The Conservative And Labour Party
This is Tory activist Sarah Robb. She’s not a very nice person. (We don’t feel too bad about saying that, as she’s no fan of ours either.)
But, y’know, Tory activist, not a nice person – no news there, right?
It’s where you’ll find her working these days that’s slightly surprising.
And most striking of all, there’s this.
Because so determined is Tory Sarah in her conviction that Jim Murphy is the best person to “lead” Scottish Labour, she’s actually gone so far as to join the Labour Party (and she’s taken her mum with her).
Alert readers can’t have failed to notice that Labour’s entire 2015 election campaign, particularly in Scotland, is set to be based on “Vote for us to keep the Tories out”. Even now, five months out from the vote, it’s rare that a day passes without one of the party’s faithful mouthpieces in the media penning another “Look, we know Miliband’s completely useless and our policies are feeble, but for God’s sake vote Labour anyway” article.
(Today’s is by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.)
Yet to even the most cursory analysis, there are no significant ideological differences between the two parties, and there haven’t been for years. All that Ed Miliband plans to do is fiddle around the edges of Tory austerity – a temporary energy price freeze here, a few pennies to the NHS there, rather than offering radical left-wing policies that are actually backed by a majority of the electorate and would give voters a genuine alternative to the Conservatives.
Instead, terrified of losing the votes of Middle England, his party tags along like a poodle as UKIP’s ultra-Tory agenda drives the country deeper and deeper into 19th-century madness. Labour’s cowardice ensures that the centre ground keeps moving further and further to the right, leaving reluctant citizens who still support social democracy with no electable party to vote for.
Labour has spent the last 30 years pursuing “The Price Is Right” politics, resulting in the despairing loyalty of people like Toynbee who can see the betrayal of all the party’s old values but still desperately urge the electorate to stick with it on the feeble grounds that the Conservatives are 1% worse.
In Scotland, meanwhile, the already-faint lines between the political Old Firm were blurred forever by the “Better Together” campaign, and never more enthusiastically than by Jim Murphy, who was regularly seen backed by Tory councillors, MSPs and supporters on his otherwise thinly-attended tour of 100 street corners.
So in one sense we probably shouldn’t be surprised that Tories are now taking the obvious next step and just flat-out joining Labour in an attempt to “usher in the era of Jim Murphy and Ruth Davidson”.
Labour has very clear rules about its members supporting other parties.
But it doesn’t bother implementing them since the “Better Together” campaign. There’s been no suggestion of action being taken against Michael Kelly, the party’s former Lord Provost of Glasgow, who yesterday openly called for Labour supporters to back the Lib Dem candidate in Gordon at next year’s general election in the most open contravention of Rule 4B imaginable.
It seems only a matter of time until the logical conclusion is reached, if it hasn’t been already. As Kevin McKenna recently put it in the Guardian:
We’re sure people like Sarah Robb will fit right in.
So, we’re a disease now?
A concise example of the state of the two main UK parties and their comprehensive acceptance of neo-liberal doctrine and policies.
Good grief. Why am I not surprised at any of this. The referendum did show that there really is no difference between red and blue tories.
Don’t think that the ordinary labour voting punter might be to happy at this. I know one who always votes labour, you know faither aye voted etc. He hates the tories with a passion. Wonder who he will vote for now.
So its true, there is a LabServative front in Scotland-shire
So even their vote Labour in Scotland, save teamGB from Tory reign is a shyste. Who knew! Sheila Crossman sounds lovely though, or honest at least, “rid Scotland of SNP nationalistic disease, sway soft votes, support Eggs Murphy, Labour, Tory, Westminster wherever we can.”
Lovely bunch.
Brilliant piece. Gets straight to the point. There is only one party, The Westminster Party.
Um…like i said on Cream Of The Crop…half an hour ago.
I find it hard to comment on anything labour do,because they
are not labour they are tories.
It’s like pontious pilate asking the crowd if they want
jesus barabbus or jesus barrabus.
Do you want lying thieving murderers or lying thieving murderers.
The people are cattle,sheep,the herd…to be used not served,
this is a very old game folks.
All that Ed Miliband plans to do is fiddle around the edges of Tory austerity – a temporary energy price freeze here, a few pennies to the NHS there, rather than offering radical left-wing policies that are actually backed by a majority of the electorate and would give voters a genuine alternative to the Conservatives.
I think you missed one here Stu … votes for 16 and 17 year olds. Now where on earth have I heard that one before? 😉
Apparently young Magrit Curran backs the immediate transfer of this particular power to Holyrood in time for the 2016 Holyrood elections. Is it just me or are we seeing a new LOW, if that is in fact possible, for Labour here.
Labour wants the immediate transfer of election powers to Holyrood to allow MSPs to give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in 2016.
Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran has written to the UK government offering support for early legislation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-30391105
As far a a certain Mr. Kelly is concerned you’ll have to excuse me as I don’t think I can be bothered holding my breath to see what *ahem* punishment Labour will meet out to him following his call to vote Lib Dem in the 2015 G.E.
I must admit it isso nice to see what we have all thought for so long turns out to actually be true namely Tory = Lib Dem = Labour = UKIP = ONE party the TORY party. Still I suppose we had to expect this after all RED Ed did introduce us all to ONE NATION so I guess it was blindingly obvious that ONE PARTY would surely follow along!
Excellent dissection as always. What a formidable thorn you are in the side of the unionist collaborators.
If you hate the signs and symbols of the Sottish working class then vote Scottish Labour.
This is the first time I’ve ever come across a story of a rat joining a sinking ship.
My God. It has been a long long way down.
– To think that I used to be a member is shameful.
(albeit 35 years ago when it was still socialist at least in name and clause 4 was still there)
Reading the above, I’ve definitely lived through history.
I’ve said before but worth saying again, this Labour Party are far worse than Thatcher’s Tories.
How any fair minded person can vote for them is beyond my comprehension.
At risk of repeating myself..
That’s why I’m worried in the darker corners of my mind that a block of 40 odd SNP MP’s will just be crowded out by a Labour/Conservative (for the good of the country) coalition.
My goodness! The post-referendum ecology of Scottish Unionism is quite remarkable!
Will the next UK government be a Tory-Labour coalition to keep out the Kippers and the Nationalists?
Labour’s cowardice ensures that the centre ground keeps moving further and further to the right, leaving reluctant citizens who still support social democracy with no electable party to vote for.
For me, that sums up perfectly what has been happening in the UK since 1983. They had a perfect chance to reverse this with TB in 1997, but sadly, as we now know, TB was slightly to the right of Thatcher!
The only time, in the past 30 years that the Red Tories have shown any courage at all, was during the referendum campaign. They had the balls to side with the blue tories and defend the union (against the wishes of huge numbers of their own supporters). I’ll give them that.
That is truly ghastly.
The Labour Party is now non existent ,it has been absorbed along with the Lib Undems into the greater Unionist Party.
I do hope they enjoy waving their union flags and swigging their cheap booze and subsidised food in the HoC while folk are desperately struggling to make ends meet.
Makes you happy to know that the other place is allowed to complain about cheaper champagne without an effing blush.
Do these folk have no shame?
No conscience?
No ” moral compass”?
C’mon Scotland – get these morons out!
Martin Wood says:
9 December, 2014 at 10:29 am
At risk of repeating myself..
That’s why I’m worried in the darker corners of my mind that a block of 40 odd SNP MP’s will just be crowded out by a Labour/Conservative (for the good of the country) coalition.
Well they may, but the moment the Red Tories do that, they will be annihilated in Scotland. The main obstacle to Scottish independence is a big ugly tripod with a red tory leg, a BBC leg and a Daily Record leg. Remove one of those legs and the whole rotten structure comes crashing down.
Great stuff, let’s hope they keep it up!
Yet more evidence that Jim Murphy’s campaign to become Scottish Labour Leader is about Westminster regaining control of Holyrood and crushing the independence movement for good.
Wonder what all the Scottish Labour devo-maxers and those frustrated at being a branch office of the London HQ think of this? Still glad you voted no, Henry and Johann, now that the right wing, anti-welfare brigade have such a prominent role in the campaign to elect your new boss?
Rev, You have done it once again, a marvellous find!
Tory helps Labour, helps Tory, shafts Scotland at any price.
I wonder how many Labour Party members have yet to cast their vote in the leadership elections? On reading this, and some of them will read this, they will feel like the postal voters in the referendum when new information came to light.
It also begs the question, who is actually funding Murphy’s campaign?
This has a smell of lab/tory coalition at westminister at the next General Election.
Anything to keep the Nats squarely in Scotland.
Honestly if ScottishLab fool the voters then this is gonna happen, and Scotlands interests will come second again and again and again.
Labour want to stamp out democracy so that they can claim to be the party of democracy.
The North Britain Labour branch office made a pact with Satan & that debt is being called in.
The tories never really disappeared in Scotland, they just joined (and took over) the Labour party.
A disease? WTF?
I don’t know who this Crossman person is, but dear God what a statement to make.
As for Tories and Labour being both indistinguishable one from the other, or indeed interchangeable – who knew?
Labour is a socialism/social justice free zone and has been for quite some time.
No surprise to me at all since before the referendum.
We had a centre-right, neo-liberal, neo-conservative prime minister for 10 years. His name was Tony Blair.
The Unionist chessboard is now clear for all to see. It’s a simple Faustian pact between Labour & the Tories. In Scotland, continued WM rule is the paramount political consideration. Tories in Scotland will vote Labour & vice-versa. Encouragement will be given by the right-wing press. The Tories have nothing to lose with this strategy. The real battleground -as always – will be England where the the gloves will remain off.
Absolutely brilliant article. Exactly what I have been trying to articulate, but you put it with a great clarity.
It may be worth having another look at those big NO campaign images with Murphy, Brown and Darling defending the union. Particularly the faces in their groups of “supporters”. Where there is one tory, there are bound to be more.
Good for a game of “spot the tory”.
wee_monsieur 10:19am
“So we’re a disease now?”
I think if they were to officially merge they could be called
The Conservative Labour Amalgamated Party or “The CLAP.” Now that is a disease, but it is curable, vote SNP!
Not surprised, but just wow anyway. I joined a Trade Union, Nalgo, at 18, and worked within the Branch, alongside an old fashioned, principled, intelligent Branch Secretary. I feel quite privileged now, as I witnessed what they were founded on.
Don’t think this silly activist, and that’s a misnomer, knows how far Labour has fallen, how truly confused they are, and how they hate and prostitute, what Labour stood for decades ago.
To think Keir Hardie was born in Scotland.
