovereign (1707)
3. Sovereign People of Scotland voted to continue as Englands partner Kingdom in the UK Union as per 1707 Treaty and associated Acts 1706 Eng, 1707 Scots. (2014)
4. Sovereign People of Scotland voted to remain E.U. Citizens (2016)
Point 4. and Point 3. are incompatible (unless there is a bespoke agreement at UK Govt level allowing to remain an E.U. Member State (most unlikely)
Point 4 is therefore the default position if the People of Scotland are Sovereign (as per valid and live (International Treaties) and I’d like to think this position is recognised by EU/UN.
Ghillie , you’ve made me holy , which I ain’t!
Dorothy Divine =)
The hand of God perhaps 🙂
@ Robert Peffers.
‘westminster has never been legally sovereign in England’
A point which can’t be emphasized often enough ( I know you have ) and frankly that fact alone makes the withdrawal Bill illegal in relation to Scotland.
If I was the current monarch, I would have a list of government minsters, civil servants and her personal advisers that I could hang by the scrotum from the palace railings when the sh#t hits the fan.
Indy Radio Live:
‘Brexit is about cash.’
‘Brexit is about power.’
Thanks Cactus! 🙂 @ 7.17 am for the link.
This station is brilliant! Almost divine =)
AND now the Cranberries!! Heaven 🙂
Whoa who is that now?
TUNE IN FOLKS !!
Rev Stu, this will make you properly homesick =)
My partner says ” What! 1000 defence workers”..??
She beginning to take notice now. 🙂
@Ghillie, Cactus et al –
Have been listening for the last hour or so. Great!
😉
@JWT
“Point 4 is therefore the default position if the People of Scotland are Sovereign (as per valid and live (International Treaties) and I’d like to think this position is recognised by EU/UN.”
Do you mean that your Point 4 over-rides Point 3 because it was the most recent test of Scottish opinion? This is to say that since your Points 3 & 4 are now mutually exclusive, by voting by a larger margin to remain in the EU than UK and because the EU vote was more recent, Scots effectively (and unknowingly at the time because we did not yet know the result in the other constituent parts of the UK) voted to leave the UK and to remain with the EU? Is this how you see it?
Cheers.
@Robert Louis
I get what you mean but women are judged far more than men on their appearance. However, clothes, unlike stature, facial features etc are easily changed and are used to make a statement consciously or unconsciously.
Whether we agree or not they are often instrumental in how we develop impressions of people.
Support significant reform of Scotland’s grouse moors.
link to e-activist.com
Today the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, @KensingtonRoyal, will attend a meeting of the Michelin Dundee Action Group
why?
link to twitter.com
link to politics.co.uk
He’s an actor
link to twitter.com
Call out to: Indy Live Radio
How can we send you a text?
You are doing brilliantly well!
My son is going to listen in on the bus and while he’s working – pruning trees 🙂
Magic!
link to itisintruthnotforglory.wordpress.com
That brand new Tory plan for Brexit? Here’s why it’s dead in the water
link to archive.is
Brexit looks set to be delayed after Labour confirmed they will back a key vote to extend the 29 March leaving date.
link to archive.is
The Tories have taken surplus National Insurance contributions and paid it towards their National Debt. Let that sink in. Waspi women, & affordable pensions are all possible.
link to twitter.com
Ian Brotherhood, I’ve just tuned in.
Cactus has been promoting and loving Indy Live Radio for days – He’s the hero!
This is amazing.
Our voices. Our stories. Our opinions.
ILR is going to be huge 🙂
THIS is a game changer 🙂
Such good music!
Folk, tune in and just have it on in the background while you are checking out Wings (bit distracting, but worth it!)
Rev! Are you listening too?
link to indylive.radio
I want to be able to listen to it on our Roberts Stream internet radio. I understand the way to do this is to submit it to VTuner so it gets listed. I’ve done it, perhaps if we all did it it might speed things up?
link to vtuner.com
I LOVE THIS SONG
Indy Live Radio 🙂
Debate in HoC about to start. Umpteenth attempt to force us out of EU.
link to parliamentlive.tv
Huge turnout for the Wullie & kate, mainly photographers and media
link to twitter.com
Brexit: Theresa May will ask the EU to reopen Brexit deal
link to archive.is
Won’t archive
link to independent.co.uk
@ Robert Louis: 1:11
I’d be Ok if all our SNP MPs turned up in Bikers for Yes garb. With roaring bikes of course.
And – if anyone is in contact with the IndyLiveRadio guys – a wee tip:
The link to the crowdfunder on the home page opens in the same tab and so cuts off the broadcast. Make it open in a new tab and people can continue to listen while donating money!
Only been listening for 20 mins, but a great selection of music so far. Let’s get people everywhere listening to this.
link to indylive.radio
Crowdfunder:
link to indiegogo.com
@Ghillie and Dorothy
Good call on the indylive radio.
Cool. 😎
Point I’m making @Proud Cybernat says at 1:10 pm is that if Scottish People are Sovereign (and Treaty of Union recognises this as legal fact) then in 2014 Scots voted to maintain the UK Union as per the Treaty.
