The day before yesterday’s news
Unalert readers will have been startled to read in much of the media this morning – including a front-page piece on the Daily Record – of the “shocking” £100,000 cost of renaming the new Southern General hospital in Glasgow after the Queen.
That, of course, is because all the alert ones read it on Wings two days ago.
It’s not just that the press has been rather tardy in picking up the story. When they eventually did, some of them – with the honourable exception of STV – credited the source of the information as the Scottish Greens rather than this site, although the Greens hadn’t said a word about it until 24 hours after we did.
The party’s website ran a strangely carefully-worded press release giving their reaction to the news “in response to a Freedom of Information request”, without actually saying that they’d made the request in question, which one might normally expect.
The party’s spokesman, ambitious wannabe politician Ross Greer (he’s top of the Green list for West of Scotland at Holyrood next year, and also garnered 804 votes in the East Dunbartonshire seat in this May’s UK general election, losing the party’s deposit by a large distance), has spent much of the last two years publicly smearing and attacking Wings Over Scotland.
Greer was employed by Yes Scotland during the referendum, during which time he upset numerous activists whose characters he didn’t consider personally acceptable by doing everything in his power to obstruct their campaigning for a Yes vote.
So it wouldn’t be particularly surprising that he’d want to avoid giving us credit for the story. But when challenged by a couple of readers last night, Greer went further than the evasive website phrasing, suddenly claiming it had been the Scottish Greens’ FOI request all along and posting what he called an “email chain” as evidence:
Readers may note that the “evidence” is somewhat sketchy. It appears to comprise two internal Green emails, dated 4 August (the day after we published our story), with half an NHS Greater Glasgow And Clyde email address stuck on the bottom.
They might also ponder whether, if asked for evidence that you’d had your own FOI response, you wouldn’t just publish the actual email from NHSGGC – it being the simplest and most comprehensive way of proving your claim – but Greer has refused repeated requests to do so, referring them to the inconclusive image above instead.
Now, it’s entirely possible that the Scottish Greens submitted their own FOI over the renaming. Our own reply from NHSGGC noted that they’d received several requests about the matter from various sources. It’s attached below (click to enlarge).
But in that case it’s strange that Greer wouldn’t just post the equivalent of the image above. It’s weird that the Greens press release would be so ambiguously worded. It’s odd that with such a newsworthy story having landed in their laps on Monday, neither Greer’s nor the Greens’ Twitter feeds would mention it at all until Tuesday teatime, 24 hours after Wings had posted it.
(One would presume NHSGGC emailed everyone their response at the same time, and indeed Greer expressly stated that that was the case.)
Of course, at the end of the day it doesn’t actually matter who gets the credit for breaking the story. Nor will it be of any interest to the vast majority of Scots that a supposedly pro-Yes campaigner and would-be politician has expended (and continues to expend) so much time and effort to attack other Yes activists, including by far the most popular and widely-read Yes-supporting website. It’s he-said-she-said stuff.
But it’s a little depressing that Scotland’s professional media, whose content already comprised 80% stories ripped from rival papers and 18% things people said on Twitter yesterday, is now too lazy and incompetent to even steal the news effectively. We ran the story at teatime on Monday, plenty of time to get something in Tuesday’s papers or evening news bulletins, but readers had to wait until it was TWO days old and the Greens had spoonfed them a pre-written piece.
More than one-third of Scots have given up reading daily newspapers since the turn of the millennium. It doesn’t take much of an investigative journalist to figure out why.
“Not helpful to independence” … oh why bother!
Green with envy Rev LOL.
The Scottish Green’s spokesperson appears to have made an issue out of this. All he needs to do is publish the Scottish Green’s original FOI request.
He seems to enjoy setting his own rules for everyone else to work under.
I wouldnt worry too much Stu. There will be full and fair correct attributions in tomorrow’s papers.
Aye right!!
Trust nobody…unless they have proven they are trustworthy.
Well, who would have thought, just another wannabe trying to grab the spotlight, and succeeding, for all the wrong reasons.
I just hope Patrick Harvie sorts this one out, pronto quick, if not sooner.
I lean towards the Greens but when I see this sort of thing my support starts to wobble.
I found it odd to see that story in the National this morning with no credit to Wings, and noted so in their comments
For the Scottish Greens to present this as their own story is revealing.
I understand they want to maximise presence in use run up to 2016 elections, however for a party I considered joining at one point, I’m disappointed to be increasingly finding their tactics sleekit and lacking in integrity.
Yes, I noticed this on the Greens website — I knew of Stu’s work and so I immediately drew my attention to their use of the indefinite article (“a FOI request”) and thought it churlish of the Greens not to mention WoS.
This is not the first time I have been disappointed in the Greens. My second (list) vote is definitely going to Solidarity.
He is obviously lying … is this really the type of character one would want in the Scottish Parliament?
The official YES campaign were handicapped by having numpties like him on board imho.
I am a green leaning SNP member but would not vote for the Scottish Greens – I simply do not trust them as I think they are supporting independence only to advance themselves as a party – much in the same way Labour have supported Unionism to destroy themselves lol.
Achnababan – “I simply do not trust them as I think they are supporting independence only to advance themselves as a party”
Think you’ve summed up the situation perfectly
The Hypocritical Greens. Total manipulating, malicious liars. Cost the economy £Billions which could be better spent like feeding children. They are beneath contempt.
They are in the Unionists/Landowners pockets, doing their dirty work making people’s lives more difficult.
The green guy could just be a prick and the Daily Retch is already full of shite, the two are compatable!!!
I wasn’t unalert, I was busy…
I was wondering why this wasn’t picked up by the MSM.
The simple fact that they could not be arsed investigating things like this for them selfs tells us all we need to know about the quality of reporting.
Gross Reer, there. “Christian Socialist”. Supposed Yes campaigner and employee of Scottish Greens. Dishing out disgraceful abuse of Wings, alleging “he’s casually misogynist, transphobic etc etc “.
Is this stuff actionable?
What an odd personality he appears to be. Perhaps he is a sleeper agent planted by the unionists….or maybe he is just an eejit.
Publish the email, Greer.
Can we ask this email is released in it’s entirety under FOI ? 🙂
In the past the Greens have always been guaranteed my second vote but no more. This Summer has ended them for me and, I suspect, many others.
On a personal level, I met Greer once. He’s a choob.
“Dishing out disgraceful abuse of Wings, alleging “he’s casually misogynist, transphobic etc etc “.
Is this stuff actionable?”
It would be if I thought he had any money to make it worth bothering.
Looks like the Greens have picked up a real “Wally”, a Kezia or McDougal in the making..!
I suspect this guy could be an expert in getting bad publicity for his party. 🙂
They just can’t bring themselves to accept the quality and growing influence of your work Rev Stu. The archives of this site are now a national treasure.
Based on this tawdry episode and Mr Greer’s high handed attitude towards others….the Greens just lost my other vote.
as someone who admires many green policies, the behaviour of the actual green party continues to make me want to bash my face off my desk.
Ach well there you go. Greens go mainstream re spin and duplicity.Who would have thunk it. What is it with politicos that they have to do this kind of thing? It is petty and stupid and hardly worth getting caught out for. Have they nothing better to do? Are they being “clever” in their own minds?
I think that’s probably it. Legends in their own imagination.
On a lighter note…
link to favrify.com
[…] The day before yesterday’s news […]
Just sent ross a message on facebook…..
Hi Ross is there any chance that you could publish your FOI about the renaming of the new hospital as WOS are apparently defaming you by saying that they were the ones that broke the story. It makes you look like you are lying and trying to score petty political points. Surely you would want to address such a travesty as such matters fester and grow particularly in the lead up to a general election when your opponents might wish to raise it repeatedly to besmirch your credibility.
@Kenny
You could consider giving your list vote to the SSP, go on, make an old man happy 🙂
I said from start greens playing politics and not to be trusted, they will undermine everything to feather their own nest.
Remember they voted against FFA And side with Labour every other day, they are closet unionists and crack pots
I’m sure it must be annoying as a journalist when others steal your story without giving you any credit, but still it’s definitely a good thing that this story is being reported in the wider media.
I saw Greer’s tweets last night and was a bit taken aback to realise that he was coming across as a right britnat zoomer, responding to reasonable questions with personal smears and slurs. He’s done himself no favours, in fact from what I saw it’s possible that he may have damaged the Greens reputation as well as his own,
He was like, “show you evidence? But Wings is an evil misogynistic homophobe.” he sounded exactly like the British Nationalists at the Stronger United twitter accounts.
Have a look at his twitter feed, he came across as a horrible person, Maybe he was being self – defensive but it came across as spiteful, I don’t like the man at all now.
I used to believe that where I am, the Greens were a sensible protest vote. That’s no longer so. I find it sad.
Sneering attitudes like Greer’s can put off people from Indy.
I also met him once…
A name to remember (Ross Greer) come the Election & the name as quikly forgotten. Another wanna be up imself.
Ur you watching Ross, or are you thinking we,ll forget in time,yer cards marked son,well & truly marked.
The Scottish Greens will be looking for our second votes in next year’s Scottish General Election. Due to their underhand dealings lately they won’t be getting mine.
Vote SNP for both list and constituency to keep everyone else out and ensure an SNP majority.
The Herald also carries this story about the £100,00 cost of the remaining and mentions that the information had been released by the Health Board after there had been multiple requests for the information.
Over the last week or two the Herald has published several letters from people, including a doctor who worked there, all complaining about the name. Therefore it is possible that the Herald, and by extension The National, put in an FoI for it.
I would be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.
But the rest….not so much.
Maybe he’s a MI5 plant. Na he’s to stupid to pass the entrance exam. Unless he’s private school educated of course.
The Jury for me is still out concerning the Green Party, they need to step up their game and show more professionalism, at the moment I don’t see it.
Towards the end of the Indy ref campaign, I had a few of WBBeft
I have always had sympathy with Green politics and objectives, and I believe Patrick Harvie to be a decent man. However, my primary political objective is independence and I make my political judgements based on by whom and by which course that might best be achieved.
During the Yes campaign I believed the Greens were firmly on side. Scotland therefore has two main pro Indy parties.
For Holyrood 2016 I had probably intended to vote SNP constituency plus list, but I was willing to get my calculator out, study polling, study the dynamics of this region and consider a Green list vote if that might replace a list Unionist.
The behaviour outlined in this article makes it more likely that my trust to deliver will be vested purely on the SNP.
That said, the real villains in all of this aren’t ‘lose cannons’ among the Greens … the real offenders are the patheticly lazy MSM.
As for the fools who thought the hospital renaming was appropriate in the current political and economic climate, was that naivety or Unionist maneuvering?
They’ve just lost my second vote in next years election.
@AllWingers
You could consider giving your list vote to the SSP, go on, make an old man happy 🙂
Towards the end of the Indy ref campaign, I had a few WBBs left. So I went into Glasgow to hand them out at random.
I saw a Green stall and ask them if they wanted a couple for their table, they refused which I thought was really petty.
They won’t be getting my 2nd vote either.
He doesn’t seem to approve of us either. It seems our satire must fall within politically correct guidelines to be ‘helpful’. We, naturally, couldn’t give a shite what he thinks about us.
The Greens have cost the SNP a lot of lost votes in the fishing industry, the way things have been done since the referendum, with regards to MPAs, SACs and the like harming jobs in areas where fishing has provided employment, many skippers, crewmen and owners believe deals were done to get the Greens onside for the Yes |Campaign and such like, even I have questioned my membership to a party that has targetted Scots fishermen unfairly in a lot of matters
Rev may not be over-fussed about someone stealing credit for his work, but this site rarely gets any credit whatsoever. (If this was academia then we could well be looking at a straightforward case of plagiarism.)
Sometimes I wish we’d kept a tally of how stories/subjects/stats suddenly appear on MSM after appearing here, especially when they’re being trotted-out by BTUKOKers who demonise us all, piously claiming they wouldn’t touch this place with someone else’s.
If Greer doesn’t have the relevant paperwork then Harvie should apologise to Rev/WOS, hoof that botton pronto, and do it all publicly.
Glad to see that your breaking news is now being used by the various sources of news. Shows your ever growing influence in the daily lives of people.
Maybe another FOI request to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is in order to discover when the Scottish Greens submitted their FOI request, if they ever did.
I am a green and I’m a little bit disappointed we seem to have lost so many votes here due to one man’s action. The accusation that we are only supporting independence to further our aims doesn’t ring true as 8,000 out of our current 9,000 members joined the party to make Scotland a better place, including independence. The other 1,000 voted to support independence as obviously the right choice for this country before the referendum.
Sorry Rev. I actually think it matters very much who broke the story.