Look on the bright side of it all! What did cosying up to the Tories do for the LibDems!? I seem to remember them flying high a couple of weeks before WM2010. Now where are they?
Next Labour. The closer they cosy up to their Tory friends the better. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could offend tradional Labour voters more. Those older people who still believe their party are socialists – seeing them close to the class enemy Tories will be the final nail in the Labour coffin in Scotland.
Calling modern Labour out for what it is, will surely destroy it.
Also, funny that perception they have … Sheila Crossman saying “SNP Nationalistic desease” … I think anyone looking from the outside at the referendum campaign would see most of the crude tribal nationalism swilling around was within the BetterTogether ranks!
British Nationalism – Definitely OK, Positively Wholesome!
English Nationalism – OK because England=Britain doesn’t it?
Scottish Nationalism – Desease
Scotland was used in the 1980’s as a testing ground for the poll tax, and was used over the last couple of years as a testing ground for the introduction of a one party state under the ‘better together’ banner.
I smiled when people on here started mentioning a Tory/Lab coalition, but I’m starting to get a little concerned. 🙁
@ Dorothy
Do these folk have no shame?
No conscience?
No ” moral compass”?
No.
No, apparently not. They don’t require one when dealing with what they perceive as a disease.
FFS, I still can’t get my head round that. An appalling statement and indictment of Tory (red, blue or yellow) mindset.
The referendum did not “show that”: nulabour is not distinguishable from the tories and that has been perfectly clear since its inception.
As an aside, I was reading Anthony Trollope this week and I give you a perfect description of Tony Blair, in the character of Sir Timothy Beeswax, of whom Trollope says:
” It cannot be denied that Sir Timothy had his good points as a politician. He was industrious, patient, clear sighted, intelligent, courageous, and determined. Long before he had a seat in the House, when he was simply making his way up to the probability of a seat by making a reputation as an advocate, he had resolved that he would be more than an Attorney General, more than a judge – , more, as he thought it, than a Chief Justice, but at any rate something different. This plan he had all but gained, – and it must be acknowledged that he had been moved by a grand and manly ambition. But there were drawbacks to the utility and beauty of Sir Timothy’s character as a statesman. He had no idea as to the necessity or non-necessity of any measure whatever in reference to the well being of the country. It may, indeed, be said that all such ideas were to him absurd, and the fact that they should be held by his friends and supporters was an inconvenience. He was not in accord with those who declare that a Parliament is a collection of windbags which puff, and blow, and crack to the annoyance of honest men. But to him Parliament was a debating place, by having a majority in which, and by no other means, he, – or another,- might become the great man of the day. By no other than parliamentary means could such a one as he come to be the chief man. And this use of Parliament, either on his own behalf or on behalf of others, had been for so many years present to his mind, that there seemed to be nothing absurd in an institution supported for such a purpose. [….] No man was more warmly attached to parliamentary government than Sir Timothy Beeswax, but I do not think that he ever cared much for legislation.
Parliamentary management was his forte. […..] Parliament must be managed,- and his party. […] He was ambitious that it should be said of him that he was far and away the cleverest of his party. He knew himself to be clever. But he could only be far and away the cleverest by saying and doing that which no one could understand. If he could become master of some great hocus pocus system which could be made graceful to the ears and eyes of many[….] then would they who followed him believe in him more firmly than other followers who had believed in their leaders.[….]
There was no other man among them to whom the lead could be conveniently transferred. But yet they were uncomfortable,- and perhaps a little ashamed”
It is depressing how little changes, since that was written in 1880
Jim Murphy may be such another, I think.
They just do not get it. Malcolm Bruce – ‘even though the NE of Scotland is affluent, there are food banks’. There are food banks because people are being sanctioned and denied benefits. The safety net has been withdraw.
Scotland raises £53Billion+ in tax revenues. Pays £4Billion in debt repayments it doesn’t borrow or spend. Loses £4Billion+ a year in Oil tax revenues a year, since Osbourne/Alexander raised Oil tax revenues 11% (£2Billion) in 2011 Budget. Could save £3Billion a year on Trident/illegal wars and a tax on ‘loss leading’ drink. Taxes from Scottish commercial activities going through London HQ’s £?Billions. The rest of the UK raises £437Billion in taxes.
The rest of the UK borrows and spends £100Billion more. Pro rata £10Billion a year.
E.g. HS2. (£70B), Hinkley Point (£25B), HS2 (£7B), Crossrail 2 (£20B), Thames tidal Tideway sewer (£4B), London Garden Bridge, 3rd London runway.
As we all always suspected, Tories the lot of them. Afeared of a party that does what it promises, to the benefit of the people of Scotland. Westminster is the disease, we are the cure.
Can I remind folks of this quote, which in terms of the British Labour Party, especially the Northern Branch office, is quite apt:-
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the ("Tractor" - Ed) moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the ("Tractor" - Ed) appears not a ("Tractor" - Ed); he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
? Marcus Tullius Cicero
Welcome to GB folks-the ultimate one party state.
No dissent allowed!
F**k that for a game of soldiers
Keep going Stu-another brilliant post
If nationalism isn’t the disease, it’s the cure.
Westminster complain about migration but they are causing it. Westminster policies are destabilising the Middle East and people are migrating to Europe. Support/funding for Israel apartheid policies are destabilising the world.
Personally, I’m over the moon about this blatant lurch (no pun intended!) to the right by SLab.
This will highlight the real difference in political thinking North and South of the border drive their core support further from them.
If they are attempting to rush in the 16/17 year old vote LA, it’s a stitch up we are witnessing unfold before our eyes. Looks like they are planning to bring all the teenagers from Englandshire up to Scotland for 2016? A full scale pincer movement underway for both elections.
God…they are seriously at war with us! Sometimes I can’t take in just how bizarre this all is! They won the ref, apparently…this’ll be the mass ‘bayoneting manoeuvre’ we are seeing now. Don’t know whether to be amused or bemused…couldnae make this stuff up!
Thanks for this forensic investigation Stu. It is clear now what is going on. This girl’s indiscretion has given the game away. Confirms what we all smelled.
North British Labour really are all over the place. Any semblence of integrity has been abandoned. Exposing that to Scottish electorate whilst emphasising positivity of pro-independence parties should help GE campaigns.
Young Sarah feeling proud to usher in the era of Jim Murphy and Ruth Davidson. Ruth your time has come, after sharing platforms with George Galloway and Gordon Brown, oh how she clapped and cheered, you are at least now linked with a proper Toryboy.
The Murphing, or morphing, of the Labour and Tory party aims, ideologies and mantras is a sight to behold. The Labservatives or Conour coalition is an unwieldy title how about One Nation Party with the subtext, for Jockland, SNP BAD.
Hope to hear soon that we have infected our 100,000th member, a disease indeed. A plague on both their houses.
Vote Tory get a Tory government.
Vote Lib Dem get a Tory government.
Vote Labour get a Tory government.
It really doesn’t matter what hue, Blue, Yellow or Red, the Tories now dominate Westminster.
go rev stu, smashing the lying deceiving lowlifes daily. destroy them.
Mum Johanne is a Rangers supporter
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=322053774505390&id=321632937880807
Lives in G15.
Christ what a bunch of today the least, not very nice people. People who seem to see in politics merely a device for perpetuating the status quo. In a week where the Archbishop of Canterbury has highlighted the sickening obscenity of foodbanks, the complete lack of any social concern at all I startling.
Young Barry Black 19y selected by Labour to stand for Aberdeen West in the next general election. But he has already upset Barney Brockett, Labour Party leader of Aberdeen Council;
” The vice-chair of Aberdeen City Youth Council (AYC) condemns proposals by the Labour Party controlled District Council Education Culture & Sport committee to increase the class size of P1 in a city school to 25″.
Barry believes strongly that The following legislation should be retained /enacted;
i. Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).
Comment; Scottish legislation different system in England
ii. No tuition fees for University Study.
Comment; His position is at odds with his likely leader Spud Murphy who as President of the Student’s Union supported an introduction of Fee charges. which is still official party policy.
iii. Votes at 16 should become a statutory right.
Comment; Scottish (SNP) government policy not Labour’s, as yet.
iv. The, “Prohibition of cannabis legislation should be the subject of a parliamentary debate. Legalisation and decriminalisation must form part of that debate’.
Miliband and the labour party are against any debate or relaxation of existing legislation
Check him out. see attached.
http://caltonjock.com/2014/12/09/barry-black-19-years-old-selected-by-labour-to-stand-for-election-in-aberdeen-in-2015/
They should just merge and get it over with, two cheeks same ugly unionist backside.
The Labour Party is now non existent ,it has been absorbed along with the Lib Undems into the greater Unionist Party.
Yup, that is basically it. It was odd during the referendum – you really couldn’t tell the difference between Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Kippers and BNP – they all just looked the same with their UKOK T-shirts and Better Together signs.
Labour now appears to have become such a rump here – on the ground at least – that they can just be taken over by the Tories and Blairites wholesale. And those I know who are still members will be perfectly happy with that: they are Tories dressed in red.
More evidence Tories are backing Labour as Brian Monteith disgorges fantasies.
http://www.cityam.com/1418070015/why-salmond-surge-won-t-happen-and-scots-will-back-labour-2015
It seems young Sarah’s family have connections with Rangers and the Lodge. Found the links. They are in the public domain, but are private family matters, so don’t think it’s approporiate for us to intrude. We have the picture of the culture and values set of Sarah’s background. Just odd that she would back a Catholic, is all. It shows the strength of Unionism though. Just as ‘nationalism’ has crossed the ‘sectarian’ divide in west central Scotland, so, it seems, has Unionism.
From Animal Farm by George Orwell
” The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
The End.
Thanks Stu for setting out in absolute clarity the reality of the Conservative & Labour Party.
Is it just me but is that Tory Tree Union Jack not an abstract N. Ireland shape?
wee_monsieur:
A disease, a virus, nazis, divisive. And you thought you just wanted your country to be fair, normal, sane, and run its own affairs…
(On the other hand, our side can dish out the insults too.)
See all these welfare-hating Scottish Tories, do they realise that the neo-lib party in London have a long term goal to privatise the NHS and state pensions and to introduce a private system of insurance? Do they realise this means they will likely be faced with massive bills (the average family of 4 in the USA now pays about £1000 a month for health insurance according to Forbes magazine and these health insurance companies want in on the act here too). Does Sarah Robb realise that David Cameron and his Eton chums wouldn’t p*ss on her if she was on fire?