Therefore because The Scottish Peoples Sovereignty has been recognised (as recently as the tail end of last year in the Commons via uncontested upholding of the Claim of Right) then our Sovereign will is to remain in the EU (this is the instruction we gave to our Elected Representatives MPs and MSPs).
The fact that Westminster claims Foreign Policy is ‘reserved’ doesn’t hold water under the Treaty of Union 1707.
One way to square the circle between Points 3 and 4 is an Indy Ref.
The other is that by implementing Brexit the UK Parliament has ended the UK Union.
England cannot have Brexit and the Union.
That’s the way I see it.
Angus Brendan O Neil’s article 50 withdrawal bill to be discussed on 8th Feb
@Nana 1.34
Well, she can ask…
link to youtube.com
Not entirely sure Treeza will receive a warm welcome right enough. 🙄
TBF you can see why the EU must be getting beyond fed up with UK gov and UK politics. The look and tone of Sabine Weyand in that briefing kinda tells folk all they need to know.
Essexexile @12.42pm – spell it ok for you Dr Doom
Only a Britnat has the arrogance to think I will take your advice/ instructions. The days of the British Empire are over – pity a lot of people in your locale think they are about to create Britnat empire 2.0 and start bossing the world about again.
So in summary you know what you can do with your instruction.
@Golfnut
13:04
You say that WM is not legally sovereign? They, the government disagree.
link to parliament.uk
@Macart
I posted a clip of Sabine Weyand telling them how it is at 7.09am and yes for sure the EU are fed up of Westminster as are we all
🙁
A few more links as I’m here today but may not be tomorrow
Read this thread
link to twitter.com
You can be a criminal and still remain an MP!
Fiona Onasanya MP (elected Lab, now Ind, Peterborough) has been sentenced to three months in prison.
This does not disqualify her from still serving as an MP.
British retirees in EU will lose free healthcare under no-deal Brexit
link to archive.is
Indy Live Radio:
What mistakes?
Just brilliant 🙂
Cheerio for now =)
Macart @ 1.39 pm
I heard it first from the cool dude, oor Cactus 🙂
This latest debate is a nightmare hybrid of Groundhog Day and The Third Policeman.
Time might be more profitably spent on this long, grim read from the New York Times, 1972.
Younger readers may not realise why the GFA is so important. Reading this will help.
link to nytimes.com
“You say that WM is not legally sovereign? They, the government disagree.”
Nana @2.01pm
An MP must get a prison sentence of over 12 months to be forced out for criminality.
In theory, they could be done for paedophilia, get under 12 months, and not be able to be removed from WM. Unbelievable.
@Nana
You take care of yourself.
@Ghillie
Heh! Might have known. 🙂
@ScotsRenewables
13:26
The link you posted to that Indygogo crowdfunder link is closed. Anyone know if there is another one?
Robert Peffers says:
29 January, 2019 at 10:45 am
What’s the point, Breeks? Your anti-SNP credentials are showing again? Your consistent and obviously wrong, use of the term, “Unilaterally”, says it all. The people of Scotland are, under Scots law, legally sovereign and that is plainly stated in the Treaty of Union.
Not quite Robert, by unilateral, I mean to imply that the UK component of EU Membership is the bilateral Treaty of Union, and by revoking Article 50 unilaterally, we revoke only Scotland’s Notice to Quit Europe independently, leaving England to soldier on with its own unilateral capacity to exit.
I do not doubt for a moment the people of Scotland are sovereign, but what we currently lack is wider recognition of that sovereignty. It is half the equation. The kind of recognition where other enlightened nations can respect the sovereignty of our nation, and other less enlightened or downright duplicitous Nation’s can be compelled to respect the sovereignty of our Nation by law and recognised convention.
Due respect for Scotland’s Sovereignty would create an instant Scottish Constitutional Backstop which prohibits the undemocratic removal of Scotland from Europe by Westminster. We can veto our own Brexit.
Scotland’s Sovereignty was detailed in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, but it was recognition from the Dowager Queen Isabella of England and formal recognition from the Pope in 1328 which affirmed its recognised legitimacy.
That status, from 1320 to 1328, where Scotland recognised itself sovereign but required international recognition of the same, is not a million miles away from where Scotland stands constitutionally here in 2019. Sovereign in name, but beggared for the want of recognition.
Our appeal to the ECJ to recognise Scotland’s Sovereignty over the revocation of Article 50 would serve the same purpose in 2019 that the Declaration of Arbroath served in 1320… an appeal to a European Authority to arbitrate over the veracity of Scotland’s legitimate claim to be sovereign.
Yes. I know we’d win. We ARE Sovereign. We CAN prove it. That’s the point. What can Westminster prove? Let us drag their doomed and forlorn annexation of Scotland’s Sovereignty out of the shadows and into the broad daylight for ruthless scrutiny. Scotland has nothing to hide and a sovereign veto of Brexit to be affirmed.
Bind our Nation to Europe by our free willed sovereign choice, and let the selfish actions of the English component of the United Kingdom render the Union defunct and irremediably breached by their folly, not ours.