I have watched as other Parties steal SNP initiatives claiming them to be their own ,and this reflects that behaviour. They are like parasites ,hitching a lift on the biggest dog for their own ends.
Stealing the work of another may be the way to go these days,but I was always taught that plagiarism showed a distinct lack of ability to think for yourself.
You had better be on guard Rev ,as no doubt they will try and claim the “wings” site was originally their idea as well.
Patrick Harvie has deservedly earned respect for himself and his party across much of the wider Yes movement, including amongst many members of the SNP. If he wants to retain that he needs to give this puffed-up moron Greer the bullet. And fast.
Thanks for this information Rev Stu,
I had been thinking about lending my list vote to the Greens for SE16. I will definitely not be doing this now.
For me – It is SNP for both constituency and list.
“The party’s spokesman, ambitious wannabe politician Ross Greer…”
Overly generous a description by far, Rev.
My Yes colleagues and I, also in Yes Edinburgh at the time, had many contacts with Ross.
Polite, but always overtly officious, he clearly was playing to an agenda outwith and beyond that of the Yes Campaign.
We also produced, and delivered extensively, our own leaflets with links to Wings, which when brought to his attention by the likes of Hothersall/Scott Arthur, of all people, he was determined, through persistent emails and calls, to ensure that we destroyed as a matter of urgency.
Greer is no more than a freeloader, bouyant on the back of the efforts of genuine activists who still believe in the mission statement of YES.
We all have such freeloaders in our constituencies – we just have to expose them for what/who they are.
Criticism of Greer is definitely germane.
Quite a few other folks on Twitter last night & this morning saying they won’t be voting green @scotgp after this & Greer’s actionable comments
Greens seem to be learning from Labour in having an increasing propensity to shoot themselves in the foot. Greer needs to grow up,join the real world & realise his words can have legal consequences.
I respect Patrick Harvie & Maggie Chapman for their green credentials but would never put them down as being for Indy but if Greer carries on in this fashion, I’ve no doubt he will damage their electoral challenges throughout Scotland.
Wonder if that’s really why he’s in there?
@Dan Huil
Very very droll!
Liked very much
Perhaps it was a “Mis-stating” of the facts, you know like the Liberal Democrats do
They say it aint easy being Green
I’m afraid it is, it’s the easiest political stance to take
trouble is if you’re going to get involved with real politics you’ll get noticed, and when you do, you’ll get scrutinised and if you tell Porkies like this fella, you’ll piss people off
I suppose you could say he’s been successful at that
Telling Porkies is a mistake in this day and age (You get rumbled really quickly) social media, computers, modern stuff
Unless he doesn’t use them of course, do they pollute anything? except maybe, “The Mind” (Deep Eh)
Mr Greer seems more like a Tory than a Green. 5th columnist maybe?
Because I signed a petition that the Greens be included in the Debates here, someone got the idea that I was either a member or interested in becoming one.
Well I have always had my doubts about them, I have always felt that they could be so easily bought out, give them anything and Independence would vanish from their manifesto.
My second vote will go where it normally goes, to the SNP.
Rev, you are light years in front of the MSM and as for the Greens I’m afraid they can forget my 2nd vote too.
Shower of sanctimonious chancers.
Rev, I wonder if you can help. I notice that You said Greer was paid as part of the yes campaign. Is there anywhere I can find published figures of who was paid and how much they were paid. At a grass roots level we have worked our socks off volunteering. I would be interested to see where my contributions ended up.
Also I was going to vote green as my second choice in the Scottish elections , but not now, there have been a few decisions or comments from them recently that has changed my mind. I am know of quite a few other nationalists and yes voters of the same opinion. The greens might not do so well as they think at the next Scottish elections.
pnr: Green with envy, Rev
Quite an arresting combination for Greer, a carrot top.
Ross Greer is only 21 years old, so perhaps does not have the maturity required for such a position. He also appears to be a bit of an ideolog, as he joined the Greens when only 15. Even then, he appeared to be strongly anti-capitalist, which in itself does not make one ‘green’.
I wish folk would stop spouting on about sustainability, when they understand feck all about the subject. It does nothing to forward the green agenda and simply plays into the hands of finance capitalists and their carbon tax.
link to scottishyounggreens.org
It is easy to see why the YES campaign took on a life of its own when folk at the head office were holding back campaigners.
Obviously,I’m wondering now how much,over a 2-3 year campaign,these kind of actions have cost in final percentage of the indyref vote. We don’t need people in leadership positions who may be inadvertently working against what we are trying to achieve for all.
Q: “what were the criteria?”
A: “whatever @MackieJonathan and I decided they were”
The ego has landed….
@Thepnr I very much wish the SSP well and would love to have them sitting in the seats now occupied by the Red Tories at Holyrood. Colin Fox is a very good politician and I like him very much. I rage when I hear people wringing their hands over Labour. Who needs Labour when there is a REAL Labour party out there, the SSP!
There was something else which struck me about this story. It was the Greens suddenly attacking the renaming of the hospital, the expense and the fact that it was the nth building named after, I quote them “Mrs Windsor”.
This is not the usual Green thing, even though it is fully in keeping with what they stand for. I wonder if it is all about a certain maverick who has decided to make a name for himself by passing off Stu’s work as his own scoop?!?
People have been raging about the renaming of the hospital for weeks now. Gail Sheridan wrote about it in the Evening News and was told by unionists to “get back to where she came from” (which is Govan, but I think they thought it was Eire). It has been discussed for ages on Twitter. Yet now the Greens have decided to step in???……….
Scottish Socialist or someone else will get my list vote.
Patrick Harvie came across as a bit of a weasel in the General Election Campaign.
I don’t trust them and they are trying to get popularity on the coat tails of independence movement.
This is all a bit disappointing.Whilst Mr Greer is a high profile member of the Greens,it should be pointed out that not all Greens are pricks.
Disappointed in the National. Not surprised at the Greens, somehow they seem bitter. And what was that guy doing dissing the YES activist! Sounds a tad anti Yes!
I notice someone mentioned their second list vote, please be wary and read up on what that actually means, we need the SNP to not lose any seats.
Given your readership, Stu, Patrick, Maggie or whoever needs to do some damage limitation.
I too intend to give my second vote to the Greens, but if this type of plonker gets in on the list, then I shan’t be happy.
O/T
Regards the second list voting etc, see ScotgoesPop, he has written a good informative article on it, a few weeks ago now.
If you can lie as Greer has and lie again to support the original lie, then you have shown your true character.
At the moment my disgust is reserved for Greer and the Greens are innocent. However if the Scottish Green Party does not deal with someone like Greer swiftly then I will judge them on that failure.
Well, I had pretty much decided that my 2nd vote would be Green. But as a member of the vile Wings Brigade I’m now torn.
People like Harvie and Wightman should definitely be in the Parliament. This Greer character, not so much.
The greens usually get my 2nd preference vote as well, this may change in future if this is the type of character they have, just post your FOI reply and be done with it Mr Greer.
Wings FoI request has a reference number 11033.
Greens email refers to a FoI reference 11034.
It looks like there were at least 2 requests although we can’t see who was behind reference 11034.
I was until last year very interested on the Greens as a viable new option…however..after having first hand experience of some of their very many selfish incumbents i decided to lose my interest entirely.
Nothing to do with WoS or Greer btw but everything to do with the attitude in the referendum of some activists locally who are ‘Labour’ but are in the Greens. Even in the screenshots you show is a ‘Labour man’ (who hates the SNP) but seemingly part of Greer’s set up and under his authority.
I don’t need to tell anyone on here that Greer’s public persona is nosediving by the day.
It’s no wonder we lost the referendum if that was the calibre of people working for Yes Scotland. It must be a kick in the groin for all those hard-working volunteers who slogged their guts out for two years.
I’ve had my doubts about the Yes campaign for months, and this only confirms what I suspected.
A question for those in the know: is it true that Dennis Canavan was deliberately sidelined during the referendum campaign?
I ask this because a year before the vote, I listened to a radio debate on Indy between Ian Murray and Dennis Canavan, and Canavan tore Murray to shreds.
My immediate reaction was for Yes to get Canavan doing more of this, but strangely, he seemed to disappear off the radar…
I contacted Yes Scotland about this, a few months later, but never heard a word back…
Ha Ha! Spot on!
link to youtube.com
The hospital so nice they named it thrice.
@ Thepnr Pray tell who is that Auld Manny to whitch you refer, Awe ffs am still in Spanish mode cause I was talking tae a lot of Nice English People lol,nae worries I get ma Scots tongue shortly.
Thepnr says:
5 August, 2015 at 12:04 pm
@AllWingers
You could consider giving your list vote to the SSP, go on, make an old man happy 🙂
I’ll put a smile on your face, SSP for me.
On the idea of giving a second vote to the Greens, I would say why take that risk?
I hope they take votes away from the other parties, but not at the expense of the SNP – the foremost route to more powers for Scotland.
The result of the previous Holyrood elections can be repeated if everyone who voted SNP/SNP last time does so again.
@ Helena Brown @12.28pm
Yes Helena-I signed the same petition & I’ve been getting their emails ever since (which I did not subscribe to nor would I have chosen to do so). Last one was 31st July. Not impressed so far-too light on content for me to ever consider becoming a member or even voting for them.
I get annoyed with folks who think it’s OK to take my email address & stick it on a list for other purposes than that for which it was provided i.e signing a petition which I chose to do but I certainly didn’t ask to be put on a mailing list. That is an abuse of Data Protection Act 1998
Thought. Someone may already have said this….
Perhaps the MSM wouldn’t run with what was a good story initially because it was directly connected with WoS.
The Greens gave them an excuse to run with it, and those who wished could omit WoS’s part and substitute Greens as the source.
On the spectrum of ‘nasty vile separatists’ as seen by the MSM, WoS is well out on a limb as arch enemy while Greens are ‘soft separatists’ and therefore can be allowed occassional credit!
yerkitbreeks says:
5 August, 2015 at 12:50
I too intend to give my second vote to the Greens, but if this type of plonker gets in on the list, then I shan’t be happy.
:::::::::::::::::::
He is top of list for West of Scotland according to Stuart.
I will not be voting Green if Stuart’s info is correct ………. it is, usually.
At the moment this questions the integrity of Greer as an indivual, but the longer this continues, it will translate into reflecting on the party. Particularly as he appears to be the candidate for West of Scotland. If the party stands by him, they’ll have to publish their FoI to retain any credibility. If they dont, then their collective integrity is going to suffer. And given the Wings readership is in the hundreds of thousands, that may well come to be a pretty stupid and costly decision for them. As others have said, Scot goes Pop have discussed this and its actually the list vote which is critical, and not the constituency vote.
From the tweet exchange above, it seems incredulous that someone like that was in YES HQ. Just as well the grassroots took over.
Another careerist…bless him.
Another thought ….
It’s a wonder they aren’t trying to blame the SNP/SG for the naming costs!
Like … they tried to attribute the Edinburgh tram costs to the SG.
I know I have said it before, but it is a sad state of affairs when a member of the public who does not even live in Scotland, is more politically astute on Scottish matters than any of Scotland’s leading so called journalists and news outlets, who only report anti UK stories when forced to.
Are they really that incompetent, or are they deliberately not looking for any negative unionist stories. It’s funny how they are never slow in talking Scotland down at every opportunity.
Scotland must be one of the most politically repressed and media manipulated countries in the world, which apparently is what we voted for.
You would be forgiven for thinking, they’re taking the piss out of us.
*******************************************************
willie fae kilwinning says:
5 August, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Thepnr says:
5 August, 2015 at 12:04 pm
@AllWingers
You could consider giving your list vote to the SSP, go on, make an old man happy 🙂
I’ll put a smile on your face, SS
*******************************************************
The way this are going Willie they will get my and others first choice vote.
O/T
Hee Hee Hee, they hivnae furgoat about me number 28th letter for Non payment of BBC Licence Fee.
Ah wisht the fekers would get ma name right ITS NO OCCUPIER,but I do know what ah would like to OCCUPY.
Another Burnham vow, like the,
More Powers to Scotland
Autonomous Scottish labour Party
and now er…
Nationalise the railways! Whatever next? 🙁
link to archive.is
BUT
The puppet master says NO!
link to archive.is
Remember … A party united shall never be defeated! 🙂
So the Ref # on the one to Wings is 11033 while the one on the Green “email” is 11034. So was one copy sent to WOS and another to the Greens. The Greens the apparently sat on theirs till after WOS’s story. Is that an attempt at risk free politics? Wait and see if anyone cares then pretend you’ve been on it all the time. Is this the Greens version of a young Jim Murphy?
Greer was the main reason I left what was originally Yes East Dunbartonshire and concentrated my efforts elsewhere in the campaign.
