The Burning House
This one goes out to all the “rebel” MSPs at the SNP desks in Holyrood.
Because it’s nearly time for you to choose whether you want to fight, or die meekly.
We don’t mean literally die, of course. We’re not threatening anyone here. But the 316-year campaign for Scottish independence is tied to a stake on a pile of brushwood and there’s someone in a black hood walking towards it with a flaming torch. If anyone’s going to save it, there’s very little time left to act.
And the only people in a position to do it are you. Them’s the breaks.
“The wind is blowing hot and cold
Who am I? I don’t know”
We’re not going to name you in this piece. But you know who you are, and so do we, and so does pretty much everyone else. Many, although not all, of you rebelled bravely over the Gender Recognition Reform bill, or other things. You can be absolutely sure that your cards are marked in the party as a result. You’ve seen what happens to those who show dissent – the Cherrys, the MacNeils, the McAlpines and the rest. Your careers in politics are going nowhere. The SNP doesn’t love you any more.
“Do I still belong to you?
Or am I only longing to?”
Those of you who aren’t standing down at the next election, and who manage to scrape through reselection, might just survive. But on current polling trajectories that’s about a 50/50 shot at best, and one way or another the majority of you are probably going to be out in 2026, replaced by some obedient mindless drone who jumped to the top of the selection list by identifying as “queer” and/or claiming to be disabled because they had lactose intolerance or a lazy eye.
It can’t, then, be personal ambition that’s keeping you in the party.
Of course, maybe you’re holding out for change. Maybe you think Humza Yousaf’s going to crash and burn and there’ll be a chance under a new leader – possibly even you – to rebuild the SNP back into a proper independence party with serious policies.
But really, what are the chances? What’s going to bring him down between now and 2026? A bad performance at next year’s election? That’s pretty much already priced in at this point, and if Nicola Sturgeon didn’t stand down for losing 21 MPs in 2017, what on Earth makes you think that he’d quit for a similar performance in much tougher circumstances? The SNP hanging onto half its seats the way things are going would be seen as some sort of triumph.
(The only conceivable thing that might do it is a complete Scottish Labour 2015-style wipeout. But realistically there are too many brainwashed cultists stubbornly refusing to accept that the SNP is no longer interested in independence – and Scottish Labour are still too embarrassingly hopeless – for that to happen.)
So barring some sort of scandal, Yousaf is in office until the next Holyrood election, and that means there’ll be no chance of even STARTING to rescue the SNP or the independence movement until 2031, which boots any kind of hope of success at least ten years down the road.
(You’re OBVIOUSLY not still in the SNP because you think there’s a hope of it winning independence any time in the next decade. It has no meaningful intention to even try. You’ve just watched a “conference” in which the only remaining credible strategy wasn’t even discussed, and in which your leader tried to pretend that next year he’ll somehow succeed in getting Westminster to concede a second referendum by getting FEWER SEATS THAN HE ALREADY HAS NOW. Like, seriously? Even Yousaf himself knows that ain’t happening.)
So here’s the big question: what are you planning on doing for the next three years? Sitting there grumbling quietly amongst yourselves and sulking as you’re corralled into backing more and more terrible, voter-repelling policies, and humiliating yourselves by being whipped to publicly express your undying faith and confidence in stupendously incompetent halfwit ministers who aren’t even in your party?
If so then you’re a fat lot of use to anyone. But there is an alternative.
You need to go, Rebel Yellows, and you need to go now. It only takes five of you and you’ll be recognised as a party in the Parliament, with standing and regular questions at FMQs and the like. And if you get just eight, the SNP and Greens will lose their majority and you’ll actually be able to exert some leverage on legislation.
The SNP isn’t listening to you inside the party. The only way to even have a chance of influencing them is from outside it.
If you go now, you’ll have nearly three years in which to build a profile and win the trust of voters and maybe actually have a decent chance at getting back in. The Holyrood electoral system is kind to small parties, and voters are often kind to people – like Margo McDonald and Dennis Canavan – that they perceive as having acted with integrity and honour, rather than just sitting trousering paycheques for supporting policies they don’t believe in.
More importantly, the quicker you go the more chance you have of not being dragged down with the SNP when it sinks. And you know it’s sinking, but it’s nowhere near the bottom yet. There’s obviously Operation Branchform and – let’s phrase this very carefully – the possibility of charges arising from it, but there’s also a live criminal perjury investigation, and a live criminal leaking investigation, and you can’t have failed to notice the growing rumours of another one.
(And that’s just the criminal stuff. If we start talking about the ongoing and impending policy disasters we’ll be here all day.)
“Sliding down around me
and my heart is pounding
the curtains are on fire
all I am is tired”
Maybe you want to stall until October. Maybe you’re pinning your hopes on a bunch of ad-hoc “regional assemblies” turning round Yousaf’s surrender policy and stopping the party becoming the devolutionist one it’s clearly triangulating towards.
But you must know in your heart that that’d never be allowed to happen even if the membership grew a previously-unnoticed spine, and waiting four months in the hope of an impossible miracle is like going for a stroll across a safari park in a suit made of sausages and expecting to make it safely out the other side. Your only chance is to sprint, not stroll.
Because the SNP is finished. Badly holed but still just about floating, the whole thing is going to suddenly go south in spectacular fashion at any moment without warning. There is no “if”, only a “when”.
And the more distance there is between you and it when it does, the better it’ll be for you. Soon it’ll be less damaging to tell people you were in the National Front than the Scottish National Party. The clock is ticking loudly and you can’t turn it back.
“And the pictures of you
will be smouldering too
as they slide out of view
they look nothing like they used to”
As for WHERE you’d go, that’s for you to decide. There’s one obvious option – a party led by Scotland’s most successful politician of all time, now returning to prominence after a botched assassination job, and also featuring people you know of proven experience, bravery and integrity like Kenny McAskill – who released the so-called Lockerbie bomber amid a torrent of criticism – and Neale Hanvey, who’s already demonstrated the ability to win a seat as an independent after being stabbed in the back by his own party.
But if for one reason or another you didn’t want to join Alba – perhaps you think Nicola Sturgeon and her cabal did too good a job of toxifying it, or maybe some of you just don’t want to play second fiddle – nothing’s stopping you forming a brand-new party of your own. The arithmetic stays the same either way. Be the new generation.
“Oh, but it’s nothing to be sad about
It’s nothing to be sad about”
Because whatever happens you end up no worse off. You’re guaranteed your jobs for the next three years whether you’re in the SNP or not. Some of you have already said you aren’t intending to stand again so you’ve got literally nothing to lose and the chance to go out swinging.
Some of you don’t need the money or the grief or the shame of being an SNP MSP in 2023. The rest of you almost certainly have better prospects outside the SNP than inside it. But more than that, you’ll be able to say that you did what you could to save the cause you’re supposed to be dedicated to.
Several of you, we know, are Wings readers. Some of you are people who worked your socks off for us in the indyref. Some of you are people we stood up for when nobody else would. All of you know we’ve been analysing Scottish politics for nearly 12 years now. And if you’re reading this article, just ask yourselves one simple question: how often have we been wrong?
So get yourselves together and give yourselves a shake. Scotland needs you. The independence movement needs you. It needs hope. It needs people to stand up and be counted, it needs them now, and you’re the only ones on the stage.
It’s your choice. You can act now and avoid a lifetime of regret, or you can sit on your arses on your couches until it’s too late, chilling out, as it all burns down around you.
I sincerely hope that Ash Regan and co are reading this.
Well said sir … yet again !!!
It actually feels now like we are on the Titanic and none of the SNP crew are bothering to man the lifeboats to save any of us. Including themselves.
They need to know there is no honour or integrity in them going down with the ship, not unless they save us, the passengers, who have paid so much, often throughout our lifetimes, towards giving them the positions, the high salaries, the golden pensions that they have enjoyed and continue to look forward to. We paid them well in our blood, sweat and tears and now they are deserting us to the ‘mercies’, or should that be mercenaries, of Westminster.
I’m reading fear stories from SNP supporters, advocating for further SNP delay.
‘Scotland United’ is the obvious solution to immediate Scottish independence. While no single party is bigger than that goal, that glaring truth, steadfastly ignored by the same blinkered fools.
SNP hijacking of people’s emotions has turned some folks brains into mush!
Fergus Ewing – has he jumped yet?
As so skillfully explained by Rev Campbell, there is absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain by growing a pair and going for broke. This is the time to do it. I appreciate that some of you are still thinking things through but don’t overthink this. Dangerous to stall. The time to act is today. Its now or never. Don’t disappoint us, don’t let Scotland down. You will be amazed by the level of support you get. If you really believe in independence, if you love Scotland, you must stand. Act now.
The Express story linked to has the year wrong for Sturgeon’s Oban visit. It was July 2021.
Gosh, just imagine a few years of A Salmond leading the administration in the manner he did 2007-2014. A Scotland where things actually function, where targets promised are achieved, where a basic level of competence is required to be in the cabinet.
Just a dream ? Well, everyone needs a wee something to think of to keep them going.
And, it could all start from just a handful of present MSPs joining Alba.
Brilliant, Rev! A very obvious solution to the problem.
`That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
let him depart;
his passport shall be made
and crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
that fears his fellowship to die with us`
Henry V
It is time to get serious – and listen. Doing the same thing time and again only leads to the same answer link to blether.social
Bravo. Let’s hope they take this on board. The time is now. The past has gone and the future never may not come as we hope or wish for. We need brave souls to make things happen now.
Stu has chosen a most appropriate photo of Slater. Have you ever seen such a smug looking politician?
Very few people changed the World by sitting on their couch. It’s what Winnie Ewing would want.
Now that would be an act of courage worthy of consideration, in the light of existing circumstances. Quite the thought indeed.
Could not agree more with this. The analysis is true and the logic is compelling. Do it (if you are reading).
I have said similar but never knew about the new party rule. My advice was just to put as much distance between themselves and the SNP as they can and crucially as early as they can, as it is going down.
This is very clever plan but it will require courage.
It seems crazy to be getting off the safety of the giant ship to board a small boat until you realize it is a lifeboat, and you are going to have to make it yourselves, and quick.
No matter what the outcome you have tried to save them here Rev. Up to them now.
This is a brilliant article.
Well done ?
Top notch Stu, and we will see whether any of the current MP’s and MSP’s have the bollox, the courage and the daring to jump ship from the SNP, but I’m not optimistic to be honest.
And of course, the opprobrium that would come their way would be huge and many will think why bother with that?
However, being bothered is the difference between being just another number or being a person with credibility and conviction?
Brilliant post mate, thank you
Soonds like a braw plan, Rev.
Thon deceitfu colonial cabal deser naething. Ony ‘Nationalist’ MSPs left in the SNP are either wi us or agin us, ye cannae ser twa maisters – the fowk an the doun-hauder. Freedom is the maist urgent priority.
Ye need an awfu lang spuin tae sowp wi the deil.
Very well said.
Alex has given them, and Scotland one last chance.
Stand as independents, but sign up to the Manifesto Scotland United.
(Wee message for John Main, I believe Fergus Ewing is currently organising his mother’s funeral. Leave him alone for now thanks.)
Please God some of them will read this and actually do something but I’ve now got to the stage when I suspect that is highly unlikely. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.
An accurate depiction on where things currently sit in Scotland Stu. I was going to use the word ‘stand’ instead of ‘sit’ but to stand you must have a backbone.
I genuinely think that it will take something dramatic to alter the views of the cult followers in the SNP. A prison sentence for somebody in the hierarchy might be such an event.
Congratulations again Stu for your article and no 300 year old drivel or ‘colonialism’ pish to be seen. How long before the usual suspects pile in with their dross?
@Alf Baird (9.51) –
Alf, can I please pick your brains?
Is there a place where all of the links to your ‘determinants’ series is stored?
I managed to get a few, contacted Iain Lawson and he gave me a few more but I’m still missing parts 1,6,7,8 and 10.
Hope you can help, thanks.
😉
If any “rebels” do jump ship we do have another Independence Party so no need to set up yet another one, all the hard work has already been done. And we certainly don’t just need a quick replacement for the SNP, we need change in more ways than one.
Arrow straight in the Bulls Eye.
It is disgusting that no SNP MSPs or MPs have followed McAskill and Hanvey to Alba in the last two years. This call is their last chance.
My initial, gut, feeling, is that there will be no movement until after the UK election next year, when voter turn-out has gone down and the SNP has lost a few MPs. Obviously, that reduces the time available for an organised group or party to make an impact in Holyrood.
I’ll be happy if I’m proved wrong.
The SNP and the Greens are now beyond the pale. Their leadership smacks of “it’s ma ba” in that case someone will take the ball off you or folk will just walk away, loads of fun having a game of fitba on yer todd eh ?
Vote ALBA to ensure a real and meaningful future for young and an to end child poverty in Scotland.
John Main 9.25am
Despicable and unnecessary remark. The man has just lost his mother, he is in mourning. Show some respect for a change!
A reverential Call To Action, if ever there was one! Chapeau!
I sincerely believe that such will be the level of support for a breakaway group/party, that those concerned will wonder why they never crossed the Rubicon weeks ago. Nothing to loose now. Jump now before the inevitable push. No point in trying to start something after you have been pushed out of the party. The optics would be terrible and people won’t take you seriously. Humza won’t go soon unless some brave folk force the issue. Nothing short of a seismic event. This could bring things forward by months if not years.
100% agree with this whole article. There are still a FEW Mps and Mps who I’d like to see returned at next elections, but if they are to get back I agree they MUST jump ship. Go to the lifeboat with a skipper at the helm who knows the way around the political seas, and recognises the sharks who circle and bite, but also steers away from them. If you seriously want to save this country and help it to become a recognised independent country on the world stage, then leave the cesspit, the merd show, and help us to regain some sense of dignity again. The voices over on the Western Isles are saying they are pretty disgusted at what the SNP has morphed into ?. You over west would do better standing independently….
So the guy that ‘won’ a blatantly rigged leadership election, who was easily the worst candidate for the job is the same guy whose wealthy relative was bunging the SNP large amounts of cash in white envelope, never banked nor recorded in the accounts.
Hmmm, just gets worse and worse doesn’t it.
This would certainly explain why Yousaf was promoted far beyond his abilities… time and time again… until ultimately he was ‘promoted’ to FM, by the same crooked cabal that are currently up to their necks in the shit.
Yousaf appears to be the ‘continuity candidate’ in every sense. He looks to have got the job(s) based on a selection process that was as bent as a three pound note, stuffed into a white envelope full of cash of course.
How can this guy be the FM of Scotland. His corrupt appointment sits like a gleaming turd atop a horrendously corrupt and incompetent party, brimming with utterly dislikeable arseholes.
Get the fuck away from the SNP folks. The electorate will not distinguish the good guys from the wanks when they ‘wake up’. Just ask ‘New’ Labour.
“And if you get just eight, the SNP and Greens will lose their majority and you’ll actually be able to exert some leverage on legislation”
Excellent point! Whether they move to an established party or create a new one, this gives them profile and a chance at re-election (if not standing down). There are a few people, not naming names who’s coat is on a shoggly nail having incurred HQ’s wrath. Move now or at the latest after the October damp squib.
@FionaN
Couldn’t agree more! Let the man bury his mother in peace.
“And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear.
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes.
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”.
> whether you want to fight, or die meekly
When a simple figure of speech has to come with a large disclaimer because simple language has been weaponised to eliminate political opponents a lot more has to change before you can start rebuilding the SNP.
In that respect the advice from the rest of this article is sound. Not only will you be putting clear water between yourselves and the SNP you can also create significant distance on the cultural front as well. If, as it appears to be the case, that cancellation culture is down to a noisy minority, while the majority are silent out of fear, then giving them a voice will only strengthen your case.
Ideally, more than one political group should emerge. Sooner or later a pro-business, conservative political party has to emerge. Conservative voters in Scotland can see the tyre-fire the the Conservative and Unionist Party is and the conflagration is getting worse. Right now they have no choice but to cling onto the Union but they know that their interests count for naught because they live north of the border. Once someone emerges to serve their interests, then their visceral fear of independence will start to disappear.
This is the first rustling of the leaves that signify a storm of change is coming. You can get out there first and hope to influence it’s direction or you can be blown away by it.
I was going to post about if these MP’s/MSP’s weren’t going to jump ship because it is the right thing to do then they should do it out of self-interest because the SNP is a busted flush.
However, as Mac says due to human nature, some people don’t want to take risks until it is too late. Would a SNP rout at the next UK election shake the MPS’s at least to wise up and do something, if only to save the well paid job they have which with their qualifications and experience will never have again once they are out of politics?
A compelling read Stu, and just so true
Kenny McAskill himself is leadership material. So if these folks defected to ALBA you’d be talking about a party with suddenly a lot of heavy hitters. Salmond could easily take a less prominent role with that calibre of person around him. Media would also not be able to blank ALBA at that point.
As for the SNP, what would left over would the cranks and weirdos party of incompetent clowns, heading for electoral annihilation in their rainbow clown car, powered fred flintstone style by Lorna Slater.
It is hard to say if it will be the corruption or the incompetence that proves fatal in the end to the SNP as both are vying for it and both are at staggering levels. Either one would be fatal but to have both plus all the sexual deviancy…
Meanwhile we have an FM who likely got the job as the man his relative was sending white envelopes full of cash rigged his election to the SNP leadership and by extension to FM.
Is this not a problem in Scotland then. It is not even subtle is it. His nickname is Humza Useless and he went from one ministerial disaster to another getting promoted every time… gosh I wonder why.
Playing devils advocate – do you really want to run the chance of poisoning Alba with the dregs of the SNP ?
No matter what they say, the bottom line is they have already done along with SNP/Green policies under Sturgeon, isn’t their credibility already shot to pieces ?
After all, Rev, you’ve written often about the ‘capture’ of the SNP over the last 8 years, why wish it on Alba ?
Bang on analysis as usual.
It’ll be ignored.
It’ll be proven correct…..too late.
Well sort of braw and there are a few that did try, but if it’s only now as the ship goes down some may finally think of jumping to save themselves then it reeks of self-interest. And all the previous antics that scuppered the once decent ship weren’t red lines for them and are just to be forgotten aye?
EG, Internal Party power grab trashing members’ input and democratic processes, the utter hypocrisy of the Party going after certain individuals when others that had behaved similarly are overlooked, Party finance matters, then in “government” we have Scotwind sell off, denying women the right to same a sex medical examiner post traumatic assault and all the other genderwoowoo associated guff, freeports, ferries, DRS, loss of EU citizenship / single market access, etc, etc.
And yet none of these matters were enough to stand up and say “no more, not in my or Scotland’s name”.
By continuing to facilitate all this shite to play out over recent years they have basically fucked and hamstrung genuine Indy activist’s ability to campaign honestly and with any degree of credibility.
The damage this has caused to the prospects of returning Scotland to self-governance is significant for a couple of reasons, it has set us back and it makes us look incompetent, meaning it’s all the harder to get back to where we were and then to build from there.
If our best pro-indy politicians couldn’t see or have the foresight to understand this practical reality unfolding then they really need to up their game.
Maybe being free of a corrupt Party whip will allow them to flourish and do much better…
So Humza Useless’ relative is funnelling large cash bungs to Peter Murrell. These funds were not declared and therefore you must assume not banked nor accounted for.
That does not look like a donation, that looks like a bribe. A bribe dressed up as a donation, in cash, in white envelopes, wink wink.
Say you the decided to launder your bribe in a shiny new motorhome scheme.
But at some point you were tipped off by bent cop that the cops were looking into things and you suddenly desperately needed to ‘legitimize’ the motorhome sitting on your mum’s drive through the SNP accounts to make it look like an SNP purchase all along.
One might do that by journaling the purchase into the accounts in haste and claim you had forgotten to do so at the time and make up an obvious cock and bull story about buying it as a campaign bus.
Tartanfever….
Inclined to agree.
They’ve already poisoned one well, why encourage them to poison another?
Given everything that’s gone on, and given the ample opportunity to date to depart, if people are still in the SNP today, they’re very much part of the problem – they can never be part of the solution IMHO, and the Nuremberg defence simply won’t cut it…
SNP Out!
This was always an option since 2015, they could have done this and put Nicola into a situation where she would need their support to do anything.
Just needed some in SNP to grow a spine….
PacMan @10:28am
The problem is that the longer they stay the harder it will be to remove the yellow paint. If they leave it too late then they’ll be tainted with the charge they are just trying to save their own skins. That’s exactly what will happen if they left today but they but going now would afford them the time to create a position to carry themselves forward with “lessons learned”, etc. Once all the rats start deserting then it will be impossible to tell the good ones from the bad and so it would be better to simply eradicate them all.
I comment very infrequently here and probably anger those who fervently want “independence”. I make no secret that I am BRITISH first because these islands are too small and should come together not split into smaller and smaller tribes. I COULD argue the ancient kingdom of Northumbria has more going for it. Being British does NOT stop you being Scottish, English or Welsh. However – now you are all angry – Rev – you mention why do some not consider starting a NEW party untarnished by what has gone before? Why not YOU?
“Rev – you mention why do some not consider starting a NEW party untarnished by what has gone before? Why not YOU?”
For the reasons I said before.
Funny I was going to suggest there may be other ‘motorhomes’ littered about the country but reading between the lines with your link above about the rumours of a fourth investigation… I am now thinking a boat or a yacht would be an excellent alternative to a motorhome. Very similar in fact…
There is no doubt that if 7 rebels formed a pact then they could bend the government to their will and dispense with such nonsense bills such as the GRR, HMPA, DRS etc. However they do not seem to be an organised force with Regan being in an isolated position and all the others acting on the bequest of Kate Forbes.
None of them other than Regan would be tempted to break away as the others are still holding out for Forbes to dispose of Humza and take over. Sorry, but if Humza goes another HQ candidate will be put in place and will assume the role as FM. Forbes is obviously trying to win back support amongst MSPs, going along with the leadership and being involved with the stage managed nonsense on Saturday. Forbes is not a leader. She hides when the big decisions need to be made and pushes proxies forward in her place to do the fighting for her. She tells people what they want to hear, then goes off and does what she wants anyway. She builds a team, only to bench them and to stop them working for others. She does not want to work for others, but wants them to work for her. She wants others to do all of the fighting even if it destroys their careers so she can turn up and the end of the battle, unscathed to claim the spoils.
Things might run a bit better under her if she was leader, however we will be no closer to independence. I imagine that there might be some rebels reading this post. If you are then wake up and realise that Forbes is not the new messiah. Talk to each other and either form a voting block within the party to force change or getting out of that sinking ship!
Right on the button, Rev. Human nature being what it is, you will always have far more followers than leaders because being a leader, even a thinker, in any country can be a recipe for unintended martyrdom of one sort or another, as Alex Salmond discovered. While people following you need you as a leader, they are willing to dissemble, but always watch your back. The weak in politics are always vicious, and, unfortunately, there are always too many willing to do the dirty work for a ministerial seat or a promotion with more lolly.
To be a real leader, you have to be fixed on the goal, and, sadly, although a number of people within the SNP hierarchy do have their eyes on the goal, not many of those are brave enough to throw in their lot with the new parties or to form a new party themselves, or even to stand as independents. Like sheep in a flock and fish in a shoal, it is safer to swim in a crowd. Standing out might get you picked off, and courage is in short supply. Bending with the prevailing wind is usually the safer option for those who lack a spine and will not try to test the waters. Generally, en masse, we get the governments we deserve.
I can only speak for me, but, before I left the SNP, my party of many years, it was a bitter and tearful struggle, but I knew that staying would be endorsing policies and actions of which I thoroughly disapproved and could not reconcile. I assume that it must be the same journey for the dissidents in the cabinet and in ministerial positions or those who are just MSPs and MPs and know that the policies and actions they have endorsed are contrary to their own belief system.
People who cling on, aware of what is happening, eventually reach a point when self-respect urges them to get out because there is nothing they can do to change matters, there is nothing they can say that will change closed minds and there is no action they can take within a party that is dead on its feet, but still twitching, to encourage a directional change.
Unfortunately, the ruthlessly ambitious, the deluded and the utterly cynical stand in the path of real progress as opposed to sanctimonious regression. The party’s soul has been lost to infiltrators and those who use and abuse power for their own ends. One wonders whether the SNP alone, without the odious Greens, would have gone so far down the rabbit hole of ‘woke’ politics. Perhaps, because there are just as many deluded and, sadly, incapable people there promoted far beyond their ability.
It is not a matter of intelligence or cleverness, but of recognizing that they have not carried the movement with them, and that takes self-knowledge and a willingness to understand and learn. Few, if any, who gave speeches at the Special Convention had or have those qualities. They are willing to make themselves appear dullards and idiots in order to keep hold of power and stick to the narrative (Mhairi Black, for one) – and let us not forget that power can come in many forms, and sitting pretty in opposition, drawing a fair salary, is one form. It is a form of useless, dead-end power that takes us nowhere, but lies the pockets of the utterly politically pointless, but well remunerated.
Maybe we will have to wait for the SNP to eventually crash and burn before the phoenix rises from the ashes, or, perhaps, the SNP is long gone and cannot be revived. Personally, I think it’s the latter – but something really dramatic could happen all of a sudden as the struts finally give way, and a form of Scottish revolution follows that crash. I think this is how it will be, but it will be too late for those who dallied too long.
Are we sure Humza would want to be associated with white envelopes full of cash? You can get envelopes in lots of different colours.
There is only a very few SNP MPs or MSPs I would be happy seeing in Alba.
The majority of the SNP are definitely heading the way of Scottish Labour although I think their demise will be slightly slower but they are certainly going out of power.
The current SNP are clearing the way for our new Labour administration dear god in heaven remember the damage and corruption Labour brought when they were last in power.
Well done SNP and cheerio.
Should any SNP parliamentarians seek to belatedly defect then I hope Alba would be selective and turn down those they know to be only jumping ship to try and prolong a political career.
I think I’d also be looking at if Pete & Nicky paid cash for that holiday home they purchased abroad. Or if they opened a bank account that was funded by cash deposits which was then used to buy the property.
Opening up an offshore account and using it to buy property abroad would essentially just be another form of the motorhome scheme…
There was even talk of expensive pens and luxury items… this really does sound like they were really finding a lot of ways of getting rid of dirty money. But it is essentially the same scheme over and over again.
Buy assets (that hold value) in dirty cash and then later when you sell them the cash proceeds become clean money. Rinse and repeat over and over…
Absolutely goddamn right, Rev. Stuart Campbell.
And contrary to Captain Willard’s advice in “Apocalypse Now”:
Now is the time to absolutely ‘get off the boat’.
Now is the time to take courage and face up to the ugly truth of what the SNP has become, and its inevitable demise.
Now is the time for all decent and true independence supporting MSPs to split from the whole f***in’ SNP programme.
This from the rev’s article:
Absolutely goddamn right.
Which of the following is nearer the truth?
1 Nicola was a plant from the begining
2 Nicola was turned or blackmailed
3 Nicola has personality issues and has wandered of the track
4 Nicola was lead off the track by a small group of plants
It gets harder for me to see why she did anything she did if she was interested in independence.
All views appreciated
A group of MSPs [and MPs] could, and should, have at least resigned the whip several years ago. It might have stopped the dreadful decline in policies, competence and passion for independence.
However, better now than never. They will become heroes for the sovereign people of Scotland.
It is the duty of all parliamentarians to protect the people – their personal circumstances should be irrelevant. I beg them to think of all those ills that will only be cured by Scotland regaining its independence and withdrawing from this awful, corrupt, Union.
“And if you get just eight, the SNP and Greens will lose their majority and you’ll actually be able to exert some leverage on legislation.”
Arent we back in the Calling Your bluff “Go on vote with the Tories then” corner then even under the remit of End justifies the means.
Whilst bigger picture might warrant it, its doubtful anyone could sell taking that option to the public at this point in time, even if previous minority Scottish Governments managed to dodeals with Tories for extra Police etc to get budgets passed..
The writing of this, and the expression of it… I think this is your finest hour, Stu.
No matter what anyone of the SNP choose to do.
Respect.
Ian Brotherhood @ 10:00 am
“Is there a place where all of the links to your ‘determinants’ series is stored?”
Hi Ian. Grouse Beater has them all here, after article no. 10 which summarises the 9 determinants:
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
I would hope that they will act with integrity but I fear they will wait until the GE to see how it plays out like cowards.