One more from Hansard:
Tend to agree with JWT @ 1343 .Furthermore, if it is the case that the sovereign will of the people of Scotland is vested in our representative MP’s elected to Westminster ( notwithstanding the “ devolved” Holyrood legislature) , then surely any “ U.K.” legislation ( either reserved or “ powergrabbed” back from devolved to reserved ) seeking to amend or create Scots Law, must surely require majority agreement of our elected Scottish constituency MP’s under the treaty of union if we are equal partners in this “ so called” United Kingdom.?? With the very existence of Holyrood under threat now and little likelihood of of Brexit now being halted ,our SNP majority at Westminster must again be democratically recognised by the European and International community as a mandate for independence to be ratified by negotiations to withdraw from the treaty of union and/ or Holyrood vote and/or people’s vote.This Connor be denied by a RUK majority at Westminster.
Following this week’s comments on Churchill is it not time to examine the truth about another 2 of our allegedly wonderful WW2 heroes – Montgomery and Mountbatten?
@Proud Cybernat
Hansard is not the font of all knowledge. It’s merely a record of what was said on a given day. We believe the Scottish people are sovereign, they (Westminster) believe they are sovereign. The reality is they have a bigger stick than we do.
I was just reading that portsmouth is the haave a large super sized drydock built for the new aircraft carriers.
Goodbye rosyth
Line up herw foe your p45
Better together indeed
Shug @ 3.22 pm
Maybe Portsmouth is just getting ready for the inevitable Independence of Scotland?
When Rosyth and Clydeside and ports all around Scotland will be busy building our own ships 🙂
For any that are interested, here’s a list of the 7 amendments as chosen by Bercow that will be voted on tonight, given in voting order.
OT: link to bbc.co.uk
Oh, no! Poor Scotland – yet more energy wealth. Why are we so cursed?
“The reality is they have a bigger stick than we do.”
Might doesn’t make something right. WM has voted upon and officially (legally) recognised the sovereignty of the people of Scotland. Now all we have to do is assert it.
I think we will.
Soon.
The BritNat parties are clearly gearing-up for Indyref2, a vote for Independence and the subsequent horse-trading. All this SNP Bad stuff being ramped-up, at this time, when Brexit ought to be the main focus (although SNP Bad is, I must admit, a big squirrel).
I think they know they will lose, and are throwing as much shite at the SNP as they can, before the campaign proper starts and they will find their claims as to why we are better together, should they still have any reasonable claims to put forward, are subject to scrutiny.
Take today’s further rubbish about Scotrail. I used to be a regular commuter on Scotrail. Now semi-retired, I am seldom on a train, but, when I am, I am impressed at how much better the service is than from when I was a regular user – and, I had few complaints then.
The forces of British Nationalism in Scotland are losing, and they know they are losing. I wonder what real damage they will attempt before the inevitable parting of the ways.
@ Jim McIntosh.
Westminster talks out of its arse on quite a lot of subjects.
The Treaty of Union between Scotland and England created the United Kingdom. Both Kingdoms enshrined within the Treaty their Constitutional law and subsequently became the only written constitution of the UK. England signed up to that whether the current shower at Westminster like it or not.
They have certainly abused their position as the Parliament of the United Kingdom and got away with it, but that doesn’t change their actual legal position.
There are only 2 absolute sovereign entities in the UK, the Crown in England and the people of Scotland.
Do fellow Wingers agree that that Gavin Williamson and John Bolton are 2 of the scariest politicians in the world?
shug 3-22
Nothing new about Portsmouths dry dock for the Carriers I saw artists impressions of this about two years ago. This will also take over warship building from the Clyde.
I’m not sure that any of the proposed amendments stop a no deal Brexit. They all merely delay the choice.
The PM and Corbyn walk out as Ian Blackford gets to his feet.
Nevertheless, he did a sterling job despite the crass ignorance of the Scottish Tories. He batted off the usual ‘trade is bigger with the UK than with the EU’ by asking if the Tories were threatening not to trade with us after Independence. He hammered home the long business and cultural history of Scotland and Europe to have an intervention from the Tories saying Germany did not exist in the timescale he referred to. The pettiness of the interventions was pathetic.
Caroline Lucas pointed out when Blackford mentioned food shortages the DUP behind her said he (or the Scottish people?) should ‘just go to the chip shop’.
It is sickening and none of it will be broadcast on the news. Interestingly he seemed more confident about demanding an S30 soon no matter what May was saying.
@Golfnut
3:51
We can stamp our feet all we want, but let’s get real, WM are still producing official documents stating the UK Parliament is “sovereign”. This may be wrong but who do we complain to? No 3rd country is going to take sides, no matter the moral or legal right of our position and I think most of us know this deep down.
@Proud Cybernat – Not sure how we “assert” our right if the bully keeps saying “this is not the time”?
………
N: The Brady ‘Irish backstop’ amendment to replace the controversial Northern Ireland backstop with ‘alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border’.
…………
This just about sums up WM.
No mention of what ‘alternative arrangements’ might involve of course, it may as well read as follows…
“N: The Brady ‘Irish backstop’ amendment to replace the controversial Northern Ireland backstop with ‘a custard pie in the face’ to avoid a no deal brexit”
Both are equally meaningless to the real world.