The Cinderella Waltz
Let’s take a moment off, folks. In our latest Panelbase poll, we also threw in a question just for fun, with genuinely no agenda at all, simply because we were curious to know what the answer was. Here it is:
Some of the detail, though, might intrigue you.
We weren’t, for example, expecting to find that the two parties whose voters were most closely aligned on the question were the SNP and the Tories.
Although that did make the Yes/No results less of a shock.
It’s also one of the very few questions we’ve ever asked where the responses from Remainers and Leavers were close to identical.
The class difference was bigger, but not by all that much.
And you’d probably expect the men to have a different view to the women.
But it was the last one that really caught us unawares.
We didn’t see that one coming, readers. The two totems of Scotland’s sectarian divide were looked upon in by far the most positive light by the nation’s often tiresomely woke youth, with opinions almost tied compared to net-negative gaps of 20 to 33 points in every other demographic.
And while the days of the toxic bigotry being really overt (eg the old Rangers’ 80-year refusal to sign Catholics) are now decades in the past, it’s hardly as if they’re invisible, with “The Billy Boys” and pro-IRA “rebel” anthems still ringing out from the stands at Ibrox and Parkhead every week.
We haven’t got any answers for this one, gang. We’re just putting it out for discussion because goodness knows, everyone needs a break from politics sometimes.
Unfortunately proof if ever it was needed that there are to many bird brains in Scotland who vote along the lines of what football team they support rather than what’s best for the nation in general.
Rather surprised at the results myself.
I think a close scrutiny of both clubs and their fans would show we are better without them.
This is a pity but the sectarian stench cannot be ignored. This is 2023 and we still permit knuckle dragging on our streets.
We’ve been here before, just recently on another article.
And the answer was… ‘young people are stupid’.
This is definitely a much needed distraction from the “Lets Get Useless in at all costs” even if it means death to the SNP, talk about scorched earth.
Totally destroy the SNP if he’s elected FM
come on the GERS lol
I grew up in Greenock in the 1970s, which had a very distinct sectarian divide. As a ‘proddy’ I went to the local High out in Spangle valley beside the old IBM. Our buses went through areas where Catholic schools were coming out and rocks were sometimes thrown at our bus. One window smashing right beside me, although the rock did not penetrate.
Rocks were thrown at buses quite a lot back in the 70s with miners throwing rocks at ‘scab’ buses going through picket lines. My Mum did not even raise an eyebrow when I told her about my bus window shattering beside me.
The separation of schools into state schools (perceived as proddy) & RC schools is at the root of the problem and that carries on to this day.
I was delighted when Rangers were relegated to the 4th Division, as it meant that we had a few years interregnum from the two tribes waving their naked arses at each other.
Shame you didn’t ask whether people attended Scottish football matches (any team) regularly/rarely/not at all.
I suspect you’d have found that most of the 16-34 group have never attended a professional/semi-pro/amateur football match in their lives. I suspect they would have a different viewpoint as to how much of a “positive impact” football has had they viewed the behaviour of most “fans” first hand.
My daughter has her EUFA B coaching licence but she gave up coaching kids/teens teams recently after nearly 10 years as the pitchside attitude of (overwhelmingly white male) parents/fans is completely toxic. That’s in England but I seriously doubt its different in Scotland/Wales/NI.
I was disappointed to read in the news a couple of days ago that Police had to intervene to separate a “brawl” between the Knuckle-draggers in the Blue corner and the Mouth-breathers in the Green corner.
Got me to thinking…
Should all these so-called hard-men, floundering around at the shallow end of the gene pool, not be encouraged to beat the cr@p out of each other, for the benefit of wider society as a whole?
Could the State not provide a venue, check that no weapons are smuggled in and ensure that numbers on each side are equitable? To avoid draining NHS resources, St Andrew’s could provide 1st Aid for one and St John’s the other. Participants could pay an attendance fee to help cover their costs – simultaneously providing a fantastic training opportunity for those wanting to learn 1st Aid!
If these dual-digit IQ degenerates are going to knock lumps out of each other on the streets, irrespective of the efforts of Police Scotland and COPFS, why not simply let them do it off the streets and spare the normal people who, as at this weekend past, have to put up with their sh1te?
Rev Stu says
‘everyone needs a break from politics sometimes’
Your good intentions may result in failure on this one, Rev.
As someone who has only a passing interest in today’s globalised footy, I think it is sad to see the two best funded clubs in Scotland being supported by some of the most deprived.
If only they could focus on the 95% of life’s challenges and injustices that SHOULD unite them instead of concentrating on the 5% that divides them.
Football is a young man’s preoccupation , or , at least , the tribal rivalry appeals more to young men .
Honestly don’t feel this survey is outside of politics. Certainly not in the world’s highest football attending numbers national . The host to the world’s first international match.
Glasgow is still home to various World and European attendance records.
Celtic and Rangers still ranked in the planet’s top twenty wealthiest clubs as recently as the start of the century. Before Rupert murdoch promoted even the English relegation clubs to European big earners.
The boards at each club are unionists who recognise their market. The remaining ca20% in Scotland can do one.
Our Union masters know only to belittle. That’s why Rangers were put down for their loyalty to the cause by HMRC .
Now we have moved onto the operation Tranny Army
Funny how it’s always the schools to blame, despite it not really being a problem elsewhere.
Shocker. An issue on which there is no significant division between yesers and noers, remainers and leavers. The country needs Sturgeon to weigh in with a comment so that normal service can be resumed.
So Swinney was waiting for you to go off-topic to announce his resignation.
He must be chuffed.
His biggest achievement in a long political career.
If Celtic keep losing their best players and managers to England, I think Celtic should be applying to join the French or Spanish leagues as it is not sustainable for Celtic to keep high aspirations and continue to play in Scotland.
It could be a positive for other Scottish clubs and maybe Rangers would have a chance of winning something when the double winners St Johnstone etc are out of form.
It is also interesting to note that the 55+ bracket that hate the Glasgow clubs also are the biggest group of No voters.
Rev Stu, seems you were right about Swinney
link to twitter.com
I support one of those teams and I honestly think it would be better for Scotland and all the other football clubs in Scotland if they both got kicked out of the league.
In my nearly 60 years on the planet the most enjoyable time for football was when there was no “Rangers” in the top tier. The atmosphere in the SPL was much better; Trophies were spread around and it just seemed like a happier place. Now obviously I think my team “Celtic” are the good guys.
The trouble is that for Scottish football to be an attractive product it has to be more than a two horse race and the financial gulf between the Glasgow clubs and the others will never allow that.
So the scenario I envisage is the Glasgow teams kicked out, TV companies find them a place in England (Div 1 / Championship) and football tropies and championships spread around Scotland resulting in greater engagement in the game by fans and an improved culture all round.
Well, I can dream.
Swinney away. So that tipoff was absolutely mint.
That’s dissapointing that people think so negatively about the county’s two biggest football clubs.
The economists at Fraser of Allander Institute estimated that the spending of Celtic and their supporters was worth £165 million in 2016/17 to the Scottish economy.
As for the Irish diaspora. They have a saying. If being Irish means we’re guilty. Then we’re guilty one and all!
So Swinney the ninny gone
What exactly is coming down the track??.
I’d be interested to know if the people of Glasgow and Scotland have a net positive or negative opinion of the Royal family, on the social and cultural fabric of Scotland.
Large sections of Hampden Park booed the minutes applause for the late Queen Elizabeth.
Rangers fans, are proud to be British, they have King Charles in their dressing room. As they are staunch Unionists.
Swinney’s away is he? Humza Yousaf said he was his best friend in politics last night at the hustings. Apart from his wife – who he had to say against his will, was his best friend. Otherwise he’d be sleeping on the couch.
FAO Mr Graeme Hampton
We do not, under any circumstances, want Celtic or Rangers tearing up every town and city in the Championship across England and Wales every Saturday from August to May every year, thanks.
‘Twas always a tool to divide and rule.
Not a clue what you mean David Hannah at 3.21 never having heard it before.
Here’s my take/experience. My family were catholic economic migrants to scotland from ulster at the turn of the century. We changed the spelling of our name to try and assimilate the family more into scottish ‘culture’. My father before 1939 was frankly told while looking for work after leaving school, ‘sorry son we dont employ catholics’. I went through the whole catholic thing in the 60’s. church family and state, before i became educated in the late seventies. I dont live in scotland now, never being scottish and never being irish. One thing was the older i became, no excuses, the more i absolutely loathed the complete waste of time that sectarianism is. Dont care what ‘side’. just hate it. what a waste. The only ironic good thing to come out of ulster (post belfast agreement) was my irish passport and ability now to live in europe.
Young people i think are after an identity. They are conservative at heart. Anything will do. They’re too young to know what a waste of time it is.
This poll should have come as no surprise. The young pick and choose their self-righteousness according to expediency, not reality. Hence they’re happy to be “concerned” about bigotries thousands of miles away, but clam up if its in their own back yard and they’ve skin in the game.