Shug @ 11.34
Number 3 for me. She always fancied being a dictator in some political role and the independence movement in Scotland seemed the best vehicle to achieve her limitless ambition.
Failed as a solicitor, she fastened on to Alex Salmond early and rode his coat tails to power. From then on her poor political skills and judgement were concealed by her undoubted public relations and presentational abilities. And, surrounding herself with nonentities and backed up by the secretive and controlling P Murrell she forged ahead constructing the personality cult which the SNP became after 2014.
tartanfever: anyone who wishes to join ALBA will have to be put through a vetting process if they are former SNP. I, too, have worries about the infiltrators trying again, but, strangely, I think they might opt for Labour because they actually sprang from Labour’s hard left loins. These people are destroyers wherever they go, and every party that wants power will have to be on its toes because that is what these people are all about – power, and oppression, of course, where none exists. The ALBA policy on biological women, though, would scupper them from getting anywhere fast. Still, better prevention than cure, as many company boards and directors are going to discover when these victim-mentality, equity warriors start undermining their company by alienating the general public, not to mention fellow workers. Sometimes, like the SNP, the hard way to discover one’s errors is the only way.
@Alf Baird (11.43) –
Appreciated muchly sah!
😉
Yup, the time to go has almost expired.
If they don’t walk NOW they are just guilty by association & the faithful won’t forgive them.
They lose nothing by walking NOW because they’ve already lost by staying.
My message to SNP MPs & MSPs is this..
We’re not looking for more Sturgeonite bullshit lies ‘I cannie do anything’
YOU can. YOU can put an end to the farce of what’s happening in Holyrood (Sunscreen, witches, GRR – are you fkn serious?!)
YOU can put an end to the Greens halfwit ideas going any further & turning Holyrood into a laughing stock.
YOU could be a hero for the majority who didn’t vote for this shit or for the Greens…
or YOU can go sit with Labour at the next GE & ponder where it all went wrong as you are wiped out & erased from politics.
& Like Labour You won’t be able to claim it was all a big surprise.
Whoever heard of making your party being whipped & made look an utter fool to save someone unelected from a different party? Have you lost your minds? If Harvie & Dumbza had any political acumen they’d have requested she stood down quietly & been replaced to save utter humiliation.
Sturgeon would also have faced instant dismissal due to ongoing investigation where actions were authorised in her name.
Walk & walk now or you’ll lose what credibility you have left with your electorate. It’s us you serve. Remember that..
Well said, Stu.
The Ragman’s roll will be nothing compared to the nuSNP membership of Holyrood.
Please don’t betray us, anymore.
Oh, they’ll be reading, aye.
Wings is the most read Scottish political blog, full stop.
At Holyrood, Westminster, Whitehall and (aptly) Scotland Yard.
All us political anoraks are au fait with the scenario.
But sadly this is a bubble.
Most Scots don’t have a scoobie about Operation Branchform and its sideshows.
They’re lagging, kept in the dark by the BritNazi colonial media and lulled by a rotten carrot painted bright orange.
An MSP/MP leaving the Saint Nicola’s Party will be seen as a betrayer. Trust is a fickle thing.
It takes two balls the size of Betelgeuse to do what the Rev suggests.
They may find strength in numbers tho.
One or two may be seen as an irrelevant accident, a handful will be noticeable, two figure leavers (between MPs and MSPs) will be a clear signal that will refocus Scots’ attention.
You know who you are.
You know what to do.
Speak one another.
You don’t want to stay in a sinking ship.
Even if you miraculously manage to keep it afloat, it’s rudderless. You will end stranded in high rough seas.
Send a signal.
Your choices will launch a clear SOS.
We’ll boost your voices.
Scots will hear you.
iSCOTLAND needs YOU!
NOT surrogates in the form of careerist politicians and gods with clay feet.
Seriously, just how much do YOU want it?
SNP do NOT want independence-
they luvv the wee pretendy parliament
All the trappings – NO responsibility
What’s not to like ????
The apples in the barrel are so rotten now that I grieve ever time I think about our situation. Great letter to the people we elected Stu, I wonder how many will read it and I hope they are at least talking with each other about it.
As a thought how many of the possible rebels were directly elected and how many got the job through the system?
I get it that people still want to vote SNP, it’s called tenacity and faith, but it’s misconceived now I fear. There is no way to get back in to the SNP bureaucracy system to make any changes without rebellion within the ranks.
Keep writing.
@Daisy Walker says:26 June, 2023 at 9:55 am
A good point and well made.
As others have previously stated time is running out for us due to demographic change. Last week I watched someone in Canada compare a house there which was on the market with a castle here in Scotland. The house looked pretty rough, the type of conversions popular in London, turn the kitchen and bathroom into bedrooms and build a kitchen in what was the bathroom and a bathroom in a cupboard. The walls outside had graffiti spray painted on them and after he did the conversion between the Canadian dollar and the price of the castle in Scotland they came in at pretty much exactly the same amount, about £1,300,000 for the house and the castle, Canadas housing market has inflated worse than ours.
People have mentioned pensioners moving up here from England, what they are not mentioning is the younger laptop class who have been using London money to buy into the Queens Drive end of Govanhill/Crosshill, Shawlands, Strathbungo, the latter two, along with Finnieston, recommended by the Guardian. What you get is a support structure for the gender woo woo and imported organised crime groups as catered to by the foreign owned and staffed rag the Herald has unfortunately turned into. If the same type of people are going to start buying into Scotland from places like Canada and North America the problem will get worse than it already is.
These people do not like Nationalists, they like civic nationalists though as they are easier to roll over, step on and ignore, just look at how the Greens are in a position of unearned power.
Thanks Stu for doing this post.
It is what I have commented on in last 2 posts.
Let’s hope Ash, Fergus, Brendan and Co are reading this and together act and join Alba.
It is frankly only hope of resurrection for Independence any time soon
I’d assume, Salmond is working not only to further ALBA but to also encourage independents from the ranks of SNP.
There’s no real benefit, by turning this into a two horse race. The more independents promoting Scotland United, would cause maximum embarrassment to SNP.
SNP’s remaining support must recognise the difference between self interest and advancement of the country, moving forward as a united force for independence!
Nicer still, if all of you would just quit politics, with so many of your number being absolute novices in the real-world of work, that’s not going to happen, of course. Is it?
With a few exceptions, any one of you deserting to Labour or joining another independence party would be immediately regarded as “suspect” by the membership and the public, alike. The only option left for those of you wishing to continue your political careers, with an ounce of integrity intact, is to do as Stu has suggested: form a new independence party inside Hollyrood and go-forward from there.
The hour of decision is fast approaching for every last one of you, ladies and gentlemen.
Nail. Head. Hit.
Another excellent, incisive article.
If the current SNP leadership is the answer then it must have been a particularly stupid question.
The SNP, as currently constituted, is like a replica of the Scottish Labour Party in the 1980’s, 90’s and early 2000’s and we all know how that turned out.
It’s time for change and that time is now. If not now, when?
We need a genuine pro-indy leader who’s nae feart to break Westminster law and tae hell wi the consequences.
I hope my MSP Ivan McKee is reading this. I really respected Ivan’s great business videos during the independence referendum. It gave me a link to show risk averse voters that we could be better off independent. I was very respectful of Ivan until he got in with the wrong crowd. It’s time for Ivan to do the right thing and stand up for the Indy movement. You will once again be held in high regard if you do Ivan. SNP MSP finally saying enough is enough and bravely calling out those responsible for the decline are going to have the majority of the independence family on their side. They will go down in history as being the group who saved the independence movement. If they do nothing and remain silent they will have nothing positive to reflect on in their later years. This is an opportunity to do the right thing. You have the backing of the Indy movement!
It would be unfair not to recognise the amount of abuse, vilification and attempts to de-platform that will come their way if they chose to take this advice.
Of course, right now that’s the best reason not to take it so it depends how robust they feel.
Comparing the SNP to the Titanic is very unfair. At least the Titanic had a band when it sunk.
This is a fabulous article.
I’ve been forlorn recently over the lack of action – and conviction – from people who should be absolutely knocking it out of the park for this country. I’m at the stage where I’m; “We’re done” “We’re finished” because I’m not seeing enough from the likes of Salmond, Cherry, Regan and more recently Fergus Ewing. Yes, Alex Salmond, absolutely Alex Salmond. I love the guy to bits and I’d bloody-well lay down my life for the guy, but what the hell does it take for all these big guns to do something unprecedented? Why are we faffing-about by going down the ‘democracy’ route when we’re on the brink of another independence ice-age? No, of course I’m not advocating civil disorder, or even UDI, but surely the aforementioned – if they truly want independence for this country – can muscle-together and make a super-party gesture that’ll turn politics and constitutional matters as we know it on its head?
This country has a golden history of brilliant minds and geniuses introducing breakthrough moments in time; we need those quantum leaps NOW. We need to send a bold message to the world that Scotland’s had enough trickery, treachery and well-meaning but useless patience.
This article is the call-to-arms I’ve been looking for.
Thanks Stu Campbell; thank God you have a vision.
Sad news about Craig Brown.
I’ll never forget the memories he and the Scotland lads gave us at Euro 96 and France 98.
Rest in peace, Craig.
They stand there on the burning deck,
A sorry looking sight.
Elected for a purpose, aye,
But didna stand and fight.
The Rainbow Warriors, self proclaimed,
With green and purple hair.
Had promised to deliver us
But dished up just despair.
And now they know the game is up
Decision time is here.
So shall they stay, or will they jump?
A tricky course to steer.
‘Too late, too late,’ will be the cry.
We’re doomed whate’re you choose.
So heads or tails it matters not,
The Scottish people lose.
To think, we could be free by now,
Enjoying hope not fears.
The SNP has buried that,
For many,many years.
But hope still burns, and will not die,
While breath we have to breathe.
So fight for right and battle on,
We always will believe.
Another point for them to consider is what exactly is staying in the UK doing to people here, especially kids. It’s literally stunting their physical and mental development.
So, why did you become a politician?
link to itv.com
It’s in the Guardian too with a leading photo shot in Glasgow.
Anyone done the electoral calculus on this?
Let’s assume a bunch of MSPs do jump to Alba. Even some MPs in London.
Next election, the % received are SNP 25%, Alba 20%, Labour 30%, Tories 15%, the rest the last 10%.
That means that Indy is off the referendum for at least 10 years. There won’t be many pro-Indy MPs in London, there won’t be a pro-Indy majority in Holyrood, and you’d be faced with some unlikely coalition Scots Gov.
The figures above are illustrative, but however it works out, the fact is clear that dividing pro-Indy votes between two parties is tantamount to writing off Indy.
Stu,
A excellent summarisation of a Snp ship sinking below the waves, a good verbal kick up the behind is what they need many years ago,
You would have made a good no nonsense leader, who checked facts while keeping your eye on the goal post, weaving your way through the shite and ideology of present day SNP and Greens that are backed by billionaires from outside Scotland
A gigantic fight even for the most determined of characters,
And Yes, I understood your explained reasons for “not” going there very well.
Bit it still has to be stated, you are the caliber that is required in Scotland now,
And reading the comments following on gives everyone a overtone flavour on the SNP.
“Wether you want to fight or die meekly”
Lorna Campbell:
Like sheep in a flock and fish in a shoal, it is safer to swim in the crowd, Standing out might get you picked of.
Tartenfever.
playing devils advocate
Do you really want to run the chance of poisoning the well of Alba.
Robertkknight,
Inclined to agree.
Alf Baird,
Yer either with us, or against us.
Geri.
Yup, the time to go has expired.
Myself,
I am with Geri and Alf Baird,
Yup, the time to go has expired and “yer either with us, or against us”
just adding ” Actions have always spoken louder than words”
Merganser @26th June 3:12 pm
I’m liking your cleverly constructed poem, Merganser.
Isn’t it amazing how poetry can clearly express in a few lines what would take pages of text to say in normal-speak ?
Very good indeed.
@Merganser says:26 June, 2023 at 3:12 pm
Good poem, certainly better than anything William Topaz McGonagall ever put together.
Worth pointing out though that everybody in HR and WM will already have their summer hols booked. We are already in the run up (or should that be run down?) to the Silly Season.
So, as far as Scottish politics is concerned, expect it to be “all quiet on the western front”* until probably mid-September. Maybes just the odd police investigation delayed action bomb going off.
[* Unlike on the eastern front]
This would be the same SNP MSPs group that decided the other week to send Sturgeon some “sorry to hear you’ve been arrested” flowers.
Are we really expecting more than one or two at most to leave their rancid party now? Even if anyone does they’ve taken a hell of a long time about it.
If the flowers they sent Sturgeon had been a bunch of triffids there would be reason to be optimistic. But alas no.
Merganser.
A very enjoyable poem, that speaks of why, no matter who thinks they they are in power, is fleeting, when it goes against the peoples wishes.
@ian says:26 June, 2023 at 3:15 pm
Here’s a wee quote from your article:
global height rankings for the UK had worsened over the past 35 years
Now, I wonder what else has happened over the past 35 years that might just have had an effect on the average height of the kids measured in the UK.
Oooo, that’s a difficult question to answer!
Haha, I crack me up.
LOL! The BBC in Scotland are calling it a conundrum:
‘SNP’s conundrum over the route to independence’
“The route to independence used to seem simple for SNP members. There was a widespread expectation in the party that election victories would lead to a second referendum. But the continued UK government refusal to grant another vote, and last years Supreme Court confirmation that Holyrood doesn’t have the powers to legislate for one, has left the party looking for a new direction. And that’s why members will descend on Dundee this weekend.”
More drumming up a con than a conundrum if you ask me.
Excellent assessment, I won’t call it a plea, but well said, now is the time for the likes of Ash Regan to pick her side as awful as it might seem for her a a few other SNP MPs/MSPs a choice has to be made either to stay on the sinking ship that is the current SNP and all the negative publicity that comes with it.
Or jump ship to the Alba party or create a breakaway indy party the former would in my opinion be the better option, ultimately they are either for us or against us, now is the time to choose.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
A terrific article by Stu, as far as it goes.
Crossing the floor/becoming Independent/starting a new party is ‘easy’, in that you’re still an MSP but too many voters will see it as ‘tokenism’. A flash in the pan, a ripple of interest, just a memory by the end of the week.
Do it properly and resign your seat, forcing a by-election in which you stand as the honest, truthful and able Independence Candidate. That will be no fart in the wind – a month or two of regular trumpetings guaranteed.
And if 5 or 6 of you synchronised actions, imagine the kerfuffle.
A powerful piece.
After decades of voting, the SNP no longer have my vote at any level, my vote is now there for the taking.
As a supporter of Independence, and one of the much maligned ‘grassroots activists’ I showed the courage of my convictions over decades – if any politician wants to show me theirs, they can have my vote.
In my professional career, I was often involved with companies, and corporations undergoing various liquidations, takeovers, and mergers – I know blood in the water when I smell it.
The modus operandi is obvious to those who have the experience to see it, and a sad pattern always repeated; a few deluded personnel desperately clung to their desks, while those with a better sense of smell jumped ship.
When the roof finally fell in, it was tears before bedtime, as they were finally forced into the reality that their sinecure was ended; they then tried deperately to find new careers, only to find any good options had been filled by those swifter off the mark.
All the while the Forlorn Hope awaited a miraculous reprieve from above, their workload, and responsibility increased, as they they became the ever dwindling buffer while manglement, and experience bailed; they were left holding the line, and taking the flak without any support, and their mental health deteriorated accordingly.
Every single time the pattern repeated, and despite quietly advising some of the deluded in advance, sadly vanishingly few heeded my inside experience – they just could not accept the inevitable.
This SNP, this ‘Corporation for Independence’ is finished, your sinecure with them is over. Get out now with your portfolio intact, and grab new opportunity with both hands.
Do not be the one weeping over your meagre cardboard box, as security escorts you to the door, and turns off the lights.
I’ve sent this article to my MSP. It will be interesting to see if I get a response.
So there we are. In 2014 Better Together should really have been named Shorter Together.
Looks like the Grenadier Guards are going to have to get longer busbies.
Check out (especially) the two guys with the beards at the NuSNP’s “indy convention” on Saturday, the guys look to me as though they are thinking to themselves we don’t believe a word of it.
Ash Regan looks underwhelmed as well, (she’s next to them on the right) time for you to act Ash, stand up or stand down.
Therein lies the problem of the career MP. No alternative career to fall back on – mortgage etc – ideal for an establishment party. Easy to control.
We need people to enter politics who are, for want of a better word, expendable, and don’t care.
Even the SNP ‘good guys’ have either withdrawn into the background or consumed the koolaide – see Jim Fairlie. For the few that do raise their head above the parapet – it’s an easy game of wackamole for the party establishment and their press pals.
Not sure how much response you will get to this. You are trying to dictate to/reason with a load of ideologically captured wannabe-American ideologues, sexual minority-obsessed nutcases who hate heterosexual people and plan to have fun running the party and country into the ground for their own crazed careerist revenge purposes. No cult member ever got lured out of brainwashing like this. However, I suppose we will see.
@ RoS
For some reason as I looked at that pic I was reminded that Ash be like the lass in the red skirt in this pic, which sort of sums up the state of where the SNP are now!
link to twitter.com
Spot on honest and to the point, we can but wonder what they will feel and think when they’ve read this and slept on it for a few hours not days, weeks or months but just a few hours before the nightmares begin.
Good luck to them all both good and bad uns as they’re going to need it
I have been reviewing how we got here. Remember The Scotsman campaign asking the ICO to release the legal advice on whether the Scot Gov had the Power to call a Referendum. Nose out of joint Nicola, presses the nuclear option. Doesn’t reveal legal advice but goes to the Supreme Court and loses. Her demise was guaranteed after that. Criticised at the time for her action by Alex Salmond that she took it to the wrong Court. Events elsewhere in the World show unchecked, unrestrained Power does not end well.
Dan.
On your link, what sprung to my mind is the two guys one (on the left) looks like Murrell, the other guys Sheppard, and the girl (Regan) is leaning in and saying to Sheppard, I fuckin told you so.
The analogy for me is Regan telling the SNP that their demise was on the cards due to their machinations, and their lies surrounding independence.
Condemning SNP is now a matter of urgency! There’s only a matter of weeks to save the situation.
Only those within SNP are in a position to impose a coup of the NEC. The membership can assist, by recognising the severity of the current situation. That would include realistic appraisal and absolutely no more manufactured excuses made on behalf of the party!
SNP must be made fully aware that they face total wipeout, if no drastic change is made to party policy. It should not even be a difficult choice, to ratify Scotland United as the common denominator to vote for independence, via the next election.
Putting Scotland First should not be a matter of conflict, it should be a simple decision to benefit everyone seeking independence. Self interest is blatant priority of the NEC. Even the most ardent of SNP supporter must now recognise that! In some cases the obvious must be spelled out to them!
For as long as the D’Hondt voting system holds sway for Holyrood elections the elite at the top of the Party will retain undue power through the List system to control their MSPs through this inequitable grace and favour electoral method.
Does anyone seriously imagine Ms Sturgeon could have maintained her iron grip over the SNP Assembly party without control of who was placed on the List.
Sven.
For as long as Holyrood is under Westminster legislation branch office we do not have MSPs
They are Westminsters MSPs.
The D,Hondt system is also under Westminster legislation,
I ask the question a few days back,
How the Scottish parliament be reconvened under Westminster legislation?
That would still make the reconvened Scottish but devolved parliament within the auspices of Westminster.
That is why Scotlands devolved parliament cannot make or create its own legislation without permission and royal assynt.
The problem in Scotland is that Scots think they have a parliament that represents them,
The reality is it only represents Scotland if it is given permission by Westminster to do so,
As Billy Connelly said, ” it is a Wee Pretendy Scottish Parliament”
Another great article Rev but it leaves me wondering what almost everyone else sees in these pieces of offal
AFAIC they have PROVEN that they are nothing but self preserving and enriching scum , every one of them including Regan ,Cherry, McNeil have sat back in their comfy salaries and well padded arses whilst the head deviant and pervert has wrought havoc on our country, our bairns, our womenfolk,and our independence dreams, yet those supposed representatives of decent law abiding citizens have done NOTHING to expose or oppose the rancid corrupt stink emanating from its rotten core , and yet people expect these craven cowards to show honesty and integrity, they don’t know the meaning of the WORDS
Given the current support for independence and the state of the SNP, it needs to happen. I’d hope they’d perhaps be in favour of abstentionism like the ISP.
O/T Thanks to Craig Brown for his service to the Scottish National Football team. We were holding Brazil at half time in the last World Cup we qualified for. 1998. His success sadly missed.
“The Holyrood electoral system is kind to small parties, and voters are often kind to people – like Margo McDonald and Dennis Canavan – that they perceive as having acted with integrity and honour.”
Utter mince.
If the Holyrood electoral system is kind to small parties, where’s the Alba breakthrough we were promised last time?
People have grown wary of “new exciting brands” after the SSP debacle and especially after the bare faced chancer and dodgy football director John Swinburne got in on the fashionable “pensioner power” ticket of the time and proved to be nothing but a de facto (if not de jure) Labour front to gain a list seat they’d otherwise never had got.
(Ironically, one of his old minions, one VERY familiar to Stu, is now trying it again with their fourth brand label and failing miserably, largely because they haven’t a clue how to fight elections, but that’s another story …)
As for Margon McDonald and Dennis Canavan being elected because they were perceived as having acted with integrity and honour, it had more to do with both being minor celebrities via newspaper columns that got them kept on the “gravy bus” (Canavan was also helped by his links to Falkirk FC during a contentious and controversial period for the club in much the same way Ian Murray benefits from the block Hearts vote).
“If the Holyrood electoral system is kind to small parties, where’s the Alba breakthrough we were promised last time?”
They didn’t get enough votes. The system is kind, but it can’t count votes you didn’t get.
It seems to me that either everybody who wants Indy should get behind one party (Alba?), or accept that splitting the Indy vote between two or more parties is going to kill off the cause of Indy. Because that’s how electoral mathematics works, either under the Holyrood system, or FPTP for Westminster.
Having 45% of the vote means you get a good majority. Having 25% and a different 20% means that you end up with very few elected Indy M(S)Ps in either place, and then the whole Indy idea is kicked into the very long grass. For years and years.
Listen carefully, I will never again vote SNP. Should you care? Well yes of course you should. There are many more like me. SNP, the lost party, geordie broon’s devo max runt. Why are you still there? If you stay you lose, Get out now while you still can. We will reward you with our votes if you stand up for Indy, if you don’t you will be swept away. Act now!
The case for staying in the Union?
Cheap booze in Westminster bars and some royal approved neo colonialism maybe.
link to archive.ph
Smug? Us?
Excellent stuff Stu but what you are saying will need these people you are talking to to grow a pair off balls and I do not think that anyone in the SNP. Holyrood or Westminster has any balls with the exception of Andrew Bridgen the Westminster MP who has been chucked out of the Tory party for exposing the TRUTH about the massive excess deaths happening all over the world and rising because of the FAKE Covid Vaccine and how our governments are handing over power to the WHO just now so that they can order our countries into lockdowns – Yes they are going to go for an even worst one soon. Every Scottish MP and MSP was put on legal notice that is “pandemic” was a scam with EVIDENCE at the start and how they are all liable for the harm to people because of these FAKE vaccines etc but not one of them have had the balls to stand up like Andrew Bridgen – the laugh is Margaret Ferrier being banned from Westminster because of a massive FRAUD and she is too dumb to realise that and use it for her defence. Go watch the Andrew Bridgen videos on Youtube if they are still there and Richard Vobes interview of him on there as well about his treatment at Westminster and by his party and how the rest of the MPs run out when he is speaking about the massive rising vaccine deaths/harms. If they were all like him things would change overnight.
@A Scot Abroad 7:27pm
All rationale and right thinking Scots would agree with your fragmentation analysis. It seems impossible for Scottish Independence from here. A word of caution remember the safety valve? I am meeting with Primary School colleagues tomorrow. Our first visit the Arbroath Declaration of Independence. As is the case elsewhere in the world if democracy doesn’t rule than other methods will replace it. Absolutely I agree democracy should win out. However what is the mechanism on offer. 5, 10, 20 years? Until WM grant a Referendum. The fact that the Scottish Parliament is a dire leglisator should not determine the long term future of Scotland.
George Ferguson,
I’m a unionist, but I also believe in fairness, as well as good governance and transparency of our political debate.
In my view, Westminster should say, there will be another S30
referendum – if the people of Scotland desire one – in 2035: 21 years or a generation after the 2014 one. That would give a timeframe, and from this point, it’s 12 years, and I genuinely think it’s going to take 12 years for Scots to come up with practical answers to things like currency, central bank, trade, and so on. Those are important things.
And let Scotland get the good governance it needs in the interim, so that people voting in 2035 can see that there’s a track record of good governance. For the last few years, Scotland hasn’t been governed well from Holyrood.
Brilliant Stu and I hope they listen,time is not on our or their side!
@ A Scot Abroad 8:18pm
I know you are a Unionist and I respect that. I have had lots of conversations with Unionist contributors like Captain Yossarian. Its not up to WM to determine the timing of the next Referendum. You served in a Scottish Regiment I served in an English Regiment. The mind boggles. A long story on my part. I am a principled Independence supporter, indigenous Scot you simply cannot deny repeated electoral mandates. Although I have to say Hunzas strategy is an intellectual desert.
“In my view, Westminster should say, there will be another S30
referendum – if the people of Scotland desire one – in 2035:”
Its not up to a foreign country’s government to say when or if Scots want to decide whether or not to ditch this union, its up to Scots and Scots alone to decide.
It says much about this undemocratic oneside union that Northern Ireland can hold an indyref every seven years on reunification, yet a foreign country’s government has the audacity to try ad tell Scots if and when we can decide when to hold a vote on dissolving this union.
And don’t give us this once in a generation pish, the SNP government might have said it in 2014, but it wasn’t part of the Edinburgh Agreement which means it ISN’T binding in any way.
According to the ‘british’ government, as far as Norn Ireland goes, a generation is 7 years between referendums.
Why should it be longer for Scotland?
Excellent writing/thinking , Stu .
Will it’s intended audience * hear * it ? They better . It’s later than they think
If you don’t follow Wings on Twitter then you may miss this.
It’s important, and sinister.
twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1673371351942307840
Yes, yes, yes and YES. This article really nails something that needed to be said OUT LOUD. The time for whining and dithering are over. Put up or shut up.
The people who it is meant for know who they are. As the article says, the clock is ticking. Do they want to go down with a failed, corrupt SNP as pathetic careerist nobodies who whined but did nothing, or do they want to be remembered as true indy fighters who took a stand, and said no, this simply will not do anymore. Where are our champions of independence??
Tick Tock.
@A Scot Abroad 8:18pm
I respect you are Unionist as I have done with other contributors on this blog. Remember the safety valve? WM simple cannot deny a referendum in perpetuity. Unchecked unrestricted Power is bad the world over. Do we need to learn this lesson again? You served in a Scottish Regiment I served as an indigenous Scot in an English Regiment. I think Holyrood has failed as a Parliament but tomorrow I am going to see the Declaration of Independence with some Promary School mates. The future of Scotland is not dependent on a failed Holyrood Legislator.
Xaracen,
This is the manual link I promised you yesterday.
PUblications. WWW Parliament, UK.
Select Committtee on privileges, second report.
Annex 1 – part 1
Union with Scotland Act 1706.
Table of Textual Amendments,
This table shows the textual Repeals made to the Union with Scotland Act 1706, Some implied repeals are also shown, but the table is by no means comprehensive in this respect.
You may have found this yourself by now, if not, I hope this is of some help to you on the matter we discussed yesterday regarding repeals of the treaty of the union by Westminster.
So that’s Doug chapman walking away..
A Scot Abroad
A genuine union is defined by a partner being always free to leave and being always free to decide to leave. Anything less is colonialism.
Who ever advise Humza to issue a press release saying he would appoint a special envoy to the EU is a definite plant
Who was it did not check with the EU, did not discuss with a diplomat.
Leaving Humza a point of ridicule and laughter is the London controlled press
The plants continue to sow confusion and false policues
George Ferguson – I must be a couple of years since I spoke to you but I’m keeping well. You are too obviously. I keep an eye out for your views. You have changed your name but your writing style is unmistakable. You will recall that you gave me some advice, quite a lot of advice, at the time. It all turned out to be true in the end. So, I’m glad I listened.