I have no juicy character wrecking titbits, I just thought he was a knob and couldn’t be arsed with him. This just consolidates my original feeling.
One_Scot @1:28
Indeed. Certainly it’s politically motivated and strings are being pulled from somewhere.
Then around that, there are layer upon layer of incompetence, ignorance, thoughtlessness, arrogance, stupidity, laziness and plain old fashioned plagiarism. It gets hard to decide what exactly lies behind each pish poor pro Union anti SG/SNP report!
The net effect is however, clear and consistent. It cannot be undone, it can only refuted, challenged and pre-empted by sites such as WoS.
When do the parties publish their lists of candidates for second preference vote?
I need guidance.
It looks like Ganga Green.
This has to be cut away from the main body or it too will
die off.
If you can back up your claim with the evidence, do so,
or be called a liar, and cost your party half of its potential votes.
I’d assume that as soon as the information was compiled it’d mean any subsequent request could be quickly filled. Might be worth mentioning that the actual cost was more than £100000 as the response admits there are costs it doesn’t give.
As to second votes. There’s two risks in not giving both votes to the SNP. One is that in some cases it means one less seat for the SNP. The second is that it might reduce the percentage in additional seats to less than 50 which will be used to somehow argue against the support for either a full independence referendum or one for devo max by a majority SNP administration at Holyrood.
“Thomas Valentine says:
5 August, 2015 at 1:40 pm
So the Ref # on the one to Wings is 11033 while the one on the Green “email” is 11034. So was one copy sent to WOS and another to the Greens. ”
It may have been the National that had that number.
link to twitter.com
Hood
Was disappointed in the recent announcement by the ssp wrt the scottish left grouping, their first combined announcement was to exclude solidarity
Sad, I know there will be no coming together, but I thought for the good of the yes movement and solidarity and the ssp, there could have been some kind of electoral agreement between yourselves whereby you are not both competing for the same votes. I’m not asking you to kiss and make up, just be sensible. There are some amazing people in solidarity and in the ssp, holyrood would be the poorer if they were not there.
I fell foul of Ross Greer and Debora storr on the bellacaledonia FB page for arguing for them not to stand in the ge against the snp, I said it would damage the yes campaign. And I was right” ask those folks in mundells constituency. The same happened to me on here with the ssp
The only people who were listening to this argument were solidarity.
For the sake of the greater yes movement, solidarity and the ssp must come to some agreement to avoid splitting the vote, votes I might add which will come from people who are neither ssp or solidarity supporters, but Indy supporting voters who want to see the unionists removed. None are interested in left wing bickering.
This either happens or one of you will lose out, at the moment, it looks like solidarity will be the future, simply because of their consistency in supporting the greater cause
Sorry pnr
The second is that it might reduce the percentage in additional seats to less than 50 which will be used to somehow argue against the support for either a full independence referendum or one for devo max by a majority…..
Does this actually mean anything?
There is a classic grovelling letter in today’s Herald from the Chairman of the Greater Glasgow Health Board “justifying,” according to him, the reasons for taking the lamentable decision to spend a substantial sum of NHS money on this title change for the new Glasgow hospital.
How do those people get those plum jobs?
Will he be suitably rewarded?
What do you think?
We should remember that the Greens were divided over independence and former leader Robin Harper was in favour of the Union.
Last month, the sole UK Green MP voted against Full Fiscal Autonomy for Scotland in Parliament.
During the Yes campaign in my part of Edinburgh we never saw anything of the two local Green Councillors at any of the YES work days.
However there were many Green activists who worked really hard but their main spokesperson tried to stop us putting a link to Wings Over Scotland on YES door to door materials but we outvoted him.
Read this and circulate
SCOT GOES POP “WHY TACTICAL VOTING ON THE REGIONAL LIST DOESN’T WORK”
link to scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk
Sorry thepnr, it’s SNP/SNP until after Independence. I’m afraid after initially liking the Greens I also don’t think Independence is top of their agenda. I worry about their agenda!
However after Independence, I will give the SSP some serious thought.
Presumably Patrick Harvie will have cleared this up.
Poor Ross, for him congratulating Wings for anything would stick in the thrapple like cold porridge with no tea so he opts for tangled webs.
URGENT MESSAGE TO PATRICK HARVEY & Co:
There were X-amount of green bottles sitting on the wall and if anymore green bottles should accidentally fall there’ll be no green bottles sitting on the wall. Think on, Patrick, think on!
SNP 1 + 2 for me until independence.
The SNP will seek Independence at the earliest and best opportunity it’s in their DNA hard wired always has been
If other Political Parties are serious about Independence they should include it in their Manifesto
If they don’t, do you trust them?
Right now we’re seeing Political positioning by someone in the Greens but
It doesn’t really matter which party, but maybe what matters is Why?
Scottish Politics has become hugely important now, more than ever before, and there will be new faces appearing and new objectives sought
Independence for me comes first last and always and no offence to anyone voting for what they want but you could hit me all day with a hammer and I’ll still never consider voting for anyone else other than SNP until Scotland is Free, after that who knows
The statement from Greer “whatever @MackieJonathan and I decided they were” tells me all I need to know about the man.
The fact that he’s the Green’s No. 1 list candidate for West of Scotland, and they’ve let this tweet stand since 18th March tells me all I need to know about the hierarchy of the Green party in Scotland.
I had a polite discussion a month or so ago on Facebook with a green candidate who had stood in the GE15 and lost. The gist of the discussion was that to me independence was the goal, to him (them) independence would mean their policies had more of a chance of being adopted, i.e. just the means to an end.
So I’m not sure having additional Green’s at Hollyrood will be any better for the SNP than having a unionist party MSP there.
I’m taking no chances my vote will be SNP/SNP.
moodie-vision–fcuking best yet
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
I used to have a lot of sympathy for the Scottish Greens. However with this sort of apparent kiniving and reluctance to produce the REAL evidence I am no longer having much sympathy for the Scottish Greens.
Congratulations Ross Greer … you and your *ahem* mates have done more to damage the Scottish Greens over this issue than if you had appointed Kezia Dugdale your new leader!
Very well done Stuart on your original post, and what an unedifying sight Greer, the Greens and the MSM afterwards presented. I too had noticed their failure to say ‘our FOI’ and the long delay where they supposedly sat on their hands while holding such a scoop isn’t believable and the pettiness and spitefulness of Greer and Leask when challenged on timing I found to be very distasteful. Well done to Wings for breaking such a story.
As for people giving their ‘second’ vote to the Greens, please be careful, for as others have pointed out the list vote isn’t a second preference, nor are all Greens independence supporters. Even voting for the SSP, which in my opinion in light of their behaviour prior to the election is a much more worthy party to support, could still cause the SNP to lose ground. Working out where it would be useful to vote tactically is much more difficult than some green activists try to claim. Until we have independence I feel we have to be as disciplined as the SNP themselves and align behind them in every election to not only keep their existing vote share, but to boost it wherever possible. Imagine the gloating from all unionists if SNP vote share went down. After we have our country in our own hands then we will have plenty of time to decide where we can differ in terms of other policies. Independence has to be the primary objective.
The high point of the Green Party in Scotland has already been reached & they remain almost completely irrelevant.
Scottish seats in the House of Commons 0/59
Scottish seats in the European Parliament 0/6
Seats in the Scottish Parliament 2/129
Seats in local government in Scotland 12/1,223
Not even a bucket of Viagra could help the Greens penetrate Scottish politics any deeper.
Might I suggest, that readers let Ross Greer have his 60 seconds of fame & then release him quietly back to the job market where his clumsy diplomacy might land him a role in a call centre in Greenock to sell stuff you really don’t need.
Stuff just like the Green Party.
Yes. It means that if the vote for list members is less than 50% the unionists will insist that that’s a true reflection of the SNP support. That will then be used to justify opposition to any referenda called.
For example assume there’s a 60% support in a given region so the natural assumption is that the overwhelming majority of seats will go to the SNP. If, knowing that to be true, over 10% give their second vote to another party that probably won’t make any difference to the seats gained. What it will do, however, is allow a claim of les than majority support.
I’ll be SNP/SNP myself next year. There is no other way to go, I want our independence first and foremost.
Patrick Harvie is grand, no doubt, but I think he suffers from ‘arrogance’ too. I felt and told him at my first, ever, gathering of ‘new members’ who had joined the party after the ref, that if it wasn’t for the SNP their membership figures would not have risen as fast as they had, that this was happening on the back of the No vote.
I had the distinct impression that he seemed to think it was so wonderful that so many people had joined and that it was based on some sort of wave of ‘green’ activism.
He stated during his wee speech that he didn’t like Alex Salmond, and I recall thinking ‘wtf, if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be seeing this surge in your membership’. I didn’t like the ‘in joke’ laughter emanating from ‘in crowd’ as he mentioned this. I also thought it was a completely inappropriate comment and he’d made an arse of himself by even saying such a thing, especially on the back of what had just happened with the No vote. (I was in grief and taking everything very personally at the time, my sensitivities were raw).
Since then, irrespective of the bombardment of emails from them, I’ve never attended another meeting. I don’t intend renewing my membership either.
Nothing to do with the Greer nonsense, but in a way it confirms my feeling of a certain ‘culture’ within the Greens wherein they ‘capitalise’ on the wave of others efforts and make out that those efforts were solely their own.
Of course in hindsight I shoulda gone to specsavers and joined the SNP. But felt the ‘Greens’ reflected my political outlook more closely at that time, and also mistakenly believed that independence was uppermost with the Greens, which it isn’t. It’s all a journey we are on, and open to direction changes along the way. But the chief destination for me now is Independence, nothing less, no distractions.
did he get lost at the sign saying Labour party join here?
I hope Patrick gives him a clout silly wee laddie, but it will still not change my view about the greens,i hoped they would bounce after the indyref swell to their membership but they are still out there on the fringes and seem to have made very little progress.
Not enough for me to justify my second vote to them regardless of whats happened.
Oh and great work Rev on blowing the story wide open just a shame those excuses for journalists couldnt give some credit where credit is due.
lol but i bet they were raging to find out it was one of yours,i wonder if they knew or if they were so lazy they didnt bother to check ? lmao
Ive also had to reconsider my second vote. Patrick Harvie made all the right noises during the referendum but I now feel they treat the Scottish Parly as a means to their own ends and not that of the best interest of Scotland.
My second vote will be going to an independence party with left leanings.
As a young journalist, I was taught: Don’t lift a story which has already appeared elsewhere unless you can move that story on somewhat. A new quote, or a different angle is fine, simply re-hashing someone else’s already-published story is a no-no.
Clearly, this sound, old-fashioned advice no longer holds good in the media – which perhaps explains why newspaper circulations are falling.
Modern journalists – lazy, spoiled brats many of them.
I think all independence supporting folk should stay clear of the Greens – if they get more seats and some political momentum I suspect they will stab the SNP and Independence movement in the back at their time of choosing by settling for ‘devo max’ or some such thing. (Especially if Trident is not renewed)
Someone mentioned Andy Wightman – who is, I believe, standing as a candidate for the Greens.
I have known Andy for over 30 years and although he is quite radical in terms of reforming land ownership in Scotland I have never heard him utter a single word of support for Independence (even after I have plied him with drink.
If you get the chance ask him….
Hood, I had a look at that pic from the National on Stu’s twitter feed. There is no reference on it. It seems that their FoI was dismissed because the request was so wide ranging, it would have cost more than £600. They instead were given the standard response which must have been compiled following an earlier FoI, possibly/probably Stu’s. From the earlier article, link to wingsoverscotland.com, it seems Stu’s FoI request was made “a few weeks ago” (actually 6th July from the pic above), which received a response on the 3rd Aug,wheras the National’s request was 29 July, with a 4th Aug response. As for the Greens, the only date in sight is 4th Aug with the email exchange. If Stu’s FoI was 11033, and the Greens are claiming theirs is 11034, where is the National’s ref no?
I echo the earlier sentiments. Forget the greens as a list vote – only a SNP majority can guarantee another referendum. Independence first, then everybody can go their separate ways.
SNP/SNP. I did toy with the idea of Green for list but why dilute the message?
Full independence, then we can sort out whether our own country should have a right, centre, left or green hue. At the moment we get what we are given from WM, and it’s brown, smelly and doesn’t taste of Marmite!
@frogesque
Is “marmite” rhyming slang?
SNP/SNP for me too. You know it makes sense!
Regarding voting Green in 2016.
Search online for Scottish Green manifesto 2015.
Nothing in there re-Independence – sure- some decent policies but more about “more powers to the SG”.
Sorry smith commision said the same-Boak.
So for now, for me, it has to be SNP for 1st and 2nd vote.
Sorry don’t know how to link a PDF file to here.