As regards the outcome of the GE2015, I really wouldn’t put it past unionist politicians to form a Lab-Con coalition against UKIP and the SNP. After all, there was a National Government in the austerity of the 1930s, and as we’ve noted, there’s not a hair’s breadth between them anyway.
At 75 yrs old you’d think that Sheila Crossman would have learned some wisdom in that time. Specifically, that nationalism isn’t a disease- it’s an indicator that something is seriously wrong in the political firmament of GB & that independence is the only cure for it.
everyone has been saying the big 3 parties are the same, but this is getting ridiculous 😐 they’re not even pretending anymore.
@galamcennalath
Indeed, quote cited on Sunday Politics “Every minor member of a coalition gets crushed”.
The future Battle of the remaining Tory vs ‘Scots with a Conscience’ Titans awaits.
Unionism is all becoming very ugly. Not so much British as Brutish.
Perhaps it always was.
This is a good find Rev. Is Sarah Robb pioneer of a new political movement? (Some might say that this movement has been going on since Tony Blair took over the Labour Party in 1994 of course.) It will be interesting to see how many more folk over the next few months identify as unionist rather than Labour, Lib Dem or Conservative.
After all something similar happened when Ireland was pushing for home rule at the end of the 19th century. Gladstone’s Liberals split into the home rulers and the large Liberal Unionist block which sided with the Conservatives to block Irish wishes.
Sorry, Stu, but I just couldn’t bring myself to click on the link to Polly Toynbee and the Guardian. I just got so sick, weary and tired of their policy of constantly taking down dissenting opinion in their laughably named “Comment is Free” section, that I refuse to visit their site, since every time someone clicks on it, it means another penny in their piggy bank thanks to the weird and wonderful way advertizing on the internet works. I wouldn’t mind, but we’re not talking about abusive, libellous or threatening posts, just politically incorrect ones, such as “divisive” nationalist supporting posts.
Referendum No.2 then.
Well I left the Labour Party after the ref result having been disgusted by the activists hounding the elderly, the love-in between Tories, lib dems and labour, the two faced lies, the denial if Scotland’s wealth, the inability to give Scots true welfare reform, etc. Gordon Brown made me sick with all his self seeking posturing and distortion of facts. I came to WOS for truth and got it in spades. Labour betrayed me, my family and our future. The betrayal continues. I am happy to be part of an inoculating virus … Keen to get rid of the pustulating red yellow pox that is spreading over Scotland’s weary body. If it turns blue, it’s dead.
3 questions:
1: Is the Rev still of the firm opinion that Labour could never go into coalition with the Tories at Westminster 2015?
2: The SNP say they will never go into coalition with the Tories…is that now basically every Unionist party then?
3: Are Scottish Labour the biggest sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome in history?
Is there a journalist of the year award? If so I would nominate the Rev. Investigative journalism of important aspects of the body politic today (and Fiona’s quote shows that it has been so for a very long time). The difference now is the internet – that let’s us join in.
Polly Toynbee is a millionaire and advocates voting Labour to keep the Tories out. Now that Labour is the party of millionaires – as opposed to the Tories, party of billionaires, isn’t it time people in England voted Green to keep the Neo-Liberals out?
now now Rev, you shouldnt make fun of the inflicted…..she is obviously a f#cktard of the highest order
UKOK ligggers ligger wot won it, Comical Cockers of the Torygraph says Gordon Crash Brown told him George Kerevan is a Trot, “leaving Gordon to talk to me alone. He’s actually read my bit of the book and cross-questioned me carefully about my background, slagged off poor old Kerevan for being a Trot, and interrogated me about my family, especially the girls.”
Even if you only take 12 years of Crash Gordon’s red Tory phoney left socio economics, teamGB is virtually bankrupt with world beating inequality but its a Scots nationalist disease that red and blue Tory imperial masters like Eggs Murphy they think they can eradicate. One of Eggs Murphy and Crash Gordon’s biggest vote NO or else frighteners was you’ll lose your teamGB pension so vote NO, but where on earth do vote NO pensioners think the money comes from to pay their teamGB pension? UKOK debt mountain and it cant go on much longer. But at least they’re not Trots, like say Norway, or Finland, or Germany, or the Netherlands and so on.
BtP
I think you’re right
A thought. In England they probably still see the GE as a battle between Lab, Con and the upstart UKIP. I wonder how they would feel if they became fully aware that Lab & Con are getting close to putting on a united front in Scotland?
Labour in Scotland now being directed by a Tory/Labour WM HQ. Labours stance on trident, austerity, welfare, bedroom tax, their no show at the infrastructure bill vote, are but a few of their policies that fly in the face of the majority of Scottish public opinion, it’s one thing being a pro unionist party and standing “hand in glove shoulder to shoulder” in a referendum with the tories, but it’s another forming an alliance with tories and libdems in a GE to try and hush what the Scottish people need and want, more powers from WM, i would say Labour are more anti-Scottish than pro-union, RIP Labour died of greed May 2015..
Nice comment from Craig Murray in reply to a blogger on his blog.
“Resident Dissident
I am interested in what is happening post-referendum. In Midlothian a week ago, for example, Tory votes transferred
47.6% to Labour
12.9% to SNP
39.5% to Independent
So it is Labour who are the true “tartan tories”. That was enough to take Labour over the line. Fascinating, isn’t it. let’s carefully monitor every upcoming by-election.”
Will give the letter writing team something to weave in to letters next week.
Her @SarahRFC twitter timeline is stuffed full of sectarian and unionist retweets…seems like young Sarah is just another GSTQ/Rule Brittania clone. Not surprised in the least to see britnat extremists like that supporting Murphy.
Margaret Curran MP has annouced publicly she is backing Jim Murphy MP for the leadership of the Labour Branch Office in Scotland.
Jim says he looks forward to working closely with Margaret.
Margaret was the best of friends with the previous Labour leader in Scotland
A perfect example of the Imperial Party crystallising before our eyes!
The UK/London Establishment’s long-term strategy is to achieve and sustain ‘forever’ the ‘US-ification’ of UK politics: i.e. a democratically-immovable de-facto single party state/political system based on 2 tweedle-dee-tweedle-dum parties, both right of centre and both fundamentally pro Big Corporate Capital. London-based and controlled mainstream media has to play a leading role in this, the gaming of the UK public, by presenting a semblance of choice: in their model, between Conservatives (instead of Republicans) and Labour (Democrats) – with the preferred/favoured protest-vote outlet only being to the Right via UKIP (Tea Party).
Scotland, and in particular the SNP, are a threat to ALL of this, as the different political discourse they have created is rapidly revealing the Imperial Party for what it is….and what is also being revealed, with evidence, is what ‘Scottish Labour’ activists are: useful idiots, Big-Capital stooges, just pawns on the bigger Washington-Concensus geopolitical chessboard.
And this is why the London Establishment are so desperate to stop SNP winning a (power) bloc of WM seats in May 15. The Imperial Party can’t afford, economically, to give meaningful power to Scotland; but equally can’t afford, politically, to formally join in a coalition as this would seriously undermine, in the eyes of the wider UK, the Big Narrative which is designed/intended to keep them in power ‘forever’…
Jim Murphy looks like he’s gesticulating wildly in that photograph. His resemblance to hitler is uncanny. Reden und Proklamationen. Scary.
So you can join the Labour party on November the 9th (OK maybe the 8th November but in much that order) and become a leading activist for a leadership candidate to run the party in Scotland less than a month later. I’m sure all those little old ladies I know who have been card carrying Labour party members since the 1960s will be overjoyed at this spectacularly elevated careerist. The battle for the heart of the party indeed has been lost, only a matter of how long it takes the public to realise it. Makes Falkirk look like an ideal socialist role model!
More evidence that Better Together is still alive and kicking Scotland.
Conservative Labour Alliance Party or CLAP for short
It’s strange that people seem so keen to call Rev Stuart Campbell names when pretty much all of what he writes here is measured and backed up by solid fact. Not surprised he tends to win court cases he’s involved.
When Tories feel so comfortable in the Labour Party, you know Labour have a problem
How is Murphy’s campaign getting hold of the phone numbers of Labour Party members? I know of someone who joined the Labour Party to vote for Neil Findlay – and also got a phone call from the Murphy campaign.
Hilarious…her ‘Likes’ page is rather enlightening…… ‘The Conservative Labour Party’ seems an appropriate name for their undoubted future.
Think this pathetic wee lassie is either a tad confused or has a split personality, would like to know much more about her past as I feel there is more to this nutcase than pure mental illness. Pity she hadn’t had a good private school education.
A immature ignorant tolly wonder what stable she is from and what her pedigree is?
Don’t these people just fill you with a warm glow, not. Perhaps Mr Murphy needs to check out his wee lassies a bit more carefully. Cause Jim if this gets out you are in a bit of trouble, good.
Does anyone else get the impression that 2014 was just a rehearsal, and that sooner or later, all hell is going to break loose?
There’s a storm a coming…
FB Sports teams, Rangers and Linfield.
This was bound to happen as soon as it became apparent that we were not going back in our box. Someone said above that the battle lines in Scotland are now between unionist and nationalist, not between parties, and this is correct.
Consider: for two long years the Yes movement became used to three parties working closely together, and there’s a reluctance to go back to the old ways. Hence the calls for a Yes Alliance. So it’s not surprising that the No Thanks side is taking the same path. On both sides, if you think about it, policy differences between parties have become less important than the struggle to redefine Scotland’s relationship with the UK.
In broad brush terms, the SG’s proposals for the next year deliberately set out to create a country that is as different as possible from rUK, while the Unionist side seeks conformity to the status quo (through austerity – and forcing the SG into making severe cuts or tax rises).
There may well be no formal coalition between Tories and Labour in WM. But both parties share the common aim of keeping Scotland bound to the UK by any means, and any proposed deal by a bloc of SNP MPs to give Scotland more powers in exchange for confidence and supply, or similar, is likely to be given short shrift.
Listening to Ian McWhirter in Edinburgh last night – he was of the opinion that WM’s threat during the referendum to wreck Scotland’s economy (on the currency question) was not an idle one. That’s now transforming into the more painful prospect of forcing us to wreck it ourselves if we insist on doing things differently.
Hard times ahead….
Oh – and may I remind you of this little piece of brilliant satire – watch the expression in the final couplet as the gloves come off.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2014/aug/27/spoken-words-luke-wright-video?CMP=twt_gu
A comment in the Scotsman web-site indicates that Jim Murphy is going to distribute copies of the Macrone Report through the letterbox’s in his electorate area, and Margaret Curran is thinking of doing the same. I am puzzled as to what is going on,If you fall within the catchment area of Mags and Jim and maybe for some reason miss-out on this distribution give them a call they will delighted to get and satisfy your query.