When you start a new place of work in your fifties, only to be asked by those doing the induction what school you went to – and to be insistent for an answer to the question – you know zero has changed in this pathetic bigoted backwater.
John Swinney, Scotland’s most boring person and Scotland’s fourth most untrustworthy person after the Murrells and Humza, is standing down.
Most untrustworthy people are interesting to some extent. Swinney managed to be both boring and untrustworthy. Which is actually quite interesting.
.
Hi Rev,
I was going to say a BIG thanks for choosing a random topic that is NOT the mind-numbingly, headline-greedy, ScotGovt capturing WOKE infestation.
BUT (and I am awaiting the customary slap-down for bad Wingers), Stuart, there is a mistake in your poll
Bask, ker-splat, balm, thud, as the end-of-each-thred warning about being killed-with-hammers lands on my head 😉
Someone at Bath-HQ of Panelbase-HQmade a mistake.
The columns are wrong!
They should read…
“And you’d probably expect the men to have a different view to the women…”
But what about the Transistor Radios?
The columns should surely read…
MEN….WOMEN….TRANS….PEDO/JAIL/DODGERS….MSPs
It is not often one gets the chance of possibly correcting Rev Stuart Campbell/Panelbase. But as one born in Glasgow and an odd percentile Rangers supporting YES voter, I had to throw in a tuppenceworth 🙂
P.S A BIG thanks again to Pete WetFart. Think about it? if Sir Peter of Perth & PishFart had NOT pi55ed-off Stuart Campbell, then the Rev would still be RETIRED, wandering amongst the beautiful flora and fauna of Bath, with his word processor and brain gathering dust.
Instead, thanks to Lord PishWoke, we DO now have a decent piece of REAL journalism to read each day.
Thankyou Stuart for returning to the old Quill and Velum. 🙂
Sectarianism was an invention of our English masters in the late 1800s Glasgow.
The people were living in the worst housing conditions in Europe.
The Gorbals being the most infamous.
There was talk of rebellion
So our English masters came up with the idea of flooding the east end of Glasgow with Irish immigrants. And with Glasgow being a majority protestant unionist city, they knew it was a recipe for disaster.
They had created the perfect conditions for taking their minds of the state of their living conditions, and instead give them something’s else to take their anger out on.
Protestants could now turn their anger into sectarian hatred.
In the end Glasgow became a microcosm of what was happening in Ireland at the time.
Catholics in Glasgow were treated as second class citizens.
Catholics could get jobs of any importance. There was a huge rise in Freemasonry. Huge rises in orange lodge membership.
Discrimination was rife. Catholics were given the poorest housing.
The English plan had worked.
They created the Catholic v Protestant sectarian battlelines, that exist to this day.
The English plan being that if they are more concerned with tearing lumps out of each other, it will take their minds off of the absolute dire housing conditions and terrible living conditions and low pay.
A well thought out plan by the English establishment.
A plan that is still being played out today.
SNP MSPs support Rangers, an overtly Unionist club
Unionist MSPs support Celtic, an overtly nationalist club (their articles of association – ‘to support the cause of both Irish and Scottish Nationalism’)
You try to impose logic on the ‘beautiful game’ at your peril. Perhaps the logic, given their respective crowd sizes, would be to tax any organised assembly of more than say 25,000 people.
Apart from being caught in a traffic jam on the Kessock Bridge, the last football match I saw was in 1984 – I’m embarrassed that it was so recent.
God save Blessed John The Redactor.
.
Apologies for the earlier typo. Sight-loss doesn’t help.
It should have read…
TRANS
And NOT…
TRANSISTOR RADIOS
Predictive text can be a real crunt some days ?
Clearly who have little understanding of the subject as you trotting out the sectarianism divide as it has been used to justify one groups racism. UEFA rightly classify the singing of the Billy Boys as racist which has led to stand closures. No other club in Britain has had this. The term “hun” which was coined at some point in the 50’s after yet another riot in an English city has been ruled neither to be sectarian nor illegal. The singing off the full Billy Boys has yet Police Scotland reguarly stand by whilst it is belted out. Indeed during a minutes applause on Sunday 1000’s interuppted it to start singing this song. Rangers have a large racist fanbase which is evidenced most weekends along with online in the likes of their official media partner follow follow. We have had instances of their own fans who are coloured being abused.
Well I did mention a few weeks ago that a certain ex FM was attempting to splash almost a million around the housing market in the Cowal area.
Follow the money I advised then, but naebiddy lissent.
Swinney for the off. Stu dead on the mark with that too. Excellent blog.
Will we be seeing a joint ticket (Regan-Forbes) now? I wonder…….
Andrew scott @3:24
Not sure if he’s committed himself to a leadership candidate yet but noticed at FM questions that Karen Adam (via internet) appeared to be sporting 2 black eyes (and possibly a chipped tooth) – so fingers crossed its coughid related (ie being allowed to take a back seat while any storm blows over) rather than, say, excessive force being used by those trying to undermine Nicola’s defacto referendum.
Beauvais says:
2 March, 2023 at 3:47 pm
Swinney managed to be both boring and untrustworthy. Which is actually quite interesting.
Made me laugh. A lot.
So true. Swinney was a key player during the dark days of Sturgeon’s reign. Remember the Salmond inquiry?
Good riddance.
Both clubs are a scourge in my opinion and neither truly Scotland focused
She’s sorry so that makes it alright then, she should resign with immediate effect.
link to archive.ph
How about The Mephisto Waltz? ( My only contribution to a thread about football.)
Nearly missed the announcement about Swinney as I was about to skip BTL.
Religion is the oldest political divide so not much of a break?
This “two cheeks of the same erse” guff is super suspicious to the supporters of the green side. Are both clubs equally disgusting and sectarian? Are their fans? Look at how both sets of fans behaved in the final day of the last two seasons in Glasgow’s city centre.
I don’t think I have seen so much anti working class contempt and derision on here. I dare say many of you would have supported the OBsolete anti football act of previous parliaments. People dredging up 1970’s examples of sectarian warfare, as if every Celtic and Rangers game calls for the reading of riot act these days. Many will of course be fans of clubs that were too shite to inspire anything other than resigned apathy. Many like me support one side and enjoy the rivalry and try in our own way to challenge the bigotry. This is a complex socio economic issue with massive historical undertones. However Glasgow wouldn’t deliver such a complacently entrenched SNP regime if both sides didn’t at least in some measure support independence despite that parcel of rogues.
Cuilean @ 2:24pm. Rangers FC (in liquidation) did not get relegated to the 4th division. The club went bust and died. A pretendy Rangers was created and sneaked in to the 4th division despite being ineligible for membership.
Not surprised at the youth vote as you Stu- it must be down to the fact that young people today did not witness the violence and murder during the Troubles in Northern .
“The separation of schools into state schools (perceived as proddy) & RC schools is at the root of the problem and that carries on to this day.”
This has been mentioned a few times over the years and it’s a great way of blaming catholics for the sectarianism of others.
If this argument held any water at all, there would be the same level of sectarianism in every part of our country and in every other country that operated with faith based schools.
It’s lazy and incoherent drivel.
I lived in England for nearly 10 years without seeing any sectarianism at all, I lived in Germany without encountering any sectarianism at all, this as far as I can see is a Scottish disease that seems to be particular to the West coast.
I would imagine that the close proximity to Northern Ireland is a factor and the knuckle-draggers from both teams continue the bigotry, they may think they are not similar but they think exactly the same way.
I find it mind boggling in this day and age to cast one religious group as the root of bigotry in others, please remember that all our forefathers were of the same religion.
“I’m a bigot ‘cause they go to a different school” doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
It takes 2 to tango, it always will.
Lumping “the old(?) firm” together as if there is some equivalence is intellectually vacuous – do stats with celtic and “rangers(2012)” listed separately by all means, but not like that. The police and media are notorious for doing this, all to protect the true nature and scale of who is really to blame.
– like “altercations” and “incidents” between “rival groups of fans” … this is typically a mob of gers fans kicking the shite out of some poor prick. You can shove your false equivalence up your arse.
When the police started to collect sectarian crime statistics individually it was very embarrassing for the ibrox club as it turned out their supportets were responsible for at least double what celtic fans were (- and much of the latter could have been self defence).
Read the local press (it doesn’t always go national) – in the aftermath of the rangers defeat on sunday, check out all the violent incidents and how gingerly the press tries to frame it; organised attacks on a celtic pub, a lad stabbed to death in wishaw (a “disturbance”) – this is not “each side is as bad as the other”, 6 and half a dozen.
The Scottish Team who carry the real legacy of Irish foundations is of course Hibs!
Celtic came later.
For better or worse, people want to belong.
Belong to something.
Belong to something they can identify with.
From transgenders to football colours, from socialists to rastafarians, they take huge comfort in being part of something bigger.