How quickly could we create a new party? Call it the Coalition of Independents (not independence specifically but it’s a nice play on the word). Have a crowdsourced manifesto and a crowd-funded electoral deposit per constituency. Randomly pick 5 funders as the shortlisted candidates for said constituency and have the rest of the funders vote for their preferred candidate. Have them sign an agreement to only legislate, vote for or otherwise endorse policies supported by the majority of their constituents or face automatic deselection.
This movement could be started by any SNP MSPs with courage but more importantly could be used for all constituencies. It gets away from the tribal nature of the current mess we find ourselves in because it is literally a party of the people, by the people, for the people.
Blockchain tech could be used to facilitate and record all finances, voting and counting allowing full transparency and enable trust in the processes.
Sounds like a great plan to me, what am I missing?
Republicofscotland .
Well said,
The problem with unionist is the only hear their own voices, and do not become aware of all the details in history if they are select in following only one set of propaganda or msm.
The other day some said Queen Anne was Queen of Scotland at the time of the union,
As we all know that is and was a inaccurate statement, as she was Queen of Scots, Not the territory of Scotland,
I don’t know if they want to be ignorant because it suits the narrative they wish was true, or because they really are ignorant.
I’m not voting SNP. That is all I can do.
If the current batch of MPs and MSPs want to follow the Green/Cult policies their end is approaching if ISP and Alba do not give mean alternative then I will spoil my paper.
The SNP will never get us Independence so it doesn’t matter who wins seats at the GE.
Well past 70 so I know now I will never see Indy now.
Westminster is acting the role of parliament Coloniser of the treaty,
If there’s nobody within SNP willing or able to make a stance against the NEC, the party has truly fucked us over.
The likes of Wishart and Blackford’s constant grandstanding, live in Westminster, with nothing to show for it, has made Scotland an easy target for further exploitation, for decades to come!
The ‘gravy train’ years has cost Scotland untold misery. Without internal shake-up, SNP is heading straight for the buffers!
@Sven 5:36om
d’Hondt isn’t the problem per-se, it’s the Closed List that is the problem, though you have identified that.
An Open, or Free List puts power back in the hands of the voter – the electorate get to see, and decide who gets in on merit, and more importantly, who is deservedly downvoted into oblivion.
It’s an achievable aim in the short term, and has the potential to re-shape Scotland politically. I’d like to see who has the guts to push for it – I certainly am.
It would actually benefit any jumping ship from the SNP (or any other major party in Scotland) Of course, most of Scotland’s ‘politicians’ won’t even have heard of the concept, and those who have, probably recoil in horror at the bare idea.
My bet is absolutely no current political party in Scotland will push for that reform, or even consider it (probably not even Alba) for reasons you also identified.
If I’m wrong, amd miraculously any do remotely consider it, the cynic in me says it’s final committee-designed, half-arsed form, will inevitably be caveated to death, and jury-rigged to retain some greater percentile quora reserved for party appointments, thus defeating the entire purpose.
My preference is Free List, or f*ck off – I’m done with wasters, and chancers.
James Che @9.51pm.
James there has been no king or queen of Scotland since James VI, held office with the consent of Scots who are sovereign the union of the crowns in 1603 is a myth.
“As you will be fully aware the Union of the Crowns in 1603 is a myth. What in fact occurred was that one Monarch, the King of Scots also became Monarch of England at the same time. In other words he became a King with two Crowns, that were never United. Ever since every effort has been made to disguise this fact and Charles visit to Edinburgh is just the latest episode in this sorry tale.”
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Republicofscotland, at 9:00pm,
Westminster isn’t a foreign government, it’s the government of the Union, in which Scots are fairly represented.
The decision as to what Westminster votes for is made in Downing Street, by a single man or woman who is the PM of the whole Union. For quite a lot of the time since 1707, that’s been a Scotsman.
You might wish otherwise, but that’s the law in both Scotland and across the Union.
Scotland is a colony and the devolved government a colonial administration service and nothing more than that.
The failings of the ‘Scottish Government’ are Westminster’s failings; because ‘Scottish’ politicians are mere proxies for Westminster colonial rule.
Scotland has a government and parliament in name only; because it’s a con-trick, a ruse, smoke and mirrors, and an enormous fraud perpetrated against the Scots.
George Ferguson,
I agree that Westminster should not deny a referendum in perpetuity. That’s why I earlier suggested there should be the offer of one in 2035, because that’s a generation on from 2014, and I think it will take 12 years from now for Scottish people to develop serious policies for an iScotland.
What wouldn’t be useful, in my view, is for Scotland to keep having referenda on the same issue, at will. Conceptually, that could be every year. It just seems a bit demanding, and as nobody has got joined up developed policies for an iScotland, and at least half of Scots aren’t convinced of the case (because nobody has got the practical policies), I don’t think that’s reasonable.
A Scot Abroad says: at 10:16 pm
“Westminster isn’t a foreign government, it’s the government of the Union, in which Scots are fairly represented.
The decision as to what Westminster votes for is made in Downing Street, by a single man or woman who is the PM of the whole Union. For quite a lot of the time since 1707, that’s been a Scotsman.”
LOL can I get some of what you’re on please!
Aye, ye jist cannae get any “fairer” than a ten to one democratic advantage for the Kingdom of England.
Plus the PM at times may have been a Scotsman, it’s jist a bad stroke of luck for us Scots that he wasn’t a member of a party that we actually voted to govern us since sometime halfway through last century.
Forget the once in a generation shite, it would be braw if once in a lifetime we actually got the government we fucking voted for!
Dan, I’ll tell you what wouldn’t be fair, if there’s a Union of two partners, and one of them has 9 times the population of the other, is if the 1/10th people can block the 9/10ths people all of the time.
Republicofscotland,
I had realised that the Monarch was not Sovereign in Scotland, that the people are, as I have listened to Sara In Salvo,
I also understood the myth on the union of Crowns.
However much appreciated, for further clarification on Which Monarch was the last monarch that was with the consent of the Scots.
Learning our history of Scotland all over again in its correct context is intriguing, and without each one of us passing on that section of history as individuals of the knowledge we have learned to each other to discuss and debate we would remain oblivious in our own ignorance,
Many thanks for your contribution on behalf of the many like myself whom were unaware of the last Scottish monarch with consent of the sovereign Scots.
Some of you might know that I have, periodically, posted some writings on the ancient rhetorical figures of speech or, as they are sometimes called, the flores rhetoricae – ‘the flowers of rhetoric’.
I’ve posted those short discourses on various figures for two reasons; one, for a bit of fun, and two, to show those who might not be aware of the figures just how powerful they can be in manipulating us. Both emotionally and intellectually.
The Rhetoric is a vast, complex, and often confused discipline. A discipline that Aristotle is credited with founding in ancient Greece over 2,000 years ago, and which was subsequently adopted by the Romans who added their own flavours to the mix.
I’ve attempted, as far as I’m able, to add some humour to my ‘rhetorical’ posts in the hope of making them more accessible to folks.
But there’s a dark side to rhetoric and we need to be vigilant so that we can defend ourselves against its power:
Who do you think wrote that little excerpt?
Well, if you’ve ever read, or heard of, the book ‘Mein Kampf’, you’ll know.
Ultimately, rhetoric gives a competent user of its techniques the power to persuade, not just one, or a thousand, but millions of people to their way of thinking.
At its core rhetoric is the art of persuading other minds to agree with the orators or writers views.
Hitler knew that, and I think we can all agree that he used rhetoric extremely effectively. He was a champion of rhetoric, and he certainly managed to ‘turn’ the destinies of millions of people – just not in a way that most of them particularly wanted.
By all accounts it seems Hitler was always a bit of a ranter.
There’s a story that Hitler, during his bohemian phase around 1920, was a party guest at the Munich house of composer, Clemens von Franckenstein (I know, right!). He showed up in a floppy hat and carrying a riding whip, a prop because he didn’t know how to ride a horse, which he cracked on his boots from time to time to impress the other guests.
The other guests weren’t impressed. One of them described Hitler as looking like a waiter.
Hitler started speaking and one of the guests reported:
Those present recalled that the prevailing feeling was of being stuck in a railway carriage with a lunatic.
Unfortunately, by the mid-1930s that lunatic’s time had come.
It’s notable that some people took the view that the Fuhrer was possessed by that other silver-tongued orator, the Devil.
Two British attendees at a 1934 stadium rally in Berlin, seated just behind Hitler, reported that he was whipping his audience into the usual spittle-flecked frenzy when:
The opinion of those observers was that the German Imperial Chancellor was indeed, from time to time, in the thrall of Satan.
Although my theory is that a combination of Hitler’s strict vegetarian diet and a short in his microphone cable ignited his fart gas causing the flash – but I’m no expert on such matters and he might well have been possessed by Satan.
However, I’m sticking with my fart gas theory.
In ordinary life Hitler was described as commonplace and unremarkable, or as Wyndham Lewis (a British writer, painter and critic) remarked, “a more prosaic person it would be difficult to find.”
Many philosophers have tried to establish a relationship between rhetorical oratory and good, honest, civic virtue. But Hitler is a good example of their failure to make such a connection.
My point is that rhetoric’s power and effectiveness is independent of its moral content or that of its users. It’s a powerful tool, or a weapon, that can be used to great effect by the good, the bad, and the very bad.
And that’s why the more the good people of this world get an understanding of how rhetoric works, the better off we’ll all be.
We should be teaching at least some of the rhetoric to Scotland’s children; or better still all children, no matter where on Earth they live.
Not only to help our children express themselves more clearly so that other minds might better comprehend them – because that way leads to tolerance and understanding; but to help them protect their own minds from those who would fill them with nonsense.
So keep a close ear on those public figures and their speeches, listen carefully to what they’re saying and how they say it; because they are always, always, always trying to convince us that their way is the best way – even though history teaches us that it rarely is.
James Che,
there’s no lawful basis for any of the sovereign Scot declaration nonsense. It’s just some words said by a few people back in 1300. It ain’t codified.
One day, you’ll realise that you are completely wasting your, and everyone else’s time, with all of this ancient guff. Literally nobody in authority, in Edinburgh, London, or even the UN in New York is going to take it seriously. It’ll be hammered into the ground every time it’s raised.
@ A Scot Abroad at 10:46 pm
And you just walked right into highlighting yet another reason why Scotland isn’t adequately served by your precious Union…
Because 300 odd years ago the Kingdom of England’s population was only approximately 5 times that of the Kingdom of Scotland’s, but over the course of this supposedly equal Union the KoE’s population has grown to approximately 10 times that of the KoS, with all the economic benefits that gave the KoE.
The fact that no UK government has exercised the political will to address this population growth disparity between the two constituent parts of the UK shows Scotland is not adequately served within the UK.
And the demographic make up of the current population figure for Scotland would be interesting to see if the census information was released; What with the influx of so many folk from England moving up here.
ASA,
The Scots may be fairly represented in UK Parliament via their MPs but their votes as one of the two sovereign partners in the Union are not.
The Scottish majority vote must have parity with the English majority vote, and only if both those majority votes are in favour can any legislation or other matter be passed as a valid Union decision. Only that way can both sovereign partners come to a democratically agreed decision on any matter arising in the governance of both kingdoms.
England’s MPs have no right to pass UK legislation on their own.
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
link to dailymail.co.uk
link to telegraph.co.uk
link to scotsman.com
The national exclusive: Indy plan not confusing of complicated, says Mike Russell!
Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea…
I suppose it’s better than admitting the party is facing it’s worst crisis in 50 years. Which he previously stated.
I hope the noose is tightening around the SNP corruption.
link to independent.co.uk
The SNP caravan. Hanging off a cliff edge like the ending scene to the Italian job.
The Indy Swindlers.
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
link to theguardian.com
“or you can sit on your arses on your couches until it’s too late”
It has already been too late for quite a while.
IMHO, anyone taking your advice now would be rank opportunists trying to save themselves, not the independence cause.
link to theguardian.com
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
Ron Clark@11:23pm
mps stepping down
Pensions secured. Life of Riley now guaranteed, sucking off the tax-payer for years to come. Job done.
At least we won’t have to suffer those posturing, virtue signalling, boring windbags any more. Good riddance.
A Scot Abroad
“It ain’t codified”.
You earlier suggested that Scotland should be “offered” a referendum in 2035 provided we’ve been good girls and boys in the meantime.
Then later in the same evening you’re lecturing people about codification.
You really are an idiot.
To think you led people into combat.
A Scot Abroad says:
26 June, 2023 at 8:18 pm
“I’m a unionist”
Rev. Stuart Campbell, this is a pro independence website and all unionist scaremongering and excuses have been debunked numerous times.
Pro-independence comments are banned on all unionist sides, unless they are stupid enough to discredit the independence cause.
Isn’t it time for you to ban unionists who try to derail every article, thanks mainly to the idiots who respond to them?
Beauvais,
I did. And none of us had any particular problems with it. And we came out on the winning side.
Which is probably something that you’ll never do. You come across as one of life’s losers.
A Scot Abroad
Every Scot will be a loser if your faded empire philosophy prevails.
Dan – You’re another chap that I remember. I remember George, yourself, Willie, Muscle Guy and one or two others. You told me you worked on a platform off the coast of Libya and so we had that country in common.
I don’t post up any more but I continue to read WoS because it interests me and the present story is one of the best I can remember.
I am not a Nationalist but I treat it like I treated Brexit and when and if the majority vote for it then I will be relaxed about that.
What I am prepared to say is that I was born in 1960 and we grew used to accepting certain things in Scotland. Number-one was the education you got at school was exceptional. That is no longer the case. There is a list I could go through of course and I will not do that, but something needs to be done differently because these changes have been very, very damaging and I see them as being politically driven and needless and that causes great damage to your movement. Holyrood has been complicit of course and so it damages Holyrood.
One point that may interest you; I remember when I worked in the Middle East, the Press and the news channels there were very deferential to the government, as you can imagine. That is what it has become like in Scotland these past 10-years and there is no-one more deferential than BBC Scotland. Ben Elton was on the BBC in England getting wired-into the Tories. That would never be allowed to happen in Scotland and that is half the problem we have.
That’s the point Campbell is making and that is why he remains so popular. In England, there are many people like Campbell and they are all allowed to say what they like. Some listen and others don’t listen but they can operate quite fearlessly. In Scotland, that doesn’t happen and that is a problem for all of us.
Ian Brotherhood says:
26 June, 2023 at 9:08 pm
If you don’t follow Wings on Twitter then you may miss this.
It’s important, and sinister.
twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1673371351942307840
Disgusting, but not surprising.
Nobody believes me, now or then, but I was betrayed by outright dishonesty with my Bank.
Back in the Credit Crunch, our workload collapsed overnight, (no fault of mine – we were sound, but our clients were big borrowers and they were totally stuffed overnight), so I had to reduce staff by 90%.
I had a large-ish overdraft, but for all it’s size, we still occasionally put our account back in credit. It was all 100% legitimate. (Though I’d do it all differently knowing what I know).
However, without the employees, turnover was no longer on that kind of plateau, and much smaller earnings were anticipated for a time.
Because I KNEW the Bank’s strategy, and published advice, was that an overdraft was meant to brought back to credit from time to time, whereas longer borrowing was better addressed with a business loan agreement, with smaller payments agreed and your whole turnover was not at risk.
So I wanted to swap my unsecured overdraft for a more appropriate business loan, secured against my property which was owned outright. I required no increase in borrowing, I was simply restructuring my banking to reflect the altered circumstances of a shed workforce.
For weeks, which turned into months, the Bank strung me along saying that my routine business manager couldn’t authorise that, I needed it to be approved by their Special Business Support team. I said fine, let’s do that. And over the next month, I had 5 different managers handling my account, none of whom knew anything about my circumstances.
At length, just as Rev Stu has experienced by the sound of things, one day all my cards stopped working and services collapsed. No warning of course… stuck at a petrol station unable to pay for my fuel.
After 3 or 4 months the Bank had agreed to my Business Loan, but on their own “initiative” had withdrawn all other services, and “simplified” my banking to the equivalent of a basic account with a monthly pay-in to my loan. None of my cards worked anymore.
Only then did I discover that the Special Business Support section was a fabrication. It was the Banks protocol for the bank to recover as much as possible of the bank’s liability and exposure on “failing” customers. They didn’t exist to help me, their object was to wind me up and recover any debt owed to them. Absolutely NOT the service I believed I was being referred to.
This was not how I saw myself. My business was sound, simply restructuring itself responsibly, and trying to do the right and professional thing. The Bank lied to me, brazenly, then treated me as a pariah they wouldn’t even speak to.
Instead of me trying to do the right thing, I would have been much better to be an unscrupulous wido myself, and simply ride my big unsecured overdraft bareback, and let the Bank worry about the debt being un-secured. If it all went tits-up, Fk ‘em!
But being an honest “mug” and trying trying to do the right thing cost me an inordinate amount of difficulty, stress, and not to mention a significant and hefty five figure sum of money, and ultimately wrecked my business.
Fuck Banks. Fuck ALL Banks. Crooks in suits with a permanent
GET OUT OF JAIL FREE“Trust me, I’m a Bank” card.And Rev Stu, be warned to place ZERO faith in the Banking Ombudsman or Financial Services Authority, or whatever flag of convenience it flies under.
For two acrimonious years the Ombudsman sat on documentary evidence proving my beef with a bank was 100% legitimate, despite not upholding my complaint. Only when I threatened to sue the Chairman personally for Conspiracy and Deception did the FSO produce the evidence I had requested to see. When confronted with proof he’d ignored, he awarded me a derisory sum which wasn’t even three figures. Total wankers every last one of them and as crooked as the day is long.
The Financial Services Authority, or whatever form the Ombudsman now takes, were a bigger bunch of lying crooks than the RBS.
It’s been a while, so I forget the figures, but the FSO apparently uphold less than 10% of complaints against a bank, and of that sub-10%, only a tiny proportion ever secure even derisory compensation.
The whole system is a racket. If you have a case, DO NOT pass GO, but either cut your losses and just take the hit, or, go straight to a Lawyer and go for the jugular.
Sadly that line of approach is nobbled too, because you won’t get Legal Aid , you’ll have to fund it yourself and put your entire life on the line.
Good old “honest” Britain. Systemically and institutionally rotten and corrupt to it’s lousiest foundation.
Do I sound bitter? Good.
To those readers unaware, try your best to ignore the utter fanny posting under the name ‘Ron Clark’ and its support for all the Unionist rags. By clicking on those links you are helping them to pull in much needed advertising revenue. By posting those direct links the Unionist is also helping them to pull in new subscribers to the anti-Scotland guff they print, as well as trying to destroy WOS btl threads. A major attention seeker.
Also, be aware that the fanny posting under the name ‘Ron Clark’ has more than one account and posts here under other names which it uses to post direct links to those rags. It also uses its other names to bombard the WOS threads with irrelevant Youtube links as we have all witnessed previously. Quite often adding hundreds of irrelevant shite on to the ends of btl threads. An SNP FUD if ever there was one.
@Craig says:26 June, 2023 at 9:50 pm
How quickly could we create a new party?
Very quickly.
This movement could be started by any SNP MSPs with courage but more importantly could be used for all constituencies
True, but could also be started by anybody.
Sounds like a great plan to me, what am I missing?
Two things (at least):
1) This is a talking shop – no more no less. Endlessly posting about Indy is our comfort zone, and none of us is going to leave it. Talking the talk – full marks. Walking the walk? Erm …
2) Underlying it all is the stark realisation, despite all the bluster and wind, that majority support for Independence is just not there.
One day that majority support will be there, and then the politicos to represent that will be everywhere. Until then, we will continue endlessly posting.
@ Dan says:26 June, 2023 at 11:14 pm
The fact that no UK government has exercised the political will to address this population growth disparity between the two constituent parts of the UK shows Scotland is not adequately served within the UK.
And the demographic make up of the current population figure for Scotland would be interesting to see if the census information was released; What with the influx of so many folk from England moving up here
Soz Dan, but you’re all over the place with this one.
You complain that England’s population has grown disproportionately, and you complain when New Scots are shipped in to address the imbalance.
Question for you: Over the centuries, which number do you think is higher? The number of Scots who went to England, or the number of English who came to Scotland?
Hows about if these numbers are represented as percentages of their source populations, i.e. what percentage of Scots went south, and vice versa?
Interesting, don’t you think? And something for the “colonialists” to mull over.
@Northcode (11.07) –
Cracking post, very interesting. Deserves to be a stand-alone blogpost.
@Breeks says:27 June, 2023 at 5:20 am
Good old “honest” Britain. Systemically and institutionally rotten and corrupt to it’s lousiest foundation
There was me thinking the RBS was Scottish.
The clue being in the ‘S’.
@Captain Yossarian 9:46pm
Good to hear you are keeping well. I use my real name now. In a hurry this morning. Going to see the Declaration of Arbroath with some Primary School friends and an Edinburgh pub crawl. I will probably surface in a few days time. Stay well.
John Main there, selectively quoting to try to divert away from the actual point that over the course of the supposedly “equal and fair” Union, the KoE’s population has grown from approximately 5 to 10 times that of the KoS.
Regardless of the origins of the folk that account for the population growth disparity between the two kingdoms, it shows that nothing has effectively been done to balance the population growth rates under London Rule.
You’d think for a bloke that continually states “show me the money” he would have more of an interest in this. All the work that built the infrastructure required to house and service that faster growing population in the KoE created significant economic stimulus with buying all the goods and services and paying folks’ wages to build said infrastructure.
John Main says on 27 June 2023 at 7:06 am:
“This is a talking shop – no more no less. Endlessly posting about Indy is our comfort zone, and none of us is going to leave it. Talking the talk – full marks. Walking the walk? Erm …”
Speak for yourself. Not all of us spend every minute of every day on here. Some of us actually get out there trying to convert folk etc. And there are some of us who do it off our own backs with the very little finances and resources we have.
Stoked, when you are trying to convert somebody, how do you answer their practical and honest questions about currency, central bank, trade deals and so on?
link to msn.com
Hmm
I think he may have got this around the wrong way.
“If you’re a T+ (chic with a dick), blah person in a straight female venue then, remember it’s not your space ya fud.
A Scot Abroad says:
27 June, 2023 at 8:23 am
Stoked, when you are trying to convert somebody, how do you answer their practical and honest questions about currency, central bank, trade deals and so on?
The actual state of the UK and you still come out with this pish. LMAO.
Currency- ha ha – I’m with 10 sheep fur a coo mantra.
Central Bullshit- ha ha
Brexit trade deals- haha
GTF
The irony.
@ A Scot Abroad at 8:23 am
There are various other sources of information on such matters should folk be minded to actually look and consider options.
link to indylibrary.scot
link to robinmcalpine.org
I listened to the Wee Alba roadshow on YouTube last night.
It was brilliant. Scotland United for Independence.
Alex Salmond’s knowledge is incredible. If we stand on a Scotland United platform with Independence currently polling over 50 per cent. Then it’s not a question of how many SNP seats we lose. It’s how many of the remaining 10 Unionist seats the British State loses to Scottish Independence. It’s political genius from Salmond and the way forward.
Listen to it. Give it an hour. Bookmark the conversation. It was absolutely brilliant.
ASCOTABROAD.
A large element of English Common Law is not «codified», that according to you makes it just ancient guff. It seems to depend on whose «ancient guff» it is though.
The British state is full of it.
Dan,
both of those links are worthless. They are just descriptive of theory. Not an actual plan.
Robbo,
That’s insane. Lemming thinking. Hurl yourself off the cliff of Indy without a plan for landing. Utterly laughable.
Scotland United. That’s the team I want to play for. Fantastic.
I could vote for Scotland United. My constituency is SNP.
Scotland United is the only circumstances I could find myself voting for an SNP man or woman.
If the SNP reject the Scotland United idea. Then I’ll spoil my ballot or the Alba Party will field more candidates and we’ll move on to the next plan.
There’s a clear plan outlined by Alex Salmond on how to win the next general election.
The SNP doesn’t lose. Scotland wins. Scotland United wins. The cause of Independence wins.
Bring it on.
Dan @ 8:40 am
“There are various other sources of information on such matters should folk be minded to actually look and consider options.”
You are right, we have the right people and the plans and skills and knowledge to develop our nation. There is even an unused maritime policy sitting on the colonial administration’s shelf to develop Scotland’s ports and shipping, i.e. trade:
link to scotlandspeaks.com
link to reidfoundation.scot
However, in a colonial society the most urgent task is ‘to free the people’ (Fanon) and for them to understand what independence means (i.e. decolonization). As Frantz Fanon said:
“When the British Government decides to bestow a few more seats in the National Assembly of Kenya upon the African population, it needs plenty of effrontery or else a complete ignorance of facts to maintain that the British Government has made a concession. The colonized peoples, the peoples who have been robbed, must lose the habits of mind which have characterized them up to now.
link to salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
Scotland United. The ball is in Humza’s court. If he doesn’t listen to big Eck in this plan then he can get himself to fuck. I hope the cops close in on the SNP nest of vipers.
@ Captain Yossarian
Good to see you are still around albeit lurking. You may be interested that I happened to see a compromised building project the other day. Brand new build of retail shops, carpark, and main road alteration less than 6 months old.
One thunder and rain storm saw the main road flooded with 6 inches of water flowing across it, down into the carpark which was sloped down to the new shop buildings. Totally inadequate drainage installed and dubious planning as the gradients saw the water lapping at the front door of one shop completely blocking entering it unless you had wellies on.
Seemed to only have little 4 inch drainage conduits around the front of shop to catch carpark runoff, which being lowest point will choke up with sediment blown off the carpark area. There was no kerb up to the shop, just a slight rise of a few inches, presumably to help with trolleys, prams and mobility aids access.
Just another few inches of runoff would have seen the entire shop floor covered.
Someone needs their arse kicked for planning and passing that.
DAVIDHANNAH
Relying on the contents of the ballot box is like chasing mosquitoes, never close enough.
Scotland needs to become the ungovernable part of the UK; Zero Cooperation with the system and that means breaking the UK’s i.e. England’s colonial laws.
Gandhi style non cooperation was advocated by Scottish Nationalist in the early years of the movement, it may be time to reconsider the idea for today’s situation.
Of course, it will require getting «dirty» and going to prison etc but who says a freedom struggle worth its salt is without such hassle.
`Later this week,ScotParl will be invited to nominate David Hamilton to His Majesty The King for appointment as the new Scottish Information Commissioner`
`David Hamilton recently retired from the Police Service of Scotland after nearly 27 years of service. He served as Chair of the Scottish Police Federation`
£77,000 + a year for 6 years.
the establishment look after their own.
Giving people the impression that SNP current proposal is suffice, while ignoring SNP’s previously unused mandates, is ultimately worthless to those voting for independence!
Especially when there’s absolutely no chance of 50%+ of voters about to be fooled again. If SNP for once, put country before party, by joining Scotland United, that would go a long way to demonstrate sincerity to the Scottish electorate. As things stand, SNP is only feathering it’s own nest, with their lack lustre proposal.
The NEC is the biggest obstacle to independence. Quoting Thatcher’s jibe, is another political stunt, that takes us no nearer the goal of independence! Scottish sovereignty dictates that only 50%+ votes is legitimate result. SNP policy has driven that percentage down to 33%. The NEC refusal to embrace ‘Scotland United’ for independence, also tactical and intended to keep popularity under 50%. We are dealing with calculating shysters, whom thrive under Devolution!
Only a coup of the NEC could provide a party capable of over turning the current sabotage and to prioritise policy for country over party. Scotland First!
Alf Baird,
the piece you link to (written by you) is lunacy. With your background, you should know that the only point of a port is trade, and trade is completely defined by numbers of consumers, and amount of production.
Scotland doesn’t have enough consumers to warrant serious investment in ports beyond what’s there already, and it doesn’t produce enough to warrant much shipping coming to it.
There’s also geography. Scotland is on the arse end of Europe, and remote from the major markets. The vast majority of ships from Asia come via Suez and the Med, and it’s far easier for them to offload cargo in Greek, Italian, French and Spanish ports. No point sailing up to Scapa Flow to then offload. And for ships coming from the Americas, the western coast of Europe is just as accessible as Scotland, even on a great circle route. The polar routes are not yet proven, and even if they were, Norway and Denmark are better trans-shipment options than Orkney.