I wonder how genuine Labour party supporters feel, now that their party is currently being infiltrated by blue tories with an agenda to get JM elected. Better together?
I think that the ugly scenes we saw from mad dog retard Unionists in George Square on September the 19th are only the start of the troubles we will see in Scotland following Murphy’s election. The man clearly has no principles, and Labour has no members. Marry the two situations. He is clearly willing to accept and will probably promote the likes of Sarah Robb and her willing Orange Order chums just to fill the ranks in a bid to halt the SNP.
Maybe we should counter the wee girl’s facebook message.
If your rich enough to buy your kids ponies you don’t need a government grant for your grouse moor.
Wonder how the new alliance is to be formed?
Under the Combined Unionist Nationwide Treaties?
I think we need a wee jingle for the election. Remember ‘things can only get better?’ maybe we could have the conservatives singing to labour ‘I just called to say I love you?
Beware the Conservative Party (Blue Tories)…
They swallowed up the Scottish Unionist Party in 1965,
then the National Liberal party in 1968,
then the Lib-Dems in 2010,
and now the Scottish Labour Party.
So it looks very dangerous to be too closely associated with the Tories as they have been the demise of several parties in the past.
No wonder Nicola rules out a coalition with them – a very wise move.
Vote Labour to keep the Tories out – That’s a laugh – They are the Tories!
Oh I really hope the people of Scotland are alive to this nonsense! We really need to send a huge SNP contingent to WM.
Recent Activity on her FB page shows that she now likes Christine Jardine. Oh, the joy.
@gillie
Magic. “Who are you voting for come May 2015?” “Oh, I’m voting for the CLAP.”
Gonna need a bigger bag of popcorn…
I think what has been happenning here is that in a desperate bid to get elected Murphy has been getting Orange Order networks to join the LP in sufficient numbers to get a majority in that college. He knew he would struggle with the unions and the party members.
So this is LabCon’s new tactic. Taking a leaf out of Mao’s book. Indoctrinate and deploy their own ignorant, hate fuelled, Red Guard youth to subvert democracy, and remove the diseased Nats.
Ho fucking hum. Smacks of end days panic measures.
It’s a pity someone couldn’t introduce her to Brendan Davy, they would make such a charming couple and they have so much in common!
The rest of you can start your own list.
Santa has a little helper, now Murphy has a little Tory helper!
Any last vestiges of Labour credibility (and even these were thin on the ground) evaporated the day John Smith died. His corpse was barely cold when Bilderberg friendly Healey rushed forward Bilderberg friendly Tony Blair into the limelight. I finally stopped voting Labour from that moment on.
Twenty years on, the only thing remotely surprising me about this article is the fact so many folks seem surprised at the degree of LibLabConWsm collaboration evidenced by this article – especially in the light of the referendum fiasco. Have no doubt Scotland needs a strong Scottish opposition party – but these Wsm sponsored puppets are a disgrace.
Stu, you’ve uncovered something major here. We need to get the word out beyond Yessers. This is serious. He’s using Old Firm sectarianism to get elected. He’s hijacked what remains of the LP in west central Scotland and filled it with hate filled Ulster unionists. I think there’s more. My antennae are telling me.
wow! tories and labour join forces to defeat the evil threat of scottish peoples democracy and social justice!
And she’s a Rangers fan! Who would have guessed?
I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again. You’re either Scottish or British. Being both is no longer an option. I see a civil war coming.
Aye, this is O/T, but have a look at the letter which ordered the massacre in Glencoe, chist!, it makes your blood boil, when you realise that a fair amount of the “NOes” had they been alive in those bygone days, would have been on the side of the Goverment troops !.
(The letter is available to read “on line”)
In Liverpool it’s apparent that Labour isn’t helping them and they are sick of it. Just take Alex Salmond’s last performance there on Question Time.
I’ve even heard people say there that they’d rather spoil the ballot paper than vote.
I think that people switch off to the Tory / Labour (kiddon) battle and it’s my hope that because there are so many of us switched on that the SNP could clean up. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel folks and we’ve got to drive toward it!!!
It’s almost as if we’ve stepped back in time.
The country is face to face with a grave crisis and the simple issue is this: whether the electors at a time of grave national crisis, a time of national emergency, are going to entrust the Government of the country to the party which brought us to the verge of ruin and then ran away because they had not the courage to face up to the crisis. Or are they going to put their trust in the leaders of the three parties who have joined together in order to carry through a great policy of national reconstruction and international reconciliation, and set our country once more on the road to better times….. – The Rt. Hon. STANLEY BALDWIN, 1931.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/national-government-1931.htm
The National Government of 1931 was formed as a result of the collapse of the Labour administration in the face of economic crisis. Politicians of the three main parties came together in an atmosphere of fear: fear of a collapse in the value of the pound sterling; fear of a repetition in Britain of the hyper-inflation that had wrecked the German economy in the early 1920s. The government so formed was to last until 1940.
http://www.liberalhistory.org.uk/uploads/72_Dutton_Liberalism_and_the_National_Government.pdf
Did they actually separate after WW2, or simply adopt new postures? Remember, the British Labour party of the 1930 and ’40, was dominated by ‘liberal’ Fabians, most significantly a good number of Houyhnhnms (“the perfection of nature”), from Milner’s Kindergarten.
A Tory Labour coalition is not a new idea. Nor is it a political one. It is pure economics.
An Independent Scotland would see England bankrupt and ruined. Both Tory and Labour Party leaders will have seen this as they both stared into the abyss in the final days of the Referendum.
Both parties must have realised that without Scotland in the Union, not only would the economy of the rest of the UK be virtually destroyed, but also that it’s political institutions would follow suit. In that moment of common awakening there was sown the seed of common survival. A short period of gestation and lo and behold, a political child is born.
Economically, there is no England without Scotland. Scotland is a life-support machine to rUK and all the political leaders know it.
Therefore, better the rivals share the same lifeboat than that all sink together.
A Tory-Labour coalition/united party? Call it what you will.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
O/T sorry
@Macca73
I can report from West Midlands that UKIP is popular but the middle classes and the smart money are with the BNP.
There is a BNP march in Birmingham every month.
More popcorn anyone?
Wings – Essential reading.
Why are the general public NOT reading this anywhere else…?
BBC/Fourth Estate – hang your heads in shame.
Brodie, that’s what I was saying, above. I can forsee something like a 1930s style National Government ahead to deal with austerity as a pact of ‘national unity’ by a Lab/Con coalition and to head off UKIP and SNP.
Hmmmmm!
The murky world of Jim Murphy and The Labour Party in Scotland’s links to the Orange Order.
Why on earth would Sarah Rob even think she would be accepted as an activist working for Jim Murphy?
She joined the Labour Party AFTER she started working for the potential leader???
What was the selection process?
Are there any Labour activists who would welcome the opportunity to network with Jim Murphy and his team?
Get to know people close to the man who will probably lead Labour in Scotland? every person with ambitions of becoming a labour MSP/MP/Election Agent/’media partner’/in fact anyone who has ambition of working anywhere within the Labour Party Machine, would look at this opening as a Golden Opportunity, to get their face known…
But Jim Murphy and Labour in Scotland opt instead for a person who isn’t even a member of the party?
I think there’s a big story somewhere within this strange ‘merging of Labour and Orange Order types’ that requires further research!
We know Labour have been quick to play the ‘religious divide card’ in the West Coast, so maybe people in those areas need to start letting people know about Jim Murphy and his Strange but cosy little relationships with Orange Order Types.
Keir Hardy must be spinning so quickly we are in danger of a singularity being created.
I have friends in the Labour Party that would look upon this with horror.
@ alexicon says
‘Santa has a little helper, now Murphy has a little Tory helper’
Seems he’s run out of Slab helpers-knew they were thin on the ground but not non-existent 🙂
Guess I was wrong
Tick tock tick tock!
I keep saying this, but the Yes campaign should have continued after September 18th. Have some foresight and be prepared for what lies ahead. A Lab/Con National Government would command a huge majority and isn’t out of the question. The only thing that can get Westminster to devolve meaningful autonomy to Scotland in that scenario is if in addition to a swathe of indy MPs elected in 2015, there is also a huge amount of extra-parliamentary pressure in the form of a broad-based Yes Alliance/Constitutional Convention civic movement convincing Westminster that it must act or face being an international pariah in the western world.
There is no depth to which ALL the Unionist parties will stoop.
Slab figures well in that.
They are now planning and plotting as they sneakily do, to remove any idea of democracy in Scotland.
It is that the SNP/ YES groups get organised to combat this, we have the membership, we still have able and willing people to put effort in, we really must do it, no more nice guys we need to meet their deceit by any means we can. We MUST crush them when the time comes. The SNP in particular, need to get more streetwise than I think they have been before.
Has anyone yet called on Jim Murphy and British Labour to distance themselves from those Tory activists with their unsavoury associations to acolytes with vile ideologies.
Even if they’ve deleted their tweets, the evidence is still to be found, so no excuses.
C’mon Jim. What’s stopping you!
The curtain has been pulled back to reveal The illusion of democracy in Westminster at last , that coupled with the pulling of the get canoe on our hashtag and other things makes one questionwhat our country status really is !
It’s strange that people seem so keen to call Rev Stuart Campbell names when pretty much all of what he writes here is measured and backed up by solid fact. Not surprised he tends to win court cases he’s involved.
I don’t think these get to court. I think the lawyers just look at what’s been written, ask what grounds there were for writing that, sigh quietly, and tell their clients to pay Stuart some money and hope he doesn’t take it any furhter.
What seems to be happening is that the Labour party are beginning to attract hard core unionist voters in Scotland. At the same time, they are haemorrhaging their traditional supporters to the SNP/Greens/SSP. So the current Labour party is gradually morphing (or Murphing) and becoming increasingly dependent on a mix of hard core unionists and a residual, fading, old, grey die-hard Labour support.
In fact, Scottish Labour are becoming the Scottish “One Nation” tory and unionist party of the 1970s (with exactly the same mix of supporters – unionists and pensioners). Really not a good position to be in – a similar fate may await them.
The Labour and Unionist Party?
Nah, I’ll just call em the Red Tories!
Could someone answer the following question. If there is no such thing as a Scottish Labour Party, is it possible that labour party members from the rUK could vote for Jim ‘Spud’ Murphy?
ken500 – “Westminster complain about migration but they are causing it.”