I have always considered the Greens as soft yessers! Could never see Harvie holding a Saltire and being passionate about Scotland. Not that you have to waive flags to support independence.
But you need a certain level of patriotism and pride to want to be a nation. Just doing so to get rid of nuclear weapons is a bit introspecive and subjective. The first reason anyone should want independence is nationhood. All the other stuff comes with being independent.
He typifies the right on politically correct civic nationalist, as they are embarassed to admit any patriotism to Scotland. They disguise it under a banner of social responsibility and collctivism.
I want all the good things like equality and shared wealth. But first and foremost I want independence because I am Scottish and don’t deny it.
Yes, rethinking my proposed SNP/Green also.
O/T
spotted this link on iScot magazine for a guy who could do with some Wings
link to crowdfunder.co.uk?
(hope I’ve pasted that right – looking over shoulder for hammers)
@Schrödinger’s cat
Glad to see you have your thinking cap on. Unlike Labour the SSP have principles, not perfect I’ll admit but with care and affection can be molded.
@Flower of Scotland
No problem FoS, I of course see things from a different point of view. There is no doubt in my mind at least that the SNP will have a majority in 2016 just with the constituency vote alone.
My main objective is to rid Holyrood of as many Unionists as possible and the only way to do that is for SNP supporters to vote for another pro Independence party with their second vote.
Is it possible that using your list vote wisely could mean no more Ruth Davidson or Willie Rennie. The answer is Yes, of course it could as both these chancers were elected on the list votes.
Whatever, of course vote SNP/SNP if thyat is your want, however I think we should never ignore an opportunity to deliver a fatal blow to the opposition!
Your vote counts, use it wisely for maximum effect.
We Wingers met Patrick Harvie some time ago in Freedom Square,feker wouldnt Take a Badge or donate to Foodbanks,I offered him a free SNP badge,smirky wee cunart.
K1 says: “Of course in hindsight I shoulda gone to specsavers and joined the SNP. But felt the ‘Greens’ reflected my political outlook more closely at that time, and also mistakenly believed that independence was uppermost with the Greens, which it isn’t. It’s all a journey we are on, and open to direction changes along the way. But the chief destination for me now is Independence, nothing less, no distractions.”
I’ve never understood why some pro-indy folk chose the Greens as their home, rather than the SNP, other than a sort of misguided notion that the Greens were just a more idealistic version of the SNP.
I think a lot of young folk joined because of a feeling that the SNP are too mainstream, or they think they’re too good for the SNP (especially “Not A Nationalist” types – aye, sure you aren’t…) and the Greens are a younger, cooler alternative – that’s certainly a draw for the kind of person who allows their politics to be defined by the Twitterati.
But for anyone whose main priority is independence, it simply doesn’t make sense to join any party other than the SNP.
The Greens’ main objective is dealing with climate change. If that’s your main priority, then join them. If you would put Green issues ahead of independence, then join the Greens. If you would be prepared to forego independence because the UK suddenly decided to elect a Green government, then join the Greens.
Otherwise, it makes no sense to join anyone but the SNP.
And that all applies to voting, as well. The Greens are not a wing of the SNP, they are a separate political party with their own objectives, several of which clash with the SNP (sometimes just for the sake of having differences, some might suggest).
Lollysmum I do agree, they should take it in context. I got a moving message from Ed Miliband because I asked Wings questions of his Party Reps, had to disabuse them of any idea I wanted to be in Labour considering like you I am a member of the SNP.
Let us not divide ourselves from the Green party over a FOI, the Greens stood with us on the independence vote, divide and conquer is the motto of the British empire, and the odd individual however familiar they may seem to us, or idious for that matter, cannot be allowed to sway us.
The REAL problem is that Ross Greer is top of the Green’s West of Scotland list which means he has a very good chance of becoming an MSP next year. Someone so patently dishonest who puts his childish grudges ahead of the interests of his party and the indyref movement is a disaster waiting to happen.
Alan McKenzie – Ref 11077. Not on document but part of file name. Assuming that’s the same thing. I think you’re probably right that NHSGCC just put all the information into one FOI and sent it out to everyone who asked.
Like many here I’ve long been suspicious of the motivation for the Scottish Green’s pro-indy stance. I was all set to give them my list vote in Glasgow next May, until I found out they were pointlessly standing 30 candidates in the General Election (did any of them save their deposit?)
This Greer farce makes it even less likely they’ll get my list vote now.
Tend to agree with the SNP 1st and 2nd votes – although I do have time for Patrick Harvie and Andy Wightman (who I think is on the Green list for Lothians – a doughty land reform campaigner who would be a good addition to the Parliament)
However, that nugget above…Nah!
Re voting in the Holyrood election next year.
If you are an SNP supporter, you vote SNP for both constituency and region.
If you voted SNP/SNP in the 2011 election, you vote the same again.
If you are a Solidarity or SSP supporter AND your party is NOT standing in your constituency but is standing for the region, then you can ‘lend’ your constituency vote to the SNP, whilst voting SSP or Solidarity for the region.
There is absolutely no point in an SNP voter NOT voting SNP/SNP.
And here’s the link that “Another Union Dividend” gave up above.
link to scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk
Time to make my position clear re the Scottish Green Party.
Before I moved to Brechin I lived in Edinburgh and was a member of the SGP but not particularly active. The antics of Robin Harper and others hacked me off so I let my membership lapse.
During the referendum campaign I got to know many local members of the SNP and some in the SGP. A large number of the SNP members were more clued up on environmental issues than those in the SGP – it was said by several that come independence they would join the Green Party.
I have had email contact with Patrick Harvie over his dismissal of Wings to no avail. The local SGP held a meeting which members of the SNP attended and were patronised, I could list more…
Like many I was angered at the decision to stand candidates for the GE and so helped the SNP. Recently I tried to explain to the local SGP that we should be aiming to get list votes from Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative supporters, two agreed with me the rest did not. My point was that the SGP should position itself as a party that was for local enterprise, self-sufficiency, stewardship of the countryside and other small ‘c’ conservative concerns.
I am now, as a member of the SNP developing ideas and policies that are to the benefit of the environment and have more chance of seeing these adopted than if I were a fundamentalist middle-class socialist tree-hugger, not every green can be described as such by any means but a significant and vocal number can.
It should be obvious to any green politics supporter that independence is totally in accord with green aims and should be a priority for a number of reasons.
RE: AMS and the second vote.
I am no expert in this system, but let’s assume that the SNP win ALL the constituency seats. Unlikely, but if recent polling is accurate, not impossible.
Those that want to split the vote (i.e. SNP/A N Indy Party) claim that this is likely to produce MORE indy supporting MSPs than SNP/SNP voting. Does this stack up? Perhaps it does but ONLY if the SNP list vote is less than 50%. Is this likely? Again polling suggests that it could be higher and the pro-Union parties seem to be doing their best to push people into an SNP2 scenario.
There are 73 Constituency MSPs, so a full sweep grants the SNP a majority outright. In each regional area this would mean the SNP struggling to add to this compliment, but if the polling among the other parties is as predicted, then I still calculate that they could pick up an additional 8-12 MSPs.
This would be another historic result, so huge caveats apply, but SNP2 is NOT a waste in my view. UNLESS – and here is where we need to hold fire until the manifestos are produced – the other Indy-Sympathetic parties are unequivocal in having support for another indyRef explicitly in their manifestos.
Personally I would favour SNP2 until after Independence, then my vote would be available.
I see Greer has tweeted a copy of ‘his’ email requesting the information from the hospital. Unfortunately all the details of who the email is from are redacted so no-one can actually see who submitted the original request.
Suppose we’ll just have to take his word for it then.
So the Greens are the new LibDems?
I wonder how come this Greer person was employed by Yes Scotland since the Greens left and helped form RIC. There he must have been, the token Green in the village, while everyone else was hanging out in RIC. Those of you who just stuck with Yes Scotland can slightly be forgiven for not thinking the Greens were Yes, because you won’t have encountered them. Some may even have chapped your door on behalf of RIC but unless you peered closely at their badges wouldn’t have known some were Greens. I certainly know Green people here in Dundee who worked hard for Yes. In RIC.
As for officially, last Dundee RIC meeting Maggie Chapman came, officially as co-leader of the Greens to talk. She was welcomed as ‘one of us’ because she is. Patrick Harvie is too. His opposition to FFA is because he thinks it would be unworkable and unstable and not a patch on Independence, not because he is not Yes. And finally, during the referendum we in Dundee RIC were asked to deliver Green Yes leaflets, which we happily did. They carried the official Green party logo and listed Green reasons to be Yes.
The Green party was:
1. In RIC, they still are.
2. The leadership is Yes.
3. They came out as a party for Yes and campaigned on that basis.
The kneejerking for one jerk here is silly and juvenile. I’m not in the West so I can vote Green on the list without having to worry about electing the immature young man. Don’t let one jerk split the Yes community. We are better than this, or we damn well should be.
Well said Paula rock will be pleased. Still on holiday in yorks
Here here mg
My biggest issue with this character is that he seems censorious and not a little authoritarian in his outlook.
Very much of the ‘I protect your right to free speech, so long as you agree with everything I say’ school. Wretched mind-set, that one, as it merely indicates that you are not as open-minded as you claim. Lot of that in some circles, where they pretend they are having a ‘debate’ on an issue but in fact exclude anyone who does not meet up to their exacting standards.
I prefer to acknowledge that even the people I dislike most can sometimes make valid points. Pretending otherwise is the behaviour of a twat.
What Paula said
The most recent polls are saying that the SNP will on 60% of the vote win every constituency seat.
Great news but there will still be Unionists like Ruth Davidson and wee Wullie in Holyrood because of the list vote.
If you really want rid of the Unionists in Holyrood then you must use your list vote wisely and vote for a party other than a unionist one.
I’ll be straight and upfront SNP/SNP is fine by me. Thinking about it rationally though I see a wasted opportunity. Let’s rid Holyrood of all Unionist parties.
Your vote, your choice.
Indeed,
P.Harvey did a fair job pre ref 1..
..although he blundered on radio about a week before in relation to the Queen…
Can’t recall the trap he fell into but his rambling developed into sanctimonious anti monarchy statements.
Such views from a prominent party leader weakened the YES VOTE.
Shucks.
I was seriously thinking of voting Green for the list next year, but I’m much less inclined to now, after seeing the quality of their candidate for the West of Scotland. It appears there are shallow, careerist, wannabes in the Green Party – whoda thought it!
I have many green sympathies and even considered joining the party. However, my priority is to see Scotland independent, and this requires another SNP majority at Holyrood, with NS at the helm. There is no way I could jeapordise this by voting for such a shady character, who seems destined to trip up big time, sooner or later IMO.
‘There is absolutely no point in an SNP voter NOT voting SNP/SNP.’
That was always my thinking. I thought the idea was to get as many SNP MPs as possible. Why an SNP voter would want any different does mystify me.
Greer is simply being true to an environmentally friendly policy of Reduce, Re-use & Re-cycle.
He’s re-used & is re-cycling a Wings original article.
It used to be known as plagiarism, now it’s Green.
Thepnr 5.22
As far as I’m aware only one poll put SNP on 60%.I stand,as always,to be corrected but I think polls have generally been in the low to mid fifties on the constituency vote.
Ross Greer’s shameless theft of someone else’s work to further himself.
Straight out of Gordon Brown’s book.
Are you sure you are in the right party, Ross?
What the pnr said
Um low to mid 50s
That is not a landslide
It’s an earthquake
In the Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale constituency for the General Election, everyone’s favourite Tory in Scotland, Mundell, won with a majority of 798 over the SNP’s Emma Harper. The Scottish Greens’ Jody Jaimeson got 839 votes. Fair enough, that’s democracy, and all that.
Yet, the Scottish Greens must have known that constituency was going to be a tight call between Mundell and Harper. As they say they are on the Scottish independence side of the political equation, and as they would have been aware that they weren’t going to attract too many votes, could they not have pulled out of this one constituency to give the pro-Scottish independence SNP as much chance as possible of achieving the win – a win for their partners-for-independence which they say is central to their policies?
I’m not saying that the Scottish Greens receiving 839 votes was the reason that Mundell won, and, of course, had they not contested the seat, those votes could well have been spread around between all other candidates, but if – and it’s a big if – those 839 votes had gone to the SNP they would have won by 39 votes, a slim win, but still a win.
Whatever, it’s in the past now. Still, it’s food for thought if nothing else.
@Paula Rose
Thanks. Good post.
I’m 2 X SNP until independence.
PS: Footie link now working here. 0 – 0
link to neolive.net
Apologies for being a dumb fifer, but I’m surprised so many were not intending SNP/SNP.
Am I failing to understand some basic aspect of the Holyrood election?