It’s an absolutely barking mad concept. No wonder nobody ever invested in your idea.
Dan says:
27 June, 2023 at 8:01 am
John Main there, selectively quoting to try to divert away from the actual point that over the course of the supposedly “equal and fair” Union, the KoE’s population has grown from approximately 5 to 10 times that of the KoS.
Regardless of the origins of the folk that account for the population growth disparity between the two kingdoms, it shows that nothing has effectively been done to balance the population growth rates under London Rule
Lucky English, getting to be an ethnic minority in England.
Ireland is about done. Scotland next.
Then when we can use Google Translate to send each other pro-Independence messages. Quick – somebody tell Jamie Hepburn.
A Scot Abroad said;
“there’s no lawful basis for any of the sovereign Scot declaration nonsense. It’s just some words said by a few people back in 1300. It ain’t codified.”
Bullshit!
There’s no lawful basis for any of the sovereign Westminster nonsense, either. It’s just some words said by a few people back in 1900. It ain’t codified.
‘Codified’ doesn’t mean it was never written down, and doesn’t mean it’s not authoritative, it just means it wasn’t all written down in one coherent document or set of documents called ‘The Constitution’. The UK’s constitution isn’t codified, either.
But it’s actually worse than that; Westminster’s alleged UK constitution, along with its ‘unlimited sovereignty’, is as dishonest and self-serving as you are, and you typify it exactly.
Westminster can’t be sovereign in Scotland while the Scots still are. Westminster arguably isn’t even sovereign in England, because the English Bill of Rights that conferred England’s sovereignty aimed it explicitly at the Parliament of England, and that parliament formally ceased to exist in 1707 when it was converted by the Treaty into the brand new Parliament of Great Britain. It is only an assumption based on nothing more than arrogance that the new UK Parliament retained the sovereignty of the old parliament, because there was no formal transfer of that sovereignty from the old parliament to the new one, and only that old parliament had the power to authorise such a transfer. And even if that transfer had happened, its sovereignty could only cover the territory of the kingdom of England, not the whole of the UK. But somehow, Westminster’s English establishment managed not only to assume and assert that it did own England’s sovereignty, it also assumed and asserted that England’s sovereignty somehow covered Scotland, too, and that its new sovereignty outranked the sovereignty of the Scots in their own country.
There is literally no legitimate formal legal and/or constitutional basis for this, it is pure brazen assertion dressed up to look sort of legal if you don’t look at it too hard, and Westminster’s English establishment would prefer you don’t look at it at all, and just accept it.
And that’s you to a T!
How many times do we need to be screwed over, by a self promoting party, commanding ownership of people’s right to self-determination? It’s absurd!
Alliance of all Indy parties, ‘Scotland United’ for independence, puts Scotland First! Why is SNP controlling the entire forum? The answer is already worded in the question.
“Westminster isn’t a foreign government, it’s the government of the Union, in which Scots are fairly represented.”
Fairly represented, I haven’t laughed so much since David Cameron (when PM)said to Scots weeks before the 2014 indyref don’t leave us lead us, after which on the 19th of September the day after the indy vote the same man came out and set out plans for EVEL.
Scots cannot affect what happens in a foreign parliament that’s hundreds of miles away in a foreign country where they are vastly outnumbered.
I must admit I do enjoy slapping down useful idiots/Denison/GCHQ/Britnat trolls such as yourself Chas, Main etc.
“A large element of English Common Law is not «codified»”
There’s a reason for the above, and its to allow the English government and its legislatures to interpret the uncodified English constitution in whatever fashion meets their needs at the time.
Dan – I remember reading about your complaints re Volkswagen electric brake callipers and wind-blown debris from too may trees getting under folk’s roofing slates.
I don’t read all the comments nowadays. I usually just skim through them. George always makes his point in about 8-lines and that’s it. Take it or leave it. It’s unmistakable.
The question was about ‘artesian layers’ if you remember. What happens when you block them with clay? Will the building collapse? I said that it inevitably would collapse and it was just a matter of time before it happened. It looks as though I have finally won.
The city council disagreed with me, time and time again, I wasn’t getting any help from the Scottish Government and so I went to the American Society of Civil Engineers and they agreed. It was pretty much a slam-dunk and that was in 2017.
They keep the ball in the long grass by refusing by saying ‘I’m too busy’, ‘no-one here agrees with you’, ‘I’m not an engineer’ and all the rest of it. You will remember my MSP? Sadly, she hasn’t been much help. Anas Sarwar’s the same.
It was the local constituency MSP who stepped forward about three weeks ago and said ‘there’s something not right with this school’. So, she has done a great job. She’s SNP, by the way. I’m not political in the sense that you are, but it’s worth pointing that out.
There is a whistle-blowing charity called ‘Protect’ and they have been great too, along with another blogger who has taken-up the case.
I’ll tell you an interesting thing: Alistair Campbell said there are 4-stages to dealing with a whistle-blower and it never changes:
Stage 1: You deny it.
Stage 2: You deny it again.
Stage 3: You blacken the reputation of the whistle-blower.
Stage 4: You agree with the whistle-blower and you say that it has all been a misunderstanding.
We are on Stage 4 now and that has taken 9-years.
I’ll let you know how it finishes. Stuart Campbell is due some recognition too for allowing me to post up using his site for so long. I expect to know by the end of the week.
It was very good hearing from you and George again. George got everything right, except one piece of advice that he got wrong and he got it wrong because he implicitly trusts the honesty and accountability of engineers. I speak as an engineer myself, but I cannot say that I am proud of the profession at the moment.
Does anyone know who signed or approved the flowers for Nicola.
I am cross referencing the owners of bad policy to see if there is a major culprit or a group of them
ASA “…In my view, Westminster should say, there will be another S30 referendum – if the people of Scotland desire one – in 2035: 21 years or a generation after the 2014 one…”
Bollocks to that; if 7 years is good enough for Northern Ireland then 7 years is good enough for Scotland.
Away with ye, ya shill.
“To those readers unaware, try your best to ignore the utter fanny posting under the name ‘Ron Clark’ and its support for all the Unionist rags”
Stoker.
I’ve seen that kind of block posting before its usually done to try and put some distance between a comment that some don’t want others to see, ie block post so that a certain comment ends up further up the thread than nearer the coalface end and ergo its less likely to be read.
Its a common and old trick but effective.
Tip that’s why shouldn’t just take the first two or three pages result as what’s available when googling something often security services will be able to push a web address/blog/story off the first page to hide it from semi-curious minds.
Well the politicians haven’t exhausted all of the political avenues yet to Independence. Before we all end up ungovernable.
But it will build up to that I imagine.
But the next phase is Scotland United.
How does the lay-person’s reinterpretation of ancient treaties, long-since overtaken by further cooperation, advance the cause for independence? What are you going to do with this ‘information’? It seems little more than a rabble-rousing whine bemoaning the fact that the ancestors took this path, and if only they’d known in 300 years there would be oil and fish and wind they’d have said, “Nah, we’ll wait a bit.” Plan for the future, not the past.
In other news I read that the EU will not negotiate with any politicians not authorised by the UK government. Add https:// to make the link below work.
dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2023/06/yousaf-told-eu-entry-off-the-table-at-brussels-event/
Also note, “The EU regards Scotland as a ‘region’ within the UK state.”
James Jones
There is still the possibility of the UK reintegrating with the EU in some form so it’s not surprising that the EU would not enter into a relationship with Scotland.
It’s also important to drop the utterly deluded notion that the EU is our friend with only out best interests at heart. It’s not. It’s a large bloc of countries acting in their own interests, but generally cooperating. The SNP approach of going in with bended knee is only going to result in Scotland replacing one dictatorial regime with another. The country has resources aplenty and the EU does not, so any relationship needs to take into account what Scotland brings to the table and the price the EU is willing to pay to get access. Any weakness would be ruthless exploited, much to our detriment.
Shug @10:41 am
It was announced by Keith Brown after the party had an MSP group meeting. So ostensibly a collective decision. But you’re right Shug, there must have been an insigator or three. Don’t know who. Plenty of suspects though.
Regarding the Times article “EU rebuffs Humza Yousaf’s plan for Scottish Envoy”
This is what Craig Murray – the ex UK Diplomat – has to say on the subject:
“The headline is not supported by what their anonymous source actually said in the text. Of course the EU cannot “officially” engage with Scotland on Independence, but there is a huge degree of wiggle room.
This Humza proposal was sensible – but why wait?”
The problem for Scotland is much deeper than the content of manifestos.
SNP is in the clutch of Westminster. If SNP suddenly discovered a set of balls and set out a realistic proposal for independence, the rug would be pulled out from under the party.
It’s obvious that SNP is compromised. While we argue over an impossible situation.
Only a full blown coup of SNP, could resolve the question of independence.
@Ian Brotherhood.
I have never used Twitter so thank you for posting the link to the Rev Stu having his banking services withdrawn without warning. The same thing is happening to nationalists in other countries, anyone who is not on board the globalist train to self destruction is a fly in the ointment and in danger of this being doing to them as we head towards a cashless society and Chinese style social credit system.
ASCOTABROAD
You seem hell bent on putting down Scotland at every opportunity. Feeling inferior?
There is much online on the opening of the polar seaways which places Orkney at the centre of traffic. Orkney is relatively flat compared to Norway with its steep fjords and mountain terrain which make communication links problematic.
Also England desperately needs to hold the Northern Islands for its own paranoid driven security reasons. England recognizes their importance even if you, for «personal» reasons, do not.
Interesting times ahead should Scotland’s politics return to fundamentals.
Ottomanboi,
The polar routes aren’t proven. It’s largely theoretical. And with current European security concerns, nobody is going to risk the Russian route.
Orkney is in completely the wrong place to be a trans-shipment port for European markets. It’s an utter nonsense. Added to which, there aren’t enough workers living in Orkney, nor housing for them, and if you thought that it could be done North Sea oil-style by flying in workers for 14 day shifts, you’d have to pay them a lot and it wouldn’t be economic.
Instead of dreaming and theorising, look at the commercial aspects. That’s what drives the money.
ACBRUCE
A Scottish «envoy» to the EU is not a technical problem. The Palestinians, a state recognized by only 9 of EU members, enjoys a relationship way beyond envoy status.
Only England limiting the activities of Scottish politicians abroad could prevent such an appointment. Their rules not Scotland’s
Salmond must move up to president of Alba …then there is a wonderful opportunity for a new leader with independence in her heart
ASCOTABROAD
Until Scotland has control of its resources it is theorizing. The Norwegians, despite the inhospitable terrain, do not regard the prospect as mere theory. Like oil, they got in before the Brits, and made themselves very, very rich, this is another example of their far sightedness. Another opportunity for the Brits to squander.
Russia, security threat, you hit the need for UK retaining Scotland’s territorial waters on the nose.
Ottomanboi,
it’s never a case of “build it and they will come”, which is Hollywood pap.
Orkney’s in the wrong place for commercial shipping at scale. You just need to look at maritime AIS databases and routing patterns to see that the vast majority of commercial shipping never goes within 1,000 miles of Orkney. There’s no point in it, so no money to be made.
It’s the sort of totally bonkers idea thought up by people with absolutely no idea of commerce.
@ A Scot Abroad
Seeing as you swerved the point last night… There weren’t enough houses, services, and infrastructure to cope with the KoE’s growing population, so that was stimulus to developed them…
At one point there were no houses anywhere, but settlements started for a variety of reasons.
Was thinking about this the other day whilst working on my roof using traditional Scottish slate that is around 500 million years old. There was a whole “local” slate industry developed out of the need to have decent roofing materials that suited our Scottish climate. But now crappy roofing tiles are often used and they are made elsewhere creating jobs in those countries and then imported here. So “Yay! Net zero for Scotland” shriek the enviro-idiots.
Happened to take a bike ride up to the back of beyond Tummel Bridge yesterday and looked at the various hydro schemes. Tummel one is currently getting a 50 million quid work over including replacing the generation turbine. Errochty looks stunning and as good as the day it was built using the stone that came from digging the tunnels for the races.
link to sserenewables.com
There’s also big work happening at the nearby Kinardochry sub station.
link to ssen-transmission.co.uk
robbo says: 27 June, 2023 at 8:32 am
link to msn.com
Hmm
I think he may have got this around the wrong way.
“If you’re a T+ (chic with a dick), blah person in a straight female venue then, remember it’s not your space ya fud.
The person in article is absolutely correct in the main thrust of the argument where if you are going to any establishment, you respect the rules.
It doesn’t matter if it is a LGBTQ+ venue, Rangers club, Celtic club or whatever, if you are going to be offended in any way when in those venues then don’t go.
Just to pick up on one point about the article though. The person in interview talked about neutral toilets in LGBTQ+ venue where there has been no reports incidents of woman being assaulted in them.
Of course there won’t be any reported incidents in these venues. The reason for that is most LGBTQ+ individuals aren’t interested in woman. It is straight men who dress up as woman that are the problem and they aren’t going to go to LGBTQ+ venues to find their victims.
Ottomanboi @1:16pm
That farsightedness of the Norwegians came from Farouk al-Kasim.
The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil, link to archive.ph
link to en.wikipedia.org
On turning the other cheek.
I would add; when one man starts to think that he is better than one woman – or worse, the whole of womankind.
And this from Martha Nussbaum’s book; Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions:
The juxtaposition of these two items in the Nation is rather «queer» in the queasy sense of the term
«Glasgow hosts Alba Breeze Nato military exercise with Ukrainian Navy»
«Glasgow should be proud that even Tory councillors backed trans rights»
Scotland, something putrid at the core?
@Anton Decadent (12.31) –
You’re very welcome.
😉
STUART MACKAY 1:59
Thanks for the link. Suddenly, feel proud of the country i was born in. Not often feeling.
PacMan says:
27 June, 2023 at 1:39 pm
robbo says: 27 June, 2023 at 8:32 am
I think you missed my point.
I said T+ and the other phoney’s . I ‘ve nae issues with gay/bi bars if that’s what yer intae. As far as I’m aware gay men and gay women go to appropriate male/female toilets.
But the phoney’s (chics wae dicks)is what i have issues with, going into women’s toilet’s etc
Wearing a dress does not make you a woman.
Pacman
Maybe you’ve missed all the posts with links to trans (chic’s wae dicks) taking photo’s of their genitals in ladies loo’s and posting them on twitter ticktok etc.
Stu Campbell has posted many examples you’ll be able to see on website if that tickles yer fancy.
Ian Brotherhood @7:22am
Thanks for the compliment, Ian. Very kind of you to say so.
@Republicofscotland says:27 June, 2023 at 10:18 am
I must admit I do enjoy slapping down useful idiots/Denison/GCHQ/Britnat trolls such as yourself Chas, Main etc.
Naw.
You lost yer “slapping doon” privileges when you picked the wrong side in February 2022.
Yer jist a figure o pity noo.
Ane o the most noisy pretendy Indy crew on here, busy cheering on the imperialist annihilation o anither, sovereign, nation and culture. Jist cos they fail yer ideological purity test.
Awa an slap yersel.
@Republicofscotland says:27 June, 2023 at 10:18 am
Scots cannot affect what happens in a foreign parliament that’s hundreds of miles away in a foreign country where they are vastly outnumbered
Woo hoo! RoS writes sense!
Quick somebody, get Breeks to read this.
Haud oan, this is Brussels we’re talking aboot, richt?
Ottomanboi says:
27 June, 2023 at 2:09 pm
The juxtaposition of these two items in the Nation is rather «queer» in the queasy sense of the term
«Glasgow hosts Alba Breeze Nato military exercise with Ukrainian Navy»
«Glasgow should be proud that even Tory councillors backed trans rights»
Scotland, something putrid at the core?
Western “values”, innit?
By which I mean criminal menaces against the growing list of countries Uncle Sam doesn’t like, and corporate sponsored creepy grooming for the little ones. That’s what “the West” is now.
Idk what you mean by “even the Tories” though, the conservatives are not reliable on this or any other issue (obviously) and have failed to conserve even the legal definition of a woman.
@Dan says:27 June, 2023 at 8:01 am
You’d think for a bloke that continually states “show me the money” he would have more of an interest in this
I think that for all the times I have explained what I mean by “show me the money”, it is truly remarkable, and maybes deeply significant, that nobody can show me the money.
Yet it is the simplest, and the most fool-proof route to Indy. Works on Old & New Scots, cis & trans Scots, white and brown Scots, old and young Scots, royalist and republican Scots.
Show the voters of Scotland how they will be better off if they vote Yes. Spell it out. Give examples. Quote experts in economics, politics and policy. Put numbers against benefits, pensions, SNHS waiting times, tax rates, affordable home building rates, all of those good things, and more.
Show us the money.
Don’t keep for ever banging on about how great things will be post-Indy. Show us.
@Ottomanboi says:27 June, 2023 at 12:43 pm
England desperately needs to hold the Northern Islands for its own paranoid driven security reasons
Here you go, Otto:
“17 May 2022 · A Russti state TV pundit has called for Britain to be bombed ‘back to the Stone Age'”
Maybes be more careful in future with the word ‘paranoid’. It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
Or us. Despite the best efforts of the self-deceivers and self-deluded on here, I don’t believe anybody is studying a map of Britain and saying “that nice bit at the top is Scotland and it’s hoaching with nice, cuddly Scots, so make sure nothing bad happens to it”.
The NuSNP government to go to court and waste taxpayers cash challenging the S35 against the unamended GRRB.
THE Scottish Government will go to court in September as it seeks to challenge the UK Government’s decision to block controversial gender recognition reforms.
“The case will be heard by judge Lady Haldane, who ruled in 2022 that the definition of sex was “not limited to biological or birth sex”.
In what became know as “the Haldane decision”, she judged that in the context of the 2010 Equality Act, sex referred to a person’s sex recognised by law, and not simply their biological sex.”
The NuSNP will fight this tooth and nail no matter how much it costs the Scottish taxpayer the unamended GRRB is one of their core policies.
Independence however is just to be wheeled out when an election comes around to fool the voters into electing these useless b*stards.
Get the NuSNP out at every election whether it be council, GE or Holyrood the same applies to the degenerate Greens.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
“Ane o the most noisy pretendy Indy crew on here, busy cheering on the imperialist annihilation o anither, sovereign, nation and culture. Jist cos they fail yer ideological purity test.”
Main.
Your faux attempt at typing Scots to fool commentors doesn’t work on me, tell your handler its not working.
As for picking the wrong side, its me your talking to kiddo, not some spotty faced wee ned who isn’t paying attention.
@John Main.
Those poor Ukranians must be thinking that Independence would be impossible. Instead of dying for Inependence they should have just asked Zelensky to show them the money first.
Mugs eh?
@ John Main
Sigh. So you’ve studiously ignored this proposal on several previous occasions now. So I’ll ask again, what’s actually wrong with this example seeing as it uses the actual policy setup we currently utilise within the UK framework?
link to wingsoverscotland.com
The mind set of a unionist,
The EU wouldn’t negotiate with Scotland it would only negotiate with the UK,
Apparently England Wales and Ireland, is the UK,
And Scotland is not,
Mmmm
Is’nt that similar to what I have been saying,
Scotland is not in the UK parliament, Scotland is not part of Britain, Scotland was extinguied from the treaty and Trade Deals,
Thanks Jonsey.
RED. 4:28
Those headlines were from The National, not the Nation as appeared. The Nato military exercises are more troubling than weird guys in dresses seeking admiration.
The latter is a convenient distraction from the hemispheric «power play» of the former.
Beauvais says:
‘A Scot Abroad
To think you led people into combat.’
LOL!!
Was it to fight one midgie or two?
What an eejit he is! Scotland doesn’t need permission from a a foreign country. No one made them our ruler. They do not own our territory, it’s people, it’s crown or it’s resources & it certainly doesn’t get to dictate our elections, refs, mandates or timescales.
Close Holyrood. Hold elections & reconvene the genuine Scottish parliament which should never have been ‘reconvened’ as a WM talking shop. That was designed & set up for what they assumed would be a perpetual Slabber English Labour government.
Things change. Circumstances have changed. They’re extinct. Shit happens.
The Scotland Act is no longer fit for purpose. It’s obsolete.
Scotland stands United at the next parliament, with or without the SNP MSPs & MPs. The time for asking, talking, polling, cajoling, bribing & begging is over.
The next win is immediate exit.
& It is also the end of English registered political parties in Scotland.
JOHN MAIN
You totally do not «get it». But, should there be a war with somebody in the east your country definitely will. The paranoia of declining anglo-american global power is dangerous.
Your lot ruined my homeland, killed members of my extended family…
I do not like your worldview, as being bombed back to the stone age is part of your country’s repertory when faced with opposition.
Scotland needs to shake the dust of imperialism from its clothing.
@Dan says:27 June, 2023 at 5:05 pm
Sigh.
Yeah, you are saying Scotland has all of these resources, so post-Indy, they all get divvied up between us Scots.
And I am saying that post-Indy, all of these resources will remain owned by the current owners, so what then?
By all means claim that the resources will be nationalised, confiscated, purchased at market rates, whatever.
Just make it clear, and show us how whichever option is chosen, we all get rich.
Oh, and revise your list. The coal is worthless as it won’t be used.
Can the UK show us the money Mr Main? Going by these figures you can’t. link to ons.gov.uk
Tell us how we got here then?
You keep banging on about it endlessly when we have no say whatsoever of all this borrowing Westmonster does. No doubt you and yer we merry men ASA dumb and even dumber Chas say it’s all Scotland’s faut.
You can GTF
RBS the clue is in RB(S)
Actually the clue is in the ( R) BS,
As Scotland has not had Royalty of its own for well over three hundred years.
The Second misnomer is that Scotland was Extinguished in 1707 according to Westminster parliament, remember
And thirdly the banking systems in Britain are private Corporations, including the the Bank of England and Wales.
Dan 5:05
Excellent!
I shall wait with baited breath..
@Republicofscotland says:27 June, 2023 at 4:51 pm
its me your talking to kiddo
Aye, it is.
Ony chance o ye dealing wi fit a wrote in ma post?
Maybes, naw, eh?
Tel ye fit, ma handler says tae jist richt it in English fer ye.
Please explain how Scottish Indy will be helped, aided, assisted and/or encouraged by the destruction of 404 and the success of Russti military, expansionist, colonialist imperialism?
Stu Campbell
You and James Kelly of ScotGoesPop have no seen eye to eye at times but, if you have a wee keek at James’ blog page you can see he is now calling a spade a spade:
“Until such time as there is a democratic mechanism by which Scotland can freely choose to leave the UK, we are to all intents and purposes a colony”.
I think James deserves credit for accepting and explicitly also stating this fact (plus, he’s now an Alba supporter).
Maybe it’s now time to bury the hatchet and for Wings to include a link to Scotgoespop?
What do you think?
John Main
Have you ever heard the term ‘under new management’?
Time to renegotiate your terms or terms…
What’s that? You don’t want to play ball? Bye then..
NEXT!
(Welcome to the real world where *contracts* are updated as an everyday occurance)
Scotland owns the contract, not the contractor.
& Don’t be silly over coal. England wants it for thier nuclear plants.
Whatever language John Main thinks he writing, it sure as he’ll ain’t Scots.
A real confusion of cod Doric and Lothian argot.
I doubt he is Scottish, though his regiment might be based here.
Ottomanboi,
Are you a secret Saddam Hussein fan? Because he was seen as the problem in Iraq, with regional threats to 7 countries: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Turkey and Israel. People tend to forget that he’d launched no less than 3 wars of aggression, and dropped chemical weapons on the Kurds, as well as killing well over 100,000 of his own countrymen. And yet you blame Britain.
You need to grow up and get a grip. Britain wasn’t the problem. The problem was Hussein, and the fact that the Iraqis have barely emerged from prehistory and are pretty savage with each other based on some argument about Mohammed’s chosen successor.
The vast majority of killing after he was got rid of was Iraqis bombing each other.
A genuine question here: what would have happened if the Scottish Government had decided to go ahead with the Scotland Deposit Return Scheme in full and had ignored the conditions set by Westminster?
Penalties/fines what?
@ John Main
And so you move onto deflecting to talk of nationalising assets and who they are current owned by, the whole point of my general example is that the revenue streams generated from those Scottish based assets and resources would be as things currently are now, so no change in the status of those assets and resources, other than the revenue streams generated by them would be flowing in to the Scottish treasury to be utilised to serve just 5.4 million folk.
Lets be honest, nobody will ever be able to proffer a cast iron guaranteed proposition to keep you happy so you’re just bumping your gums on this subject. And as I asked previously, just what qualifications and experience do you actually have to determine what is and isn’t viable. If you are some kind of economics and trade genius then why don’t you put forward proposals yourself if you are a genuine supporter of Scotland returning to self-governing status so we can improve the lives of those that live here.
@Northcode 26th June 11.07pm
You sound like someone brainwashed with the LIES and PROPAGANDA re Hitler, His party, Germany and WW2. The intelligent people who have done their research know that the quotes put out by Hitler and his party are different to what they really said as our corrupt governments, media etc have got to keep the LIES and PROPAGANDA going to steer the masses away from the TRUTH about back then as per my comment on Stu’s last post re Hitlers successful debt and interest and inflation free economy etc.
The FACT is Hitler and his party did NOT use rhetoric – they always told their people the TRUTH and they did what the said they were going to do and that is why he had the full support of the people behind his when he created the most successful economy in the world back then creating full employment in 3 years and making his people the bast off they have ever been – hence why Hitler had a 98% approval rating something that none of our leaders have ever even managed because they do not tell the truth and they do not work on behalf of the people. You can find a video of many of Hitlers speeches online if you look for them but like I said already everything exposing the TRUTH about him and WW2 etc is blocked and shadow banned and everything keeping the LIES and PROPAGANDA going is everywhere. Also the only true version of Hitlers book is an original copy from before WW2 as even that has been changed to suit the lies.
Hitler also shut down all of the secret societies and exposed them to his people and JFK started to copy Hitler by exposing the secret societies and started to print his own debt and interest and inflation free Greenback Dollar and that is why he was taken out – they are silent about this FACT as well.
Our leaders work for the Mafias behind the UN, WEF, WHO etc and they are ALL working to THEIR agenda hence why NONE of them are going against the latest scam on us the £170 “Green” tax going onto our power/heating bills just now as part of the Global Warming – oops changed to Climate Change because the Earth has actually been COOLING for decades. The biggest laugh is there are volcanoes always going off all the time with each one putting out more CO2 and pollution than humans have since the start of the Industrial Revolution and yet the idiots that support this SCAM support these Mafias ripping off their own families as well as themselves along with everyone else.
Ottomanboi says:
27 June, 2023 at 5:16 pm
RED. 4:28
Those headlines were from The National, not the Nation as appeared. The Nato military exercises are more troubling than weird guys in dresses seeking admiration.
The latter is a convenient distraction from the hemispheric «power play» of the former.
I agree it’s a distraction in a lot of ways, but it’s not merely a distraction.
The war on normality is, like the more traditional war on independent countries who don’t obey Uncle Sam, very much part of the new thing our betters want for us. I expect Scotland to soon have similar laws to Canada, where parents who try to stop the State grooming their children into transgender can expect to be harassed by the police and then put in a cage.
Much of what passes for politics in Western countries these days is just simple malice. You keep hoping the public will catch on at some point. Hopefully before WW3.
@ Robbo
I think we have our wires crossed.
As to my thoughts about these Trans, I’ve made myself clear in the below comment posted on a previous thread and have nothing more to add to it.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
The point I was making is that if you go to a Rangers bar and are offended by having to sing the British national anthem then don’t go there. Similarly, if you go to a Celtic bar and are offended by patrons singing Rebel songs, don’t go there.
It is the same with these LGBTQ+ venues. If you are a woman and don’t feel comfortable with guys using neutral toilets that you intend to use then don’t go to these places.
You could argue that this behaviour in LGBTQ+ venues of having male, female and neutral toilets is causing the behaviour you mentioned in your comment. You could well be right but as I have stated, I have wished my hands with this Trans community and trying to bring balance to the subject. If the majority deems that there should be only male and female toilets then it I’m perfectly fine with that.
Until then, why would somebody give themselves all that grief by going to these places where they know they will not feel comfortable being in them?