A bit OT, but too right. Catalan press today headlines a Manpower report that London construction firms are paying a thousand pounds a week to bring in builders from abroad. One in three London firms can’t bid for projects due to lack of workers. Firms suffering scarcity have risen from 34% to 41% in 3 months.
Unions say that there’s uncertainty about government support for apprenticeship schemes for British youth. Tories, investing in people and industry as always, it seems.
Interesting to take a glance at current and existing EU bids for new project money (including Junckers infrastructure investment plan) – most UK bids I’ve seen have been for London, no surprise there, and so far I’ve found almost nothing for Scotland. Keep an eye on this, it’s big money.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, as you were, it seems.
W0nderhow many new members slab got in the past month??
And gillie, don’t forget, vote SNP and get a Tory government …
Aye, it’s rapidly becoming the Better Together Party.
Rev Stu
” 9/11, Hillsborough, Ibrox”. I take it that you are speaking to your lawyers about these so-called examples used in WOS?
Rev Stu
” 9/11, Hillsborough, Ibrox”. I take it that you are speaking to your lawyers about these so-called examples used in WOS?
O/T. Last night I got home to an interesting collection of things lying on my doormat. Instant trip to the recycling basket for the cheapo calendar with David Mundell’s ugly mug on the front. And then.
Envelope containing twelve Christmas cards designed by Stewart Bremner, as ordered and paid for, very welcome, thanks a lot. And then.
Two business cards promoting the Wee Blue Book, one Wings badge (round, shield style logo with text), and one Wings cloth patch. Not in an envelope, just loose on the mat. Didn’t see a note with them. Some Winger has come past my house and very generously dropped off these items. You know who you are. Thanks very much indeed.
“The North Britain Labour branch office made a pact with Satan & that debt is being called in.”
+1, as they say.
”9/11, Hillsborough, Ibrox”. I take it that you are speaking to your lawyers about these so-called examples used in WOS?
I doubt if that’s specific enough to be actionable. When the Scotsman did it, they made specific accusations that were untrue.
The thing that annoys me is that these are the kinds of things that SHOULD be out there in the MSM. Giving people the truth about our potential elected govt MP’s, MSP’s etc; people who pertain to be this that and the next thing, but turn out to be the complete opposite.
Instead the MSM gloss over all this. It gives the reader/viewer the impression that all is hunky doory. Nothing to see here. Everything is Rosy. Don’t you worry your pretty little head. You’re in safe hands. Just you carry on watching Strictly cause that’s all that matters to you really. They treat us like mugs. Are they really stupid enough to think that folk don’t go on line and find out things for themselves (maybe not in enough numbers for them to be worried about I suppose)
Thank god for Wings is all I can say (and all the others). I’m not a politics graduate or a guru on all things Westmister/Hollyrood, but when I come on here it helps me see/think outside the box. More importantly to see things for what they are not – i.e Little Miss Tory/Labour (Can’t with for that Mrs Roger Hargreaves publication).
The British Establishment will not wait beyond GE15 before laying plans to assimilate political Scotland into political England.
With Holyrood elections due in 2016 and then the Council elections in 2017, Westminster will not wish the Independence movement to increase either in strength or ambition.
Labour in Scotland will be given every encouragement and resource to defeat the Indy Alliance until the Scottish Parliament lies under an English boot.
As many have said before, Holyrood will first be by-passed and then gradually emasculated – there’s no hurry. With the Referendum result secured to Westminster, Mr Cameron and his successors will know exactly what to do.
For Westminster, the future security of the British Establishment is all that matters. Underpinned by the massive mineral assets of Scotland, that future is secure.
As for those who maintain their right to self determination in Scotland, they would do well to seek alliances where they can. They might need them.
From this position it is difficult indeed to see a constitutional path to Independence for Scotland.
But then that’s what we have Nicola for.
Go on, Nicola! Show us the road!
@Patrick Roden
To be fair, her heroine Ruth Davidson just about joined the Tory party before she became the Scottish leader!
Role Models and all that!
There’s a stench at 1.57pm…
inky Pic says:
“maybe we could have the conservatives singing to labour ‘I just called to say I love you?”
How about – Remember You’re A Womble.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIxkqoNi8I4
@inky Pic
Song …theres a perfect lyrci for tories, labour, murphy
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
..
…
….
Sitting in an english garden waiting for the sun.
If the sun don’t come, you get a tan
From standing in the english rain.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob goo goo g’joob.
Expert textpert choking smokers,
Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?
See how they smile like pigs in a sty,
See how they snied.
I’m crying.
Campaigning savvy I think is needed here. I think that going around and talking to the public is one thing but I also think that the SNP and it’s government are missing a trick.
They tend to try and fight a “clean” campaign and we’ve all seen the way when joined at the hip the tories/Lib/Labour lot fight with smear and scaremongering to get what they want.
This is no better than the two aliens in the Simpsons that came to Earth and take the bodies of Clinton and Dole. It won’t be long before you see Miliband and Cameron holding hands to pass “Particle Strands” on the street!
Had a talk with a friend in london yesterday and had a general talk about politics. It seems around her way nobody wants to vote labour or tory and see ukip as the only alternative. I pointed out that they have no policies to speak off, and was told yeah people know that but they are seen as the third option.
She finished by saying that she probably wouldnt vote or spoil her ballot paper and wished she could vote for the SNP.
Oh dear, I now find I have had this SNP disease for 5 decades now. I hope they don’t find a cure. 🙂
seems almost ironic now that many so called Socialists were arguing that Scotland leaving the UK would be bad for socialism; seems Scotland staying has had that effect – or did they anticipate this and think that a Tory/Labour/LibDim alliance on the right, with a likely right wing Labour (Scottish branch) leader, would almost counter-intuitively result in an internationalist socialist paradise?
seems almost ironic now that many so called Socialists were arguing that Scotland leaving the UK would be bad for socialism; seems Scotland staying has had that effect – or did they anticipate this and think that a Tory/Labour/LibDim alliance on the right, with a likely right wing Labour (Scottish branch) leader, would almost counter-intuitively result in an internationalist socialist paradise?
@ Grizzle, aye, forever lurking, and creeping around, sad really.
@devorgilla, I think your instincts are right. Slab has lost members in droves, no foot soldiers to even leaflet, so the word has went out to the OO.
crisiscult seems obsessed with the shenanigans of parliamentary politics. So long as you stay at that level, you are part of the problem.
To achieve socialism, you need a united working class. The SNP exists solely to divide the British working class, on the spurious grounds of nation.
@ Natasha
Have you noticed your ‘friend’ is back?
Labour and orange order….never happen
http://www.newsnetscotland.scot/index.php/scottish-politics/4935-questions-for-labours-mathesons-after-pre-election-orange-order-pledge
Labour..Catholic Card..Orange Order
3 dinosaurs angrily growling goodbye in a modern age
Will’s not a troll 😉 just a lonely voice. See
http://socialismfirst.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/should-the-left-back-independence/
for where he’s coming from
Will Podmore
The SNP exists solely to divide the British working class, on the spurious grounds of nation.
Yeah, thats they bastard Tartan Tories for you!
yawn
@WillPodmore
Ah yes, of course, because socialism isn’t allowed to occur in one country that shares a land mass with another and god forbid should they be independent!!! How will that EVER work?
How can you have two countries that share a land mass with different laws etc!? How on earth could that work!
“Jim Murphy’s office is packed today, we don’t have enough phones for everyone”.
That is not surprising, since there is only one phone in a phone box.
So Comrade Podmorsky, do you agree with Stalin’s definition of a nation as:
“A historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture”
And to elaborate on that latter point…
“Community of psychological make-up: defined as “specific spiritual complexion” a product of differing conditions of existence which gives rise to peculiarities of national character.
Of course by itself the psychological make-up, or, as it is otherwise called, ’the national character’, is something indefinable to the observer, but in as much as it manifests itself in a distinctive culture common to the nation it is definable and cannot be ignored.
Needless to say, ’national character’ is not a thing that is fixed once and for all, but is modified by changes in the conditions of life; but since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its imprint on the physiognomy of a nation”.
That kind of sums up the Scottish position, no? Straight from the bible of your politics.
Don’t choke on your Borsch now.
A look forward. At the General Election Labour in England return the largest group of MP’s to Westminster. Without needing to count in the Scottish block but roping in the LIb/Dem rump and a few others. the party then have enough MP’s to form a government. Only then are the Scottish Labour MP block counted in providing an extended majority.
Jim Murphy, (assuming he gains leadership) and his Scottish MP’s will sit on the government benches for 5 year’s contributing little of benefit to Scottish politics or to their constituents since their vote adds nothing to the outcome of any legislation. Effectively Labour Party Scottish MP’s neutered and compliant will be able, as in the past to get comfortable and fat enjoying the fruits of the labour of Scot’s extolling them to do more.
In such circumstances a large team of SNP MP’s will be crucial since it is their voices alone that will be heard in Westminster fighting Scotland’s corner.
So that’s it. Vote labour get nowt. Vote SNP get a lot.
An extract from something I posted here on the 5th Dec.
“It is a difficult situation for Westminster to manage. Both major parties at Westminster want into power. One might think that it was better for the Blue Tories to let Labour lose out in Scotland… The reality is they will prefer an ‘average’ result for Labour in Scotland. They certainly won’t wish the SNP to have a landslide much less a complete wipeout.
Westminster parties are balancing a number of very difficult variables that lend themselves to uncertainty… Rise of UKIP, Milliband’s lack of popularity, austerity measures, EU referendum… and even EVEL and Barnett pressures.
This is a messy mix.
One priority for Westminster is to try to corral the SNP. An all party coalition (LabLibCon) would not surprise me now. It will be set in the context of economic imperative and UK survival.
This always was a Scotland – Westminster war, and it will continue as such.”
People should be in NO doubt that the Independence debate is yet to be had. And it WILL be a fight between Scotland and Westminster.
http://www.liblabcon.com/#cover
http://www.liblabcon.com/videos/
If you have not already seen it. Its worth sharing.
Are we really surprised at this happening. I mean first off we had HER, you all know who I mean, HER that’s all I’m going to say.
Next up we had HIM, the warmonger, who *ahem* claimed to be the leader of NEW LABOUR. Well excuse me while I pause and think about that whilst also remembering that the FIRST visitor to number 10 after his *ahem* anointment was HER! Now you can call me confused but when was the last time you ever heard, or saw for that matter, the leader of one party invite the leader or ex leader of the losing party around for drinks at number 10?