It does not surprise me in the slghtest. T’was always thus.
Your clan, your caste, your team.
In these fractured times, the youth want to belong, somewhere.
So do the old, til they tire of life.
Celtic and Rangers in Europe are always good for a laugh, to be fair.
Football used to be a working man’s sport – a respite from wage-slavery.
Like all good things, it has been taken over by the money-men and turned into big business.
Football in the west of Scotland is not about football. It was never about football.
For both of these reasons I turned my back on it many years ago.
I have to say, I haven’t missed it.
We would all be better off if we did the same – and let the money-men’s investments flop.
Alex Salmond queries Humza Yousaf’s gay marriage vote excuse
link to archive.ph
From my own point of view.
I wish they would all waive saltires, and be more Scottish. However there is only one team I find offensive. That’s for political, religious and ethical reasons.
So farewell John Swinney, a very deeply religious man. So, deep that it was buried under a bushel.
Stu,
Being busy doing research of legal matters that effect Scotland, that was interesting results from your poll that you took over the divide on football and related religion that still has serious consequences on the yes and no vote for the future of a independent Scotland .
Luckily I do not support any football team, therefore are not bias in my determination that quite simply each country should be able to run its own affairs free from Colonialism.
Back to legal matters only.
HC Deb 25th October 1976
Vol 918 cc 136-55
Order for second reading,
Sexual Offences ( Scotland ) bill.
This comes under the Consolidation bill, (to cement laws.)
Has this been Repealed oris this still law in Scotland,
I thought you might find this interesting for the gender and trans- issues taken place in Scotland, interesting reading.
If it’s nae wi’in a sax mile radius o ma hoose Ah’m nae supportin it.
Sturgeon, Swinney, who’s next to leave the sinking ship? There’s still a sackful of rats left on board. How many will jump before they are pushed overboard I wonder. Let’s hope there will be a deep clean and a real independence party emerges.
Only Alex has the clout necessary to get independence back on track. If Ash wins and invites Alex back into the SNP (and the other Alba people) that would see a mass exodus of dead wood and would put independence firmly back on the agenda, from which it has been missing for the past 8 years.
A phoenix from the ashes may yet appear.
Aye Swinney don’t let the cell door slam on your way out.
Get rid of them, flatten the stadiums and turn them into parks and flats that are less shit than the rest of Ibrox and Parkhead to try and encourage a bit of gentrification. Start a Glasgow United playing out of Hampden. You’ll see a massive positive change in society immediately.
Look it’s easy….Hampden…..first 45 mins…clueless v toothless…. second half bring on kiddie fiddlers and rapeits …after 90 mins…extra time.Bring on Spanish police that have been told that anyone twitching/standing wants independence lol….prob solved
The league is overwhemingly skewed in their favour due to the amount of money that the two of them have sloshing around.* That they have such an advantage yet complain about financial inequality when beaten in Europe is quite an achievement. I have friends who are fans of both; the ones in Glasgow generally go because their dads took them when they were little.
The last game that I went to was East Fife -vs- Dumbarton a couple of weeks ago (at a friend’s insistence); most of the ones I’ve been to over the last while have been Lowland League or East Of Scotland leagues.
I like a game of football.
*Some of this money may be, in some form, imaginary…
Celtic are my team. Football without fans is nothing, said Big Jock.
Founded to help the Irish Immigrants fund soup kitchens for impoverished poor. The fairytale story of 11 men from Glasgow going on to win the big cup.
Wee Jinky said that the Inter Milan team looked like film stars.
It’s neither creed, nor nationality that counts but the man himself.
Bertie said, Aye but can they play!
And the rest is history.
Politically the fan base seems to be sympathetic to the Irish struggle for Unity, and the fans are singing f*ck the Tories most games, while supporting the trade unions. You’ll see the flags saying support the workers.
Douglas Ross found himself on the recieving end of a banner, and the Celtic fans raised the flag for Palestine while playing Hapoel Beer Sheva. Raising hundreds of thousands for Palestinian kids.
I like the politics and the history of Celtic.
Rangers were unlucky in the penalty shoot out in the European League Cup final last season. The thousands that went to Seville are memories that will last a lifetime.
I think for most people after the whistle blows most people are friends, colleagues and family. It’s not what it used to be, despite the song choice.
link to youtube.com
You always get a few idiots that take it a bit too far and somehow manage to smuggle fireworks into the stadium.
Not sure why this site has degenerated into an ” old firm” discussion as there are far more important topics to discuss. To declare an interest I tend to favour the team from the East end of Glasgow but much prefer rugby union to Wendy ball.
Stevie says:
2 March, 2023 at 4:36 pm
This “two cheeks of the same erse” guff is super suspicious to the supporters of the green side. Are both clubs equally disgusting and sectarian?
The term “Old Firm” is an old fashion phrase for career criminality (in much the same way prostitution is called sardonically “the oldest profession”), and even merits a mention in the “Belles Of St Trinian’s” movie where George Cole’s spiv character Flash Harry in street bookie mode exhorts the public to place bets with him to “support the old firm!”
There’s a good reason why Glasgow’s gruesome twosome are called “The Old Firm”, not the “old firm friends” myth the old George Outram group of papers propagated (where you couldn’t even get a job as the janny if you weren’t a freemason). They’ve been interlinked for mutual financial benefit to a marked degree ever since Celtic first appeared – hardly surprising considering it was largely at the behest of a jerry-builder and a wanted conman, with Father Walfrid as their frontman (and who didn’t give a sh*t about the “poor” so much as was alarmed that increasing mobility amongst East End Catholics might see them subject to non-RC “influences” – it’s important to remember that the Marists were set up as a replacement to the Jesuits when the Vatican decided the Society of Jesus was getting a little too crypto-socialist for its liking).
What makes this even more remarkable is that Rangers vehemently opposed Hibernians (as they were originally called) from being allowed to join the Scottish Football Association only a few years earlier, specifically because they were Irish Catholics. Hearts and St Bernard’s were fined multiple times for defying the “ban” and in the end the SFA was forced to climb down. The difference with Celtic, it seems, was shared contacts amongst the seedier businesses in Glasgow.
As has been pointed out many times before, Celtic’s first chairman was the piano player of the Rangers Glee Club for years, and there’s little doubt both attempted to fix the 1909 Scottish Cup final to as many replays as they could get away with in order to maximise gate receipts, hence the infamous riot (Queens Park and Third Lanark called for both to be disqualified and the two losing semi-finalists Clyde and Falkirk to play for the cup instead, but the SFA as per usual weren’t going to disadvantage the Old Firm).
Celtic and Rangers were infamous in the early days of the game for running “friendlies” against each other on the same days the other Glasgow clubs (Queen’s Park, Third Lanark, Clyde, Partick Thistle, Northern, Thistle, Cowlairs and Linthouse) and Paisley’s Abercorn (less than a mile away from Ibrox) were at home to hurt their gates.
In Division 2, matches towards the closing part of a season where a Glasgow club had a chance of promotion would suddenly see opponents some travelling distance from Glasgow benefitting from the appearence of never seen again “trialists” causing points to be unexpectedly dropped – and accusations were rife of Old Firm players doing “favours” to weaker teams to ensure the promotion challenges of potential local competitors were derailed (in a less technically advanced age, such subterfuge would have been easy enough to do).
The Old Firm have always encapsulated everything rotten, untrustworthy and underhand about Scotland. But as their fans don’t care so long as they “win” everything all the time, notions of “the bigger picture” are lost to them, as with more important matters. How to keep a people in a state of cognitive and emotional immaturity forever in one easy lesson.
I listened to Alex Salmond there. He’s in need of some stepsils. Humzas recollection of events is as bad Nicola Sturgeon’s haha.
David -Same. Glasgow Warriors are my team. Can’t beat Peter Wrighht on Fridays having a go at Tom English and the referees!
Merganser says at 6:49 pm
‘If Ash wins and invites Alex back into the SNP (and the other Alba people) that would see a mass exodus of dead wood’
With the best will in the world, that scenario isn’t possible, Merganser. Regrettably, every SNP MSP elected in 2021 is there for a further 3+ years, so even if ALBA heavyweights were invited to return, it would be as ordinary members, not as MSPs.
HR is likely to get pretty messy though: if Yousaf wins it seems inevitable that a rebel group will form on the backbenches, if Regan wins, she will not get a comfortable ride from the woke and Sturgeon factions.
Alex Salmond would undoubtedly breath fire into the Indy campaign from HR if he was presented with, and won a seat, rather than from the ALBA Party marginalised by MSM. But Alex has repeatedly said that there must be two Indy parties, working independently, and having an ‘understanding’. It is not clear what kind of fringe role he could play, other that being a figurehead for Indy, even if he did return to the ruins of his beloved party.
I think his best role would be as the master strategist, planning and co-ordinating, working out of the limelight, and guiding and unlocking the massive potential that exists within the YES ranks.