@robbo says:27 June, 2023 at 5:27 pm
Thanks for the link. Here’s a wee quote:
“UK general government gross debt was £2,224.5 billion at the end of financial year ending March 2021”
Ouch. Taking Scotland’s share as 10%, that’s £222.45 bill we will owe on Day 1 of Indy.
Jeezo, dividing by 5.5 million, I make my personal share to be £40,363! As a tax payer, I bet I will get stiffed with the debt for at least one non-contributing Scot too.
You can GTF
Now, now, Bob. Unless you are a taxpayer too, be nicer to one of the mugs who might be paying your tab.
Of course, Scotland could do UDI, walk away, repudiate the debt, etc. etc. In which case somebody should run the numbers on how much it will cost each Scot for the decades while we endure international pariah status.
As the UK found out when leaving the EU, always best in the long run (and easiest) to pay your debts.
O/T
An interesting article that IMHO gives a balanced view of De-dollarisation and how the global economy will slowly shift to a multi-polar one in the coming decades:
link to archive.is
Resources of Scotland,
The reality is that the Scottish resources are already ours, ” we” just did not know having been kept in the dark by the Coloniser all these years.
There are two sides to this argumental debate.
The first leaves The Parliament of Westminster and GB acting as a Colonial English parliament towards Scotland with bias.
If We presume the hoax treaty is in fact genuine and that Scotland and England are both in it
Then we have to ask Why the Westminster parliament has been passing legislation altering the Treaty of union with Scotland Act 1706,
This would imply that Westminster old parliament of England sees itself as sole as the Westminster owner of the treaty of union,
We also see a divide in Westminster as a union parliament acting as Englands old parliament when it passed the devolved government Scotland Act legislation separately.
We again can see that the old English Westminster parliament residing within the treaty of union with the Colonial Stock (Scotland) Acts passed.
Then we experience the laws of EVIL passed in Westminster as separate legislation to England, from Scotland.
We witness Westminster removing and passing legislation on the Scottish burgh’s , (buroughs) under the Law revision (Scotland) act/s, ” both” of which were supposed to remain untouched after the treaty, laws of Scotland and burghs.
Then more evidence is forthcoming when Westminster states on its parliament site that the ratification of the treaty of union Extinguished the Scottish parliament in 1707.
however at the same time avoids mentioning the same applies to the old English parliament.
The second scenario that the ratification of the treaty of union extinguished both the parliament of Englands old Westminster and the old Parliament of Scotland also extinguished the ratifications that were made,
That neither parliaments ratifications are legal after that date or in the New parliament in England called the parliament of GB
The legal entity namely the new parliament of GB never entered into or signed a treaty with Scotland or with its Extinguished old parliament.
All promises of a union died with both extinguished parliaments, prior to the GB parliament
Agent x
The DRS wouldn’t have gone ahead without full & stringent checks within parliament, both inside the chamber & across a committee scrutinising ever dot & every t crossed.
The Scottish parliament under Sturgeon & fellow unionist civil servants & Lord Advocates have deliberately set the parliament up to fail in order to secure the colonial masters position: ‘Oh lookie how dumb you all are! Yer nothing without me. Aren’t you luck, dumb Scots, you have us to charge to the rescue’
The exact same for GRR bill. The exact same for Ferries.
The failure lies with devolution & it’s subsequent foreign meddlers. Scotland will not be allowed to look good cause that would only encourage us to be indy.
There’s 32,000 UK civil servants in Scotland. Over 60%. Why?
Do we not have any home grown? Is it reciprocated at WM?
Scotlands resources.
With no treaty of union due both sides of the treaty of union having expired with the extinguishing of both parliaments ratifications and Scotland not renewing or making or entering into a treaty of union with the new entity the called the parliament of GB,
Scotland resources belong to Scotland since the 1707 treaty of union failed to materialise.
@Dan says:27 June, 2023 at 6:01 pm
the revenue streams generated by them would be flowing in to the Scottish treasury to be utilised to serve just 5.4 million folk
If you believe that, then per capita, Scots would be approx ten times better off than we are now. Anybody who believes that, a professional politico say, could put that on hundreds of thousands of T shirts, and on every bus shelter in Scotland.
It’s obvious to me why nobody believes that, and I kinda think you don’t really believe it either.
Lets be honest, nobody will ever be able to proffer a cast iron guaranteed proposition to keep you happy
It’s not just about me, Dan. Ignore me if you like, but come up with something that resonates with another 2.75 – 3 million Scots.
some kind of economics and trade genius
I’m not, but like many Scots I can detect BS at ten paces.
Scotland’s awash with money and resources. Hell, some of it already belongs to me. All of it already belongs to somebody. Post-Indy, how do we ensure that the Scots get a bigger share. Write it down, keep it simple, remember you are aiming at the several million Scots who don’t give a fart for politics, economics or anything else. Show them how the money gets from the pockets of the current owners, and into theirs, and make it believable.
@Red says:27 June, 2023 at 6:06 pm
Hopefully before WW3
Jeezo, Red, do try to keep up. Not everything reported by the MSM is lies.
45 sovereign countries are already involved on the right side. I can’t be arsed to count the shitholes involved on the wrong side.
John Main,
Please, out of the kindness of your heart, don’t you start posting in some dialect. It’s bad enough that this pensioner has to skip over Prof Baird when he gets going on what “post colonial theory suggests” and wanders off into I know not what Rabbie Burns soundalike.
If this catches on then WoS will become a foreign language site to this native Scot.
Geri,
The Scottish devolved government is a Colony legislation government sent to manage Scotland.
And could be construed even more so, now that Westminster UK parliament openly admits officially to the world that the Scottish parliament was extinguished from proceeding or completing its journey into the new GB Westminster parliament as soon as the 1707 ratifications took place,
Then it took baron and peers from Scotlands officially closed and extinguished parliament to represent Scotland.
As I have mentioned previously etymology counts as to whom is the GB parliament and who are Scotlands representatives if not chosen from a functioning 1707 Scottish parliament,
The weather is a great bluffer
In 1973, more than two decades after a young woman wrote to Albert Einstein with a similar concern, one man sent a distressed letter to E.B. White (1899–1985), lamenting that he had lost faith in humanity.
White replied:
E.B. White was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including, “Stuart Little”, published in 1945, followed by “Charlotte’s Web” in 1952.
Rev, your bank accounts were all closed for 100% political reasons.
This is the world we are now living in.
This is war.
The fruit of the tree of corporate hubris.
link to techradar.com
and the serpent entered Cupertino and had some fun.
I get the feeling that ‘Wings’ has now become an outlet for the nutters in Scotland. I do not include Stu in that number!
Everyday the same crap is posted by the same individuals and round and round we go.
It may be that some posters have a mental disability or are senile. This could explain why they repeatedly post the same shite. They simply forget!
Wings is even attracting new nutters. I see a post above, from a new entrant into the fray, extolling the virtues of Hitler!! Wow, just wow!
john Main tries hard to stem the flow of stupidity. I am unsure where he gets the stamina to do so but he does try valiantly. I cannot, for the life of me, see what is so wrong with some political party setting out why and how we could all be better off, financially, physically and mentally in an Independent Scotland. Why does nobody ever do just that, if and a big if, it is true?
England are unfortunate that they have the incompetent, sleazy corrupt Tories in Westminster. Scotland is even worse off. Not only are we under the influence of Westminster but we also have the incompetent, corrupt perverts in Holyrood.
Isn’t it just braw to be Scottish?
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
John Main says: at 6:49 pm
“… Write it down, keep it simple…”
Eh, I did…
And the fact that you say you don’t believe it and / or your BS meter is twitching suggest you can’t actually give a hard definitive rebuttal against what I have proposed with robust reasons why it wouldn’t work, when the meat of what I proposed are exactly what we currently operate under within the UK framework.
You also don’t actually know what I suggested wouldn’t resonate with a significant number of Scots should they actually be made aware of the proposal.
You may have picked up over the years that I am far from impressed with the quality of our politicos of all hues. That they haven’t come up with a coherent fiscal plan such as I have suggested is not unexpected when they think folk can change their sex, and fitting solar PV arrays to North facing roofs is a okay.
You know when the energy companies put the price of your diesel and leccy units & standing charges up and you just coughed up the extra dosh. That’s where your money went.
Would you not prefer to have had the power to better control these huge corporate companies and their rampant profiteering, or are you just a whiny subservient streak of pish that accepts that sort of thing. Get off yer knees FFS!
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
What’s not to like about the Declaration of Arbroath. What pique from Glasgow to condemn the exhibition. I was with other people today. 100% satisfaction from our party. Worth seeing before it’s locked up for another 18 years. An apolitical exhibition. It’s our history. Go and view it.
link to telegraph.co.uk
link to telegraph.co.uk
This place becomes more wacko by the day. Apart from all of the completely misinterpreted ancient guff that nobody at all cares about, we’ve now got someone banging on about Hitler, JFK’s assassination, looney tunes theories about debt and Covid denialism.
And still, nobody seems interested in developing a plan for iScotland before any referendum, but rather just wanting to jump off a cliff and hope it will all be worked out before the sudden meeting with reality at the end of the falling.
Absolutely mental.
link to telegraph.co.uk
link to dailymail.co.uk
Have I missed some rule about posting you tube links? ?
‘kin hell , looks like wee Mainy has double-dunted on his maw’s * slimming tablets * .
He’s def double-dunted on the utter shite he usually comes out with .
He knows THAT subject is off-limits so he sneaks his asinine anti-insight opinions under the wire n jumps into his wee yellow n blue taxi . Beep ! Beep !
FOR HIRE .
Aye
link to amp.theguardian.com
link to mirror.co.uk
link to standard.co.uk
link to scotsman.com
link to gbnews.com
@Sven says:27 June, 2023 at 6:57 pm
Some of it I learned at my mother’s knee, but that was a long time ago, and memory fades.
Some of it came from reading and studying Gibbon’s Sunset Song at school. The dialect in that is not too difficult, so if you haven’t already read it, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
In more recent times, some of it came from Irvine Welsh’s Glue. The dialect in that is constant throughout the book, and takes a bit of perseverance to grasp. Again, if you haven’t read it, and have a strong stomach (!), worth a try.
One thing Welsh taught me is that often it’s not that the words are different, it’s the pronunciation that causes the difficulty. Welsh is an expert at writing the words as they are pronounced, not as they are formally spelled.
@Robert Hughes says:27 June, 2023 at 7:55 pm
subject is off-limits
In order to look objective and not hypocritical, Bob, you have to jump in at the first mention of the off-limit subject, not at the second or subsequent mention (my response).
A few posters on here have commented how they skip my posts. You are sounding as if you skip everybody’s posts but mine.
That’s quite flattering, if true.
@ Geri
You copy the url link of the YT vid, then paste it into your comment, then importantly remove everything before the www so it doesn’t embed the vid on this page when you submit the comment. The Wings site’s software will then tweak the link on submission so it is a clickable link.
As a test here’s a 2 min vid from when Chas was way more fun when he had Morph as a lead. 😉
link to youtube.com
I see rocket Ron Clark yoon direct link poster (the new Wilson McBride) is on yet another mission.
No doubt Dad’s Army will have rocked up too with more stellar input by the time this post submits…
@A Scot Abroad 7:51pm
Ancient guff? The Declaration of Arbroath I saw today was inspirational. Queues out of the door but orderly. People like history. A plan?. Indeed the SNP Scot Gov have no plan. I will give you plan and I already have in my various posts as have other contributors. So let’s take the biggest worry, the Scottish Currency. As I noted before throughout on this blog the Scottish Pund was devalued many times against the English Pound before the Union. Its the natural state of affairs. The lesser population is disadvantaged. Money is pieces of paper. The Bank of England has taken action in 2008 and now to support the banking system as opposed to the fortunes of ordinary people. As the BoE Governor said at the time a moral jeopardy because we are going to have to repeat the exercise.
George Ferguson,
well, what is the plan for the currency? Nobody seems to know. Use the pound Sterling, but without any input on things like interest rates? Use the Euro, US Dollar, again with no input? Create a new Scottish currency?
All situations require a central bank. What the plan there? What about issuing bonds? What’s backstopping it?
This is a cracking article.
I wish I had written it. But you did and we’ll done!
John Main says:
27 June, 2023 at 6:55 pm
@Red says:27 June, 2023 at 6:06 pm
Hopefully before WW3
Jeezo, Red, do try to keep up. Not everything reported by the MSM is lies.
45 sovereign countries are already involved on the right side. I can’t be arsed to count the shitholes involved on the wrong side.
Now that you mention “shitholes”, I bet the Russians, Chinese, and Indians are… less keen on encouraging children to experiment with alternative sexual identities, or banning the cheap energy their economies and therefore standard of living depend on.
People in these “shithole” countries will be driving cars, going on holidays and cranking up the central heating whenever they feel like it while you’re Net Zeroed into accepting routine power cuts and restrictions on your movement as the new normal in your cold wee hoose.
Apart from that, I’m not sure what you mean, John.
But I am Scottish, so will be happy to argue with you. x
Billy Carlin says:
Hitler also shut down all of the secret societies and exposed them to his people and JFK started to copy Hitler by exposing the secret societies and started to print his own debt and interest and inflation free Greenback Dollar and that is why he was taken out – they are silent about this FACT as well.
Hans, are we the baddies?
This is a cracking article.
I wish I had written it. But you did and well done!
Ken, there’s been a proliferation of commenters btl on here, over the past year or so, whose raison d’etre appears to be to disrupt any constructive discussion about how Scotland can achieve its status as an Independent country.
I used to read every btl comment but, these days, I’m finding I’m scrolling past stuff.
Git yirselz tigither! Are we for independence, ur no?
Try the positive approach…
A Scot Abroad says:
27 June, 2023 at 8:38 pm
George Ferguson,
well, what is the plan for the currency?
Gee us peace Private Pile.
@A Scot Abroad 8:38pm
We accept a Scottish Currency probably called the Pund will immediately devalue. I am referring to history again. Before the Union the Scottish Currency devalued many times. The funds for a Central Bank will come out of the division of assets and liabilities post UK. It’s all here on this blog but it requires patient research. I voted for Brexit not as a cock eyed banjo playing retard depicted by the BBC. But as someone that thinks control of your destiny should lie at the Nation State level.
Dan 8:14
Cheers! It was my post to John Main re Scots should put it on a T-shirt – they don’t cause no one believes it..
Cameron believed it. S’Of course Scotland could make it on her own. She’s a wealth country BUT *insert fake love bombing here regards family of nations, equal partner pish*
Or below are 10 economists on Scottish Independence.
‘Without Scotland’s Oil, little England, as it will soon be known, has nothing to offer the world’
We don’t need to put it on T-shirts. England cannot exist without the other 3 Nations resources.
Curtesey of Phantom Power..
link to youtube.com
A Scot abroad
Currency has been done to death, mate. It’s been 9 yrs since indyref FFS!
Estonia established its own currency in a warzone!
It’s not impossible. It’s not rocket science. Scotland has set up two central banks before, one being the bank of England.
Listen to my vid from phantom power & Yanis Varoufakis.
Scotland will have its own currency.
O/T: I never thought I would write this but…Willie Rennie has shown some principle and backbone. Friends of Wings twitter has a videoclip of him in Holyrood chamber pointing out the lack of interest amongst SNP MSPs in the harsh realities of life for his constituents.
I almost didn’t recognise him!
BEGIN TRANSMISSION…
This will be my final entry in the log that is the comments section of WoS.
My experimental foray into the world of forums was always going to be short-lived; for at heart I am a hermit, preferring the sound and silent company of the ancients to the unsound salty chatter of my contemporaries.
I still, on occasion, today was such an occasion, visit my old pals, Jenny and Brendan and Willie and Joe up at the graveyard; for they, too, as they sleep soundly, embrace the sanctity of silence.
This is the anniversary of my dear old dad’s passing, and it seems an appropriate time for me to pass away from this place.
I thank you all for tolerating my, often facetious, comments and my occasional rants on rhetoric; watch out for the words folks use – that way you won’t be fooled by their tricks and traps.
I wish you all good fortune on your travels through this dream we call life.
And remember the words of E.B. White – “hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
This is Northcode, Captain of the SHAG class starship and deep space exploration vessel, ‘Spes Nova’, signing off.
…END TRANSMISSION
Robbo.
You’ll need a fucking plan. Because, if there isn’t one, there’ll either be no Indy via democracy, because nobody sensible will vote for it, or if some lunatic lemming in power votes for UDI, there will be a crashing down to earth that hurts ordinary Scots very, very badly.
So what’s the plan?
@Garavelli Princip 5.58:
“Whatever language John Main thinks he writing, it sure as he’ll ain’t Scots.
A real confusion of cod Doric and Lothian argot.
I doubt he is Scottish, though his regiment might be based here.”
Spot on, GP, re the language question(s).
This is something which has annoyed me for some time, and not just from obvious purveyors of pretendy Scots. It sometimes even affects Scots enthusiasts.
If you’re going to write in Scots (or Gaelic for that matter) then at least observe the rules of that language and stop just making it up, ffs.
A Scots Grammar by David Purves/Modren Scots Grammar by C. Robinson, The Concise Scots Dictionary by M. Robinson and Lorimer’s New Testament are all you need to know to express yourself properly in the Scots language and get the spelling right, if that’s your bag.
Give the language (Scots or Gaelic) the respect it deserves, otherwise you’re just demeaning it, you split-tongued sourocks (Lewis Grassic Gibbon).
Also, you have to laugh at all the desperate unionists on here who continually piss on our chips where old documents and treaties are concerned but have multiplied organisms all over the place re Magna Carta or Henry VIII laws (both irrelevant to Scotland) and who would probably fight to the death to fly the union flag over Gibraltar, citing Article X of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
It’s a funny old game, Saint, innit?
@Sarah 9:34pm
I absolutely get Willie Rennie. At the beginning of the Covid scare I campaigned for Grandparents to be allowed to see new born grandchildren to help new mums and babies. He got it. Ages later Nicola gives a concession. Result Covid babies have communications and facial recognition problems because of the delay. Be prepared to spend lots of public money recovering from this Scot Gov decision.
Brian Doonthetoon at 8:57 pm:
“there’s been a proliferation of commenters btl on here, over the past year or so, whose raison d’etre appears to be to disrupt any constructive discussion about how Scotland can achieve its status as an Independent country.
I used to read every btl comment but, these days, I’m finding I’m scrolling past stuff.
Git yirselz tigither! Are we for independence, ur no?
Try the positive approach…”
On the contrary, those of us cynical about Scottish independence have challenged the significance of arguments focussed on “1707” and “colonial” nonsense, and ask how “No” voters should be persuaded. This ought to be a useful intellectual exercise but there have been few if any effective responses so far.
Incidentally, is there any national pride in using Pidgin English?
Sven @ 6:57 pm
“If this catches on then WoS will become a foreign language site to this native Scot.”
According to Albert Memmi, colonial schools “creates a permanent duality” in the assimilated native; i.e. the ‘I’m British AND Scottish’ syndrome. The former is merely a cultural illusion, but a good one all the same; the same hoax worked in a great many other colonies too. It is linguistically based, also known as Linguistic Imperialism. The English were/are experts at it.
Some of the native group – primarily those broad Scots speakers, the latter mostly now confined to the working and rural classes – “will never have the good fortune to suffer the tortures of colonial bilingualism”.
However the assimilated colonized, mimicking the colonizer’s tongue, “sets about discarding his mother tongue..which is crushed; it is a linguistic drama”.
“And the most urgent claim of a group about to revive is certainly the liberation and restoration of its language”.
Which helps explain why peoples in self-determination conflict tend to be linguistically divided; upon liberation the oppressor’s tongue ‘burns his lips’ and ‘the colonized reaches for his own language’, lowly dialect or not.
@ Sarah
Here’s the link for those that want to view the 2 min clip. I mentioned the fire service cuts btl a day or so back.
link to twitter.com
@ Northcode
Oi! This is getting ridiculous. That Edgar Allen Poe character has nicked the lyrics from the song by Propaganda – Dream Within a Dream
T’was bad enough when Gary Numan stole that Sugababes – Freak Like Me song for Are Friends Electric…
All the best to you Northcode. 🙂
James Jones..
Three things..
We don’t need to convince No voters of anything. They have to convince us to stay. It’s not looking good for the Union so far. Better Together turned out to be bullshit so you better come up with a better plan.
2. If we’re not under ‘colonial rule’ why can’t we hold a referendum? Normal countries aren’t forbidden from asking thier own citizens a question. Why, what & who gave that power to England?
3. Ever told a Scot they can’t do something?
Tinto Chiel
‘Multiple orgasms’?
*Spits tea* LOL…
Aye, don’t forget 1690. That’s another date from the Moses era they have tattooed on thier arse from birth.
Geri says at 10:13 pm:
“We don’t need to convince No voters of anything. They have to convince us to stay.”
Lol! The delusion on here is epic. Where are you gonna go?
For example of a Union.
It’s consenting.
Either side can leave when they’ve had enough.
Did the European Union tell little England it was forbidden to hold a referendum? It couldn’t leave? It needed 27 permission slips?
No. Because that was a real Union in action.
Scotland being forbidden to hold a referendum by the supreme court was illegal under international law & against the treaty of Union (which is debatable there even was one enacted) So, in the eyes of London, we are colony. A colony with a foreign government running our pretendy parliament under strict rules via the Scotland Act & with reserved matters doesn’t cut it under international laws of Self determination.
We even have the eejits forbid us from private international meetings promoting Scotland. Do you think that’ll last LOL!
Scotland is a recognised Nation with its Territory intact.
No one has the right to claim it is forbidden from doing anything.
@Geri 10.25: not quite what I said but I take your point 😉 .
“If we’re not under ‘colonial rule’ why can’t we hold a referendum?”
An excellent question but I foresee tumbleweed moments in response.
Don’t wait up!
Nytol/Night all.
BBC going hell for leather to show alcohol pricing has not worked. Have heard 4 interviews today and all negative and questioning the success.
Currently interviewing someone from the ‘Times’, well that will be balanced!!!!
Ha ha ha BBC we see you
I would get the NHS to calculate the cost of alcohol sickness and hand the bill to the industry and tell them to such it up. The would be true capitalism. Produces must take responsibility for their product and not rely on the state bailing out problems created by them.
Having the NHS pick up the cost of their industry is something I would expect in a communist country.
Geri,
you need to convince 50%+1 voters to support Indy, because if you don’t, then nobody else in the world will give iScotland any time at all. No recognition, no trade deals, no membership of the UN, and most important, no money. Which iScotland would badly need, because it ain’t paying its own way now. Hasn’t since the 1970s, and that was only for a few years at the height of oil.
Best get that message out to the UDI supporters, such as the lunatic Ash Regan. She’s about the most dangerous woman, to Scots, in Scotland right now, because UDI is nothing more than a hand grenade, pin pulled out, and held firmly to Scotland’s stomach.
sarah @ 9:34 pm
“I never thought I would write this but…Willie Rennie has shown some principle and backbone.”
As Cesaire tells us, ‘there is an infinite distance between colonialism and civilization’. Rennie believes in the same one-nation Britain political ideology as his leader Cole Hamilton, that Scotland disnae or shoudnae exist. He campaigns for our perishing; the inevitable sacrifice of ‘a people’ and their national culture where colonialism is allowed to continue.
@ George Ferguson at 9.50 re Willie Rennie: I previously had no time for him at all, judging him to be trivial, based on his photo op antics, and the lack of any perceivable policies plus of course association with Alistair Carmichael. Perhaps being Leader didn’t suit him.
Thanks Dan for the link – one of these days I will apply myself to learning how to do them [I know you and BDTT and Robert Peffers have explained multiple times…].
James Jones
I’m not going anywhere. Yes will win the next election on a United ticket for Independence & with immediate effect we’ll be leaving the Union.
The UK will be terminated.
You’ll have to convince young ppl to remain in Brexshit Little England to vote No – where they’re always regarded as 2nd class citizens or cannon fodder & where thier votes don’t count.
Good luck with that!! Yer gonnie need a big plan on how to achieve it!
Geri says:
27 June, 2023 at 10:46 pm
Did the European Union tell little England it was forbidden to hold a referendum? It couldn’t leave? It needed 27 permission slips?”
No “tumbleweed moments” here. Simply Article 50.
A Scot abroad
What a pile of garbage!!
Scotland has refurbished England since the 70s onwards.
Have you never heard of Happy or McCrone or successive English PMs reveal Scotland true weath?
Away and dinnie talk pish!!
& Countries recognise other countries. Not permission slips & indy is well over 50% now & has been for yrs. How do I know that? Because the UK carried out a poll of the Union & then declared it locked as a matter of ‘National security’ & they repeatedly refused a section 30, then they had the supreme court break international laws to declare we were forbidden from leaving.
They wouldn’t do that if they’d nothing to fear.
They have everything to fear. It’s YES now & It’ll be a YES come elections.
So you’re still going to vote SNP? Mug!
But why do you think young people in England will have a vote on Scottish independence?
So you say it’s the Union which will need a plan? Not Scotland? You’ve copped out! Ongoing delusion.
I see that the “too wee, too poor, too stupid” troll is on backshift this week.
Article 50 was after the event.
A mechanism for exiting the European Union.
Fck all to do with actually holding a ref in the first place.
Little England has (it’s thinks) removed any such mechanism from Scotland.
So I’m afraid that was a FAIL to answer my question.
It’s is tumble weed from you. Explain why, if we’re not a colony, we can’t we hold a referendum without permission?
Because there’s no legislation for a taxpayer funded referendum of legal standing and no existing obligation for the rest of the union to recognise the result.
Sarah..
Re Rennie..
He is on damage limitation since the buffoon known as Alex Cole Hamilton had his rancid speech that Scotland as a Nation should never exist ever again.
& then hiss love in with Beth the trans prostitute..
And his appalling behaviour to the whistle blower who gave a grim picture of working for him.
& That they’ll be humped by Alba who is moving up the ranks..
Willie is on damage limitation patrol. They are toast at the next Holyrood elections & he will be trying real hard to hide all thier crap that’s came out over the last few months.
I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
Geri
Are you really that fuckin thick that you don’t realise you are having a conversation with a Troll?
It’s like having to be told that you are walking about with your dick hanging out.
Here’s an idea,,,give these wankers your email address, and then you can talk whatever shite you want to them, knowing that you are not clogging up Wings Over Scotland with your irrelevant pish.
Ministers weigh contingency plan for collapse of Thames Water!
I wonder who’ll be paying to service that £14bn debt?
Geri,
you are a bit of a dreamer. Nothing that you hope for is going to happen. Because it’s a big bad world, and the U.K. has huge influence in the sorts of institutions that iScotland would need to recognise it.
Face facts. Get 50%+1 in an Indy ref, and you are on your way. Any form of ludicrous UDI, and Scotland is going to get absolutely battered by the rest of the world.
So it’ll be the referendum, then.
James Jones.
Who mentioned the SNP?
Indy political parties don’t stand in England. English youngsters won’t have a vote unless they live here.
Scottish independent MPs will stand in all elections from now on in both parliaments. 50%+1 is instant negotiations to exit the Union.
That’s all that’s required. If England doesn’t wish to sit in the dark they’ll start negotiating too but if they don’t the international community will.
It’s a democratic vote & instantly recognised under international law. Scotland is a Nation. Not a possession.
They going to ban us from UK elections now too? Lol!!!
James Jones..
We don’t need the rest of the Union to recognise us because they’re sitting on the bus with us lol!!!
We don’t need Englands permission. That’s a myth & against International law. Are you going to send in the troops?
That’ll look braw to all those countries you invaded to *instill democracy* eh? Best we stop funding Uka-rainy eh?
Once again we are surrounded by talking EMPTY HEADS.
FFS Obviously nothing better to do than go round in circles.
Listen to the REV!
He has called the long shots every time.
Then lets get on with telling JOE PUBLIC.
I really despair at some of the Sh**e on here.
I am top old to wait for another 10 years.
When did anybody actually speak to someone under 20 years old and explain the reason to get involved and listen to their point of view. ( If they had one.)
DOH!!
Geri, that makes no sense. Like I said, the delusion here is epic.
Ron Clark
No, I’m not thick. Neither am I a fucking spammer. Your contribution so far has been endless spamming of links with no actual comment on Stu’s article.