Third up we had the warmonger’s side kick, you know the one. I mean the guy who spent most of his time in number 11 Downing Street plotting the downfall of his *cough* best mate in number 10. When the warmonger’s side kick finally made the trip into number 10 who do we all remember as being HIS first visitor to number 10 … why off course it was the same *ahem* frail wee wummin that the warmonger had invited in, none other than HER!
Finally, after the warmonger’s best mate bottled it on an election then LOST the election when he had no choice but hold an election who do we see entering number 10 … why it’s none other than the ETON TWAT! Now here is the very difficult $60 million dollar question. WHO do you think was the first visitor that the ETON TWAT had into number 10 … why it was HER off course!
Now it may just be me but if there is ONE thing that I have learned above everything else since 1997 it is that the Labour party, be it OLD Labour … NEW Labour … UNDECIDED Labour … CONFUSED Labour … or whatever, it is that the Labour party no longer exists it is just a branch of the Tory party called the RED Tory party. Therefore are we really surprised when a BLUE
Tory supporter joins the RED Tory party?
If nothing else remember RED Ed and his ONE NATION campaign well that was the first indication that Labour and Tories are sitting as one and the conclusion we can all draw is that we now are witnessing the final admission by one and all that we are now living in a ONE PARTY state. Don’t they call this COMMUNISM? 😉
looks like they are becoming rattled again as the 👿 are back in town 🙂
The UK is becoming a country of Bankers and Beggars. Metaphorically speaking which are you?
The Union is already broken. Only Bankers and Tories believe that its worth keeping it together.
Binary choices?? Fact.
Labvitories
Will Podmore: not wishing to avoid responding to your point, but it does appear to fit into the tu quoque line of argument, hence would it not be fairer for someone, e.g. you,
to respond to the point made first- that Labour/Con/Lib alliance, should it happen (and clearly there are attempts being made to make it happen), is damaging to socialism. Now you could blame the SNP for that, but the point I’m making is that keeping Scotland in the UK was argued to be better for socialism in these islands (don’t know if you personally argued that, but you’ll be aware of that argument). Is the development of a Unionist alliance a positive direction for socialism?
This Robb person seems to be a child, and a bit of an idiot. I wouldn’t give her the publicity.
Podmore, you have to start somewhere, and the labour Party have turned their backs on the socialism project. A place that votes to the left, and has institutions in place that further differentiate it, is a good place to start. Call it a nation or a constituency, whatever. Doesn’t matter. It has to be about what’s possible. A socialist UK is a lost cause. The working people of England who want a socialist government can only look outwith their borders for inspiration and hope. Let’s give it to them. The SNP are our best hope of progress.
It’s good to see Murdo Fraser’s idea of creating a new centre-right party in Scotland has come to fruition. I didn’t expect it to come about like this, though. But it makes sense, since there’s just not enough right-wing voters in Scotland to sustain two separate right-wing parties.
Devorgilla
All hushed up by a Fabian owned press and media. Is this why George Orwell allegedly wrote 1984, to warn of a hidden menace?
What is really sickening is that the OO will have direct access to vulnerable voters and the knowledge(from both) that “we know where you live” could be used as a mental cosh to beat the vote from the people. I feel this is going to be a fight to the death for Scotland and I think we should be planning our war maneouvers(spl sorry). Also just my opinion, we talk about tactics on here just too much. The enemy is reading every word and I think using it against us. there needs to be a private area for Wingers, who have passed scrutiny,to go to talk freely. Am I paranoid? Scotland is my country and my heart belongs to her,I will not let this poison seep into her veins.. This is our time we have to grab it …together as one people!
Hey, that’s good No No No Yes,
Let’s not fall for their “CLAP” TRAP. :-).
Hey, that’s good No No No Yes,
Let’s not fall for their “CLAP” TRAP. :-).
Lesley-Anne 3.03pm
Brilliant read, That is exactly what has happened to the UK since Thatcher came to power. It has been right wing unionism from 1979 to the present day.
It doesn’t matter who was in power, Red or Blue. They are put there to protect the London Financial Sector. (And Trident)
I had been thinking since the referendum that all the independence supporting parties should combine to form a Scottish Parliamentary Party (similar to the idea behind the Irish idea but going for independence).
This proves that the Britnat parties sbould drop the pretence and just amalgamate and at least be honest for once.
Sorry for the re-post, but as we are talking about ideological alliances, here’s a wee ditty from the good old Soviet Union. IMO, Unionism sings from the same song sheet, and the tune is called called English Socialism. Oligarchical collectivism anyone?
Party People? 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huJyosg9Zm4
He’s back, is he? Did Natasha ever get her answer?
Luigi says:
9 December, 2014 at 12:54 pm
There’s a storm a coming…
Yes,just hope it washes these turds away
caz-m says:
Lesley-Anne 3.03pm
Brilliant read, That is exactly what has happened to the UK since Thatcher came to power. It has been right wing unionism from 1979 to the present day.
Doffs hat, bows and curtseys. 😛
Erm … HELP!
Can somebody help me back up … please? 😉
Does anyone have a horse? I know someone who could do with a good whipping. 🙂 (apologies Groucho)
Your antennae aren’t wrong.
You aren’t paranoid, Cherry. I’ve seen firsthand what some have done in the referendum campaign, to people I know and love – and it has all the hallmarks of sectarianism.
I and others close to me who were affected did not talk about it during the referendum campaign because we didn’t want to frighten people: we wanted to keep it positive, after all. We didn’t want to parade ourselves as victims of intimidation or assault or violence (the police were notified). But next time around, we might not have that luxury, and have no choice but to make sure everyone knows EXACTLY what these people have done.
And trust me, this goes beyond the halls of the Orange Lodge too. There were a lot of pro-independence Orangemen (we knew a few personally). There were other dimensions.
Yes it is a Labour/Tory alliance we are witnessing in Scotland. They are equally appalled to see their exploitation rights being questioned. For our part we have to be infinitely patient and keep digging to make them a laughing stock. That frazzles their brains because they feel that they have a god given right to be taken seriously.
Lesley-Anne commenting way back this AM – is this type of arrangement that you refer to not called – A DICTATORSHIP?????
Auld Rock
They are indeed Bitter Together. They have failed to move forward from the referendum. Voters, even those who voted No, will be unsympathetic..
It’s been said before.
We need a Wee Red Book for GE2015 that highlights labour positioning and hypocrisy.
Could also revisits some of the evidence of what has happened since no vote to oil price etc
Little section on consequences of EU exit would be amusing.
Good stuff
Auld Rock says:
Lesley-Anne commenting way back this AM – is this type of arrangement that you refer to not called – A DICTATORSHIP?????
Auld Rock
I bow to your superior knowledge of such things AR. 😉 😛
Just in case my last comment was interpreted as violent abuse by our resident Leninist (he seems to take the huff quite easily).
Horse Feathers – Advice for Dad (1932) 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUV_2cqbrbo
Cherry
There is no such thing as privacy on t’internet, apparently. Hi guys (gives one finger wave to GCHQ).
Remember this? And a quick shoogle on google will reveal much more.
http://www.newsnetscotland.scot/index.php/scottish-politics/4948-concerns-raised-over-growing-number-of-labourtory-council-pacts
Instead, terrified of losing the votes of Middle England, his party tags along like a poodle as UKIP’s ultra-Tory agenda drives the country deeper and deeper into 19th-century madness
Never a truer word Rev. You have to hand it to Cameron – well Osborne probably – the Tories have played a blinder since the referendum. They had a brilliant strategy all mapped out from the word No and have executed it perfectly, while Ed and wee Dougie, his election ‘strategist’ peer into the headlights and wonder what on earth to do.
Getting rid of the SNP forever……oh yeah, now where did we hear that before?
@devorgilla, I think your instincts are right. Slab has lost members in droves, no foot soldiers to even leaflet, so the word has went out to the OO.
Would it be wrong to infiltrate the Labour party and their campaign, they are desperate for supporters & activists, i see at as only fair as SNP have way to many helpers, we could deliver their leaflets straight to the bin, we could disrupt their communications, we could highlight there hypocrisy from within, good old fashioned subterfuge, lets face it the gloves are off, Labour and the BBC & MSM will stop at nothing to smear and destroy us, all is fair in war & politics…
@Taranaic
am I glad I’m not imagining the undercurrent of subtle bigotry. Does it go both ways? I’m neither one or other made that choice about 45yrs ago. Sorry to hear of your families trouble..vile, problem is who do you turn to, better together what a joke! Think it was Lesley-Ann that said dictatorship…seems to be just about an inch more and that’s what will happen. Frightened of what could happen to us as a country.
The real worry for me is the very strong possiblity in a hung parliament of us getting a government of [English] National unity just to block the SNP from holding the balance of power.
Impossible I hear some say.
Just remember better together up here.
Imagine BETTER TOGETHER EVEL. Keeps the SNP and UKIP out in the cold.
Shivers up my spine
Sorry I’ve not been around for a while but now back.
macbeda
Describing your political opponents as a “disease” sounds awfully like what you might hear in the 1930s or 40s Europe,not very democratic at all.
This makes it look like the Tories are influential in the Labour party,making sure that they get theirs and Camerons choice of leader.
Drawdeaddave
I do like your style. That’s a great idea 🙂
Rev
I’ve just gone back to look at your comments on the photos & tweets above. They are priceless especially the one where she gives out the address of Smurph’s campaign office.
Not the brightest star in the heavens, is she 🙂
“Welfare and “Food Stamps” Does this bint think she’s in the USA?
If this is the future of Labour in Scotland then we are all in trouble!
Very good piece Rev.
You hit the nail square on the head, when you say there’s virtually no difference between Labour and the Tories now, alliances were formed between Labour and the Tories during the referendum, that will last God knows how long.
Nonsense! Not enough phones for the Labour Volunteers?
Sounds to me like they have been wasting money on Cable TV and
Piercings and don’t have the cash to pay for the line rental.
They could call all the Dud Murphy supporters on one line anyway!
Maybe it was harder to get people to accept a reverse charge call?
How I wish they would phone me at Tea Time. lol
@AllyPally
I reckon that if the scenario is a closely hung parliament and the SNP hold the clear balance of power then its an even certainty that a Lib-Con coalition will come out of it. The Ashcroft poll testing English reactions to various Celtic nationalist coalition parties and the strong antipathy to the SNP (I wonder how that happened? shall we ask the MSM?
Though I reckon that in that scenario we still win as Angus Robertson, advised by one Alexander Salmond will be the official leader of the opposition entitled to first reply to budget speeches and weekly at PMQ’s. What a platform that will be to push genuine Social Democratic agenda and won’t Labour squirm? and won’t those in England people will have to ask ‘why don’t we have an option like this to vote for?