The best hope may be that Regan, either as new leader, or after SNP implodes further under Yousaf, takes charge, and returns her party to its founding principles. Working all-out with ALBA, SALVO, and the entire YES movement for the next 3 years would enable this mass co-operative to overrun HR and have the country fully prepared for Independence, a wait that would be well worth it.
O/T: Rev, have you heard anything about Ian Livingstone resigning with immediate effect?
Just one in a long line of lies from Humza.link to theguardian.com
Then there was the driving without insurance while Transport Minister!
Sectarianism barely exists in Scotland, and middle aged drunkards LARPing as True Blue Proddies or Fenian Rebels for 90 minutes doesn’t fash me in the slightest (just don’t watch if you don’t like it, Love Island is embarrassing too but nobody’s forced to watch that either).
It was still quite spicy right up till the 90’s, but nobody cares whit school ye went tae anymore. As the wee stushie over Kate Forbes showed, religious bigotry in Scotland isn’t anti-Catholic these days, it’s anti-Christian-in-general.
Swinney to the back benches shockarooney.
The older you get, the more experience you have of the toxicity of the evil twins, the more you view them as negative. Simple.
So farewell John Swinney…throughout a long career in politics you achieved a few things that absolutely no-one will remember and that no historian will bother to research.
Others may have an idea of what those “few achievements” were but as I cannot be bothered to find out about those achievements or ask those who might know if they actually exist, we’ll just leave it at that.
Its interesting that both Swinney and Sturgeon have gone but Robertson is still hanging on to his role as a minister.
I don’t see how Swinney can be part of the police investigation for the £600k as he holds no party position that would require him to authorise the use of funds. That would suggest the reason he is resigning is only tangentially linked to the 600k.
We know from Craig Murray that Stewart McDonald’s emails don’t contain anything damaging to the Murrells and I would assume by extension to Swinney.
Could it be that the investigation into the leak of the 600k has forced someone to turn Kings evidence and they are throwing our evidence on the Salmond affair to strike a deal?
The ugly evil sisters are a bane and curse on Scotland. I support Elgin City and Scotland and that is it.
I have even less time for Scottish Rugby which as far as I can see is an even worse hotbed of Patronising Yoonery than the two Ugly Evil Sisters.
___________________________________________________________________
So was Swinney pushed or did he jump?
So Swinney and Sturgeon have gone and Robertson isn’t standing for leadership of the wokist SNP. Is this a case of “there is nae smoke withoot fire”.
Busy raising my blood pressure watching Question Unionist Time.’
SNP Kirsty Blackman looks like they just freed her from a prisoner of war camp.
Letting the right wingers take over the show while whimpering.
Fiona Bruce in quicker than a Whippet to interrupt key words like Independence.
Surely the answer is for all Glaswegians to support Partick Thistle?
As a Celtic fan, I have a vested interest. However, I wonder if the results would have been any different if you took the clubs individually, as opposed to a collective unit.
Anyway, I despair when I hear the tired old Catholic schools are the problem. It’s not a problem in any other country on earth. Why is it so much of a problem here?
Maybe if people knew a little history, they would know why we ended up with separate schools.
As for the problem being invented by our English masters, I’m not sure about that. They certainly utilised it, that’s for sure.
Tom Gallacher in his book The Uneasy Peace stated “One nineteenth-century historian claimed that in the 1790s, when Glasgow had no more than 39 Catholics, there were 43 anti-catholic societies”.
Of course, it’s the Catholic schools that are the problem!
Jesus, can we go back to fighting for independence instead of fighting amongst ourselves?
I despise the old firm. It has been the scunner and bane of the west of Scotland for far too long.
I have witnessed it manifest in every single strata of west of Scotland society I have ever encountered, from top to bottom. Family, school, bus drivers, taxi drivers, train drivers, street sweepers, binmen, jannies, cooks, cleaners, builders, joiners, plumbers, labourers, musicians, teachers, farmers, shopkeepers, writers, publicans, bar staff, social workers, youth workers, professors, politicians, journalists, polis, cooncil folk, doctors, lawyers and everywhere in between. It sickens me.
If I were ever to run for office, doing away with the OF would be among my top priorities. With the neverending shite we’ve all had to put up with because of it, it has been the source of way too much strife and ugliness for far too long. There is no valid argument that justifies its continuance.
If Glasgow must have football, then amalgmate the teams, call it Glasgow United FC and put the OF shite in a museum where it belongs.
What Rot, apt name.
A certain Wallace Mercer tried to do that in Edinburgh. It didn’t go down well with either set of fans.
Let’s do away with the OF label. It’s tired too. Let’s call out Celtic fans if that’s the focus of your ire, or Rangers fans likewise.
But even at that level, it’s lazy. It’s like unionists calling out a nationalist on Twitter and tarring us all with the same brush.
What is it you have witnessed amongst that almost full gamut of the job market?
Do PTFC fans ever fall foul of your ire? Or any other club’s fans?
Swinney was informed about the child sex abuse carried-out by top lawyers but apparently did nothing about it. Thanks to John Halley, that is now being investigated and the noose is tightening around some necks as McPlod gathers the evidence.
Just how far that will go is anyone’s guess, but it would not surprise me if the resignations are connected with this.
I think the £600K is a more palatable red herring. The real story is probably bigger than that.
Operation Planet: link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
@themadmurphy
I think that’s no longer relevant that the catholic school divides . Things have changed . The kids are all friends on social media by high school and by sixth year are now at each other’s parties . I went to a lot of sixth year fund raisers ( with my wallet ) and was surprised that their friendship groups were across three or four local high schools .
Our local high school is the feeder school of a faith school despite being non denominational the kids don’t make a deal of it and integrate . Certainly in Glasgow they are used to integrating. It’s not a big thing now where I live . We have a very desirable catholic school that many different faiths go to .
Football is a whole different thing but at my sons non denominational school most kids supported Celtic .
However in the high schools they are reaching out to each other in my neighbourhood.
That’s a great thing .
Agreed! The male/female columns are meaningless.
That applies to any opinion divided up by gender.
sarah says at 10:02 pm
“O/T: Rev, have you heard anything about Ian Livingstone resigning with immediate effect?”
Saw a tweet about it last night but have not been able to verify. If true it’s very suspicious given Sturgeon and Swinney’s resignations. If it is true it brings to mind that police officers who resign or retire cannot retrospectively be investigated for wrongdoing in office.
I’m so bored of this inaction.
I know, I know, the candidates need to get their chances, blah, blah, blah…
8 years we’ve been marking time while the SNP had it’s mental breakdown. It feels more like 80.
For Humza to be the preferred choice of the outgoing junta should properly be a death sentence on his campaign, but it manifestly isn’t. Hate to tell ya folks, but Rip van SNP hasn’t woken up yet.
Serious question, who is going to change their mind in four weeks? While the bourgeoisie debate party procedures, the Wee Free Church or a person’s stance on gay marriage, Scotland haemorrhages another month of life force, another month of resources are plundered, our economic turnaround and societal resurrection is delayed another month, and Scotland’s Neoliberal divergence away from EU standards proceeds another four weeks..
It grinds, and grinds, and grinds, and grinds… and it’s fucking insufferable.
For fk sake draw lots. Ping an arrow in the air and see which one it lands closest to. Who knows, we might get really lucky.
The SNP membership can wake up and align itself behind a Convention of the Estates with or without the histrionics of a Leadership “contest”. There is NOTHING to stop sitting MP’s and MSP’s backing a Convention of the Estates and affirming the Sovereignty of Scotland and doing it by lunchtime today, yet they insist on locking progress into these interminable political procedures; the Scottish Independence uphill Steeplechase.
I am so fucking tired of it.
What has patience delivered? A rat infested Vichy Assembly which repeatedly panders to the invasive doctrine of Westminster Parliamentary Sovereignty, which is wholly and irremediably incompatible with the Claim of Right. It isn’t “our” assembly, it’s theirs.
Holyrood isn’t a mechanism catering for our liberty, it is a mechanism which delivers our subjugation; the Claim of Right and Sovereignty of the People throughout the Realm of Scotland is usurped and subjugated by the contemptible Scotland Act, the dog collar Scottish MSP’s put round their necks in order to collect their Westminster pay cheques.
Our “Patience” with the SNP witnessed Scotland missing out on a Scottish Backstop in 2016 which would have rendered the 1707 Treaty of Union untenable, and Scottish Independence left standing as the only viable conclusion. But no, the SNP had to dither and procrastinate while the initiative was lost, opportunity squandered, and deals were concluded to Scotland’s greatest possible injury and disadvantage.
Here we all sit on tenterhooks not so much waiting for the new SNP leader to energise the moribund SNP, but to see whether the hand of the corrupt cabal is still on the tiller, and whether the SNP serves the interests of degenerate perverts are creeps, or remembers it’s former identity, as a the Party of Scottish Independence which has sold off the family silver.