Is their a scenario where it would be better not to vote SNP/SNP?
As an avid Wings reader I take in the comments as much as the articles; I’m epileptic and spend some fairly regular time in recovery after debilitating seizures and feel I know some posters and the Rev even though I have rarely posted! I mention this because I am also a Scottish Green supporter who voted SNP in GE2015. I notice in most posts here the Scottish Greens are referred to, as they often are, as ‘the Greens’, missing a key point in the party’s commitment to the Yes movement, in that it negotiated a separation from its sister party, unusual in ‘globally concerned’ green politics, to support the movement. Robin Harper may not have been a supporter of independence but I believe P Harvie is; there is room for a spectrum of opinion within a party isn’t there? In the way that A Salmond represents the right of the SNP and N Sturgeon the left. Eck said a future Scotland would keep the queen, I can’t think of anything more reprehensible as a symbol of former colonialism in a future sovereign nation and think many SNP supporters might feel the same, it doesn’t mean they now distrust the party!
Those now speaking about transferring their second list vote to one of the other left leaning parties based on the poor, immature political machinations of Ross Greer, who admittedly needs to be sharply dealt with by the party in my opinion too and should not top the list anywhere if this is his modus operandum and its impact, is that not a bit of ‘weathercockism’ with green principles? There are no other parties, anywhere on the spectrum, standing signpost like on green issues, it’s why a Scottish Green Party is there!
With Cluff Natural Resources browbeating the SG, Ineos holding their fracking licences for 30 years against the backdrop of cuts to renewables subsidies despite the potential in the renewables industry in Scotland and the investments already made, numbers employed etc, who else is going to make sure economics stay on the right side of the environmental science? When the SG called for evidence and research into alternatives to the not fit for purpose Council Tax, the Scottish Greens funded A Wightmans Land Value Tax research. Marry that to the type of research done by Prof Sandilands into zero rating income tax against LVT in a beneficent tax system and the type of reasoning which would shift a Scotland ‘thinking as if it was in the early days of a new nation’ into a sustainable tax base, with powers already there! The type of FFA being negotiated at WM, as per the vote mentioned above too, would shackle a new Scotland to a malign tax cycle which would lead to later cycles of boom and bust when something better was on offer(which Stiglitz, Krugman et al recommend as a more beneficent tax base and sustainable alternative to debunked austerity models!)…
There’s far more on offer from the Scottish Greens than Ross Greer’s Twitter feed and I think the movement needs a green voice. Every party’s had their zoo ears to be called to account, zooming in different ways, how the party deals with them, I’ll admit is the test of their mettle, over to you Patrick…
Achnababan, near the top of the thread, has prety much nailed it:
“I simply do not trust them [the Scottish Greens] as I think they are supporting independence only to advance themselves as a party”
From what I’ve read here today, I’m now convinced to vote SNP/SNP and will make sure my nearest and dearest do the same.
At times the internet is a wonderful thing.
Doug, some of us were just politically naive, or politically disengaged for such a long time, the ref and the Rev brought us in from the cold. I’ll never be a ‘geek’ certainly, but now I’ll never be so naive again.
Also, I’m too old to be young, but I’m still cool 😉
Today’s Daily Mail:
“… in a Freedom of Information request disclosed yesterday”
Yes, saw that in today’s Mail and immediately thought that, more than likely, it was the FoI requested by Stu. When they didn’t disclose that it was their own FoI, or named who or what had made the request, I just knew it *had* to be the one made by Stu and shown on WOS!
The slimeballs of faecal matter at the Mail will readily steal an exclusive from Wings without naming the source, yet at other times they are all too ready to insert Wings into a headline and construct an article of lies and smears about Stu, the site and those who comment BTL. They are at the very lowest level of all the sewer-dwellers which comprise the corrupt right-wing media of the ready-to-collapse, teetering-on-a-precipice construct still laughingly known as the UK.
have just (1815hrs) received a screengrab from ross greer showing the scottish green party’s own FoI request.
why he could not or would not provide it last night i can’t say.
why the media chose to delay their stories i can’t say.
cheers.
Yes, the Greens have lost my second preference vote because of this ( and enduring Fluffy as my MP, of course) – as others say SNP/SNP until we have independence.
@ K1 – coolness like greenness is a state of mind, as is being a Scot.
‘Is their a scenario where it would be better not to vote SNP/SNP?’
Yes, if you want to protect the union.
I’m a member of the 2X S.N.P. vote club next May. This is mainly because being of independent soul, if not of mind 😀 , I want independence and until I see my country fully independent from the criminal element that exists within Westminster I will continue to be 2X S.N.P. Sorry Thepnr. 🙁
I also have a second rerason for being so minded in my voting preferences … I live in the constituency that currently holds the regretable honour of being the seat of Fluffy! 🙁
We currently have the poisioned dwarf as our constituency M.S.P. and I want to do everything I can to ensure that neither her or any Labour List candidate returns to Holyrood next May.
We have a meeting at the end of the month to confirm Joan McAlpine as our constituency candidate. Like a few Holyrood constituencies Joan was the only candidate for selection so I don’t think the meeting will be long on arguments from other candidates. 😀
@ Linda McFarlane
Thanks for the post about the Crowdfunder for Boorach. He’s a Winger who could do with our help. He lives in a converted van which has just about reached the end of its road & he’s about to start chemo for lung cancer.
Please help if you can
link to crowdfunder.co.uk
As the old saying goes, success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan.
Posting, BTW, from the Hermitage Hotel St Petersberg so a test of sorts.
Donated to Boorach Crowdfunder CMon Wingers get behind this crowdfund He,s wan o oor ain.
Good on You Kevin Kane for helping Boorach.
PR, true dat 🙂
OT, but relevant to much of the discussion about voting.
I think it’s important that anyone with a serious interest in Scottish politics FULLY understands the way in which seats are allocated in the second list vote. My guess is a lot of people don’t quite get it.
It’s actually quite easy to understand, but personally I can’t see how you can make predictions easily.
We use a D’Hondt method. Simply, the number of votes cast for each party are divided by the number of seats won so far plus one. This calculation is repeated over and over where each time the winner from each calculation gets a seat.
Next iteration, the previous winner is at a disadvantage because they have just won a seat and therefore the formula gives a lower result with the division. Another party may, or may not win next time.
This goes on until all seats in the region are allocated.
The BIG twist in the Scottish system is the results from the constituency vote in that region are included at the start of the D’hondt calculations.
This is why a party which gets a lot of constituencies needs a high list percentage to collect a few more seats.
Put simply, if the SNP do really well in the constituency vote, and win most seats, they will need around 50% list percentage to get more seats. Also, anyone getting less than about 10% ( I guess) will get no list seats.
link to en.m.wikipedia.org
Good description from the BBC …
link to archive.is
Paula Rose says:
“Time to make my position clear re the Scottish Green Party.”
Finally admitting that you are indeed a hypocrite.
You had ample opportunity to make your position clear a long time ago but refused to do so.
I think like Craig Murray you have moved to the SNP out of opportunism rather than principle, but I may be wrong.
As Ken500, myself and others have been saying for a long time, the Greens cannot be trusted.
SNP supporters wanting independence must give both their constituency and list vote to the SNP in 2016 to ensure an SNP government.
Don’t be duped by the Greens. They follow Lib Dem tactics.
Paula Rose’s hypocricy now exposed:
Paula Rose,
“@ Cadogan Enright – think we’ll go with unionist troll.”
Paula Rose,
“Rockcock as usual.”
Paula Rose,
“Rock – do you really want to go through this all over again? I will if you like,”
You could have two days ago if you wanted to.
But you didn’t because you know that you are being a hypocrite by cheering the election of 56 SNP MPs on this site while defending the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP.
If the SNP landslide had not been so massive, the Greens’ vote splitting policy could well have let more than one unionist MP to survive.
@ george 6.41pm
Is that the FoI one dated 4 Aug?
Date at bottom of nhs FoI release re: renaming is 31 July.
Seems many requests were made, but some beat others to the publishing punchbowl 😀
@Rock honey – go do something else other than waste our time here.
Most Greens I met during the Yes campaign worked very hard for independence but I never trusted their leader: he could rarely resist a pop at AS and I eventually thought he had piggy-backed on Yes to gain electoral advantage. I don’t think he views independence as essential to the future, so enough said.
The strength of Yes came from the roots, not the upper echelons. My wife and I met Blair Jenkins on the Saturday before the referendum: he seemed a nice guy. He told me, what with the numbers who had signed the declaration and the RIC registrations, that he was sure we would win. I believed him. Imagine how I felt on Black Friday. Now I just feel he was out of touch, but I may be naïve.
Mabel and Big Jock summed it up pretty well, I feel.
Once independence has been achieved, we can go our separate ways but I’m not risking a drop in the SNP vote next year, which will be seized upon by our opponents. AS seemed to have a high regard for Colin Fox and I would consider voting SSP again in the future but it will be after independence, on the other side of bliss.
Glad Mr R. Anderson is back, or is it the Santa Ponsa Kid now?
@ Rock for those of us in the know Paula Rose is a SNP member,except you lol, you were played like a clockwork toy.
Must have taken them a while to track down where they had put the response from the NHS. No wonder, with all the names redacted, perhaps they forgot who had it.
Interesting that the three responses we’ve seen are all different, Stu’s one, the National one,(on wings twitter) and the green one, same text different format, with all identifying names redacted. Odd.
You know those labels on food that state “free trade”, “organic” etc? They shouldn’t be there – produce should be labelled “unfairly traded”, “pesticides used” etc – in the same way policies should be of benefit to us all unless labelled otherwise i.e. Of only short-term benefit.
And the moral is, if you mess with WoS, you’re in for a bumpy ride. Everyone knows how shit UKOK hacks really are.
Paula Rose has no credibility.
Her previous comments are on the record on this web site.
She should have clarified her position a long time ago instead of attacking, ridiculing and patronising others.
Her sycophants Thepnr, Brian Doonthetoon and ronnie anderson who joined her in her attacks on me must be feeling quite stupid now.
Do not trust the Greens. They are exactly what the Lib Dems were for so long – political opportunists.
Give maximum support to the SNP in 2016 by giving them both votes.
I want independence sooner rather than later.
I support many Socialist and Green policies but that will only become a real choice AFTER independence.
Hi Rock.
How often did you meet Paula Rose and speak to her, at the 8 WOS get-togethers, that have taken place since April 2014?
How often did you meet her, when she was manning the WOS stall at the various rallies that have been held in Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh, since the referendum?
Are you merely an armchair warrior, who doesn’t dare to exit the front door?
You’re really building a wee LIST of your own, iye? Glad I’ve been included. To be on the same LIST as Ronnie and Paula Rose is honour indeed!
You’ve been played hook, line and sinker and you don’t like it. No offence…
Went on link to twitter.com , never met him and he is slagging me of for reading WOS, the guy appears to have problems with the human race.
I’m with Achnababan and Paula Rose. I’ve never detected any sincerity among the greens regarding independence. Events during the SNP minority govt and events in recent months have confirmed to me that they cannot be trusted.
Once we have independence, then maybe SSP or more likely Solidarity, which would be my current preference – SSP are too quick with grudges and likely to continue the splits that have historically so characterised the left. Sorry PnR, I look for inclusivity and compromise.
As per usual if anyone wants to have an argument please join me on the Quarantine thread – this is the current thread read by many – or is that the point?
Famous, or rather notorious, Paula Rose quotes:
“@ Rock – do you have a problem with democracy?” [Paula supporting the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP]
“So sad to read that Rock and deewal are the dad’s army of the UK – unless they can convince us otherwise.” [Paula supporting the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP]
“I’m sorry but I think Rock exists to disrupt our unity of purpose” [Paula supporting the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP]
“Not sure that these long gaps called Rock really work as intended – occasionally two or three words actually make sense. Most do not”
“Rock honey – are you cognisant with the word “pish”?”
“Listen – Rock is like a Deerhound, big and shaggy but a dear hound nevertheless, he will keep barking at me and when we get a space again off the main thread I will gladly play ball”
“–”Fred – Rock took against me a while back, as yet he/she has run away from all invitations to debate away from main threads in rooms on wings where we could have a debate.” [Paula refusing to criticise the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP]
“Hungry ravenous eater of steak here – where’s wee Rock?” [Paula Rose a meat eating Green]
@ Rock awe am mortilly offended you didnt see fit to put my name in capital letter. Ladys dont wear syco pants, Paula Rose does a nice line in frilly nicks & no Ultimo.
ronnie anderson,
“@ Rock for those of us in the know Paula Rose is a SNP member,except you lol, you were played like a clockwork toy.”