Will they dare shaft Scotland with the SNP given an absolute, legal, reported, right of reply? It will also throw the position and plight of Scotland into sharp relief up here, concentrating voting minds for the next referendum.
Labour hate the SNP with feral, unreasoning passion. I think not even the prospect of power would tempt them into coalition and not in the teeth of English public hostility. From a LibCon government to a LabCon one is just one letter different as well. Eeasy-peasy.
Damn! that one letter difference caught me out. Change that first coalition to LabCon please.
Lollysmum says:
9 December, 2014 at 6:42 pm
Drawdeaddave
I do like your style. That’s a great idea 🙂
Cheers i do have my moments… ^_^ …
At least if they do combine into LabCon, it will mean the next GE in Scotland will be fought on the constitutional issue.(as all elections should be until independence)
Please note that EVEL is only one vowel away from EVIL.
I’ve been accused of not liking conspiracy theories, but that’s not really true. I like them fine when they’re plausible and stand up to scrutiny. I do believe I could get alongside the one where Tony Blair was a deliberate, knowing right-wing plant introduced into the Labour party to seize control and move it to the right.
So we’ll all have to be careful to vote SNP if we don’t want a dose of CLaP……
Hard core Unionist have always, I repeat always, voted Cons, or Labour. They have historically hated S.N.P. Murphy is just transferring former Tory unionist votes to Labour, nothing more. This element hate anything that threatens queen and country (U.K.). and knowing that Tories cannot win, they will support anyone who has a chance of opposing S.N.P. This is their N Ireland.Thankfully they are in severe decline.
Now I just tried the website isidewith.com and got 80% Green and 76% SNP. What kind of neo-liberal (about the worst swear word I can conjure with) psycho do you have to be to come out with a match to the Conservative Party. And what the hell is ‘Right Wing News’, and who would look there out of choice (presumably the MSM are too liberal for her tastes). I hope the Boldly Going Jim is feeling like he is keeping good company.
Morag
Re conspiracy theories, have you read “The Ghost” by Robert Harris? A rattling good thriller, said to have been written by Harris as a thinly-veiled attack on Tony Blair after they fell out over the Iraq War. However, I couldn’t possibly comment on that.
No, I haven’t read that. It sounds like a good read, I’ll have to make a note.
O/T – a thought I posted elsewhere a bit earlier.
… we’d probably better donate a groat or three to our local Scottish donkey sanctuaries – I hear they’re expecting a sudden and substantial influx of used donkeys next May.
It looks like the better together coalition is being reformed if even unofficially .This of course is in respons to the polls showing the large lead for the SNP and other independence parties .
We should build up the pro independence grass roots movement .
The london press after the referendum dropped the “scottish question ” with the comments of hatred shown on the BBC news by london jurnos they have picked it upagain and seem worried .
If there’s a LabCon merger, then the SNP will be the second-largest political party in the UK. Even if it’s just another coalition, the SNP will be The Opposition.
in MHO, we are rapidly approaching a serious political tipping point where the YES (and aye, maybe) proponents are frustrated by their NO opponents hijacking of the political discourse using a Quisling media to trumpet the British State’s propaganda and can see no other natural recourse than in direct action.
Now for clarification, I’m not suggesting violence or insurrection but in such an arena of political frustration with the feelings of those harbouring Independence sentiments, is this not a logical conclusion ? at the very least Civil Disobedience in the face of such patient Government collusion. It was the case in :- Poll Tax, Ravenscraig and most recently Bedroom Tax ….. thoughts ?
One nation Labour, one nation Tories… Dare I say it: “Ein Reich, ein Partei, ein Fuhrer.” Hi Nige.
Let’s not get carried away folks. I have always tried not to hate them in the way they hate us. It is their hatred of us that has driven them to embrace the Unionist doctrine. Let them wither and die by keeping our message positive and connecting with the new young idealists.
In a state characterised by the lack of ethics, how is free will and human liberty to survive?
In the absence of free will and liberty, how is human dignity to survive?
Even after all the Labour & Conservative collaboration over the last few years,this item is jaw-dropping. Labour really have sunk to the bottom.
Jesus Christ, did you guys not learn anything from the referendum campaign, where your bizarre and needlessly nasty character assasination of random female political activists did nothing to endure you to the biggest skeptical demographic there is.
Compare Labour to the Tories by all means, but if the size of your targets are this small it’ll do you no good.
“London has a centrifugal pull on talent, investment and business from the rest of Europe and the world. That brings benefits to the broader UK economy.” Now who could have said this? Cameron? Boris Johnson? Miliband? Murphy?No, Nicola Sturgeon! She is backing the City of London, backing finance capital! Are you happy with that? Representing you, is she? And you kid yourselves that the SNP is some kind of progressive force ….
@ Will Podmore
For the sake of argument, and taking you at your word that NS is backing the City and finance capital, do you think new political paradigms are built overnight.
Given that you reject all idealism, what is your position re. ethics?
P.S. The SNP is not the Yes movement.
This is a message to the fake reverend. The young lady you have defamed here is a friend of mine. With this in mind, I hereby offer you the chance to come to the website I have mentioned to debate these issues with me. This offer is made without malice and is only made to discuss these issues. Let me know what you think.
The SNP is no new political paradigm – it is the same old failed social democracy, a rhetoric of social justice, with a practice of collaborating with finance capital, plus a nationalist twist. The Yes movement is no new political paradigm; it is just old-fashioned, anti-working class nationalism. Witness all the anti-trade union remarks made here, about trade union ‘dinosaurs’ – i.e. workers who don’t agree with the Yes campaign.
@ Will Podmore
You’ll have to do better than SNP BAD.
What is your position re. ethics?
Well for a start, that bourgeois nationalism is bad.
That murder, genocide, rape and torture are abhorrent crimes. That Cuba’s government is more ethical than the USA’s. That socialism is better than capitalism.
End of Daze writes that ‘they (unionists) hate us’. No, unionists oppose the idea of bourgeois nationalism, we do not all those who espouse that idea. Some do; they shouldn’t. Play the ball, not the man!
Well for a start, that bourgeois nationalism is bad.
That murder, genocide, rape and torture are abhorrent crimes. That Cuba’s government is more ethical than the USA’s. That socialism is better than capitalism.
End of Daze writes that ‘they (unionists) hate us’. No, unionists oppose the idea of bourgeois nationalism, we do not all hate those who espouse that idea. Some do; they shouldn’t. Play the ball, not the man!
Iain Crieff writes, “A socialist UK is a lost cause. The working people of England who want a socialist government can only look outwith their borders for inspiration and hope. Let’s give it to them. The SNP are our best hope of progress.”
Iain, can you not see that you’ve contradicted yourself here? If socialism is a lost cause, how could looking to Scotland for hope help to achieve a socialist government?
The SNP is not anybody’s idea of progressive. Under the SNP, teacher numbers, college places, and NHS bed numbers are all down. The SNP promised that it would raise economic growth to the UK level; no, it has worsened. It promised that it would match the GDP growth rates of small EU countries; no, it has worsened. It promised that it would improve productivity; no, it has worsened. It promised that it would improve healthy life expectancy, no, it has worsened.
The SNP is pro-NATO, pro-EU, pro-TTIP, pro-finance capital. It is just another bourgeois party, an enemy of progress, an enemy of the working class. Only class politics can solve Scotland’s problems, which are the same problems faced by the rest of the British working class.
@ Will Podmore
That murder, genocide, rape and torture are abhorrent crimes. That Cuba’s government is more ethical than the USA’s. That socialism is better than capitalism.
Those views are your opinion, which I actually agree with on this occasion. However, you appear to indicate that Cuba and socialism more closely represent your ideal social construct, compaired to the USA. Are you not being somewhat inconsistent? Only the other night you rejected all idealism, hence my ridicule.
Do you accept that that free will and self-intermediation are human rights? Do you not acknowledge that without ethics and ideals, free will and human liberty are not sustainable?
Do you think the British state is ethical? If not, how can we be Better Together?
Self-determination, doh. 🙂
@ Will Podmore
Your silence indicates you do not consider free will and self-determination to be human rights. Not consistent with your ideology?
Sorry I came to this late. Now concrete evidence of the No campaign that never went away. More reason for the YES alliance to have remained in place, no matter how difficult to sustain.
SSP and Green votes will be lost in mix against LABCON UK.
Some say why re-run Ref2 so soon?. I say that is the issue: Scotland v British State, the political process of the REF has hastened all the inherent contradictions of the UK LIBCON State to accelerate, and they are coming to the boil and the boil must be burst.
Will Podmore…the British W/class unfortunately is an artificial construct…its time has passed. The economic relations that created a coherent and homogeneous class of workers has ended via Thatcher and her successors. The English working class, or what remains of it, is displaying reactionary regressive and imperial tendencies, hence UKIP and anti Europe.
Here in the Scotland the ‘National question’ is synonymous with the class one. The poor and the fair minded classes want power wrested from the ruling elites: LABCONLIB alliance; monarchy and aristocracy; big business; and Imperial UK.
Your profound ignorance of the lack of economic levers in and for Scotland mean that a bourgeois party like the SNP can only remain so under London rule.Independence will free up the Scottish working class i.e all of us, except the super rich and their loyalist lackeys, and allow us to seize democratic control of our land and resources..unleashing freedom and justice that you can only have a wet dream imagining in your 1970’s wolfie smith trance.
Scotland : Free or a Desert…go look it up.
Tbh i think she is not all there.
She has Rangers, Hamburg, Linfield FC as likes on her Facebook then has Juventus/Real Madrid(?). People are calling her ‘my wee lovely tory’, then she goes joins Labour. She also has liked Lib Dems page amongst others. She wears union jack trousers and gave this review to the British Legion:
“I don’t care if legally you are still the RBLS, the fact you have taken the decision to remove “Royal British” from your commercial logo and name speaks louder than any excuse you could give me. All this does is fuel the narrow minded views of some Scottish Nationalist who seem to believe that the world ends at the boarder when in fact it doesn’t and never will. What does this tell our neighbours in England, Wales and N. Ireland, are we telling then that their dead sons mean nothing to us? That we only care about you if your a Scot? That is not the message we should be sending to the people who we fought side by side with as Allies and neighbours. I am truly disgusted by this move.”
She is a loon. Labour are so desperate for people they will take anyone on.
Cameron, a belief that we have free will is a philosophical position, and is arguably a necessary condition for moral responsibility.