Do we really need this quivering blob of bloated inertia? Cannot we just go ahead, create a Convention of the Estates to champion the Claim of Right and Constitutional Sovereignty of Scotland, and trust that whoever or whatever MP’s or MSP’s remain in the SNP that are any good to us, will be adequately nimble and fleet of foot to make their own way to the Convention of the Estates, and there to pledge their democratic mandate from the people, to the furtherance of the peoples’ sovereign rights and integrity?
Go SALVO. Roll that snowball down the slope. We must not surrender our vital initiative to the SNP, the insatiable political black hole where countless mandates, initiatives, opportunities and hopes all go to die.
RE: the old firm
d n wade says:
3 March, 2023 at 1:02 am
Surely the answer is for all Glaswegians to support Partick Thistle?
Hear, Hear! – very much the enlightened approach and one that I would thoroughly recommend. For those considering it a liking for regular disappointments with fleeting bouts of hopes followed more disappointment is a necessity
On a serious note I wonder if the poll results reflect that for the 16-34 age group the Old Firm didn’t really exist between 2012 and 2016? Someone who is say 16 would have no real memory of what the old firm was pre-2012 and the worst aspects of the old firm have only started to come to the fore in the last 3 seasons as Rangers for a bit close to Celtic
RE:Swinney’s resignation
Something is clearly scaring the Sturgeonites. I get the police investigation might be the real reason why Swinney and Sturgeon resigned and Robertson isn’t running for FM but I have 2 questions that don’t seem to fit that as being the only reason.
First of all why is Swinney going if its the £600k? He wasn’t in a position to control the use of that funds so why would the Police be interested in him?
Secondly I get why Regan’s policies and willingness to work with Alba could scare the Murrell’s but why does Kate Forbes scare them so much? She’s been in government for a few years so can’t have been considered too much of a loose cannon but clearly the attacks in the press and the timetable for the election have been done to specifically disadvantage her. She’s still a young politician who you would think they could find ways of manipulating so what’s causing them to run scared?
X Sticks hope you are well, found this tweet which was posted last night as yet info not verified, if true something big is happening , and if true Murrell will be trying to hand on long enough to ensure Useless gets the gig. Lets hope he fails on both counts.
Im beginning to think there’s a plan unfolding 🙂
Quote
Sir Iain Livingstone quit overnight.
POLICE Scotland’s Chief Constable quits after five years in the role & WILL NOT serve his resignation period. What are the most powerful people in Scotland distancing themselves from?
@GBNEWS
@BBCScotlandNews
@SkyNews
.
@ X Sticks re ‘police officers who resign or retire cannot retrospectively be investigated for wrongdoing in office.’
Any idea the source of this?
I think a couple of retired Detectives got the jail for falsifying evidence re a murder trial… so I wonder how correct it is.
Possibly it’s not that they cannot be investigated, but more to do with they cannot have their pensions revoked?
Also, wrongdoing/criminality – big difference, so much would hinge on the exact wording.
I am a Thistle fan. Mainly because my dad’s from Maryhill. However I do support Celtic in Europe etc.
My dad tells me a funny story. He was at the 1971 cup final , when Thistle thumped Celtic 4-1. He was at the game with a bunch of mates. One was training to be a priest, my dad is catholic. The Celtic fans were shouting:” Ya bunch of Huns”. In Glasgow you are either one or the other , you can’t be neutral, it’s mental.
My problem isn’t with Rangers being a protestant club or otherwise. I just don’t like the politics of Rangers , and that’s institutionalised. There is an anti-Catholic , anti Irish ,pro British military agenda.
I don’t have a problem with the Irish people, the flag or anyone’s religion. I do however have a problem with the Butchers Apron and what I would deem anti Scottish songs sung by Rangers fans.
I do not endorse the IRA or any terrorist regimes on both sides. I would support Rangers in Europe, if they would just stop with songs and the English flags. Above all else I just find it embarrassing. Scotland fans have a good reputation, so why do Rangers fans run about like Millwall casuals embarrassing Scotland?
Maybe when we get independence the British/Irish politics can be gradually erased from these fans identity.
@Daisy
Apologies for the DM source, but I’ve taken the hit and archived it for you 😉
link to archive.is
“Nearly 50 Police Scotland officers have resigned or retired from the force to avoid misconduct proceedings against them”
Hi Lenny – hope you’re well too!
Secondly I get why Regan’s policies and willingness to work with Alba could scare the Murrell’s but why does Kate Forbes scare them so much?
She’s a normal person, which is exactly the sort of person who is no longer welcome in politics.
Have you seen Holyrood or Westminster lately? It’s like something out a John Waters movie, except it’s not funny.
Breeks @9:42am
I dunno. I think we’re entering a period of chaos, whether the incumbents like it or not. Successions are always problematic and this one is unlikely to disappoint. With Police Commissioners and Deputy Leaders running for the exits, something big this way comes. Even if Humza “my recollection is different” Yousaf takes over as planned, it may all blow up in his face anyway. Even if they manage to keep a lid on the can of worms I doubt he’ll be leader for long. He simply does not come across as leadership material. If Nicola still hopes to be the puppet-mistress it will all blow up even quicker.
I think that’s enough disconnected sentences for now.
Stock up on popcorn. They aren’t deft enough to keep it all together.
@Daisy
The only source I have for this is a recent conversation with a relative who told me that the police forces of England and Wales had, in light of some recent high profile cases of serving police officers preying on women, voted to make resigning not mean that the police force could not be held to account for turning a blind eye to red flags but that Police Scotland had voted against this.
As I said I only have the account of someone who said they had seen this on the news.
Many folks held their nose and voted SNP at the last election; how many will do so again? If Yousaf “wins” the stink will be so overwhelming several gas masks will be needed even to contemplate a vote for his party.
I think it will be difficult no matter who wins the leadership contest: Forbes and Regan will have the wokestapo after them and Yousaf is just useless, as well as being superficial, hypocritical and racist
Red says…
“Have you seen Holyrood or Westminster lately? It’s like something out a John Waters movie, except it’s not funny.”
I’d say it was more like something out a George Romero movie, except it’s more scary.
X Sticks 11.28 .
Sturgeon knows all about resigning before a investigation ie her resigning from the Law Society & left her employers to pick up the bill for her maladministration on to cases .
There is something in the latest edition of Private Eye…
“Private Eye has described the police investigation into SNP finances as the “game-changer” in Nicola Sturgeon’s abrupt decision to resign last month.”
Re: Livingstone: “found this tweet which was posted last night as yet info not verified, if true something big is happening”
Something big should be happening. About time, you might think!
Folks who follow these matters will know that Livingstone got the gig after his predecessor Phil Gormley was reported for “misconduct” and investigated by the utterly corrupt (surely impeccably correct??) Scottish Police Authority (SPA). He resigned shortly afterwords.
An insider at SPA (no longer working there) tells me that the Gormley ‘misconduct’ was a stitch-up by senior cops at Police Scotland. Gormley was an outsider having headed the National Crime Agency down south. Apparently he found the “quaint little ways” of Police Scotland – er somewhat unusual, and was intent in doing something about it.
You might not believe this, but apparently those impeccably proper chaps at PS were not at all keen on that idea – and so Gormley suddenly found himself the subject of an internal procedure. “Bullying” – they said.
I know it’s difficult to believe that Police Scotland would do a stitch-up, so I guess these reports are ill-informed!
In any case, the guy who was his ‘temporary’ replacement got the permanent gig – and then spent a lot of time and resource investigating Alex salmond.
Knowing what I know about the depthless probity of our Scottish plods and the Crown Office, I have to assume that these matters are totally unconnected – and I have misinformed.
It is however most unusual that the Heid Bummer would not be allowed to serve out his notice!
Nothing to see here!
Breeks.
Neither a extinguished or subsumed Scottish parliament in 1707 can send members from a Scottish parliament to sit in Westminster parliament since the Scottish parliament closed its doors in 1707.
This leaves no Scottish parliament as active in a treaty with the Westminster parliament since 1707.
“A certain Wallace Mercer tried to do that in Edinburgh. It didn’t go down well with either set of fans.”
Of course it didn’t, and it won’t in Glasgow. Doesn’t matter; there is no good or valid reason for the continuance of the cause of the sectarian shite that infests our society from top to bottom, and the root of it is solely the OF.
“Let’s do away with the OF label. It’s tired too. Let’s call out Celtic fans if that’s the focus of your ire, or Rangers fans likewise.”
It’s the entire OF that’s the problem, not one side or the other. The whole thing needs closed down.
“Do PTFC fans ever fall foul of your ire? Or any other club’s fans?”
Irrelevant. It’s the OF that’s solely & entirely the problem at the heart of the sectarianism that blights life in the west of Scotland, at every level, and has done for far too long.
Rangers and Celtic are too big for Scotland and because of that, they have undue influence that allows their fans to behave in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated in other countries.
If they ever got into the English league and managed to get up to the big tier where the money is, the discipline of having the financial rewards taken away from them would force the two clubs to act to keep their fans in line.