Ronnie I am not as easily duped as you are:
ronnie anderson,
“@ Rock Would you stop your disrespecting A Winger ie (unionist troll) Natasha is well known personaly by many Wingers.”
Natasha,
“I can do without transphobic comments from ill-educated people.” [Possible unionist troll leaving the site in a huff after calling the Rev. Stuart Campbell “ill-educated”]
Rock, you really are becoming boring now. You really felt the need to trawl (troll?) the site for Paula Rose quotes?
Do you not believe she is a member of the SNP?
Get a life.
You are (purposefully?) diverting this page.
New readers – please excuse the strange conversation at this stage in the thread, do comment and be part of this site.
While this particular individual appears to have issues with fair chunks of the Yes side overall I have no problem with the Greens. If there is another move fora referendum I expect they will back it and that is fine by me.
On broader issues of environmental matters we need a voice of caution and the Greens provide that. So while it is amusing that a particular known grump doesn’t want to acknowledge Wings I don’t see any great point in firing pelters at the Greens or the SSP or the National Collective or any other fellow travelers. We have enough targets to concentrate on with the Red, Blue and Yellow Tories.
Talking of which, Greg Moodies cartoon over on Bella is particularly mental this week. The Ian Murray character is brilliant.
Hi Mr Rock!
Sycophant? Who me? LOL
ronnie anderson,
“@ Rock for those of us in the know Paula Rose is a SNP member,except you lol, you were played like a clockwork toy.”
No SNP member in their right mind would pretend to be a Green on this website, defending the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP to help the Tory Viceroy of Scotland get re-elected.
Stop trying to re-write history. Not all readers are as gullible as “Tory embracing” Thepnr, “Sovereign” Brian Doonthetoon and yourself.
And Rock – your ignorance knows no limits, if you can suggest Natasha is a “Possible unionist troll”.
Natasha fell out with Rev Stu. End of. You, on the other hand, are exhibiting all the classic troll features; attacking individual posters and diverting pages from the subject under discussion.
I’m not suggesting you are a troll – only that you seem to exhibit certain ‘troll’ qualities. I like this track by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers…
link to youtube.com
People please do not engage with personal thingies – this thread is current, it is read by many, we regulars are few – have a thought for others, they are many xx
Hey Rock
You love to quote posts from not just the recent past but from wayyyy past.
I’m impressed, do you have a wee notebook on me too? I’ll bet you do 🙂 You dumb ass shit 🙂
Brian Doonthetoon,
“Hi Rock.
How often did you meet Paula Rose and speak to her, at the 8 WOS get-togethers, that have taken place since April 2014?”
Definitely not as often as you did:
“But, as Paula Rose told me on Saturday evening at Helensburgh, he’s quite endearing, like a 3 month old puppy.”
You are an useful idiot to Paula Rose.
Paula Rose 9.25
I’ve just rejoined the conversation and haven’t read many of the posts.What the hell have you done to upset Rock now?
Rock.
Congratulations! You have destroyed the discussion on this page.
Award yourself an “Under The Bridge” badge…
ronnie anderson,
“@ Rock awe am mortilly offended you didnt see fit to put my name in capital letter.”
Not to offend you any more than the bare minimum necessary, I wrote your name exactly as you write it.
(Sorry, the following post is on the long side!)
If this ‘kineejit Greer was part of the Yes Scotland campaign team it just consolidates my misgivings about the Yes Scotland campaign that have been troubling me ever since the devastating defeat of 18/19.09.14.
Where *was* the Yes Scotland campaign? Not the physical address in Glasgow, but out there, on the airwaves, on screen, in the media, and on the street, house-to-house, organising rallies, online, on social media, facebook, Twitter, etc., making themselves accessible and seen and heard and as noisily as possible?
Yes, the UK Better Together MSM was 100% behind the UK and used every dirty trick they could to ‘influence’ the result. There was never going to be any fairness, impartially and non-bias from the UK and its subordinates.
Yet, Yes Scotland could surely have made more of an attempt to force the issue of making sure they got at least some representation more of the time. Or, even simple things like requesting equal representation on TV or in interviews, and should these have been ignored or refused, making that information public via social media, showing just how underhand Better Together was acting.
Why wasn’t ex-Labour MP Dennis Canavan given more air-time? He has experience of Westminster and Labour’s machinations and when he speaks he does so authoritatively and put his points across well.
Or, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh? From interviews and such since her election to Westminster, she speaks well and holds her own.
The CEO himself, Blair Jenkins, was the biggest disappointment of all. When given air-time he was bland and unforceful. Where was the passion? Where was the fight, the spirit, the drive? It wasn’t some local by-election he was given the leadership of – it was for the right of Scotland to become the independent country it was meant to be, FFS; it doesn’t come much bigger than that.
His insistence that the Yes Scotland campaign be nicey-nicey and all sweetness and light meant that Better Together steamrollered their way to victory using negative tactics uncontested except by those in the grassroots campaign.
I really hope that him having being Head of News and Current Affairs at both STV and BBC Scotland, and the recipient of an OBE in 2012 for broadcasting didn’t have any ‘influence’ on the way the campaign was lead.
The newspapers and leaflets offered for distribution by Yes Scotland were bland and insipid. Where were the ones countering the lies from Better Together? Where were the ones revealing the crimes perpetrated upon Scotland and its people by Westminster and the British state, like the McCrone Report, for example?
And now we find out that this eejit Greer was actively working against individuals who were doing their utmost to get a Yes vote for independence – while being employed by Yes Scotland…!? Just fucking unbelievable! Was Jenkins aware of that? If he was, then that is a disgrace beyond words.
Margot MacDonald and others mused out loud about the involvement of MI5 and their infiltration techniques and operatives working from within and without to ensure a No vote. The more one hears about those who were in Yes Scotland’s employ, their dealings, and the overall flacidness of their campaign it makes you think, it really does.
And finally, what would the result have been without the work at grassroots level, a movement that grew spontaneously, if everything had been left in the hands of Yes Scotland? I’m positive it wouldn’t have been anywhere near the alleged 45% for Yes – far from it indeed. And Scotland’s independence would be decades away, if at all, rather than the possibility of anything up to 5-ish years away as we are now.
Now I don’t know whether to feel sad or angry about Yes Scotland and what it did – and didn’t – do, I really don’t.
To all new readers and folk who read this without commenting – please excuse the shenanigans going on normal service will be resumed xx
@Mealer
Rock is just doing his job. Nothing to see here.
All the best for Boorach.
If you don’t want have a ‘crowdfunder’ account you can just send direct by Paypal, email address to send to on the update page.
link to crowdfunder.co.uk
I think Yes Scotland were trying very hard to be ‘safe’ and distinct from the perceived forceful persona of Alex Salmond – yes they were pretty weak but they also weren’t easily attack-able, and to a large extent our understanding if their weakness is what forced the grassroots to be strong.
Yes Scotland were perhaps a deflector shield more than a campaigning organisation
Hi Dal Riata.
Good comments. In Dundee, I saw the RIC out canvassing twice a week – latterly three times a week, I seem to remember – and Team YES Bus were out every week, in the last couple of months of the campaign.
There was a “YES Dundee” but I don’t know if it was a local ‘grassroots’ effort, or a branch of YES Scotland.
Maybe, from now on, we should be coordinating through ‘Scot2Scot’ and the Yes Registry?
Rock
What is wrong with you? PR took you for a ride & you can’t handle it. We who know Paula, know what she is & who she is. Get it through your head that she is under no obligation to answer to you on anything.Just who do you think you are?
You pick on folks when they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it. You are basically just a bully. I believe I told you that once before & I’ve seen nothing since to make me change that view.
I remember you being asked on more than one occasion just what you’d done towards GE15 when we were all out doing our bit including Paula. I don’t recall you ever answering the question although I will stand corrected if you did.You are good at criticising others but can’t take it when its aimed at you.
I did wonder if you had a problem with women because you’ve had goes at Paula, Natasha, Morag & probably others.After my rant at you some time ago I left WOS as I was sick of the way you continually dragged threads down into the gutter with your attacks on individuals. Maybe that was your intention, I don’t know but I found it insulting to other posters & Rev Stu.
Rest assured I’m not going away but I certainly won’t be addressing you again here. I’m afraid, you just aren’t worth the effort.
My apologies to everyone else on here but sometimes it just has to be said 🙂
The shenanigans are irritating the tits off me.
He says, she says, blah, blah, blah.
Is there a facility on this forum / blog, where folks can piss off into a private room to sort out their differences?
@Lollysmum, Linda McFarlane, Ronnie
Happy to make a contribution for Boorach – done 🙂
link to crowdfunder.co.uk?
Paula Rose,
“People please do not engage with personal thingies – this thread is current, it is read by many, we regulars are few – have a thought for others, they are many xx”
We are at 180 or more comments and this thread is about Greens being exposed as the hypocrites they are.
Some of us have been pointing this out for a long time while facing insults and patronising from yourself and your sycophants.
Like a chameleon, on this thread you have suddenly and opportunistically changed your long standing Green colours to SNP colours.
Why did you continue pretending to be a Green after joining the SNP?
The moral of the story is, if you want independence, don’t trust the Greens one bit.
It is also a fact that there are many unionist infiltrators inside the SNP. Be very careful.
Hand and Shrimp, yes it is unfair to tar all Greens with the likes of Greer. And if he were just an individual, it wouldnt really make any difference, but he is the top of their list in west of Scotland and that elevates him to a position of (potential)influence in the parliament. In which case he does deserve a greater degree of scrutiny, in regard of his viewpoint which seems to raise some concern, not by this episode of the FoI but earlier episodes with Yes Scotland and the comments by others upthread.
There will be calls in the next few months for voting strategies, 1st vote this and 2nd vote that and people need to understand how the 2nd vote could impact on any majority. They need to be aware of the danger of unionists slipping in on the list. Scot goes Pop discussed this and the link is upthread. It is not as simple as many think.
The way I find peace of mind is to think of indy1 as a path finding exercise. 🙂
@ Dal Riata.
As usual, some excellent points.
It’s easy to get all paranoid after the event but I do wonder about the Yes campaign at the top levels. I remember Morag having hinted darkly at misgivings about Blair Jenkins’ performance, given his BBC background. These still trouble me. The BBC is an odious and completely corrupt body and stands squarely in our way.
But then I consider the new landscape, with 56 MPs, and I keep telling myself its spell is broken.
Not convinced. No pixies at the bottom of my garden, I’m afraid.
Lollysmum,
“Rock
What is wrong with you? PR took you for a ride & you can’t handle it.”
This site is according to the owner “by far the most popular and widely-read Yes-supporting website.”
Are you seriously suggesting that Paula Rose used this website to take me for a ride?
The same Paula Rose who posted this:
“but so far instead of welcoming people you have driven them away.”
What did she aim to achieve by taking me for a ride?
Drive away independence supporters from this website?
Be very careful about unionist agents amongst us.
If we weren’t so gullible, we would not still be a colony after 308 years.
Dal Riata: The CEO himself, Blair Jenkins, was the biggest disappointment of all. When given air-time he was bland and unforceful.
Perceptive: he was not inspirational, not the sort of person one hoped led a Yes campaign. His Wiki entry is brief and loose ended, unfinished. His silence after the Referendum begs the questions, why? Surely a man of such conviction would resurface looking for election to a political seat?
Brian DTT, what about the declaration that we got everybody to sign and sent off all their names to Yes Scotland. Surely that should form the basis of the Yes Registry(or is that what you meant). From the numbers we were getting back to us in the last week, it was up in 1.9M or so. Never did get a final tally. I hope it hasnt ended up in a box somewhere or worse chucked out. Anyone know?
O/T There are many more red squirrels round my way this year though not so many swifts – how about where you are?
@ Dai Riata and Big Jock echo my thoughts….Patrick Harvie talked a good game during the Ref, but never missed a chance to distance himself from the SNP even in the face of Unionist hegemony.
I have never thought it embarrassing to be a Scottish nationalist, in or out of the party. Harvie always seemed relaxed about the national question and I always felt that if Devo Max had been conjured up in reality, that he’d have bought it without a backward glance at Indy.
Many of the Greens’ philosophy is appealing, but so is the SSP, but the eye on the prize is one of Independence first and last. After that, I and others can afford to pick and choose who we want.
I and many other veterans of this site argued long and hard for the SNP to challenge the media imbalance and downright disinformation being disseminated. I never agreed with the ‘softly, softly’ approach and did not use it personally on the doorsteps.
I believe that Blair Jenkins was the wrong man for Campaign leader and I will not speculate publicly as to why I had grave doubts from the first YES meeting I went to..where his answers to my direct questions about BBC bias were dismissed by him to my face.