So who is it walking about with thier dick out? Why don’t you go spam another site BTL with yer Express bullshit?
I’ve followed this site since indyref & ‘lurked’ for yrs reading comments.
Other ppl will do that too. Or they won’t. Thier choice.
Once an article is a few days old the convos inevitably turn to other things. Live with it.
If someone asks me a question or addresses me by name I will answer them if I’m here.
You are free to scroll past. I wasn’t aware BTL triggered so many ppl but you have no self awareness you are spamming this site. Sorry if I’m interrupting yer gazillion fucking links!
Have you actually commented on Stus article yet? No, you haven’t. Just spam so far..
I did as did many others.
@ Geri: Rennie’s “on damage limitation”.
Good point, well illustrated.
A Scot Abroad
No referendum required.
Every election from this point on with a manifesto pledge for Independence is all that’s needed with a 50% + 1 result.
There is no referendum needed. The election result IS the referendum.
No UDI – we’d have just held a legal & democratic vote through the ballot box.
What *huge* influence does England have? None.
Especially when there in no longer a ‘United Kingdom’ to be a member of anywhere. Their position will have to be renegotiated with these *huge* institutions you speak of – the security council will be the first to go. It being at the UN of all places..
& No longer since it Brexited.
& No longer since the 72 who’ve left the UK before us.
It’s you that’s a dreamer..
Amazing the people such as @Chas 7.35pm and A Scot Abroad 7.51pm who have NEVER actually used their brains to research their way out of their educational indoctrination and media brainwashing to discover that they have been getting lied to about everything including Hitler, WW2 and Bank/Financial System etc saying that what people like me who HAVE are either talking crap or wackos when they are showing that they are clueless about these subjects. Everything I have posted on these subjects is FACTS and I have all of the EVIDENCE for everything that I say.
A Scot Abroad says we should be developing a plan for Scotland – I have already told you the best way to get 100% for independence and that is to tell the people that we are going to set up our own peoples Central Bank and print our own debt and interest free money and that by doing this we will have NO inflation and also by doing this we will have NO need for taxing (robbing) the people to pay back FAKE debt plus interest and by doing this we will have all the money we need to create a better country for all of our people.
I actually gave the example of how this was the way that the US became the richest economy in the world after their independence before they were taken over by these Mafias that run this scam banking/financial system in most of this planet. I used Hitlers Germany as the second example of how he arrested and jailed the bankers and took over their banks and printed his own debt and interest free and inflation free money and spent it into his economy creating FULL employment in 3 years and making his people the best off they have ever been.
As I said they took Hitlers Germany – and Italy and Japan as they weer copying Hitler – out because they did not want the masses in all of the other countries questioning why their governments were not doing the same. Britain and France signed their treaty with Poland before WW2 in order to start the war and get Hitler the blame with the Polish government then ethnically cleansing and MURDERING the Germans living in the German areas handed over to Poland after WW1 forcing Hitler into going to their aid. Hitler knew what they were up to and even after over running Europe and forcing the British/French back to Dunkirk he stopped and offered to retreat back to the Pre-Versailles German border with NO strings attached but the corrupt puppet Churchill refused because as I said they could not let Hitler continue with his successful debt and interest and inflation free economy.
Just because you are ignorant of all of this does not mean it is crap or we are wackos because we DO know because we use our brains to do research to see through all of the LIES and PROPAGANDA. It was all LIES around Saddam Hussein as well – they took him and Iraq out because he stopped using the corrupt US Dollar for selling his oil and buying stuff. Same with Gaddafi and Libya – they took them out because he had made his people the most educated and well off in Africa with cheap petrol electricity and housing etc and because he was giving interest free loans to the rest of the African countries which was stopping them getting ripped off with the FAKE loans plus interest that the Mafia banking system was keeping them in perpetual debt with and robbing them of their resources with keeping their people poor.
Like I said already this is the simplest quickest way to get 100% voting for independence by telling the people we are going to set up our own peoples Central Bank and then print our own debt and interest free money with NO inflation and NO taxes the way it used to be and as per the examples I have given. Who is going to want to stay part of a UK that is run on behalf of a SCAM banking/financial system with FAKE debt plus interest and inflation and taxes and who is going to vote for political parties that defend that SCAM. There is your simple plan and all it needs is for the people to educate themselves to all of this instead of them living in their world of drivel and indoctrinated brainwashing.
Modern Monetary Theory, all very good.
Unfortunately, it’s why Scotland will never be allowed to print it’s own cash and why independence is somewhere over a rainbow.
Cheers Sarah.
I think he’ll be sucking up to try deflect attention away from the disaster that is Alex Cole Hamilton who should resign his position.
If he doesn’t think Scotland should ever exist again then neither should his wages & he should pack up his belongings & be gone from ‘Scottish’ politics.
Scotland never relinquished it’s territory. He’d know that if he had a clue about Scotland & it’s ppl.
He’s a bigoted troll. I dunno who thought he’d be a good leader. Must’ve been Murdo Fraser LOL!
Alf Baird @ 21.59
First off, thanks for indulging an “auld weegie” by using what is, for me, my own native tongue, which I first learnt formally over 75 years ago when I commenced school.
For me, my own natural grammar, syntax and spelling is exactly what I am using to type this post. It’s how my parents, grandparents, friends and relatives always spoke.
For your goodself, this may be regarded as making me a colonised Scot, for me it’s just natural. And, I much prefer reading the thoughts of Prof Baird as given and expressed by him rather than constantly being told what “post colonial theory would suggest”.
I promise you that such politics as this old duffer has are not shaped by my neither thinking in, nor expressing myself with, braid scots, doric, or the distinctive expressions of Fife.
And, in passing, though off topic, I truly do wish that you and Stuart Ballantyne had been responsible for the provision of the two necessary (catamaran) Ferries.
Thankyou for the courtesy of your comments.
I am continual surprised at the wholly negative intimations towards conservative minded fellow Scotsman. Just because of my slightly right of centre political views these seem to be wholeheartedly ignored by mainstream independence supporters. Scottish independence will remain a vision of the dead heads unless we embrace all interested parties regardless of political associations. Alas I see no binding alliance. I still believe in democracy rules….we voted to stay in the union. Maybe if we demonstrated a solid ability to deliver success on key social imperatives that vote may have been so so different. I personally need sound fiscal leadership to support a Scottish government. All I see is wasted opportunities.
The point of this article is to encourage MSP’s to think about who elected them and what the electorate would expect them to do in the situation that exists just now.
The suggestion was made that some of them resign and start afresh with honesty and accountability to their electorate, and I am talking about the MSP’s of all parties here.
The example that was given was of Margot McDonald and so it has been done before. All that I would say is that you need to be good to make it work and I suspect therein lies the problem.
That these MSPs hold views more akin to those of Wings supporters doesn’t make them any braver, more principled, or less fond of gravy.
They’ll cling to the job and pension, convincing themselves that they are more effective staying in the tent.
They see Alba and see that any new party, however eloquent, simply gets squashed by the SNP machine and its deep control of the state.
Scotland has created an anti-democratic monster as corrupt and self serving as any one party state run by a mixture of crooks and ideological zealots.
@Red says:27 June, 2023 at 8:50 pm
But I am Scottish, so will be happy to argue with you
Laydees & Gennulmen, I give you what is perhaps the only true statement posted on here last night.
Incidentally, Red, I am pleased that you acknowledge the fact that China & India both have their political feet flat to the floor on the fossil-fueled accelerator.
As they are also two countries that are likely to be spectacularly impacted by climate change, it really does make one think, if one has any capacity for thought, that is. They can’t all be planning to come here when it goes pear.
Certainly a fact to be deployed the next time an almond-milk drinking, veggie-growing, battery enthusiast starts droning on about car ownership.
@Billy Carlin says:28 June, 2023 at 12:38 am
Not much of what you write gels with my historical understanding. I recommend the following:
link to wiki.mises.org
As suggested by the title of the article, there was inflation in Nazi Germany. One interesting fact in the article: the Germans were careful to ensure that all the costs of their military occupations accrued to the occupied territories. For that reason alone, it was never feasible for Germany to give up and withdraw to its pre-war borders.
The article also explains about the post-war creation of the DM, and how that worked for ordinary Germans. Perhaps some relevance there to the creation of the new post-Indy Scottish currency.
Billy Carlin,
your plan for Scotland just printing debt is absolute lunacy. Even the Zimbabweans would laugh at it. They’ve gone to the US dollar, now, after their attempt at printing their own debt resulted in 35,900% inflation.
I suspect that you have failed the interview to be iScotland’s central bank.
Sven @ 1:41 am
“what “post colonial theory would suggest”.”
Thanks for your response.
Postcolonial theory is important nonetheless; the entire UN self-determination process depended on it. It is what enabled many colonies to become liberated from the scourge of imperialism, including linguistic imperialism and its adverse psychological effects on ‘a people’.
Our nationalist leaders lack understanding, their knowledge of ‘the colonial condition’ remains ‘rudimentary’; the theory tells us this, which explains their lack of progress, and the rupture in the movement.
Theory is also important in all areas, including maritime transport. None of those dealing with Scottish ferries policy has any formal high level education in the principles of maritime policy/economics. If they did, they might understand that the type of ferries they procure and the way they procure them is always seriously flawed. Hence the repeated and longstanding mistakes, and problems for island communities.
Most areas of Scottish Gov policy seem to be similarly flawed, which implies that those making or implementing decisions and policies are not sufficiently educated in the theoretical principles involved (e.g. biology; colonialism; transport; landownership etc). Such officials should at least be educated to Masters level in the specific area involved before being given high level policy responsibility in it.
We have a ‘mediocre meritocracy’ in other words, which again postcolonial theory tells us is a standard feature in a colonial society/territory.
Just watched a news story about 700,000 English school pupils being in buildings that are dangerous and or unhealthy to be in.
Regular sewage back ups flooding the school regularly making primary kids ill.
Another spending £100K per annum on repairs and it’s got to come out of their teaching budget.
New Student loans to increase by up to 50% according to Martin Lewis.
English Water Bills to increase by 40%.
The water board share holders have made billions and have polluted the rivers and seas regularly to dangerous levels and now the public have to pay to do they work they haven’t been doing for decades.
Some Scots saying the want to stick with and be like these Westminster morons behind it all
Mr Carlin
It appears that the nurses forgot to lock the door to the computer room last night and you managed to gain access again.
Did you post under the name ‘Gordon Gekko’ previously?
Keep taking the tablets-they are for your own good.
Thanks Tinto Cheil,
I’m always happy to write in Scots, and I do indeed have the books you mention including Lorimers magnificent work.
(Incidentally my wife, daughter of an Aberdeenshire quine, tells me that Doric translatiion of the Bible is imminent, or might already be published).
I gave up trying to post in Scots here because the spellchecker is an implement of imperial dominance, and I don’t have time to fight it. I also have some Gaelic, but that’s an even higher mountain.
Alf Baird,
buying ferries is really quite simple for a commercial business.
You issue requirements to 3 or 4 proper ferry building companies, you don’t tell them your budget, you get their tenders back, you pick the one with the best answers and a credible price, they build it, you take delivery.
See Pentland Ferries as a good Scottish example.
You don’t need a Masters in Business to do that. You just need to understand how business works.
“Please explain how Scottish Indy will be helped, aided, assisted and/or encouraged by the destruction of 404 and the success of Russti military, expansionist, colonialist imperialism?”
One has nothing to do with the other.
The conflict arose due US/UK imperialism that is well known, and the 15,000 or so sanctions against the RF are part of the cost of living crises along with Brexit, which are self-inflicted.
The sanctions are killing thousands in Africa, as only 3% of 404’s grain is sent to them the rest goes to the Atlanticist ran Europe.
I suspect that you have failed the interview to be iScotland’s central bank
au contraire …
This is Scotland after all.
The interview is just for show. The final decision is made on the results of the box ticking process.
Main inventing new “names” by the day now.
Then he sets about having a conversation with HIMSELF.
Then he gets the fishing rod out and tries to bait some clown like “Geri” or “Dan” to engage in some meaning (not), conversation.
How fuckin thick to you have to be not to see what this wanker Main is up to?
Main has flooded Wings with “names”.
The sole purpose being to fuck up and disrupt BTL comments ,,and to control the debate.
I could call Main a dildo or even a Fanny, but those are useful things, Main on the other hand is just a useless piece of shit.
@Republicofscotland says:28 June, 2023 at 9:52 am
One has nothing to do with the other
Ha bloody ha.
Sure, the optics of pro-Indy fanatics being anti-Indy fanatics when it comes to the other side of Europe are opaque to you, but not to anybody else.
The conflict arose due US/UK imperialism
Ha bloody ha.
that is well known
Naw, it’s nae.
the cost of living crises along with Brexit, which are self-inflicted
So, Covid self-inflicted? Military invasion and attempted colonialist assimilation self-inflicted? Ha bloody ha.
The sanctions are killing thousands in Africa
Naw, RF refusal to allow grain exports is killing people. I would put the figure much higher, BTW. And it could all be stopped tomorrow by RF getting back behind its 2021 borders. Cos nobody cared a scooby back in 2021, despite all your assertions to the contrary that RF was being threatened.
As always, RoS, you are eternally trying to justify the unjustifiable in the warped belief it advances your agenda.
Naw, it disnae.
Republicofscotland,
you couldn’t be more wrong about 404’s grain exports. Historically, half went to China, with Turkey and Egypt also being major markets. It’s only really Spain within western Europe that’s a market, with 6% of the total. A bit to Holland as well.
You should really try looking up some facts, rather than just inventing things.
Scot abroad
Printing cash making Zimbabweans laugh!
What like the bank of England. What is the UK debt level now?
All that oil money gone, all that debt and virtually none of it spent in Scotland, a place mired in drugs unemployment and food banks.
You need to take a look at how London is pulling your leg.
Come back when you can tell me what we are not as rich as Norway.
Btw what shift you on now sensible
@Ron Clark says:28 June, 2023 at 10:16 am
Here you go, Ron, innarestin article on Unherd this morning:
“Is liberal society making us ill? – Social contagions plague a vulnerable demographic”
It explains why so many people are spiraling into delusion and pathologisation. It defines the meanings of the words “sadfish” and “sadfishing”. You’re gonna need these.
Happy to help, Ron.
Shug,
the U.K. normally issues gilts, rather than printing money, although there’s been that as well ever since that embarrassment of a Scot, Gordon Brown, failed to control and regulate the financial sector. The total debt is about 80:20 in favour of gilts over printed money.
National debts are built on future tax revenues. Investors have the confidence that if they buy £100 million today on a ten year bond, they’ll get a few percent interest each year, and the country will still be around in 10 years and still raising tax to pay them back their original £100 million when the term expires.
You can’t really say that about Zimbabwe.
For an iScotland, it’s yet to be proven. But the fact is that Scotland currently consumes a lot more money than it raises in revenue. So not a good start for an iScotland. Investors may buy Scottish debt, but they’d charge a hefty premium.
“you couldn’t be more wrong about 404’s grain exports.”
The Black Sea Grain Initiative ends on July 17th, 404 has utterly abused it, and its very likely the RF will end it altogether, its only RF’s concern for the poorer African nations that saw it last so long.
404’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba (A mad dog Bolton) toured African nations last year with all sorts of promises on sending more grain via the RF’s initiative but as usual it was just empty rhetoric.
Someone is peddling Yoon nonsense about Scotland’s finances again….
Same fuckin’ tune, change the record.
Main.
I see I’ll have to spell it out for you.
Here goes.
The US instigated the coup in 404 knowing the RF would respond to it, the entire plan was to cut the RF out of Europe and replace RF goods with US goods and it has worked so far, to the detriment of Europe and its people.
It of course has far reaching consequences for Third World countries who rely on all sort of cheap food imports and donations.
The US now has most of the European market and that was a bit part of the plan.
link to consortiumnews.com
@Republicofscotland says:28 June, 2023 at 11:39 am
its only RF’s concern for the poorer African nations that saw it last so long
Now this could be true.
Wagner is all over the poorer African nations, such as Sudan, the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali, helping the local elites to asset strip these countries, whilst filling their own mercenary coffers and underwriting the wider RF war effort.
RF concerns that Wagner might have to pay more on the ground for their food supplies might well be in play here.
The neo-colonialism being practised by RF on the African continent is well documented.
Scot abroad
Wonder who bought the gilts
Printed money is a better deacription
What shift you on
John Main
Yes. All those people in Mali, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, etc. are too stupid to realise that they’re waving Russian flags when they should be waving French ones, link to archive.ph
Ron Clark 10:09
You do you eh?
Stop dictating who can & cannot respond to a conversation. No one likes a fcking milk monitor – especially on forums that don’t belong to them & no one appointed you for that role. Clown!
Stu allows comments from EVERYONE so until that changes you’ll just have to suck it up, stop obsessing or pray one day he makes YOU a fucking moderator (unlikely!)
I haven’t spent a lot of time here over the past few months so I dunno why you’ve singled me (& Dan) out for yer wee episode. Makes me wonder if yer my old nemesis of Andy Pandy?…
See how paranoia works?
Last time I was here Stu issued a warning for personal attacks. I suggest you need it but that’s up to you. I’m not a child but you seem to be. You’ve offered nothing constructive so far (either on the article or in the convo) other than spamming links & playing board police.
There’s some very interesting vids on YouTube on how BRICS has slowly crept in over the past few decades.
Countries in the East sick of imperial sanctions.
Governments print money to service thier interest payments. Making the bare minimum payment leads to spiralling debts. They print money – what bank do you know that lets a borrower owe trillions without cutting them off as a bad customer? Lol!! None. Because that’s what a central bank does. It prints money then takes it back through interest payments, loans, mortgages etc.
Yoons thinking the English don’t print money? LOL!!!!
Does anyone remember the original article “Burning house’? It’s right there at the top of all these comments. No need to worry though, we are so far away that nobody is going to get burned. There is still a lot of hot air about though. Curious innit.
BBC running a news blackout of Humza’s trip to Brussels
Yes BBC we see you for what you are
Gordon says:
28 June, 2023 at 11:42 am
“Someone is peddling Yoon nonsense about Scotland’s finances again….
Same fuckin’ tune, change the record.”
Well said, that man. I was going to get involved with one of them again but what’s the effing point, time to stop feeding the -oh so numerous- trolls. There’s at least three shifts on duty now – what can they be so worried about I wonder….
Jeezo – heres ‘DasBlimp’ from under the stone now….must be changeover time.
Give me strength….
Re upthread about the Rev Stu and the closing down of his First Direct bank account without warning. Someone commented that it is owned by HSBC and this is indeed the case. I am six month behind reading my Private Eye subscription and I am currently reading issue #1587 2-15th December 2022 and I just read this on page 14 of it.
“HSBC surely wants influence with the parties that determine how it will be taxed and regulated-it paid huge fines for misbehaviour after the 2008 financial crash-but elsewhere it has been nervous of political associations. In 2021, the London headquartered bank denied accusations from MPs it had supported China’s crackdown on Hong Kong democracy in 2020 by freezing accounts belonging to pro-democracy activists and appearing to welcome Beijing’s oppressive new security law.”
Shug,
the vast majority of gilts are bought by pension funds, whose rules require them invest in a sensible fashion, so they spread their purchases between shares, gilts, maybe some foreign investments.
I don’t know if you have a private pension plan or maybe get your work to pay in 5% of your salary, but most in work people do, and find that they then own a share of U.K. gilts.
I’m not on a shift, merely observing that’s how gilts work.
A Scot abroad
How can a population of only 5 million, with an abundance of wealthy natural resources, who can’t borrow & can’t overspend it’s set budget, be absolutely pish poor & spend way above its means?
It doesn’t.
Scotland pays in way more than it ever gets back & that fact has been done to death over the past decade. This site has oodles of articles on the subject as well as parliamentary debates on the government website.
It’s a myth to the point it’s embarrassing now. Better Together pish that was debunked & quickly dropped from thier campaign because it was embarrassing the first time they tried it that even Cameron was forced to concede.
Maybe you didn’t get the memo from 2013/4?
In the Telegraph today. Makes yer proud dunnit!
”
A leading Scottish private school is to allow children as young as 12 to socially transition without their parents’ knowledge under a new transgender policy.
George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, in guidelines being consulted on with parents, said pupils aged 12 and over would “usually be deemed competent” to demand that parents were not informed if they chose to adopt a new gender.
It also calls for teachers and other staff to “normally respect a child or young person’s wishes and use the name/pronoun they have asked to be used,” despite growing fears over the dangers of social transition.
”
Serious question: How did we get to this?
If the media ignored the question of independence, it would make SNP’s task of maintaining Devolution impossible!
The propaganda war is vital to maintain the appearance of a battle for independence. There is no such battle, only hot air being spouted, by both sides.
Not one inch nearer to any mechanism to independence. Yes the “mood music”, keeps the fantasy lively, especially around election time!
dasBlimp @ 13.38
In 2014 the leader of a competent, serious, independently minded administration was replaced by a “me,me,me” sociopath who lost no time in surrounding herself by servile, self seeking sycophants whose main interest was feathering their own nests.
The past 9 years have been spent in grievance politics picking fights with Westminster rather than focusing on building an enviably better Scotland where ordinary folk would be able to experience for themselves what could be achieved.
Unlike John Main I don’t cry, “Show us the money” … I’d rather say, look at what Alex Salmond achieved in improving the governance of Scotland in just 7 years 2007-2014. Where could we be now if that firm base had been built upon.
Narcissism.
I remember a time when a teacher’s private life was just that, private. Dare to ask one about outside of school would end up with two of the strap for being belligerent.
Now they can’t wait to share with *their* children (class) who they’re shagging, what shananigans they got up to over the weekend with thier rainbow clad shrine of their partner, explaining in detail their pronouns & painting the entire class with rainbows whether weans like it or not.
Notice it’s all about the *me* there & there is fck all teaching ABC but plenty alternative lifestyle.
Narcissism. It’s a pandemic.
The only chance the separatistas have got of overturning the democratically expressed will of the Scottish people in the 2014 “once in a lifetime” referendum would be if Alex Salmond can somehow turn the Alba minnow into a fully grown cock salmon.
I don’t see that happening, despite the catastrophic implosion of the SNumPty party and the fact that political nature tends to abhor a vaccuum.
Go and read the beast of Jekyll island and stop punting Tory/labour spin on how the economy works
Next thing you will be telling me tax pays for the NHS and pensions
where did the oil money go
You need to get a better bot
Are you on the same desk as sensible dave
Re Salmond
He’s said if ‘Scotland United’ doesn’t materialise & become a strategy then Alba will stand in far more constituencies than just against the tories.
Seems he’ll be taking the gloves off ..
About time.
SNP can either play ball or get out the way. Indy won’t forgive them if they pass this up..
@John Main 8.03am
Your historical understanding is based on LIES and PROPAGANDA as I have been explaining to you all.
Plus you are relying on Wikipedia as well which is controlled by our corrupt governments/secret services etc to put our their “truth” – even the founder of Wikipedia is telling people all over the place he does NOT trust Wikipedia for this reason – go watch the video on the UnHerd Youtube channel called “Wikipedia Co-Founder: I no longer Trust The Website I Created”.
That is all the usual LIES and PROPAGANDA on Wikipedia to fool the hard of thinking plus what they have done is take the REAL Private Banker FAKE money printing that was done to the German Wiemar Republic that destroyed the German economy creating massive INFLATION along with the massive INTEREST on that FAKE debt and they have LIED to say that it was during Hitlers printing of debt and interest free money printing where he had NO inflation. That is why Hitler arrested the bankers and took over their banks and printed his own debt and interest and inflation free money so they tried to undermine his economy and bring it down by using the Stock Exchange/Financial System that these Mafias own and control in all of our countries so Hitler shut that down as well.
You do NOT get inflation by printing your own debt and interest free money. The government decides what amount of money is need for the latest year to do everything that they need and then when everything is done they write that money off for that year so then NO debt and NO inflation. It is the debt and interest to PRIVATE BANKERS that causes the inflation.
@A Scot Abroad 8.33am – This above is in answer to your uneducated crap as well – The Zimbabwe Central Bank was and is owned by the same PRIVATE BANKERS that own the Private Corporation Bank of England that is in the City of London Private Corporation that is NOT part of the UK who also own the Private Corporation Federal Reserve that is in the Private Corporation Washington DC that is NOT part of the US and who own just about every other Central Bank on this planet as well. It is this SCAM Private Banking System that is DELIBERATELY creating the inflation to control and destroy our economies to bring in these Mafias that own and control everything’s agenda.
A people that own and control their own economy and print their own debt and interest free money will NOT have any inflation and cannot be controlled by any corrupt outside bankers/Mafia’s. This is what the people need to waken up to and do and be warned how these Mafias put people into all of the positions of power etc to take over countries especially the banking/financial system in a country.
Not that this makes the slightest bit of difference in the foreign parliament in a foreign country, Scotland could have a hundred indy minded MPs and it would change a thing they are badly outnumbered.
“SCOTLAND is set to have two fewer representatives at Westminster despite the planned changes being previously described as “outrageous”.
The Boundary Commission for Scotland published its final recommendations for UK Parliament constituencies in Scotland, with two MP seats set to be cut from the allocation north of the border.
Wales will also lose eight MPs through the shake-up, with England gaining 10 overall.
Scotland currently has 59 MPs, but this will be cut to 57 when the changes are approved by the UK Government.
Two seats – Na h-Eileanan an Iar and Orkney and Shetland – are protected under legislation. Of the remaining 55 seats, only eight remain unchanged.
Once the changes are approved, the boundary changes will come into effect, ahead of the next General Election. “
“The only chance the separatistas have got of overturning the democratically expressed will of the Scottish people in the 2014”
The majority of the Scottish people voted YES in 2014.
Republicofscotland,
you keep peddling this nonsense about the majority of Scots voting Yes in 2014.
It’s actually quite racist of you to insist that someone you don’t recognise as Scottish (maybe they are English, or brown and were born in Asia) isn’t as valuable to Scotland as someone who is entirely ethnically Scottish.
If you live in Scotland, and have the vote, your vote is just as valid as anyone else’s vote. Whether you come from Arbroath, Anglesey, or Accra.
@Sven, 1.58pm 28 June
Well said
Why are Scots meant spend precious hours of daylight trying to convince unionist to be independence for Scotland supporters.
I suspect this of being a excellent delay plan tactic by the unionist,
At the end of the day this delay has seen many retire from South of the border to Scotland changing the demegraphics of the vote,
This is ideology and has been efficient in its delay tactics,
It kinda rubs shoulders with the unionist dictatorship of telling Scotland what there percentage mark should be to achieve Scotlands independence.
Anyone living in Scotland only needs to observe the failing Britain, imposed austerity, the financial crashes, the rich getting considerably richer and divide widening between the middle income class and those that run Britain,
The constant wars and proxy wars to realise tax payers mony is not being returned to the NHS or to infrastructure across Britain
If the soft or hard No’s living in Scotland cannot see this demise of the of the old empire increasing at a ever increasing pace,
With mortgages increasing and energy prices rising
Immigration high and house building investments low,
The Wee pretendy Scottish parliament and Scotland itself has always been the testing ground for policies that Westminster wants to bring to Britain and its dominions in general,
The poll tax was a very pin point moment to display this,
However the gender issue is another one of those directions Westminster always intended to go.
I was watching Andrew Brigden trying to stop the indoctrination of our Children underthe Trans gender policies this week in Westminster,
The politicians in Westminster voted against Andrew Brigden.
The policy of Westminster is to see if they would get away with a bad or dictorial policy across britain by trialing them in their devolved areas first,
These policies can then be blamed and finger pointed, on Scotland, Wales and N Ireland,
But we must not forget that While the pretence to oppose the devolved governments legislation is there for media purpose propaganda,
All devolved legislation has to be approved by royal assent, as was the Scotland Act, the transgender legislation, the hate crime Scotland bill, the rape clause legislation etc,
All these policies are UK Westminster testing grounds under the Colonial (Scotland) Act management sent to Scotland as our Wee pretendy Scottish parliament.
The Scottish devolved parliament remains Westminsters legislation Baby,
I hear the nonsense about the wee pretendy Scottish parliament having to beg its master in Westminster for a referendum.
And it opens your eyes as to wether Scotland parliament is its own master.