Breeks.
The pre- agreement by Commissioners and the ratified acts by the Old Westminster parliament 1707 excluded the The Scottish parliament from entering the treaty of the union as a union partner.
As a child of catholic parents who left the faith due it being a second marriage, I wasn’t brought up as a catholic but all my relatives were catholics, and I lived in very orange areas in the Clyde valley, singing songs in the primary school bus about wading through catholic blood and hearing my grandad curse at proddy players whenever Celtic lost. Thankfully I matured out of that nonsense with a loathing of the sectarianism that was enshrined in Rangers and Celtic. I moved to a mixed village where we’d play footie together every night but go to different schools, and my best mate at the proddy school used to support Celtic just to wind everybody else up – a brave soul.
This was a great question to include in your survey Stuart as I feel it cuts to the heart of a major aspect of Scottish culture – tribalism, and this seriously holds Scotland back from whatever path the people choose to take. This is a great analysis too – maybe the views of the young reflect what people in Scotland tell me, that the religious bigotry that seemed endemic to the culture is really becoming less prevalent.
Innarestin article on Unherd: “The SNP needs Alex Salmond back”.
A few of the statements in it are bound to raise hackles, but still hard to argue with, if you prefer facts to fiction.
On the subject of the leadership battle, Regan is the only one who is offering an olive branch to AS. More proof that Regan is the only candidate putting Indy first.
As this is a fitba thread, we can all agree that you don’t leave your star striker on the bench if you want to win.
@Breeks 9:42
Wondering how you think a “rat infested Vichy Assembly” could grow a pair and assert Scottish Sovereignty by lunchtime, or maybes teatime, as it is now almost 3.
Also wondering why such a died-in-the-wool Indy stalwart like yourself frequently comes on here to bemoan Scotland’s hypothetical divergence from the EU monoculture.
I kinda thought Indy was all about preserving our own culture, laws, and home-grown localism against external pressures to change, and not about throwing it all away in pursuit of gimmicks such as cheaper holidays and the removal of mobile roaming charges.
link to facebook.com Well done Ash
Not the Catholic schools argument again! I’m reminded of a discussion many years ago on Scotsport where Jim White told his guest (Graeme Spiers, I think) of how he’d been torn away from his Catholic pal at school and how this could only lead to bigotry in adulthood.
‘And is that why YOU became a bigot?’ asked the guest. Cue a furious denial from Jim! Clearly only the Catholic schools were to blame in his eyes.
Pacman , time to have a keek at Millwall and their ‘well behaved ‘ fans.
It isn’t just a Scottish phenomenon – even Canadian supporters of ice hockey wrecked cars and shops after they’d won and I always thought of Canadians as calm folk.
In international football English fans get a bad name.
Reading about CAIS/PAIS XY disorder of sexual development. It so passes me off that they are considered to be women despite having (undescended) testes and no uterus or ovaries. It seems to be No dick = woman. Erm no i would say, no ovaries/ presence of testes = man. Not having to deal with the cyclical upheavals of menstruation is a major benefit for all men, even testosterone deficient ones. Let’s stop being nice, it doesn’t help.
Owen – I think the biggest problem is actually private schools. You only have to look at Humza the Hutchie Grammar boy. To see the sense of entitlement! Most of our judges are from Private schools. Then there is Kirsty Wark!!!
The Catholic schools trope is a bit tired!
If the election of Ash Regan to SNP boss is paid for by promising unsound continuation of the £3bn. gift to the construction industry for dualling the A9, and the continued exploitation of new undersea oil for burning rather than phasing it out, then could Labour now top the list of green(wash) credentials?
I wish the Greens hadn’t shot themselves (twice) in the head which looks like killing off the energy policies we desperately need.
Thanks X Sticks very useful.
Cynics might now be wondering if there were any live enquiries or complaints into Mr Iain Livingstone prior to his sudden retirement?
Interesting to see Sir Stephen House acting head of the Met currently getting pelters re allegedly using the term ‘regretful sex’ for those making complaints of rape. He is denying it emphatically.
Those with experience of House noted that he always dotted the eyes and crossed the T’s when it came to keeping minutes of meetings, etc… which is why it took such a long time to get him to go (he was a terrible Chief Constable both for Strathclyde and Police Scotland). One can only hope no-one is stupid enough to bring him back to Police Scotland.
Gormley, on the other hand, was a very good Chief Constable (all-be-it determined to turn Police Scotland into the biggest English force of all), however, he was actually very able and human, so much so, he failed to cover his back when writing up meetings where there were disagreements. It left him open and that’s when there was an internal coup.
Iain Livingstone should have got the CC first time round. He was by far the best candidate, and best qualified for the job. By getting it on the rebound, after the coup, he was never in a position to ‘upset the apple cart’ and occupied the position without being able to clean out house as needed.
And then there was the Alex Salmond sqaud, etc.
Police Scotland badly needs to break into 4 areas, with a Chief Constable for each one. Their Chief Spokesperson should be selected from them for a period of 5 years, and decisions on force policy be made collectively across the 4 areas.
Anyway. Very interesting. Thanks again.
@ fruitella the hun at 4:17 pm
Importing fuel to burn from other parts of the planet is less environmentally sound than burning our own. Plus the Scottish jobs in both the fuel production and processing industries will be sustained if we use our own fuel. Or should those workers just sign on the dole.
I commented the other day that only approximately 25% of our rail network is currently electrified, so we are a long way off phasing out fossil fuel use or should the trains only go as far north as Dunblane…
Plus energy, like all the major influential powers, is reserved to London Rule so heehaw of great significance Scots can do until we return to self-governance.
Breeks.
Legal matters only.
Englands Westminster legally has no union partner in the treaty with it other than itself.as it extinguished the Scottish parliament.
For the parliamentary union to succeed the Scottish parliament from 1707 has to still be in existence.
But it was extinguished pre union in England, and ratified by the English parliament as extinguished, not subsumed.
And in Scotland it had closed its official doors in 1707.
Since the Scottish parliament closed its doors, it has been unable to send any member/s or representative/s from our parliament since 1707.
So whomever sits in Westminster all these years falsely claiming they are from the 1707 Scottish (union partner) to Englands Westminster parliament Has held illegal office since 1707.
Englands Westminster has been running Scotland under a false flag of The Scottish parliament being in a union with it,
Legally it never progressed as such.
This thread exemplifies why religion is destined never to be discussed in a calm measured way in Scotland, luckily I am from a mixed catholic, protestant marriage and can view the protests from both sides as to who is to blame as pathetic
IF any SG were serious about addressing the issue of sectarianism they would immediately ban ALL religious marches , these marches are NOT about religion they are about power and threat and as such they should be considered ANTI SOCIAL
“Scottish jobs…will be sustained…if we use our own fuel”
It’s a powerful position. But you agree, with your environmental credentials, that we have to stop burning oil for heating and transport, even though it is profitable – in neoliberal terms – to do so? That means turning our back on all the potential profit (we used to finance the re-structuring/destruction of british industry) and retraining redundant but skilled labour like we used (to pretend) to. When should we start with that? Asking for a descendant.
fruitella the hun
The decisions around phasing out of fossil energy use are substantially different in wartime to what they are in peacetime.
To give but one example. Germany has greatly reduced its dependency on imported gas, partly be ramping up consumption of coal and its even more environmentally damaging relative, lignite.
From that, we can conclude that ramping up our own gas production to reduce consumption of the worse alternatives elsewhere is the environmentally sound action.
The environment, after all, is global, not local.
And the war is here for a long time to come.
@ Breeks 9.42am, like you breeks I am sick of this never ending parade of the troughers, AFAIC every one of them including Ash Regan is untrustworthy, every one of them including Regan sat on their comfy arses and let the deviant dwarf and her ghouls DESTROY the SUPPOSED party of independence, every one of them by their silence and cowardice colluded with the deviant dwarf to stand by whilst WM fucked Scotland and the Scots
NOT one of them had the courage or integrity to VOICE their opposition to the imbecilic actions of the BETRAYER , NOT one of them stood by Salmond when he was falsely accused of heinous sexual actions by an individual who clearly committed perjury as they were NOT EVEN in the building at the time they claimed the false offence was committed
I find it incredulous that there are still people who cling to the belief that the snp is salvageable and that if Salmond returned it would all be better , so brainwashed party members are willing to FORGIVE and FORGET the cowardice , collusion , silence , trea son , lies , corruption and abject failures to govern responsibly for the people of Scotland by all the other cowards and deviants in the deviant dwarfs party
Others maintain that there are still good people left in the snp , name them , and never mind Cherry or McNeil they were still cowed into silence
@ fruitella the hun
What someone with my environmental credentials would like to see, and what is realistically possible in policy terms to roll out across and be tolerated and sustainable by Scottish society are unfortunately quite a way apart.