I support the right of national self-determination, for oppressed colonial peoples to free themselves from colonial rule. I just disagree with you about what constitutes a nation. Britain is a nation, Scotland is not. Yugoslavia was a nation; Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia are not nations.
Idealism is a philosophical position, opposed to materialism. It is nothing to do with whether one has ideals or goals. Idealism holds that that the objects of knowledge are in some way dependent on the activity of the mind. That the material world is created by the mind and does not exist independently of the mind.
Lochside writes off the British working class, and prefers to join with the EU, which imposes austerity (poverty) policies on the vast majority both here and abroad. What’s progressive about that?
I agree with Lochside, that the national question is synonymous with the class one. The British working class, being the 99% of the nation who produce value, are the real nation. Unite and liberate. Cameron laughs when people embrace division and try to split the British working class.
@ Will Podmore
OK, so you see the only avenue to a more erosic society, is through communism. How will you get everyone to agree with you Will? Do you not agree with Marx, that communism has to happen all at once and everywhere at the same time. What about existing imbalances in the distribution of global economic development. Will we just sit and twiddle our thumbs until the circumstances are ‘just right’?
Is free will and human liberty sustainable in the absence of ethics?
‘Erosic’? Not in my dictionary. No, the prior stage is socialism. Please source your claim that Marx believed that ‘communism has to happen all at once and everywhere at the same time.’ I doubt you can, because he didn’t believe that. Trotsky may have, but Trotsky was not Marx.
No, we don’t think that we just sit and twiddle our thumbs until the circumstances are ‘just right’? Who ever claimed that we did?
You ask, “Is free will and human liberty sustainable in the absence of ethics?” Who’s written about an absence of ethics? You asked me about my ethics – I gave you a brief answer – which hardly equates to an ‘absence of ethics’.
You construct straw men, you make up quotations, you make false allegations, all because you can’t cope with the actual arguments being put.
@ Will Podmore
Erosic as in Eros, from Plato’s Symposium, Diotima. You know, the poor, rough, dirty and barefooted dude.
Karl Marx. The German Ideology. 1845
Part I: Feuerbach.
Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook
A. Idealism and Materialism
Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
Where is there any evidence of ethics in the British state? Have you not written coppiously on this matter, most specifically in relation to Foreign Policy?
“I hereby offer you the chance to come to the website”
You can debate matters here if you want, but you won’t get far alleging “defamation”. All I did was quote her own public comments.
@ Will Podmore
I’ll save you the bother of looking it up. Erosic is used as a metaphor for BALANCE.
Cameron, Where did I claim that there was any evidence of ethics in the British state? The unity I support is the unity of the British working class, not the unity of the British capitalist state.
I stand corrected on Marx. I didn’t remember that early piece of his.
@ Will Podmore
As for those whose duty it was to dispense to the poor
the love of God and to treat all men charitably, they were
in love only with power and riches, and made an empty
show of justice and integrity. Right to them meant ugly tyranny,
harshness, severity to no purpose. They made laws in favor of the king
and allowed such as favoured the people to lapse.
(Luís de Camões, Os Lusiadas, Segundo o legitimo texto, Tomo Segundo, Avinhaõ: Francisco Seguin, 1818, Canto Nono, #28, p. 120.)
@ Will Podmore
Thanks for the acknowledgement.
Are free will and personal liberty sustainable in a state characterised by a lack of ethics?
@ Will Podmore
I wasn’t meaning to be provocative simply for the sake of it, when I suggested Leninism is a conceptual cul-de-sac. IMO, a phenomenological discourse is necessary if we are to reinterpretation the world, in such a manner that is not bound by capital, which is simply a tool at the end of the day.
Here’s a wee read for you to consider. Think it over and come back to me.
Nature, Neoliberalism and Sustainable Development: Between Charybdis & Scylla? – Harry Cleaver , 1997
https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/port.html
reinterpretation = reinterpret
@ Will Podmore
Sorry if it look like I’m hounding you Will. My post at 1.55pm was meant for a main thread – glasses, lack off. 😉
Come on Will buck up son – Cameron is going to win this on points if you don’t buck up.
Paula Rose
Troublemaker. 😉
I meant my post at 2.24pm, of course. Doh.
Cameron, my book on British foreign policy is a sustained assault on the British capitalist state and its appalling role in the world. I expose its claims to uphold ethical standards as hypocritical in the extreme. And the books applauds the all too rare occasions when the British working class acted, together, to defy or defeat that state’s schemes, wars and terrorism.
On sustainable development, Cuba’s socialist efforts reflected the people’s long-term care for nature for the good of future generations. Fidel Castro pointed out, “Development is in essence a continuity strategy, insomuch as the idea of sustainability is intrinsic to the socialist principles that sustain our revolutionary model.” As analyst Pamela Stricker commented, “Sustainable development cannot be realised without social justice.” By contrast, globalisation brought inequalities, injustice, pollution, abuse of the environment, deterioration of ecosystems, and loss of biodiversity.
Duncan Green concluded, “As of 2003, Cuba was the only country in the world that managed to live within its environmental footprint while achieving high levels of human development. This was probably due to its unique combination of sound environmental management, excellent health and education provision …” The World Wildlife Fund said that Cuba led the world in minimising its ‘ecological footprint’. Cuba was the only country in the world that had both a quality of life above the World Wildlife Fund threshold of 0.8 on the Human Development Index and an ecological footprint that was sustainable.
Cuba – one island, one nation, united and progressive.
Will Podmore
Cameron, my book on British foreign policy is a sustained assault on the British capitalist state and its appalling role in the world. I expose its claims to uphold ethical standards as hypocritical in the extreme.
That is exactly why I brought it in to focus. Why would you wish to shackle Scotland to such a shower of ….? If you suggest ‘worker solidarity’, I would ask how maintaining such a corrupt state is helpful to workers in Britain, or indeed the rest of the world? It certainly isn’t helpful for us Scots. Do you not think worker agitation in England would follow, living next door to a successful, progressive democracy? Mind now, if you answer SNP BAD, I’ll ask to get you band. The future is ours to shape, if given the opportunity. Oh, don’t ethics require one to have ideals / morals?
On sustainable development
Are you a historian, philosopher, economist, planner, ecologist, environmental scientist, or simply bored? How do you define yourself, in terms of your specialist training and expertise? What is your particular insight and understanding of sustainability and development? Have you read Agenda 21 or any subsequent global frameworks? Have you understood them, their objectives and potential / likely outcomes?
“Development is in essence a continuity strategy, insomuch as the idea of sustainability is intrinsic to the socialist principles that sustain our revolutionary model.”
Pish!
“Sustainable development cannot be realised without social justice.”
I agree, but what is the purpose of adopting a sustainable strategy? Is it simply to prolong the exploitation of nature, and for who’s benefit?
Duncan Green concluded, “As of 2003, Cuba was the only country in the world that managed to live within its environmental footprint while achieving high levels of human development. This was probably due to its unique combination of sound environmental management, excellent health and education provision …”
All very commendable, though I would suggest these are elements of a nation’s social fabric, they are not socialism itself. Are you a supporter of Warminster’s backdoor privatisation drive, with regard to the Scottish NHS? How do you feel about Warminster’s attempt to undermine Scotland’s renewable energy sector, let alone it’s clear desire to impose fracking?
” The World Wildlife Fund said that Cuba led the world in minimising its ‘ecological footprint’.
Not so hard to achieve in a relatively undeveloped economy, though I do applaud the focus of Cuba’s development benefits.
Will, are you secretly a Fabian? Did you read the text I left for you yesterday, because it doesn’t look like it to me? Why not join in and help us reach a new understanding of our relationship with the planet and each other, instead of standing outside and throwing stones? Is it against your ideology? Is it too revolutionary for your taste? Please explain your conservative, Unionist stance.
P.S. I am Zapatista. I’m also Alex Salmond.
I’m not suggesting shackling Scotland to the British state; I’m proposing that together we overthrow that state.
I’m a historian, with degrees in philosophy, history and information studies.
Given that ethics means morals, of course having ethics requires having morals.
We note how intelligently you refuted Fidel’s statement.
The purpose of adopting a sustainable strategy is to prolong our survival, for the benefit of humanity.
No, I am of course not a supporter of Warminster’s backdoor privatisation drive, and I support the development of all forms of energy, including renewables, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and shale gas, all properly regulated.
No, I didn’t read the text you recommended. Did you read the text I recommended? Lenin’s Materialism and empirio-criticism.
No, I am not secretly a Fabian. Have I answered all your questions?
We note that you wrote, “if you answer SNP BAD, I’ll ask to get you band.” I suppose you meant banned – how very ethical of you. Criticism of the SNP is verboten – revealing.
@ Will Podmore
Dream on if you think middle England is going to get up off it’s fat and increasingly imperialist arse, to do anything about the neo-liberal monster that is consuming all that is wholesome. A disproportionately large contribution coming from Scotland.
Do you not think it a little foolish to try explaining sustainability to a trained town planner? Erosic, what?
No I haven’t read your Lenin link, as you didn’t appear to understand basic Marx.
Are you seriously happy with nuclear power and fracking? Not exactly sustainable, are they? Oh, I forgot England already imports energy generated by Scottish renewable. And you’re comfortable having these incredibly dirty and dangerous industries regulated by the British state, which I thought is morally bankrupt.
“I expose its claims to uphold ethical standards as hypocritical in the extreme.”
Re. banning. Can you not take a little prodding? I was hoping to stimulate your imagination and creativity. Ah well, so much for the caliber of your ideas.
You don’t have a clue Will, do you?
http://wingsoverscotland.com/english-votes-for-scottish-laws/
Sure your not an imperialist? Not even a liberal Fabian?
I am Zapatista. I’m also Alex Salmond.
P.S. Not that Erosic is a planning term, but hopefully you get my drift. I simply think the depth of your understanding is somewhat lacking.
P.P.S. Why don’t you share some of your specialist insight here. Come and give me a hand. 😉
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-inconvenient-truths/comment-page-1/#comment-1937751
P.P.S. Why don’t you come and share some of your specialist knowledge here. Lend us a hand mate. 🙂
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-inconvenient-truths/
Dear Cameron, I have added Nature, Neoliberalism and Sustainable Development: Between Charybdis & Scylla? – Harry Cleaver, to my short list of books to read. Thank you for the suggestion.
So kindly reciprocate and read what I recommended.
@ Will Podmore
I see they let you out for Xmas then
Will Podmore
I’ll take a look. Thanks for being patient and helping with the debate.