Or a arm of political policies trialed out on Scots, before being introduced further afield without Westminster taking the direct hit or flack for it.
I also see by this method of indirect hidden policy legislation through the back door of devolved governments , A Westminster that follows suit, with a few wrinkles ironed out (after testing trials) by a few months or a year later,
If we want independence here in Scotland, the first thing we need is to have Scottish parliament that is actually Scottish and not a branch office of its Colonial master,
Scotlands parliament and devolved governance will always take the blame for the bad management of Scotland, as it was meant to.
While being run under hand by Westminster legislation and distant prevailing policies,
I do not see the point of delaying tactics to convince those that are to voluntary to blind to see,
Monopolising the Boundary seats and MSP is nothing new for Westminster, this was done to Scotland under the “representation of the People Act,”
Then they reduced those areas for that representation of the people and are continuing to do so,
“It’s actually quite racist of you to insist that someone you don’t recognise as Scottish”
The above is hilarious, coming from a Britnat whose beloved union, (England) their government is sending the exact same folk to Rwanda, not to mention Theresa May’s go home vans aimed at foreigners, and then there’s Brexit, which said to everyone not born in the UK, look, will just all f*ck off.
To compound Westminster’s bias Yemenis and Palestinians and other BROWN skinned folk not to mention the boat people which the English media demonises can’t get into the UK yet WHITE skinned 404’s get everything that’s going in the UK.
Finally if you’d bothered to check many countries don’t give votes to incomers on constitutional matters and rightly so.
I read some idiotic comment today that is as follows.
Did the European Union tell little England it was forbidden to hold a referendum? It could’nt leave, it needed 27 permission slips.
Scotland is not in a hoax treaty with 27 other Countries and never was,
There are only two,
And one of those two is Scotland,
If Scotland decides it wants to walk away without UDI being involved it can do so,
For there is NO old English parliament in existence to sue it for breach of the treaty,
And there is NO old Scottish parliament to sue against for breach of the treaty,
Both according to Xaracen ceased to exist in 1707,
Who does Scotland have to require permission slips from to walk away, please name them.
James Che,
you are really going out on a rotten limb with your “argument” that the gender bill that went through Holyrood was some form of Westminster testing ground.
No. It was entirely dreamt up by the SNP and Greens. The reason that it’s not the law is because Whitehall stopped it.
It was entirely Scottish lunacy. Unless somehow you are now going to be claiming that Nicola Sturgeon is English. You might try that tack, because the Lord alone knows what goes on in your head. Utter gibberish, normally.
Scotland does not require a permission slip to leave from the UK government as Scotland did not sign a treaty of union with the UK government.
Long term gravy train passenger SNP MP Stewart Hosie to stand down.
Hosie who had the ridiculous title of SNP Treasury spokesperson at Westminster, added;
“I will, of course, remain an active member of the SNP and find other ways in which I can help further the cause of Scottish independence.
“I will also give my full backing to whoever is selected to replace me.”
For any dream to become reality..
You first need to wake-up.
SNP is infested, unfit for purpose, Cannae even present a credible lie, regards Indy policy!
Only a successful coup of the NEC, could possibly repair the existing damage to the party.
To delude yourself of the inevitable loss of seats, than currently held, is a credible case to take independence forward, is suicide for all concerned.
Best step back from the edge now, accept that the party is damaged and do something about it, while still time!
Less than 38% of the Scottish electorate voted Yes in the once in a lifetime referendum.
Democracy can be a bitch!
Did you bother to read the bit about Andrew Brigden, noooo.
He is a English MP in England and in Westminster and as far as I am aware just got voted down in Westminster by English politicians for trying to stop the indoctrination on trans gender issues in schools,
So Westminster as it always intended after trialing it in Scotland first under there legislated devolved government to Scotland just voted in agreement with with there devolved government to Scotland,
The thing you choose to deliberately miss ASA is it is not a Scottish parliament and it is not a Scottish government,
It is a facade, it is a Westminster branch office that always need to seek permission for whatever it does from master Westminster, it also has to wait for Royal assent for it legislation to pass,
So for the Scottish perverted bills to pass in Scotland while the devolved government is under british legislation it also has to given Royal consent from the monarchs of Britain,
How is that for connections to the wrong side of child safety, womens rights, sex trafficking and stopping dead people in morgues from being sexually assaulted,
And been as you bought up the connections to the Snp whom exist as workers and employees of the british government under their legislation, go for it,
We have known for a long time here in Scotland, they do not represent the people of Scotland.since 2014 anyway,
Sorry but the legal connections all lead back to the roots of UK legislation that has to be given consent to outwith Scotland.
Every word written or uttered for the case of independence, mostly wasted effort, at this time.
Every ounce of energy should be to oust the current NEC of The Scottish National Party!
Politicians within the party are being judged by the hour, as the movement awaits a revolution!
Scotland United. I could unite, behind an SNP candidate. If they adopt the Scotland United strategy.
It’s the only way, I could vote for the SNP. Because I’m voting for a people and a cause, and not a political party.
The SNP have betrayed us all.
But we’re not voting for the SNP. We’re voting for Independence. If ever there was a time for Scotland United. It is now.
Republicofscotland says:
28 June, 2023 at 3:47 pm
”
“It’s actually quite racist of you to insist that someone you don’t recognise as Scottish”
The above is hilarious, coming from a Britnat whose beloved union, (England) their government is sending the exact same folk to Rwanda…………….
”
=============
The mistake you made there was conflating ASA’s words with the actions of the (admittedly) odious WM Tory government. This conflation thingy is typical in this kind of debate: It doesn’t provide clarity, it is disingenuous and it frustrates. Try calming down a bit and thinking harder before submitting your posts. There’s a good lad.
When Czechoslovakia split into two states there was no referendum, the velvet divorce.
Only 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs in opinion polls favoured dissolution. That was not considered a problem by legislatures involved.
Those who argue for a majority for independence in Scotland might refer.
I doubt a UK divorce would be «velvet».
James Che says:
“I read some idiotic comment today that is as follows.
Did the European Union tell little England it was forbidden to hold a referendum? It could’nt leave, it needed 27 permission slips.”
Guilty as charged LOL
I was giving the example of the UK leaving the EU.
It did not need permission to leave the EU or permission to hold a referendum or endless criteria to meet.
If we’re not a colony (As some suggested) then why are we forbidden?
It’s a nonsense.
It’s also against international law.
Section 30 is a WM invention.
Ebenezer Scroggie
Jesus F*ckin Christ.
Although I enjoy correcting Britnat wankstains such as yourself, GCHQ/Denison/useful idiot/ Britnat trolls sometimes it can be tedious.
No matter.
Firstly the fu*kin once in a lifetime indyref wasn’t, for it wasn’t mentioned in the Edinburgh Agreement.
Secondly.
link to 12ft.io
Whilst shopping in Asda yesterday a pre recorded message came over the PA. It was promoting an LGBTQI charity which was “placing role models into classrooms” to bring about a “cultural shift” and Asda boasted of having donated £100,000 to it.
James Che says:
28 June, 2023 at 4:23 pm
Scotland does not require a permission slip to leave from the UK government as Scotland did not sign a treaty of union with the UK government.
=================
Great! Let’s get on with it then.
Anton Decadent @ 17.07
So now I have to trudge along to Tesco, beggar it !
Anton Decadent says:
28 June, 2023 at 5:07 pm
Whilst shopping in Asda yesterday a pre recorded message came over the PA.
===============
And that’s why I don’t shop at Asda. That, and the fact their products are crap and it’s full of chavs. The Co-op is doing the same around our way: bottles of wine adorned with the rainbow flag. It’s all bollocks.
If Scotlands democracy is blocked, if Scotlands right to self determination is stymied, if Scotland has a Colonial governing body overseeing it politics,
If Scotland voice is prevented due to acting colonial master not allowing Scotland its own media,
If Scotland is prevented from having trade deals,
If Scotland has to beg a master for its freedom time and again which is always refused,
If Scotland resources are stolen and licencsed out with its territory by a master elsewhere,
If Scotland lands are sold,
then we are more than to wee, to stupid, and become to poor.
For no one holds a treaty with us ( Scotland) that still exists today,
We never had or entered into or signed a treaty of union with the British parliament,
We never have held, entered into or signed a treaty of union with the UK parliament.
The last treaty we signed was with a now extinct extinguished parliament of England,
That treaty is also extinct and extinguished since 1707.
The Scottish parliament that made and contributed to that treaty is now extinct and extinguished in England,
That treaty is also extinct and extinguished.
The Treaty of Parliamentary unions or union future union of monarchy died with those two extinct/ extinguished parliaments.
Any promises made for a future union of parliaments between the two Countries died, ceased to exist, became void as soon as both separate parliament promises were cut of when becoming extinguished and extinct.
Neither EX Parliament could proceed after being extinguished or could enter the fallacous British parliament in unity of parliaments thereafter..
Who does Scotland ask or turn to, to ask for its freedom from in a treaty if the parliament it made a treaty with no longer exist and is extinct?
In a democracy the majority of the electorate may well know little about politics and processes of «power». The majority may well be indifferent, complacent, uninformed to the point of stubborn resistance to any kind of systemic change.
Those engaged in seeking systemic change should not allow themselves to be hung on the gibbet of those who fear change.
A functioning democracy is a restless, dynamic force which indifference, complacency and hubris may impede.
A Scot abroad
Re gender indology came directly from WM.
Remember the Labour party was infested by *women’s officers* that weren’t women, taking up roles in the Labour party & banning most of its membership having a hissy fit. Do you not remember the Madigan era of complete lunacy? LOL!
It went tits up & they abolished it only for Sturgeon to take up the baton & run with it.
It is entirely a WM invention transported North as a testing ground just as the poll tax was.
You lot can add B&Q to that list too. They’ve also gone Tonto with the rainbows..lol!
Daffy James Che bored us all with:
Who does Scotland ask or turn to, to ask for its freedom from in a treaty
=====
Is the answer “the English” and do I get a prize?
Geri.
I understand what you were trying to say, to prove a point,
But the unionist are confused enough over history propaganda they have been taught,
I try avoid to them to much to think about all in one go,
I know you are keen for Scottish independence as much as I am I read your posts quite a lot,
If you really do want to send them crazy at the same time as educating Scots that have not had access to British information until recently
Well I am more than willing to colaberate with you over wether there is actually a treaty in existence between Scotland and England,
It drives them Crazy. To think we (Scotland) could just walk away.without incorporating UDI 😉
North code,
Can I persuade you to rethink your retirement from Wings,
I may not have been up to your good standards, but I will sorely miss your contributions and teachings.
Please keep posting even if you chose to do so on a variety of Scottish literature 🙂
We all just self identify as Independent Scots.
sorted.
Get some men in thier nans frocks & we’re good to go.
They’ll instantly recognise our stunning & brave new outlook where no one dares question it.
A Scot Abroad said;
“Republicofscotland, you keep peddling this nonsense about the majority of Scots voting Yes in 2014.
It’s actually quite racist of you to insist that someone you don’t recognise as Scottish (maybe they are English, or brown and were born in Asia) isn’t as valuable to Scotland as someone who is entirely ethnically Scottish.
If you live in Scotland, and have the vote, your vote is just as valid as anyone else’s vote. Whether you come from Arbroath, Anglesey, or Accra.”
ASA, your ignorance is epic and abusive! This is not a matter of race it is a matter of appropriate representation and sovereignty. It is the ‘ethnically Scottish’ voters who own Scotland’s sovereignty, the rest do not.
Scotland belongs to those sovereigns, and on any major constitutional matter like Scotland’s independence, the decision belongs solely to Scotland’s owners, and not to Scotland’s guests! That was Salmond’s only real mistake!
check this out –
look at all the little efta countries and those adjacent to us; we have all they have and more – all together – fish, oil/gas, golf, tourism, whisky, salmon, financial services.
so – where is the UK? Maybe top 20, but imagine where it goes if Scotland leaves, and we end up top 5 initially, then #1 in the years after, and England drops to #30 – what happens to the english political class then?
small independent countries kick-ass, no matter what the nigels spraff on their keyboards … the only worry in financial terms will be a currency which is too “hard” and dying of laughter when england loses its topranked debt rating, as decided by its own markets … ouch! – gilts are junk, sell, sell, sell
JAMES CHE
Freedom is there for the taking. A permission, a by your leave from third parties is not required. The Anglo-Scottish union is functionally dead. Devolving power from Westminster, however feeble, to Scotland but not to England, tore the unitary state «Union Treaties» to shreds.
Those in Scottish political life should not assume the humble posture of supplicants, to any.
There was a study done by some university after indyref that was published by the BBC.
A breakdown of the demographics of indyref.
It was rUK who voted no & EU citizens.
The Scots voted YES.
We’d have won but having the franchise open to all was a terrible mistake by Salmond (or whoever it was who floated that idea) First thing BT did was go after the EU citizens saying an iScot would throw them all out..
& Look who ended up doing that?!!
I think we need people to commission another White Paper on Independence a blueprint of an Independent Scotland.
As part of the Scotland United campaign.
People need a tangible plan of a different future that’s ring ready for the election.
It might cost hundreds of thousands of pounds but it, you can’t build a people’s movement without a vision of Independence.
50,000 marched through the streets of Edinburgh just a few years ago.
150,000 could, be marching on the steets again. On the instruction of our elected politicians. A people’s assembly, convention. Whatever you want to call it.
We can collapse Holyrood. Turn that into a referendum. Change the standing orders. And do it easily.
There must be a company of business in every part of Scotland who believes in Independence. We can turn their offices into polling stations.
We can hold our own catalonia style referendum. That won’t be respected but it will help to mobilise the popular movement.
We can, organise a general strike. When everyone is on board a few years from now. We can do so much.
It’s possible. And then in the background we can get our legal minds to take our case to the United Nations.
It’s only a matter of time. Clearly support for Independence is now consistently higher than 50 per cent in the polls.
It’s up to the Unionists to make the case for us to stay. I entirely agree.
If Independence is polling at 53 per cent at present.
Just think where it will be. When people actually do some work on Independence.
Our SNP government and their civil servants are abysmal. Unfortunately the UK Government is even worse. The World’s lowest barometer.
Britain is a failed state. It rules no waves. No one can relate to Rikki Sunak. Or Kier Starmer who the hates the unions.
Now Anas Sarwar is smooching with Rupert Murdoch. He sees the Labour Party as the next colonial administrators. They will promise everything in the newspapers, and the mainsteam media.
Most Scots will never get behind it. If given a vision of an Independent Scotland free from the war mongering NATO British State. And their spiralling debt ceiling and inflation and shite pensions.
I did listen to a bit of the SNP conference. One guy said.
Bairns not Bombs.
Nurses not Nukes.
Teachers not trident.
That’s what I want to hear. Hopefully the Alba Party have got a blueprint for Independent Scotland going on behind the scenes.
We just need this Scotland United plan to come together first.
Geri says:
28 June, 2023 at 5:36 pm
It is entirely a WM invention transported North as a testing ground just as the poll tax was.
==========
On Scotland and the poll tax you may find this interesting…
link to bbc.co.uk
Main and his “names” have moved in and taken over Wings.
Just look at the fuckin mince that is BTL.
Regular Wings posters need to win back their blog.
Xaracen,
you tell me how to identify someone who is Scottish enough for your taste to have a valid vote in an Indy ref.
By what criteria? Skin colour? Residence? Whether they are a net giver or taker to society with their taxes? Or whether they can be reliably counted upon to vote for Indy, because Yoons don’t count?
You’re just as bonkers as everyone else.
DAVID HANNAH
White paper, referendum, the United Nations…I think Scotland is now well beyond such «trifles», such time wasting.
A Scot Abroad says: at 3:06 pm
“It’s actually quite racist of you to insist that someone you don’t recognise as Scottish (maybe they are English, or brown and were born in Asia) isn’t as valuable to Scotland as someone who is entirely ethnically Scottish.
If you live in Scotland, and have the vote, your vote is just as valid as anyone else’s vote. Whether you come from Arbroath, Anglesey, or Accra.”
Eh, so how did this work out for EU nationals residing in your beloved UK for the “Brexit” vote?
This loon has some epic lack of self awareness to the point you’d think it’s a parody account.
Nearly everything it posts is like – “Doh! Hadn’t thought of that…”. Quality posterboy for
BetterShitter Together though, but fuck having it leading a platoon I was in if I wanted to make it home safely.If you can’t access my link above, here is the text of the BBC article…
Secret papers reveal push to ‘trailblaze’ poll tax in Scotland
BBC3 min
December 30, 2014
Newly-released cabinet papers from Margaret Thatcher’s time in power have confirmed that then Scottish Secretary George Younger pushed for the poll tax to be introduced early in Scotland.
Documents from 1985, opened up under the 30-year rule, show he had wanted to “trailblaze” the new charge in Scotland ahead of the rest of the UK.
The note was written by Oliver Letwin, as an advisor in the Tory policy unit.
Mr Letwin, who is now a member of the UK government, declined to comment.
Image caption, George Younger , who died in 2003, was Scottish secretary until 1986
Image caption, George Younger , who died in 2003, was Scottish secretary until 1986
The community charge, widely referred to as the poll tax, was a new system of taxation introduced to replace domestic rates.
It was a single flat-rate tax on every adult, set by the local authority.
The poll tax was introduced in Scotland from 1989 and in England and Wales from 1990.
Many refused to pay it and the subsequent protests and riots contributed to Mrs Thatcher’s downfall as prime minister.
After widespread civil unrest and protest, it was replaced by the council tax in 1993.
Image caption, Anger over the poll tax saw outbreaks of unrest on the streets
Image caption, Anger over the poll tax saw outbreaks of unrest on the streets
Secret cabinet papers have now confirmed it was Mr Younger, Mrs Thatcher’s Scottish Secretary from 1979 to 1986, who fought to introduce the community charge early.
A memo written by Mr Letwin in 1985, four years before it came into force, states that Mr Younger, who died in 2003, was “extremely keen to use Scotland as a trail blazer for the pure residence charge”.
He was also keen to avoid a further disastrous revaluation for the domestic rates system.
The memo from Mr Letwin describes Scotland as an ideal testbed to experiment the radical system and suggests early introduction could help find “undetected gremlins lurking in the proposals”.
The opened archives highlight why Mr Younger, later Lord Younger, was so keen on a new system to replace the rates.
The previous rating revaluation had sent charges soaring and had been extremely unpopular – and a further revaluation loomed.
Image caption, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister who introduced the community charge
Image caption, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister who introduced the community charge
However, the opened archives also reveal a memo penned by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, who said the measure would be “unworkable” and “politically catastrophic”.
“The biggest gainers will be the better-off households in high rateable value properties, the losers would be poorer households, particularly larger ones,” he wrote.
“We should be forced to give so many exceptions and concessions (inevitably to the benefit of high-spending authorities in inner London) that the flat-rate poll tax would rapidly become a surrogate income tax.”
The newly-released papers also highlight detailed discussions about the Barnett formula. Invented in the 1970s, it is the method by which the Treasury still shares out the UK’s public expenditure.
Some English MPs have long argued that it benefits Scotland and disadvantages their constituents.
In a memo to Mrs Thatcher, David Willetts claims that Scotland and Northern Ireland “have their snouts well and truly in the the public expenditure trough”.
Mr Willetts, who was then a policy adviser, is a former minister in the present coalition administration and remains a senior Tory MP.
Image caption, The newly-released documents also show moves to reduce funding to Scotland
Image caption, The newly-released documents also show moves to reduce funding to Scotland
He has declined to comment.
The SNP’s deputy leader Stewart Hosie said Mr Willetts’ comments were “quite shocking” and claimed that “nothing has changed with the Tories”.
The Dundee East MP said the comments showed “the same people 30 years ago making the same mistakes they are making today, ignoring the contribution Scotland makes and always only ever talking about expenditure”.
On the poll tax, Mr Hosie said: “It confirms what many of us had been saying at the time and since, that Scotland was used as a guinea pig for this terrible legislation.
“This was not introduced for good reason, say to cut the rates bill. It was introduced to test the system because they knew it was fundamentally flawed.”
Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran said: “It confirms the truth of what we were saying. They were using Scotland as a test-bed for the poll tax and they were trying to undermine the Barnett Formula.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: “Many things have changed over the last 30 years, not least the fact that, under Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives are backing an even stronger Scottish Parliament with its own tax raising powers. That will make the old arguments from the 1980s even more out of date than they are already.
“Judging from the response from both the SNP and Labour, it sadly appears that we still have two parties in Scotland who prefer to dwell on the past rather than focus on the future.”
More on this story
Sven @ 5.18pm Tesco are doing the LGBTQ etc crap as well – well my local one here in Paisley was so presume it is company policy.
The trouble with locking shit up for 30 years LOL!
Anyone can say what they like – especially if they’re dead.
Why? For what purpose was some no mark Tory with a great idea for Scots considered Top Secret? It’s farcical. Everything they do is as they love a good revision excersise.
Dan,
Spot on. Non Brits don’t have the vote in England. Resident 15 yrs + & only on general elections, & certainly not on constitutional matters. When this is pointed out it results in yet more tumbleweed.
We need to build the people’s movement.
The people are not past the SNP delay. 53 per in the polls for Indy.
They just need the instructions.
A people’s movement will make us Scots be proud to be scottish. We will take to the streets to demand our Independence.
The 50,000 that marched in Edinburgh. It’s been done before. It can be done again.
We need a people’s movement to make everyone proud to be Scottish.
The qualification for being a Scottish voter in Scotland is that you register as an over 16 voter in Scotland. That’s what makes you a Scottish voter: a part of the Scottish electorate. It matters not a jot where you were born.
Jesus Christ was born in a stable. That didn’t make him a fucking horse, did it?
Absolute horseshit from Tory Boy in that article.
Scotland’s ‘tax raising powers’ are a poisoned chalice & a fallacy. Use them & whatever Scotland raises will be deducted from our budget the following yr. So we don’t have tax raising powers’ then eh? We have a punishment scheme that only replaces the money we’d lose later the following yr.
‘Many things have changed in 30 yrs..’
One thing hasn’t. We don’t vote Tory & they haven’t won here in over 70 yrs. That’s more than 3 generations & they’re still here telling us where we’re going wrong like we voted for them…
Ireland is a European `freeport` for Big Tech and Big pharma of America.
No or little tax a compliant government and an English speaking workforce.
Ireland and the Irish are being shafted by the Great Satan of American Corporate might.
Dan,
I was in favour of all adults in the U.K. having a vote on the Brexit referendum, even if they weren’t a U.K. citizen. I have the same view as to who should get a vote on Indy.
Don’t assume so much. You’ll end up making a pratt of yourself.
“It is the ‘ethnically Scottish’ voters who own Scotland’s sovereignty, the rest do not.”
How do the National Socialists determine the “ethnicity” of Scottish people? What racial hygiene techniques do they use for mensuration? Do they use calipers to measure the ratio of nose length to distance between cheekbones?
Do the racist bigots here believe that we Scots all evolved from lichen and heather and sphagnum moss?
@ A Scot Abroad
So if your democratic principles are so robust, then why don’t you recognise and accept the legitimate and democratically expressed (by a wider electoral franchise) material change in circumstances that the EU leave vote created for Scotland?
One of the main tenets of
BetterShitter Together during the 2014 referendum campaign was that if Scotland voted to return to self-governance we would be out of the EU. EU national voters were enfranchised for that vote so could be steered towards voting to retain the Union.And as Scotland is a net exporter of the goods and England is a net importer there are divergent needs for the two Kingdoms that make up the UK. At least retaining single market access would have been preferable for Scotland, but no, England’s needs dominates.
And there were clearly viable options for Scotland to retain EU membership as per Article 48.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Billy Carlin @ 18.56
Aww sugar, the good news just keeps coming, doesn’t it. That means I’m going to have to have a look at Morrisons & Lidl, see what their policies and prices are like.
Just as well most of my basic stuff comes from Nadeem at my local minimarket. He’s honest and definitely has no time for guys in women’s prisons.
I don’t buy much, but I’m not subsidising this idiocy.
ASA…
“I was in favour of all adults in the U.K. having a vote on the Brexit referendum, even if they weren’t a U.K. citizen. I have the same view as to who should get a vote on Indy.
Don’t assume so much. You’ll end up making a pratt of yourself.”
Given the franchise for the Brexit vote excluded citizens of other EU countries resident in the UK (but EU citizens from Cyprus and Malta resident in the UK qualified as Commonwealth citizens, and Irish citizens resident in the UK were also included in the franchise), we assume you were not in charge then? Otherwise, we assume, you would have ensured that all EU citizens living in part of the EU would have had a say in the future of that part of the EU with regard to its continuing to be part of the EU.
Can we also assume that in the highly unlikely event that IndyRef2 takes place, you similarly will not be in charge? We will therefore assume that, despite your preference, any future IndyRef2 franchise may well exclude citizens of other UK countries resident in Scotland. Therefore, we assume, it may not be possible for you to ensure that all UK citizens living in part of the UK will have a say in the future of that part of the UK with regard to its continuing to be part of the UK.
As such, your opinion is noted.
James Che @5:46 pm
“the unionist are confused enough over history propaganda… wether there is actually a treaty in existence between Scotland and England”
Yes James, an oppressed people are confused over both their national identity and also their constitutional reality. The ‘I am Scottish AND British’ identity confusion is largely a consequence of cultural assimilation; the illusion of ‘Britishness’ as a cultural ideology even worked for a while among former colonised peoples in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It maybe works easier here because we share an island with the Imperial power; Ireland figured things out earlier, the sea divide being a rather obvious added feature to the ever present cultural divide in colonial rule. And then we have the hoax of a ‘Union’, when more or less all native peoples and territories under Imperial rule were left holding just such a worthless piece of paper.
Fortunately the colonized must realise sooner or later that their “condition is absolute and cries for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise” (Memmi). Though first they need to better understand their ‘colonial condition’, which is the present weakness.
To the wee grey haired lady who shrugged off the weather to put an Alba leaflet through my door:
Thank you darlin’, you have my vote.
Many countries do not give universal suffrage to foreigners, as of 2014 according to the English state propaganda machine in 2014 there were 500,000 English folk living in Scotland, I’m pretty sure that number has increased in almost ten years since that indyref.
Sturgeon the betrayers census a year late and millions more expensive has yet to reveal the true number of English folk who have moved to Scotland.
What we do know is that 72.1% of them voted in 2014 to keep Scotland in the union, and that figure or a pretty similar one is unlikely to change, no matter how persuasive our next endeavour on indy will be, as remaining in the union gives these English folk a sense of security at our expense.
Therefore whatever number of English folk that are now living in Scotland, it can be safely said that their votes tip the balance considerably just as they did in Wales in 2016 with Brexit, the Welsh (majority) didn’t vote for Brexit.
In my opinion if you’re not born in Scotland and haven’t resided for a set amount of years (to be decided) then you shouldn’t get a constitutional vote on whether or not Scotland should stay or leave the union when the next vote comes around
Other countries do this so why not Scotland especially with so much at stake.
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to bbc.co.uk
A Scot Abroad said;
“Xaracen, you tell me how to identify someone who is Scottish enough for your taste to have a valid vote in an Indy ref.
By what criteria? Skin colour? Residence? Whether they are a net giver or taker to society with their taxes? Or whether they can be reliably counted upon to vote for Indy, because Yoons don’t count?
You’re just as bonkers as everyone else.”
Well, that’s your voting card revoked, ASA my lad, and any Scottish sovereignty you have left will be fully decanted at the nearest Blood Donation Centre and put to far better use for more deserving cases!
A weekly reminder of why England wants to keep tight hold over Scotland. Surely if energy policy wasn’t so important it would have been devolved by now…
48% of GB Grid power is currently being produced by Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT gauge). (All bar one at Peterhead are located in England).
link to gridwatch.templar.co.uk
But what geographic area is the gas that is being burnt in England coming from? Check out the rather large flow rates at the St Fergus terminals.
link to mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net
And Scotland currently exporting about half over and above what we are using down south.
link to extranet.nationalgrid.com
Geri says:
28 June, 2023 at 7:04 pm
The trouble with locking shit up for 30 years LOL!
Anyone can say what they like – especially if they’re dead.