Canavan and Ivan McKee were far more combative and telling in their defence of fairness and economics of Independence respectively. But both were sidelined at critical times. My abiding memory of Blair Jenkins was on Call Kaye being enticed by a pro-Yesser to state clearly Scotland’s contribution to the UK economy and stating that he didn’t have those figures to hand….this in the last week of the campaign!
@ X Sticks @ Linda @ Lollysmum lets keep spreading this appeal to make Boorach,s life a bit more comfortable.
@Indigo at 9.55 pm
Yes, that’s a fair enough comment.
@Brian Doonthetoon
“Maybe, from now on, we should be coordinating through ‘Scot2Scot’ and the Yes Registry?”
Yes, that’s a good suggestion.
Hopefully, those leading Yes Scotland, or whatever it will be called, for Ref2 will get it right – if Scotland is denied its independence – yet again – there won’t be a Ref3, at least not for a very long time.
We seem to be drifting from the point with all this. It is hardly the first time Stu’s work has been plagiarised by the Scottish media and by Scottish politicians and won’t be the last.
The cost of the renaming, while obscene is hardly the issue. The hospital was named during a ceremony that, had the name been ‘the Alexander Fleming Glasgow Hospital’ the cost would not have raised too many eyebrows.
The decision to rename this hospital in worship of a woman at the pinnacle of the inequality pyramid of the UK can only be seen as a political act.
The hospital is the greatest in the UK at this time and a triumph for the SNP, delivered as it was on schedule and within budget in Scotland’s largest city, a Yes city. For this reason the team GB brand has been applied to her flank to remind all us rebellious Scots that we are subjects, not citizens.
That there are dozens of other hospitals in Scotland with the same Royal brand is not enough. We can’t have a nationalist success, a success independent of the real death star.
There is more to this story than some guy who hates Stu stealing the renaming cost story.
I would love to know how in the name of the wee man this Scottish Government triumph has been usurped by an elderly woman who treated Scotland with absolute contempt at the start of her ‘reign’ over us and did so again 60 years later when she made her feelings known and then purred down the phone to Cameron.
Who signed off on this in the Scottish Government and why? It makes no sense to me
Lollysmum,
“After my rant at you some time ago I left WOS as I was sick of the way you continually dragged threads down into the gutter with your attacks on individuals. Maybe that was your intention, I don’t know but I found it insulting to other posters & Rev Stu.”
You left WOS because you had lost the argument and couldn’t answer back:
Lollysmum,
“No Derek Bateman, I don’t agree with you, the cringe is peeking through your argument.”
“Just shut the fuck up for a change-it’s people like you that are feeding the ‘one party state’ narrative with your attitude that gives MSM & WM its ammunition & you are too dim to see that you are doing it.”
One Scottish cringer attacking another!
Which independence supporter cares about the MSM and WM? They lie about us all the time and don’t need any ammunition to do it.
For the sake of completeness, what do you think about Morag’s comment about a “democratically elected” MP?
“Now, I’m about 90% sure that he was in it up to his bloody neck, which I would happily wring.”
Doesn’t that give “MSM & WM its ammunition” too?
This site does not belong to you. I will stop posting when the Rev. Stuart Campbell tells me to.
Lollysmum,
“I did wonder if you had a problem with women because you’ve had goes at Paula, Natasha, Morag & probably others”
Are Thepnr, Brian Doonthetoon, ronnie anderson, Dave McEwan Hill, Ian Brotherhood women?
WTF!
Maybe the most practical advice on any recent thread and it gets waylaid by this Dwayne Johnston wannabe misogynistic crap.
For the record I didn’t understand the D’hondt method – and I got my higher maths when it was a hard exam – but the 2016 message is —
Vote SNP/SNP.
Now everybody go and buy a copy of John Byrne’s “Your Cheating Heart” and chill the fuck out!
@ Paula Rose Squirrel,s Yes,an ah dont walk as swift as ah used tae.
@Rock
BeJeesuus you have a notebook on Lollysmum too! My my.
Dearie me Rock. You are always ready to pick a fight with Paula Rose, now tonight you seem to be firing off at The Pnr, BDD Ronnie Anderson and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.
Whit the hell is going on wae you the night, hiv you taken some angry pills or whit?
Now we are all entitled to our own opinions, you included, but surely there is no need to be as aggressive and rude as you are being tonight.
Come on man/woman, calm doon for goodness sake, there’s nae need for any of this.
Tam Jardine: The decision to rename this hospital in worship of a woman at the pinnacle of the inequality pyramid of the UK can only be seen as a political act.
Absolutely – another form of colonisation, of placemen planted to make the weeds in the garden seem natural.
Once upon a time we had a national orchestra. It became the Scottish National Orchestra. The Orchestra of Scotland is title enough, a title recognizable the world over. Then in came a placeman as administrator and it became that tautology of all tautologies, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
What’s next?
The Royal Scottish Caledonian British National Orchestra?
Right, that’s it. I’m giving this site a break.
Just days after the Rev posted the encouraging figures for new visitors, I wonder how many will remain when they encounter Folk bickering like infants.
@Tinto Chiel at 10.10 pm
I was with you until the final paragraph:
“Not convinced. No pixies at the bottom of my garden, I’m afraid.”
Not sure of what you’re trying to say there, I admit. Are you implying that I’m making suggestions of some kind of conspiracy theory? If you are, then I want to say that I’m not. I was just putting things out there, as they say.
Observations, implications and suggestions can be made about anything, but subjects such as governments, referendums or elections, for example, I believe should definitely be made, especially the more we learn about the UK and its ‘workings’.
Anyway, I’m not a raging conspiracy theorist and I’ve an open mind about most things, and until there is definite proof one way or the other about various shenanigans all I, and others, can do is attempt to seek the truth – it’s out there somewhere!
Of course, you might not gave been suggesting anything like that at all, and if so, my apologies! 🙂
@ Lochside.
Some good comments, but I believe Denis Canavan had some health problems which sidelined him. Happy to be contradicted on this. When he came to our hub with NS to speak to pensioners in the last week he was excellent. Your BJ anecdote only increases my scepticism about the official Yes Campaign.
@ Rock.
Meant to say on another thread re sovereignty and your comments on Robert Peffers and BDTT (I think): do you deny the Scottish concept of popular sovereignty?
If not, to exercise it, surely you wait until the SNP make it a manifesto commitment, then vote for them. We don’t have to wait for CallmeDave to “grant” anything. Don’t understand your problem with this idea. Once we have a majority in these circumstances we have legality.
Whenever the need to recharge my anger at the loss of my cheated country I just think of the bloated face of Fats MacDougall hypocritically lying to the news camera about why he thought the Yes campaign was doomed from the start.
I keep seeing those loose, chubby lips trying to form words followed by a thin sound coming from the back of his throat, starting from his bowels, and I want to vomit.
Hi Alan Mackintosh.
This is to what I was referring…
link to nationalyesregistry.scot
Their crowdfunder reached its target on Saturday.
With Rock’s lists on everybody, maybe we’ll see Clypegate2.
Rock you’re boring mate.
I’d rather discuss the original article than be subjected to your guff.
Oi you lot – back on topic pronto.
@Grouse Beater at 10.13 pm
“His [Blair Jenkins‘] silence after the Referendum begs the questions, why? Surely a man of such conviction would resurface looking for election to a political seat?”
Yes, that’s an excellent point.
And, what has become of Blair Jenkins since the morning of the 19th of September, 2014? Does anyone know? Have there been any sightings? Rumours, even?
I have nothing but respect for this site and those who comment.The knowledge and understanding some of you have is impressive and helps make this site the the ‘go to’ place for those of us who want our country back.
The Rev deserves our utmost respect for the efforts he has put in to help our cause. An outstanding journalist and patriot.
I’m thinking that some on here tonight are letting themselves and the Rev down wi some of this bickering.
Any chance of giving it a rest?
At a pre-election hustings in the north of England the candidates were asked what policy of their own party they disagreed with.
Green candidate said his party had come out against Scottish independence and he didn’t like that because he thought that was a decision for the Scots.
Perhaps we can deduce that Scottish Green policy was/is one of deference to HQ, just like SLAB?
Burnham’s on a roll today! Who can resist his appeal?
———————————————————–
“People at all levels of society share the same hopes: a secure job, a decent home, a good standard of living, prospects for their kids and proper care for their parents.
“But in our insecure, modern world, for far too many people these dreams are dying. It will be the mission of the Labour Party I lead into government to revive them – and turn the light of hope back on.”
—————————————————————
FGS! Apple pie on Sundays and Santa twice a year… 🙂
link to archive.is
Ecuse my ignorance, although I can guests that WM is short for Westminster what on earth is MSM?
Eyes on the prize please.
For me the Hope St campaign was a bit happy-clappy (and their website was poor & rebuttals non existent) but I’m not sure what else could have been done with the certainty of a hostile media. Sure, I’d have liked more passion & more Canavan but in truth the heavy work always had to be done by boots on the ground & indeed, if we could not put boots on the ground then we did not deserve Independence, there had to be a grassroots demand.
There is & we set a new baseline. Our achievement is that plus all our battle hardened troops.
The biggest oversight was obviously that we did not find a way to strip the BBC of its cloak of objectivity, it was a judgement I guess of some coverage for Yes vs no coverage at all. A work in progress now along with developing a narrative on the key issues of pensions, sovereign currency, defence, nhs & eu
“What’s next?
The Royal Scottish Caledonian British National Orchestra?”
The Betty Windsor Borders Line.
all aboard!
@ Dal Riata.
Apologies for not making myself clear, DR. I’m not convinced, despite 56 MPs, that we have broken the malign spell of the BBC, that’s all. Pixies are the good, optimistic guys at the bottom of my particular garden.
Here’s hoping.
O/T.
link to facebook.com.
Put yer pitchfork doon Rock n Punt up for Boorach.
A wee saying from my theatrical director days:
House lights should be trained on hecklers – like owls they cannot hoot comfortably when illuminated.
Hello Jimmy and welcome to Wings.
MSM is short for Main Stream Media, you know the lying newspapers and TV programs that we all love to hate 🙂
Brian DTT, ah ok, yes I saw this a week or two back. A collective of the Yes groups. I was thinking of the yes declarations which we sent off from the yes shop. These were all cross referenced with postcodes before adding to the total and in essence this must have been similar to the thing that was signed in the ’50’s, the national covenant or somesuch. That list must be somewhere.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand”
(Abraham Lincoln)
Poor wee BBC Labour Party Journalists complaining they’re being spied on by Police Scotland again, and guess what
It’s all # Nicola Sturgeons fault
Hugh Henry was tonights token spokesperson for the Labour Party where he duly repeated every word Paul Huthcheon of the Herald said word for word last night on the same stupid pointless 2015 programme except with Andrew Kerr tonight admitting nobody will care because journalists are not exactly popular in Scotland
It makes you think if they know they’re not popular, why don’t they know Why they’re not popular
Ooh, on another maybe quite important note the BBC are using housing Landlords to collect TV Licenses
I found out today Council properties, Sheltered accommodations and others are being required to collect the money from Tenants
This was direct from a Housing Warden today
When I questioned the legality the Warden had no knowledge, she was just told to collect the cash
Tomorrow I’ll phone my MP and see if our GUV has any Info
Sounds really off though
Ha,my FOI ref is 11032,submitted on 5/07. Greer only sent his on 9/07. Does that make me the winner lol! Got the reply, (presumably sent to all those who had sent FOI requests) on Monday evening. Don’t really understand what took him so long to put his ‘story’, sorry ‘comment’ together. I mean, I’m just lazy so I know what my excuse is! But then I’m happy for Stunto do the hard work for me. Trying to put Wings down really doesn’t do his cause any good. It is one of the few sites that tells it like it is and backs it up with proven links.
@Jimmy says:
Ecuse my ignorance, although I can guests that WM is short for Westminster what on earth is MSM?
Mindless Silly Morons or as the establishment’s little helpers Mainstream Media.
The head of the health board, Andrew Robertson OBE is the one who has seemingly the task of explaining this decision to brand the new hospital with the royal stamp.
One thing I find coincidental on Mr Robertson’s Register of Interests is his other role as a trustee and vice-principle of the Carers Trust (formerly called The Prince Royal Carers Trust).
Could the removal of the Royal connection from the Carers Trust be linked in some way to the push to rename and the new hospital? Does anyone know the reason for that other name change?
Hi Jimmy 11:03 xx
Jimmy
MSM = Main Stream Media.
Princess Royal of course
@scotspine says:
The shenanigans are irritating the tits off me.
Not surprised as that is what they are meant to do. Accept it as a consequence of reading or posting on Wings.
Rest assured there are some among us who’s only goal is to create division. Don’t be wound up by it, just laugh it off.
Easier said than done I know, pretty guilty myself of flying off but you can but try. Stick with us scotspine.