I’m almost at two decades of getting by on just 1 KWh of leccy a day. Ever developing further my veg growing abilities and other food requirements from local sources so I can be self-sustainable and reduce my spending in corporate shops.
I recycle to the point I even deal with neighbours’ waste as they lack the motivation to do it, ranging from taking their compost to add to my wormery so I have enough organic waste to keep my veg and fruit growing soil nourished, to collecting unused bikes I can fix up to give to people, or donate to the local bike station.
I’ve tidied many tonnes of waste cleared from roadsides and countryside to keep my locale looking at least half decent. That’s waste created by private citizens chucking their waste out of cars, businesses fly-tipping, and even British Telecom / OpenReach and their contractors dumping their trade waste in roadside ditches or embankments. The latter I have an epic yard long email chain which included the head of the project to roll out broadband in Scotland doing his dinger with other depts to sort out… Not unexpectedly it came to nothing…
Also clearing the roadside pavements so the bairns can get to school safely seeing as the local authority think leaving them overgrown for years is acceptable.
Likewise clearing culverts and verge drainage channels to drain flooded roads so the road surface doesn’t break up and deteriorate so much with winter frost heave.
I do all this work voluntary with zero recompense for many hundreds of hours of my time and fuel.
I wish people would do more as the activity is beneficial for the soul and physical well-being, but that’s me, a great deal more of society really don’t give a flying fuck about improving our natural environment preferring instead to carry on with the unsustainable practices.
Aye, there’s a lot of “I”s in my post and some may like to think that is about ego, well it isn’t, it is merely to show that what I speak of is actually backed up by years of actual commitment and accrued knowledge, and not just spouting virtue signalling pish without being able to back up my views and position.
So that said, I realise that societal transition to more sustainable ways of existing is not going to happen overnight, and therefore will require the continuation of certain undesirable practices till the political power and will, and wider society make the choice to move in the correct direction with regard to environmental issues.
The fact that we are still spending many millions of pounds building new energy from waste incinerators at landfill sites hints that the significant reduction of general waste containing plastics with a similar calorific value to expensive fuels like petrol & diesel, is not expected anytime soon.
John Main 6.06
It can be better argued that in wartime special efforts are justified. The less dependence on oil the more secure we are.
There are two wars. (big ones) The one for control of natural resources in the underpopulated (by our standards) east of Europe, and the global war on nature which threatens us all directly – of which cheap energy consumption is a major driver.
BBC Reporting Scotland, reporting that lawyer Amer Anwar, and a certain Scots I think it Jagtar Singh, that his family said that Humza Yousaf at the time of the same sex marriage vote of which Yousaf missed, that he (Yousaf) was working tirelessly to free the man.
Notably none of the above openly challenges what Craig Murray, Alex Neil and Alex Salmond has said, which is the complete opposite on why he missed the vote.
BBC Shortbread are trying to put the idea into our heads that Yousaf missed the vote on same sex marriage because he had a serious prior commitment, we know who the BBC wants to be next FM of Scotland.
If SNP members who dislike Humza are smart. Those second votes should go to Forbes. So in theory she is actually well ahead.
link to telegraph.co.uk
Mhairi Black, notable only for taking a drag queen into a primary school, hits out at Alex Salmond for telling the truth about Humza Yousaf missing the same sex marriage vote.
Black who has done nothing for the indy cause, and has been a biitter disappointment, says that Salmond telling the truth is belwo the belt politics.
link to msn.com
@Dan 6:43
You forgot to mention blanking off EGR valves on engines in your post.
Poisoning kids downstream of your toxic exhaust fumes to save a few pennies is not a good look.
I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only I recall you took agin me for some trifling post showing what you reckoned was a lack of ideological purity on my part.
So none of us is perfect. Big furry deal.
Dan, was it you who suggested how to protect the gooseberries from sawfly? If so can you remind me please.
@fruitella the hun 6:50
The war has global reach. The first world has been able to pay the vastly increased costs for energy. The third world has been out bid.
The same goes for food.
We are only more secure by being less dependent on fossil fuels if we would have to import these fuels. As a potential net exporter, if we developed our reserves, we are more secure by pumping our own.
Cheap energy is exactly what has liberated billions of people from lifetimes of unrelenting, back-breaking drudgery.
I declare a vested interest. I am one of these liberated billions. So are you.
Your logic is arse over tit.
Reading Robin MaCalpine’s blog:
“I am in touch with two of the campaigns. I have met with both the Forbes and Regan campaign teams at their request and have been feeding in Common Weal policy positions, which is a normal activity for a think tank seeking to influence policy. If the Yousaf team contacted me I’d do exactly the same for them.”
Great stuff. The guy is very articulate. Passionate about Independence strategy, that’s why his book, Sorted – A handbook for an Independent Scotland is sitting on my shelf. Cheers Robin!
Hail Alba.
@Big Jock 7:00pm
You can find analysis on scotgoespop
SNP members’ first preferences for leader (Savanta ComRes / Daily Telegraph, 23rd February – 1st March 2023):
Humza Yousaf: 31%
Kate Forbes: 25%
Ash Regan: 11%
515 members questioned? Out of the supposedly 100,000. 11% for Regan is better than previous 7% on a different poll.
@ John Main
Aye, coz blanking off an EGR valve to cure an ongoing issue rather than scrap an otherwise perfectly usable vehicle makes environmental sense, when the vehicle would only need replaced with yet another disposable modern shitbox vehicle.
And FYI that car is only driven a couple of thousand miles a year in a rural environment so rarely running in the rpm zone where EGR is utlised, and as it is rarely sitting in traffic so up the rpm this means the DPF is hot enough to do its job anyway. Plus it still passes its official MOT emission soot test.
But good on you for trying to find anything to have a go at rather than address any of the other far more significant matters in my post.
Doug those dates would be pre-Salmond interview on Humza’s deliberate avoidance of the equal marriage vote. Might have an effect on polling.
Also note the older voters don’t like Humza , so who knows how far he is behind.
RepublicofScotland 7.07
I was looking for a shorter link on that Marie Black before i posted
Next up she might have a pop at Emma Hunter NOOO that wouldn’t do .
Ah mharyblack
The Glasgow ned
Who cares what this trougher says
If the facts are as you think them then of course sound logic will process them to a different conclusion. They’re not. The facts:
– we are driving the biological system to destruction, one road, school, shopping mall at a time – then there is pollution and industrial agriculture which we have all accepted (outside the vested interests) are damaging;
– a human can plant and harvest enough food for their household if they have a decent plot (and a rotavator) without “backbreaking toil”. That idea came from producing stuff for lazy gits with mercs on the payroll.
– billions of people were created by cheap energy, many of them are in poverty and misery with little hope of improvement.
–
Regarding Scotland’s oil reserves, I confess this is something I am hugely conflicted about. If you have read the work of Steve keen on debunking neoclassical economist William Hordhaus’s prize winning contribution to the IPCC, it is pretty devastating to see the influence evangelical economists have had on the climate policy. I recommend people google keen’s work on this. Economists simply wave away scientific evidence to write the paper they want to write.
The policy of dismantling the North Sea oil project sounds good, yet it isn’t enough to ‘externalise’ your hydrocarbon use. shutting down the North Sea and importing dirty oil from the tar sands of Alberta seems to be a lose lose. That said, I think we could be moving a lot faster than we are at present. Sadly we haven’t taken sufficient advantage of the opportunities we’ve had already – see scotwind. The potential revenues from that (and land tax) could have funded a cheap public transport system like we are seeing rolled out across Europe.
At present, decommissioning is a likely vote loser. Neoliberalism is extinction level economics.
What a crappy situation.
I really don’t understand the mentality of some of the audience at the Glenrothes hustings tonight.
Ash Regan explains the process of getting around a table with Westminster once the 50+1% is reached at an election she then says the UK government will at first be reluctant to to do this, but like the sixty or so nations that have left the British empire the UK government must eventually accept what’s happened, this brings a mediocre applause from the crowd.
Humza Yousaf says the Westminster government must repeal Section 35 (with the GRRB in mind) and the crowd gives him a loud round of applause. Don’t these people not realise that without independence which needs to be front and centre of everything a Scottish government does, that Scotland cannot and will not prosper, I really despair sometimes at the stupidity of some folk.
We need some even more potent revelations to blow the anti-independence SNP contingent out of the water.
$35,000,000,000 worth of oil stolen from Scotland in the last year.
So Mhairi Black, Pound-shop MP and one half of the SNP’s Dumb and Dumber Westminster leadership dream-team, comes out criticising AS for daring to comment on matters SNP.
She needs to come back when she can string a coherent sentence together. There really is a dearth of talent in Sturgeon’s rancid SNP.
As for “below the belt politics”, the Dear Leader would know all about that!
Robert. People thought it was great when a street fighter like Mhairi Black got elected. However the neds r us accent gets a bit annoying after a while. Particularly when you find out that underneath the rough exterior lies nothing of any value.