+++++++
No they can’t because … erm … they are dead
Dan,
Scotland has been a net importer since at least 1998. In 2020, the gap was about £20 billion. See link to statista.com
Why do you have to be factually wrong in literally every single comment? It takes only a couple of minutes on Google to find out the facts. Clearly, you don’t think that facts matter.
@David Hannah says:28 June, 2023 at 6:18 pm
One guy said.
Bairns not Bombs.
Nurses not Nukes.
Teachers not trident.
Needs to be said a lot louder if it’s going to be heard 1500 miles to the east.
A lot, lot louder, but then again, nobody over there is listening.
Soz, David, but I am not buying into your belief that we Scots are so dumb and delusional that many of us will fall for this kind of trite, naive sloganising.
I’ve been following the comments on this post with interest. The Rev. certainly gives us a lot to think about and I’ve followed the comments by fellow Independence supporters with interest.
However, today, the majority of posts seem to be by “Unionists” – every hour on the hour! Do they honestly think that by trying to take over this site (with all their different names) that they are persuading us to change our minds?!
The person who amuses me most is “A Scot Abroad”, who is trying to convince us all that he knows best and has “led” British men on to the battlefield! I very much doubt that fact! The man can’t spell and uses atrocious grammar. He knows no facts about Scotland (he thinks historical documents, although woven into the history of Scotland, are irrelevant!) I doubt if he could even read and understand a written order from a commanding officer! I doubt if he was ever in the Army, because he doesn’t come across as the sort of man that any trained soldier would ever follow! He never makes a point in his posts but loves telling everyone else they are wrong!!
However, he made me laugh tonight when I realised how many comments he had posted today!
Good news that Stewart Hosie is standing down at the next GE. Dundee is stalwart in defending Independence. I think Humza Yousaf will have a hard job finding such a good candidate as Hosie! (Let’s hope it won’t be a man wearing a frock!)
I left the SNP about 3 years ago, when I became very suspicious about Peter Murrell sending me e-mails asking me if I could pay my annual subscription 3 months before it was due! I then started doing some research, and as a result Ileft the SNP and joined ALBA!
So I’m guessing they’re all too feart to jump?
… Let them drown
Just please put that annoying gimp ASA on the ship with them
@A Scot Abroad 10:01pm
I am with Dan on this one. I worked within the Scottish Power Industry for 40 years. I am writing a paper on how to return the Scottish Power Industry to public ownership. Normally this report would cost 650k+ if you are SNP. I am sending it to Alba in the Autumn for nothing. The British Energy Market is broken everybody knows that.
Amongst other interesting stats…
“Transfers
To offset the difference between England’s electricity generation and demand, net positive transfers were
received from Scotland and Wales, as well as from continental Europe via the France, Netherlands, Belgium,
and Norway interconnectors (the Norway interconnector came online in October 2021). During 2021, these
sources provided 20.0 per cent of England’s total electricity consumption, up 2.7 percentage points from 2020.
In 2021, Scotland exported 33 per cent of its generation in net transfers to England and Northern Ireland,
down from the record level of 37 per cent in 2020.This was in line with lower generation in Scotland (due to
lower renewable output), though Scotland’s electricity demand also decreased (down 1.7 per cent). Wales
exported 13 per cent of its generation in net transfers to England, up 10.2 percentage points from the 2020
value which was the lowest proportion in the time series. Total generation in Wales has fallen 35 per cent
since its peak in the time series in 2016, predominantly due to the reduction of coal and gas fired-fired
generation.”
From page 3 of 13
link to assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
ASA quotes a chart the meaning of which I suspect is highly subject to the precise accounting rules being applied – and we all know how reliable the english are here, I mean, they just make shite up like “ex regio”. Let’s have the import/export figures for ex-regio, somewhere past narnia, on the way to mordor.
Oh Flower of Ex Regio
when will we see
OUR REVENUE AGAIN
that flowed and gushed for
inflating the pound throughout the neoliberal program
creating a southern property bubble
facilitating short range and selective trickle down policies to southern tories
…
a wee bit hill and glen
(lyrics need work)
– you are clearly an ignoramus and a trolling waste-of-space and you are just going to “bugner” any information, argument or facts anyone gives you
– howsabout you earn your corn with some entertaining stories from your military service?
seen (done?) any good atrocities?
(no point in going to the funfair without getting on any of the rides)
kicked in a door to a room full of wailing women and children just to finally use the “full auto” mode on the bang-stick? In the balkans adventure you could have just done it and then said “it was the serbs” and the BBC would have said “yup, its the serbs” and then NATO would have done another airstrike … wet your beak.
– good ole bbc – didn’t they take a photo of a guy standing behind a chain fence and say “concentration camps in europe!” – but where were the gas chambers? – canny huv camps without the gas, as jumpin jack flash would say
Last weeks electricity transfers.
System Transfers:
Scot->Eng: 136.87GWh
link to twitter.com
Dan,
Keep posting these please, most people know nothing about the never ending robbery!
Plus, the Yoons hate to see the truth….
Confused,
I’m not going to tell you details about it. A bit of time in Northern Ireland, the first Gulf War, four tours in Bosnia, Afghanistan once. Then I left because I wanted to leave at 40, and do something else with enough years left in me to make something of that.
George – As you know, I am not a Nationalist but I am a relaxed soul and I’m not in this for a fight.
For many years, I have thought that Nationalists should carefully select the ground to fight on and, if they did that and won, the pendulum suddenly begins to swing in their direction. What is secure ground? Something that strongly engages with the majority and gets them talking and interested in politics again. It have always thought that power generation and energy supply in all its forms was more or less a slam-dunk and I always wondered why they never pursued it.
It takes strategic thinking to work something like this out.
One unifying factor, apart from post-imperial sentimentalism, among the yoontrolls is their inability to put a positive case for the ‘union’.
Indeed, the definitive, negative case for the ‘union’ was formulated by one of their number – McCrone. Such was its potential that both the red and blue Tories buried it.
Ends
@ James
Well it’s sort of fuel.
link to scotch-whisky.org.uk
@Captain Yossarian 11:11pm
Actually I am not a Nationalist either. I left the SNP in 2015. More centre than any else. But the Energy market is way out of control. Government Regulatory Agencies are impotent. The MSM are thick missing the basic fundamentals. Sorted soon.
@ASA
“ I’m not going to tell you details about it. A bit of time in Northern Ireland, the first Gulf War, four tours in Bosnia, Afghanistan once. Then I left because I wanted to leave at 40, and do something else with enough years left in me to make something of that.”
You failed
Just look at all the transfers we could be charging England for instead of giving it away for free.
I wouldn’t mind so much but when the bastards treat us with such contempt & like we’ve just wandered out of our cave & dared venture into *thier* parliament it doesn’t half stick in yer craw it’s us that’s paying for them. Not the other way around. As if the English would spend more on Scots than they do thier own citizens is the biggest joke that ppl actually swallow that shite!
Did anyone ever see the tik tok with the Welsh guy about the flatmate who was called George? Lol No one liked George.. Explains the GERS bs & all in under 2 minutes..
Hope it works..
//vm.tiktok.com/ZGJXYAruK/
ASA..11.04
So just invading missions then?
@ Geri
And dinnae forget the connection and transmission charges!
Recent article picked up from voices.scot
link to munguin.wordpress.com
And from a good while back now.
link to thecommongreen.scot
@ confused, loving “Oh Flower of Ex Regio…”
Last link afore I hit my scratcher seeing as it was open on my browser. Even it loves a bit of excluding oil and gas figures.
link to gov.scot
Oil & Gas is excluded because it’s from *unknown regions*
Oil just miraculously appears as if from nowhere & lands in the UK coffers. Those rigs in the North sea are just fancy ornaments to decorate the place.
But not to worry, we’ve the wrong kind of oil. Our oil is the worthless shite kind no one wants.
The UK takes it away for free to help us out. They’re very thoughtful like that. Did you know they also pay our bills for us & we get more per capita per head?
It must be exhausting being a Unionist with us ungrateful peasants to try educate! Why can’t we all just be Northern England and stfu about being sold some dodgy beans?
20 for me – 1 for you. 😀
Foodbanks – Goooood
Oil – bhaaaaad!
Rinse & repeat..
I want to raise, David Goodwillie. He’s just lost his job even at the other side of the World.
He’s not being allowed to move on with his life.
Sturgeon, and Val McDermid. Playing out a sick and twisted fantasy novel in real life. I’m gutted for him signing for Raith.
And then Clyde. Clyde don’t even play in Cumbernauld anymore. The SNP cancelled the entire team. That’s right isn’t it?
Now they want to abolish Juries for the alphabetties act. Horrendous an evil. A corrupt twisted power crazed psychopath Nicola Sturgeon really was.
She’s despicable. And now Goodwillie can’t even get a job at the other side of the world. A family man. With his life ruined.
Sometimes women are gold diggers. Not popular opinion. Just look at Amber Heard.
Sturgeon for me. Is the Amber heard of Scottish politics.
The point in trying to make is the Scottish Government hate men.
Its a syndrome from the sturgeon regime. S
She says she never wants to shake a man’s hand again. She said it in Vogue magazine when she was the cover girl for attention.
I mean, and then she threw hubby under the bus. She can’t speak for him.
What’s happened to Goodwillie is awful.
The guy’s made a mistake as a young man. He’s paid for it. A criminal has the right to be forgotten after 5 years. Goodwillie wasn’t charged in a criminal court.
Sturgeon coming out with that pish about him last year. Despicable.
You know what I find even more despicable?
Perjurers who lie in criminal courts for the most heinous crime imaginable.
Sturgeon is soo much like Amber Heard. Another bandwagon to jump onto the metoo movement. Herd with Depp, Sturgeon with her shenanigans with setting up the alphabeties.
Dr Curry giving testimony at Depps trial was like listening to her describe all of Sturgeons traints & mental disorders lol
Both of them are nutters. One wrong move & you’ll pay, forever. Typical narcissists.
Thankfully the jury, in both trials, seen through both fakers.
The judge in the English court re The Scum newspaper was as corrupt as fck too & had family connections to that rag.
Trials should not be held without juries. She’s another one who wants them eradicated cause ‘they’re just a bunch of randos’
Herds deposition was classic when she let the cat out the bag she’d informed TMZ of her restraining order – lol at her trying to shove her words back in her mouth LOL..
Old “blinky” meet new “blinky”.
Now together say “blinkers!” and smile for the camera. Oh…looks like the CCTV’s been switched off. That’s odd…
And…scene.
David Hannah at 1253am,
Have to agree with you regarding that footballer. I mean, seriously, do folk never want to let him work? Ever? WTF is this hounding a guy around the world all about?? Twisted if you ask me. Tabloids doing something similar to what they did with poor Justin Fashanu – a good guy destroyed by thicko homophobic bigotry, FUELLED and amplified by utterly evil tabloid media.
Meanwhile known perjurers, who conspired to put a good innocent man in jail for life, walk the streets of Scotland.
George – That’s good. The point I was making is that no strategic thinking gets done at Holyrood and very little at Westminster. The last thinker that was involved in UK politics, that I can remember anyway, was Philip Hammond. I will wait for this with great interest. The fact that this hasn’t been looked at until now surprises me.
@Captain Yossarian says:28 June, 2023 at 11:11 pm
What is secure ground? Something that strongly engages with the majority and gets them talking and interested in politics again
Wow, lightbulb moment.
How’s about showing the people of Scotland the extra money they would have in their pockets post-Indy?
That would certainly work for me, and maybes one or two other million indigenous, Sovereign Scots conform to the same stereotype.
But, as long as you are dealing with people like Geri:
Just look at all the transfers we could be charging England for instead of giving it away for free
the conversation is still-born, because in her heid, it’s already all hers.
And thus, how the current legal and watertight ownership of the assets and resources can be transferred to an iScotland state, paid for, set up on a sound engineering and fiscal footing, and the profits allocated between government social programmes, taxation, and wealth transfer to the Scottish people, does not even register on her radar.
@Confused says:28 June, 2023 at 10:49 pm
Oh Flower of Ex Regio
when will we see
OUR REVENUE AGAIN
Never, obvs. That’s the killer about the past, it’s dead and gone.
Whereas the future is all still there to be arranged.
Hard to do that when you’re greetin in yer dram aboot stuff ye can’t change.
@Robert Louis says:29 June, 2023 at 6:46 am
walk the streets of Scotland
Nah. I’m confident they all have company vehicles, expense account taxis, or pool limos on call.
We’re talking senior Scottish establishment figures here, after all.
John Main up early and still whining about needing to be shown the money. Maybe if he spent less of his time posting on here he could instead apply himself to do more worthwhile work that actually paid him the level of money he so covets.
Or here’s an alternative money making strategy he could try: Seeing as comes across as being tighter than a shark’s ass at 50 fathoms, he could try sticking a lump of the abundance of worthless Scottish coal up his ass each Monday, and by the end of the week he could probably shit out a diamond.
TBF with that idea the marketing might need a bit of effort as I can’t see a lady being overly impressed with wearing a hunk of John’s uber compressed shit as jewelry.
@ Captain Yossarian
Similarly to a properly managed energy sector being an important factor to many folk across society, access to decent health service provision is another element that should be at the forefront of campaigning. And more generally just decent overall infrastructure and services.
It’s interesting that it is practical “engineery” type folk that see and understand the basics elements of what a society requires to function, yet so many of our politicos seem to focus or are distracted by the “out there” stuff, whilst the important stuff goes to rack and ruin.
Sturgeon the Betrayer and her then number one sidekick John Swinney to appear at the UK Covid Inquiry today to give evidence.
One wonders if the betrayer and her loyal Judas Swinney will give fifty refusals as Sturgeon has done in the past.
I see another of the Sturgeon Era ( those were the worst of times and the ….eh….worst of times ) ciphers is standing down – surprising , given that he never really ever stood up . Yip , Stuart Hosiery is standing down in order to spend more time with his mirror . Will anyone notice his absence ?
At this rate the primary school class of Oct ’14 will have jumped overboard – no doubt into lucrative Private Sector gigs – before the looming encounter with the iceberg of public disgust and electoral carnage .
When the going gets tough , all the shitebags make good their escape . ” Same as it ever was ” .
@Dan says:29 June, 2023 at 8:29 am
It’s not whining, Dan.
It’s a proposed policy for winning Indy support in the “real world”.
It’s defo more difficult than posting playground insults, so I assume that’s why you prefer to stay in your comfort zone.
Not much of your post worth responding to, but your resistance and denial to me pointing out that the widely accepted moratorium on exploiting coal reserves, if continued with into the future, renders Scotland’s coal worthless, is noted.
That policy might be reversed in future, who knows, but right now, I am seeing no prospects for that.
Things change, Dan, the world moves on, eternally fighting yesterday’s battles on yesterday’s battlegrounds gets Scotland nowhere.
If the money is there, show the Scots voters who care about real world issues. Then they will vote for Indy. If the money doesn’t matter, stop banging on about Scotland’s resources being stolen.
Is there sufficient number of decent SNP politicians able to save the party by forcing reconsideration of indy policy to something approaching honest endeavour?
Joanna Cherry? Angus MacNeil? More likely to quit before long, than enable the necessary coup of the NEC.
It would appear that only further investigation and revelation by UK authorities of the party, could potentially force SNP into oblivion. Which conversely, would assist the independence movement, to regroup under new direction.
We can only hope that the UK establishment does it’s damnedest, as soon as possible!
link to twitter.com
I’m sure the dug will not be fooled by a chic wae a dick in a dress wearing makeup and a wig. Would love a transwoman to try and adopt him. He might lose his gonads without surgery.
They can smell a fraud a 100 miles away!
@Republicofscotland (9.11) –
Thanks for the reminder about Sturgeon at the covid inquiry.
Very much looking forward to hearing what she has to say, or not as the case may be.
It’s worth bearing in mind that, over the period covering lockdowns and right up to her resignation, Sturgeon made 1 speech about Brexit, 266 about coronavirus. (That’s according to the ‘First Minister’s Speeches’ section on the Scotgov website in case anyone wants to check.)
So she certainly had plenty to say about it back in the day. Let’s see how much detail she can muster without using ‘I’ll have to get back to you…I’ll write to you with those details…’ etc.
Dan 8:29 am
“John Main up early and still whining about needing to be shown the money.”
Some folk know the price of everything but the value of nothing. National liberation is of course priceless, as any former colony knows.
John Main: The point of the article is that Holyrood is taking us nowhere and that we may be at some kind of inflexion point.
People expect it to continue, but Stuart Campbell sees that it (probably) cannot continue; in its present form anyway.
There is a lot of respect for what Fergus Ewing has done and the proposal that is being put to the other MSP’s is: If more of you do what he has done, Holyrood may just regain public trust and support.
So, that is the conundrum. What Dan is doing needs to be refined down to a series of bullet-points and that is where engineering and the politics combine.
Sadly, that is where Holyrood usually, if not always, flounders.
I agree with you that a few more people need to do more.
I pray Stu will indulge me to ask people to look at my blog to see the story behing the crashing of the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival. There are two key posts.
link to craigmurray.org.uk
link to craigmurray.org.uk
I want people to understand that this is absolutely a political action. I “own” the festival, Robin McAlpine ran the speakers tent last time and the previous time we had Kristian Hrafnsson, Editor of Wikileaks, speaking.
The campaign against the festival was championed by the BBC, STV, Record and Herald and amplified by Bella Caledonia and Gerry Hassan. Its spokeperson who did all the live interviews as Iona Fyfe. Do a google image search on “Iona Fyfe and Nicola Sturgeon”.
This is precisely the same kind of process that led to the cancellation of Stu’s bank account. It is all a part of the crushing of dissent.
@Alf Baird says:29 June, 2023 at 10:10 am
You’ll be writing about “intangibles” next.
Indy as a faith-based (i.e. religious) act.
Gotta be worth a try. Run it up the flagpole and see if the majority salutes.
@ Alf
Aye, for all the time John squanders on here when he could be productively earning more cash for himself, he has failed to offer an evidence based rebuttal to my suggestion of a revenue stream generated for a self-governing Scotland from our proportionally higher share of assets and resources, when utilising the current policy setup administered under London Rule.
Contrary to what others may think, I I am fairly confident that Nicola will not prevaricate nor fail to remember any matters of significance in response to difficult probing questions at todays inquiry…………mainly because she won’t be asked any.
The English governments disgraceful attempts to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has failed, no doubt they will appeal the decision. Though white 404’s were never on the deport to Rwanda agenda.
“The Rwanda deal has been ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal, with judges concluding that it is not a safe country to receive asylum seekers from the UK.
The government lost the latest stage of the long-running legal battle over the scheme to forcibly deport asylum seekers to the African nation. Flights will remain suspended ahead of an expected showdown at the UK Supreme Court.”
link to msn.com
I kid you not. There’s a lassie on the Jeremy Kyle show literally making Owen Jones sound good and half reasonable.
She has talked absolute shite for the last hour – don’t know her.. Even Kyle’s not on it to compete wae her on stupidity. Myleen Class is hosting. The house jock Storm whatever has just come on now to look pretty and talk more keich.
Watch a show! dearie me.
The English king to face demos in Edinburgh when he shows up on July 5th to carry out a mock coronation to fool Scots into believing that he’s king of Scots.
This farce has been enabled by House Jocks.
“The people of Scotland were not asked if he should be given these honours, nor whether he deserves them. Instead he shall claim them because he believes he is entitled to them.
“We will not allow this pretence at legitimacy go unopposed. He does not have the consent of the people of Scotland.”
The group went on: “Charles’ perpetual need to celebrate his reign, with all the pomp and pageantry it requires, is a spit in the face to the people struggling with the cost of living.
“Food costs, energy prices, rent payments, and mortgage rates are all at an unprecedented high and we’re still expected to host Charles and Camila’s inflated egos.”
Jeremy Vine even
Independence majority on standby, waiting for imminent implosion or internal coup of SNP. Is that the nearest to revolution we can muster? Should we not be battering down the doors of Holyrood?
@ craig murray at 10.33 on BECTU, BBC and MSM wrecking Doune the Rabbit Hole for political reasons.
It looks that way, certainly.
This morning I was remembering the Governor of Saughton jail standing in your cell where he could see the filth and the absence of a loo seat. Presumably all the criminal prisoners had the same dreadful conditions. He should be prosecuted and sacked for this. People are imprisoned – the sentence doesn’t say the prison must be insanitary and inhumane.
All the prison officials who permitted self-id men into women’s prisons should also be sacked, at the very least. Their actions were illegal as self-id was not the law until recently.
Any crowdfunder to take action against the prison service and against BECTU will receive my support.
I hope that Wingnut shows a bit more respect for the Scottish people than his mother did when she showed up for an equivalent gig in the early 1950s dressed like a suburban housewife.
Seems that Sturgeon got her wrist well and truly slapped while giving evidence to the covid inquiry – ‘that is a witness box, not a soap-box’.
Big Honest John is up now.
Live link:
link to youtube.com
@Republicofscotland says:29 June, 2023 at 10:52 am
white 404’s were never on the deport to Rwanda agenda
Indeed. Something else RoS and I can agree on.
Of course, recognising the differences between illegal and legal migration, asylum seeking and grifting, I also understand why.
RoS, it goes without saying, will remain flummoxed.
Once again, RoS does his level best to turn all grounded-in-reality Scots against Indy by supporting a loony tunes open borders fantasy.
Maybes before today is over he will be back posting about the destruction Scotland’s open borders has already done to Indy.
@Dan says:29 June, 2023 at 10:40 am
revenue stream generated for a self-governing Scotland from our proportionally higher share of assets and resources
Dan, you win. You are right.
Day 1 of Indy, all the dosh will be divvied up amongst 5.5 million Scots. Those 55 million English can go whistle.
I see it clear now.
Those 55 million English will just say, “Hey Ho, we really are all stuffed now, never mind, Corrie begins in 10”.
You see, I thought they might well say, supported by the UN, EU, etc. etc. “pay your share of the debt, buy the assets from their current owners at market value, agree distribution and supply contracts that mean we English won’t be freezing in the dark, or else, because we are nasty, imperialist, vicious, violent, thugs with all the hardware and tens time the manpower”.
What am I like, eh Dan?
Queenie arrived like a peasant to Scotland because Scots don’t put up with that pageantry shite & wasn’t she forbidden from wearing Scotlands regal attire? They’re not the Queen/King of Scots.
I wonder what house jock will overturn that tradition to rub our noses in it? I’m sure Dumbza will eagerly comply.
@Republicofscotland says:29 June, 2023 at 10:57 am
“We will not allow this pretence at legitimacy go unopposed. He does not have the consent of the people of Scotland.”
Wow.
Just for a moment, I thought somebody had noticed the flawed and fraudulent process that anointed HY as FM of Scotland.
But naw, we are all soooooo over bothering about that.
John Main says: at 1:04 pm
“What am I like, eh Dan?”
You appear to be doubling down on what I said up thread, in that you are coming across as a whiny subservient streak of pish, one who doesn’t seem to be able or willing to comprehend the reality and empowerment which Scottish self-governance would bring.
So if you’re still adamant you want to be shown the money, and you’re not willing to take up the synthetic diamond creation opportunity (even if it was just for drill bits, abrasive wheels, and tile cutters which tbh would be an easier sell), then how about considering that employment law and minimum wage are currently reserved to London Rule.
A self-governing Scotland could make changes to these aspects which would improve workers’ rights and importantly for you the amount of money in folks’ wage packets.
This would be at the slight expense of reeling in some of the huge profits many of the corporate run businesses currently make, whilst also reducing the burden of state subsidies which are effectively covering greedy businesses paying their workers low wages on part time contracts.
Ottomanboi.
“Freedom is there for the taking”
Indeed it is. Scots need to stop being persuaded they are stuck by hundreds of years of the Colonisers rhetoric.
They are not, their minds are.
@Dan says:29 June, 2023 at 1:46 pm
doesn’t seem to be able or willing to comprehend the reality and empowerment which Scottish self-governance would bring
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. Here’s the key finding from the newest thread:
sending a special envoy for Brussels to pave the way for Scotland’s readmission to the EU
If our elites have their way, we’ll be as “empowered” as Brussels permits. Our businesses will be constrained by EU Level Playing Field rules, our workers will be out-bid by cheapo foreign labour enjoying freedom of movement, our real estate will be bought up by overseas money for people wishing to re-enact Brigadoon.
Everything will be different post-Indy, yet everything will be the same. Just like the French say.
We are talking about two different world views. You have your dream, I am grounded in reality.
John Main still swerving and deflecting to avoid the dealing with the point of my post.
Alf Baird.
28th June 5: 46pm.
” A break and nota Compromise” ( memmi)
Indeed a clean break from the hoax union, No compromise, No Snp or unionist party under Westminster legislation should legally negotiate Scotlands separation from England as this would be equivalent to Queen Annes two sets of Commissioers working for one and the same employer,
Is that what Scots wants , to be shafted again under the same Colony administrators?
No, I suggest a clean break where the Coloniser is put in the position of being on the back foot, ( in the fallacious hoax treaty of union,
This way all reparations, return to Scotland without question, from Sovereignty, stone of Destiny, missed oil revenues, politics, Scots law, the choice of Scottish monarch, ( if we decide to have one),
Our original sea borders, our police force, our NHS. Our voting Burghs, our own currency returned, it eliminates the unfair Barnett formula placed upon Scotland, it would remove the Colonial legislated devolved government sent to Scotland for management.
It is the great reset that Scotland needs with- out Westminster having a legal foot to stand on,
The fallacious treaty of union needs more recognition and more facts contributed from the independence movement,
This is one of those moments that all independence supporters can make a huge difference to Scotland,
If there is no treaty, as I and a few others are beginning to realise ” We can walk away” without the need to beg for a section 30 begging permission slip, “without Scotland having to divide its assets”
And best of all NO dispute or argument need be held over whom would be allowed to vote on Scottish independence,
With no union no unionist has a vote.
The legal onus would be for Westminster to contradict and prove when it extinguished the old Scottish parliament and the Old English parliament in England that the treaty of union was not also extinguished.
That all promises made and ratified were not also extinguished,
For Scotland legally did not sign a treaty of union with the Great British Parliament as it did not exist either at that time period.
If by some small chance the Westminster parliament wriggled its interpretation of the two old parliaments positions and considers that Scotlands old parliament breach the treaty of union,
It cannot sue a Scottish parliament that was extinguished over three hundred years ago.
We “Scotland” are in the position to walk away without constantly begging the Coloniser.
No politician in Scotland regardless of political party is going to bring this obvious anomaly issue to the table due to it jeopardising their financial position and pension within the Colonial devolved government.
In fact it would be in their best interests to squash this before they lose their political position, so it is up to the Scottish people not to be hoodwinked any further,
It’s not Scotland’s oil.
Oil belongs to the owners of the oilfield. Not one of the North Sea oilfields on the UK Continetal Shelf is nationalised.
If an amputated Scotland had tried to confiscate any of the oilfields, as happened in Iran in 1953, the international oil companies would stand shoulder to shoulder and refuse to buy any of the stolen oil. If you can’t sell or ‘fence’ your oil, then your oil is worthless.
So scratch oil as a potential financial resource for an isolated Scotland.
What about Whisky exports? Very very few countries are stupid enough to tax exports, so no tax revenue.
As a source of mass employment, forget about the Whisky industry. Go and visit one of those big name malt distilleries and see for yourself how few employees there actually are. Astonishingly few, even in the really world famous big name distilleries.
What about tourism? Yes, now you’re talking seriously big money, especially for the minimum wage East European bar maids and chambermaids and kitchen porters. In the winter season the place is dead. In the summer season the place is chockfull. The infrastructure can’t handle any more.
In the Western Isles, Skye most notably, the laybys are ankle deep in human shit because there aren’t enough public toilets to handle the demand. Passing places can only handle one large coach at a time so you get traffic jams in both directions.
In summer 2019 the cops were interrogating any cars hoping to board the ferries to the isles, demanding proof that they had pre-booked accommodation. They were even asking whether campervans (Oops! blush) had booked a pitch.
Scotland has already reached Peak Tourism. We simply haven’t got the infrastructure for any more. The proposed punitive tax on tourism will raise loadsa money, but even that much will probably not be enough to fund the Buckfast habit of Weegies and Dundonians.
What else? The banking sector? Forget it. They’d have buggered off to England or Ireland.
We, the people of Scotland, dodged a bullet when we resoundingly voted against the self-harm of self-amputation.