We will never win independence while people like her are given licence to sit on their arses at Westminster. Here’s the thing. We all have a way of speaking amongst our mates. But most of us adapt our accents at work or in meetings. That doesn’t mean you are selling out your Scots dialect. It’s just to be professional and so that your accent doesn’t detract from the point you wish to make.
Mhairi Black sums up all that is wrong with the SNP.
No referendum, no stone. Be ashame if it went missing!link to thenational.scot
It’s independence or nothing now!…critical
If snp can’t or won’t do it,
then get lost,and be forever known as flops!
And the people will find thier own way!
If mhairi black was born 5 miles west,
She should would have been fae johnstone
Humza has made it onto the international stage at long last…
link to twitter.com
Big Jock @ 9.09pm
Let them have the cess pit cap back for the Coronation. Most true Scots know that isn’t the real stone.
@fruitella the hun
Short, painful, lives of unremitting toil has been the destiny of the vast majority of humanity for all of recorded history. Work if you want to eat is the rule.
It’s still the destiny of hundreds of millions today. Within living memory, it was the destiny of hundreds of millions of other people, the Chinese for example. These Chinese people are in the first generation where technology and cheap energy has allowed them an escape route.
It doesn’t matter what we do in Scotland. The rest of the world won’t be turning the clock back without a fight.
We can already see how that fight is developing. It’s a crying shame, but it just goes to show the eternal truth: it only takes one madman in a million to ruin things for that entire million. That’s “baked in” to us humans as an existential flaw. So we may as well accept it and get on with it.
It’s the basic truth underlying a thousand films, books and plays. When the shit hits the fan, minding your own business on your self sufficient plot won’t help you.
Dan
What you do is commendable, and very unusual. I’ve been working on different bits of the environmental task these 45 years – sporadically for the last decade in retirement. That gap between what needs to happen and what people will vote for is exactly why the Greens should be advocating real change rather than trimming their position to get a few bums on parliamentary seats.
This guy, on the staff of a right-sing funded Yankee think-tank/private intelligence agency, has given a description of what the Greens really believe that seems right about the Ecology Party’s aims around 1980. That’s still my position but acknowledging we have to replace the current system gradually doesn’t mean we have to lie about or obscure where we are headed. It is only with that in view we can justify some of the intermediate steps.
It is, of course, a position anathema to the traditional left who have spent so much time and energy convincing people we can all (they imply globally) have a middle-class lifestyle if only we pin back the 1%.
link to archive.vn
“minding your own business on your self sufficient plot won’t help you.”
Agricultural systems are rarely self sufficient at the homestead level. They require various forms of cooperation with neighbours to work.
Unrelenting toil is mostly a result of being enslaved – so others have unrelenting leisure. That’s a different issue and does not prove the notion that we either have cheap energy or work till we drop.
Your description of the future makes one wonder why you bother to participate here, unless debunking any positive notion is your sport.
fruitella the hun
You disagree with what I write (or is it disapprove?) so I should fuck off.
Fewer words, less carbon footprint, better for the planet.
A positive improvement on your post, and written just for you. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Legal matters only.
What the global climate change do not tell you.
That before and during the Scotland act, Westminster made (act)s for Shetland and surround seas that produce oil to be retain to Westminster.
The Zetland act is included is this.
Climate change and energy crises is for the purpose of controlling the common man,
The politicians are still holidaying and jetting around the world going, and continuing to enjoy a high standard of living at Davos and WEF meeting, and to their holiday resorts, like BJ did when he went Awol for a while while prime minister, HE was in Greece, where his Father Stanley Johnstone has a lush holiday home,
They partied the night away with food and drink while we were all in lockdown.
If the politicians were leading by example, they have shown a poor example.
Where was Greta Thumberg when the explosion of Nord Stream happened, a disaster for wild life, and the sea, ? They are all quiet as a mouse.
Where were all the climate change enthusiasts when the rail way explosion happened East Palestine in America? , they are all quiet as mice,
Whom and where are the climate Change global enthusiasts when the Western World and with the aid of Europe weapons blow up Countries under wars flags that must have a large impact on animals, water supples, and habitat,?
It is only convenient to shout climate change, when it suits apparently.
The other scenario that is omitted by The Climate change globalists from Davos, the WEF, and the WHO,
Is the History of Climate Change’s that have took place for millions of years before industrialisation or oil produce.
The sudden rise of temperature from the Ice Age to tropical britain, and reverting back to a cooler and wetter climate in britain,
This is a repeat weather pattern that has happened world wide for millions of years.
Just because you were not around in the passing climate change events does not mean any one of us has to remain ignorant on this topic,
There are plenty of geologists that have wrote on this subject in the past, there are thousands of published papers from experts on this topic,
and for those that like it in easier format. You can watch the, The Birth of Britain, with Tony Robertson, of time team fame.
Also by Tony Robertson is his programme on The Dark ages, and why people starved.
And if you watch History archaeology with Time Team you will see that Britains ports have changed and altered over centuries due to the the sea levels rising and falling.
Re-read your post then see if you can point out to me the way forward for humanity if it’s in there, or you could elaborate if it’s not. I don’t see it.
I’m here mostly to argue against economic growth based on cheap energy (oil burning at the moment) because that’s what is destroying everything I value. The SNP are very much an oil-centred party. I share their independence objective though but doubt we can get the numbers without courting both the green vote and the socially conservative vote currently going to No. I think Ash Regan was ill advised to dump two green policies – A9 and fastest possible reduction of oil extraction for burning.
Too many words for you?
Dan.
Legalities of people and contributing to own food supply.
Most of the Scots were driven from their natural way of living long ago, when the bigestates took over Scotland,
With the legal conception of enclosure laws from down south and the elite,
Others were ripped from their natural way of living by highland clearences.
And others through a lack of associated employment when their lands and crofts were taken from them through Colonial Stock land grabs,
There are very few Scottish people left with their own generational piece of land.
Nowaday they are out priced by those whom sell expensive or property else where and invest that money to buy large tracts of land at a cheaper price in Scotland,
Then there are those that, buy here in Scotland for a tax evasion scheme and buy Castles and big houses that are left empty while they live abroad.
Then there are the second holiday homes that locals cannot rent.
There is such a accumalation as to why Scottish people have no connection to the land of their forefathers, and have forgotten how to do these things.
Scotland has been Colonised and their land has been stolen or taken from their hands, their natural livelihoods and way of living is alien to them since they were forced to live in cities for employment.
So yes we can all do some thing like not littering the country side.
But to be honest, what interest does a Scotsman now have in looking after what was once their Country and land for the well being of the powerful wealthy or the rich, that land stole their land through being Colonised.
It is a sad fact that hundreds of years of history has pushed the Scot to the fringes of Society to disconnect, From a interest of their land through no choice of their own,
Legally what is coming under the umberella of re-wilding legislation is Britains natural wild life being culled, ( killed ) to supposedly being replaced with other Species from long ago,
Except in reality the balence is not being met, nor should it be.
Our wildlife is being discriminated against in favour of ideology,
The natural wildlife of Scotland that has survived even from the days of old that lived along side such animals as feline predators or wolves is being killed.
Very little of these animals will be left, from hedgehogs, to foxes and badgers, to deer and birds, all for the sake of experimental ideology. That will tipnature out of balance here in Scotland.
People should pay attention to new legislation being bought in and what it does to our present animal environment.
Don’t usually comment on environmental issues as basically it is a waste of time and energy.
Firstly, before the earth becomes incinerated in the climate change supposedly caused by wholesale industrial development, there will be numerous viral attacks several of which will actually kill healthy young people. As the last example (which was a relative pussycat in viral terms) proved, our economies are extremely vulnerable and our social and medical services completely unfit for purpose.
To look forward fifty years for a fix, when there are three continents ripe for development and exploitation right now, seems lunacy.
Everything that humanity does to raise living standard has an adverse effect on planet Earth. Of course in real terms and time humanity has been around for milliseconds and in one minute RT there will be no trace of our passing through.
In conclusion things will go on much as they have done until our economies collapse. So why torture ourselves,
“To look forward fifty years for a fix, when there are three continents ripe for development and exploitation right now, seems lunacy.”
There are evangelical Christians in the States who believe all the natural environmental damage and resultant tribulation foretells the return of Christ. They see no point at all in trying to stop it, if anything they want to hurry it up. They think the planet was a gift from God to humanity to do with what we please (or rather what pleases the powerful whatever harm it brings to everyone else). We currently have a Pope who doesn’t believe that, and neither do I.
No point in arguing with those folk. Either you believe what we are told by physics and biology or you don’t. Anyway, this development you mention, could you say more about it? Not sure which three continents you mean.
I see the National reporting that MRSB have rapped Panelbase’s knuckles for asking misleading / leading questions on your behalf. I expect other MSM to be cock-a-hoop in due course. Any (printable) comments?
@ Del G
Bit of explanation in this thread.
link to twitter.com