My vote in 2016 will be SNP,SNP.
Democracy Reborn: “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Abraham Lincoln)
Not the wisest choice of epithet on a site dedicated to Scotland’s freedom, but apposite nevertheless. 🙂
Brian Doonthetoon,
“Do you not believe she is a member of the SNP?”
Brian Doonthetoon,
“Similarly, you cannot presume to accuse Paula Rose, a Green supporter, who was a very active YES campaigner – and campaigned for an SNP vote in the recent GE campaign – of hypocrisy by intending to vote Green next year.”
My argument against Paula Rose was, as a Green, defending the Greens for standing candidates against the SNP during the Westminster election which led to the Greens splitting the vote to enable the Tory viceroy of Scotland to be re-elected.
While at the same time cheering the election of 56 SNP MPs.
What stopped her from stating then what she has stated today?
“Like many I was angered at the decision to stand candidates for the GE and so helped the SNP.”
The same Paula Rose who then accused me of:
“but so far instead of welcoming people you have driven them away.”
So she deliberately tempted me to drive people away from this website by pretending to be a Green supporter?
What good would that do to the Yes cause?
In my view, she doesn’t have any credibility and like the lying Lib Dem MP Carmichael’s close friend Craig Murray has opportunistically changed her position.
Like many have their doubts about Blair Jenkins’ true commitment to the Yes campaign, I would never trust a “Yes supporter” like Paula Rose.
I find yourself, ronnie and Thepnr to be useful idiots for her for behaving like her sycophants.
But those are my views and maybe I am wrong.
Marie Clark,
“Now we are all entitled to our own opinions, you included”
Well not according to Paula Rose and her sycophants:
Paula Rose,
“@Rock honey – go do something else other than waste our time here.”
ronnie anderson,
“@ Rock as Thepnr say’s you go do your thing ,but do it elsewhere NOT ON WOS”
Brian Doonthetoon,
“Rock, as I typed on another page, you have been SUSSED.
You are a disruptive influence, so there, NYAH!”
Thepnr,
“Rock likes to stir the porridge. No reasonable arguments, just offers controversy. Likes to wind people up.
In other words, a troll. Well named, crawl back under.”
Paula Rose
O/T There are many more red squirrels round my way this year though not so many swifts – how about where you are?
There was a red squirrel run over and killed on Latch Road last night or this morning! I still see the two who live in the trees across the road from me though.
@Dr Jim
Saw that Reporting Scotlsnd piece too, Police Scotland “believed” to be one of two UK forces spying on journalists (poor souls). SLAB’s Hugh Henry calling out the Scottish Govt on it.
Cut to studio, Reevel Alderson quoting Scottish Govt spokesperson that it relates to a ‘reserved matter’ under the Scotland Act. That’s legally correct : defence of the realm, national security and interception of communications are all reserved matters under the Act. UK government departments are responsible for them. Did Alderson confirm that? No. Did he say the relevant UK department had been contacted for an explanation? No. Instead, he gave a bitchy and fatuous narration of the Scottish Govt complaining a few weeks ago that MI5 had been spying on MSPs. The inference? Scottish Govt are hypocrites.
The Beeb, just like Fox News : fair and balanced.
@Rock,
can you please go to the off thread links if you wish to have personal arguments with other Wingers.
You are currently becoming even more boring than Will Podmore.
No new post – how about instead of retiring to the social club we stay here?
link to youtube.com
Amazing –
link to youtube.com
“A House divided against itself cannot stand.”
Abraham Lincoln clearly never lived in my street.
New readers – we do this…
link to youtube.com
Tinto Chiel,
“@ Rock.
Meant to say on another thread re sovereignty and your comments on Robert Peffers and BDTT (I think): do you deny the Scottish concept of popular sovereignty?”
I am waiting for Robert Peffers and Brian Doonthetoon to answer my question but they have suddenly gone very quiet about our “sovereignty”:
“As a “sovereign” Scot, I have had enough of the purring queen and want to replace her with an elected president of the Scots.
Robert Peffers, our self appointed resident historian, and your assistant Brian Doonthetoon, an expert on the Declaration of Arbroath, can you please inform me how I can exercise my “sovereignty” to get the process started.
Thank you so much in advance.”
….er, what’s going on here tonight?
Feeling the freeze right up here in the ‘shire frae what’s being said.
I feel as if ma mam and da are hain’ a bleezin fecht
C’mon!! we are all on the same side – I dinae like all the fechtin when we are all (more or less) wantin the same outcome
Rock said, “Robert Peffers, our self appointed resident historian, and your assistant Brian Doonthetoon, an expert on the Declaration of Arbroath, can you please inform me how I can exercise my “sovereignty” to get the process started.”
I thought I had already outlined how this could be done: vote for an SNP manifesto with independence as its policy and, with a majority, you have your sovereignty. The individual monarch is essentially irrelevant if the people are sovereign. Forget your purring queen.
I am not a Scottish constitutional historian but I await correction. Perhaps Lallands Peat Worrier?
Or yourself, Rock.
Let’s have a festival of Scottish culture –
link to youtube.com
@ Rock Pants to YOU.
For any new visitors veiwing tonight Welcome,to let you,s know Rock is our Troll in residence tonight ,Podmore will be along tommorow,but dont let that discourage you from posting your comments.
Tanx for that wee video Paula. 😀
Just wee bit of info for you coutesy of my partner.
The Cilla show was from 1973.
Life’s a Gas appeared on the Electric Warrior album.
The band played Mad Donna first before Mac sang that song with Cilla.
link to youtube.com
Mad Donna appeared on the Tanx album.
Bet you’re glad I saw your link now aren’t you? 😀
You can all relax now I’m returning from whence I came … the “Darkened Room!” 😀
A few thoughts.We call Blair Mc Dougal useless for presiding over Better Togethers loss of 20 points or so.The Yes campaign gained those points under Blair Jenkins.I heard Blair Jenkins say the grass roots campaign had taken off to such an extent HQ could hardly keep tabs on it.Was that a sign of an inept HQ leadership or a hugely successful grass roots? Maybe more the latter than the former? The structure was considered appropriate at the outset.Next time round it will be set up differently because different circumstances will apply.It was decided that the only hope of winning independence was to mount a positive campaign.I bought into that and still do.The positive campaign goes on.I reckon a positive campaign shouldnt be overly aggressive.Hope over fear.On many occasions I asked the question “can a bunch of ordinary Scots take on the entire British establishment and win?”.I thought we maybe could at the time.With hindsight I was wrong.We weren’t strong enough.But we built a huge increase in support.We brought independence firmly into the mainstream.It is now an option at least worthy of consideration by most Scots.The process of our positive referendum campaign has advanced our cause in leaps and bounds.We’re within touching distance.Lets keep at it.
@Tinto Chiel at 11.09 pm
Aye, nae bother, got ye now! 🙂
You’re right, it’ll take some doing to break the spell that BBC Scotland still has on so many of its Scottish viewers.
It reminds me of the Disney version of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. In the following extract from Wiki., let’s replace Mowgli (the mancub) with ‘Scottish viewers’ and Kaa (the snake) with ‘BBC Scotland’ and make a few other embellishments:
“BBC Scotland, their eyes filling with multi-coloured spirals as they whisper, “Yesss Scottish viewers, pleassse go to sssleep.” The Scottish viewers foolishly stare into BBC Scotland’s serpent-like eye, and find their own eyes becoming captivated. They fill with spirals as they are pulled forward, their mouths falling ajar as they attempt to get closer to the hypnotic eye. BBC Scotland continue their lullaby, misreporting and manipulating the news so as to confuse Scottish viewers further. The Scottish viewers arms fall limp by their sides and their legs drop either side of their armchairs as their eyes follow BBC Scotland, dragging their tired bodies with them.”
(With apologies to Wiki., Disney and Kipling!)
But, as we know, all’s well that ends well, and Mowgli triumphed (with the help of Bagheera – not sure who he represents yet, social media maybe?) over Kaa!
The Scottish viewers, more of which, day by day, are becoming aware of the constant misrepresentations of Scotland’s news, will triumph over the wicked BBC Scotland, too, one day. Hopefully, it won’t take too long!
Let’s have a festival of Scottish culture –
link to youtube.com
@ Dal Riata.
??.
Let’s remember Orwell’s 1984 was really about the BBC as much as Stalin’s USSR.
Lang may your lum reek.
Can anyone tell me if Cat Boyd is a member of any political party? I know she was prominent in the RIC, is a member of the International Socialist Group and is a leader of the Scottish Left Project.
When she has spoken, I like what she has got to say and she does so with passion and commitment. I’d like to see her in Holyrood. I don’t know, though, perhaps she herself would not want to be an MSP in Holyroood.
(Just as an aside. Imagine the fun and games to be had if she had been elected, in whichever constituency, to represent the SNP in Westminster as one of the present 56… Her and Mhairi Black… By Christ, it would be bloody marvelous! Westminster and the British Establishment would possibly self-combust!)
New dawn for Ruthie in the East as her star in the West doesn’t look promising. 🙂
link to archive.is
@ Lady Arbroath 1320 – I had your partner in mind when I put that up xx
And my groovy emoji peace sign came out a ??!
Sigh.
Off to bed.
Thought that you may have Paula. 😉 😀
Sorry, O/T
She who has recently passed on and is now being beatified by the UK’s MSM was one of the 200 ‘celebrities’ who ‘wrote’ a love-letter pleading us simple-minded Jocksters to stay and pledge our troth to the blessed union sent down to us by God Himself and named by Him Himself as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, amen. Or Better Together or something.
The exalted one’s name can be found between Dickie Bird and Graeme Black on the list at the following:
link to archive.is
Shame that one immature man has caused such division and discredited his party to some extent and I’m not just talking about the FoI issue. A number of his comments about Rev Stu constitute defamation of character (if Stu can prove they’re incorrect) and others seem to highlight that he’s a bit of a control freak. More than anything he seems to be intent on disparaging everyone who posts on here and that ain’t nice. Can this young leopard change his spots before he does real damage to the Greens, sooner than later? Harvie should be taking a real close look at him.
The thread also highlights the issue of a small group of people taking it on themselves to name a 900 million pound Scottish hospital without consulting with the public. Reason being to include us would have led to some people being upset if their choice of name wasn’t selected. Balderdash! What it does highlight is that wee cliques, toon cooncillors and politicians excluding the public in relation to decision making has become the norm ….. design of the Scottish Parliament, Orange Order walks and so on ….. the list is endless …. has been going on for decades now (if not centuries) and we’re pretty well sick of it. Sick of being excluded in decision making and sick of, in this case, famous Scots who made a positive difference to millions of people’s lives, such as Fleming or Barbour, being usurped by someone who’s done nought for anyone other than her ‘ain ….. already massively rich …. folk’. It’s not as though we’ve excluded them in any way at all. I gave up at, at least, a count of twenty hospitals in Scotland named Alexandra, Victoria, Queen Mother and with ‘Royal’ in the name and it wasn’t our Royal Mary Queen of Scots either. However at the end of the day I’m not going to let this get my knickers in a twist as after we get our Independence the hospital could be renamed if it really gets up our humph.
Dal Riata I loved and totally agree with your post at 9:42pm. We’ve had .. call it … a practise run at Indyref and learned some hard lessons that can be put to good use next time round. Blair Jenkins mmmhhh! What was that all about? Alex (much as I adore and respect him) with his wee boy attitude towards the currency issue ‘it’s oors … sterling … and we’ll have it’ without backing this up with some kind of sound legal argument didn’t help at all. Did anyone even think of carrying out a role play exercise in relation to the Salmond / Darling debates?
Lack of media support / airing of views and policies could have been thwarted by including loads of data on some of the leaflets that were sent out such as the enormous leaflet that had a full page photograph of a mother holding her child: Sent out a few days before the Referendum. The steam was coming out of my ears when I saw it. That page, these leaflets, should have included Stiglitz views on currency, Webbs on pensions, Marriott Leslie on NATO, Lieutenant Commander May on Trident, Sir Harry Burns on the NHS, McCrone, Stolen Seas, West Coast oil, EU, fracking etc etc. They didn’t but let’s hope if we don’t get some decent unbiased coverage next time round the SNP communication team will be on the ball.
We also know now not to use postal votes (get the word out), that exit polls are essential and that we need EU and UN personnel to cover the next Referendum. Let’s hope too that all the rUK ‘Scottish lovies” (who’ve now disappeared into oblivion) won’t repeat their con and that the lying Vow type weasels from London, crying their eyes out, won’t dare set foot on Scottish soil next time round. And maybe by then, fingers crossed, the Daily Record will have gone right down the karmic drain.
Flippin’ eck , nipped off for a cup o tea and do some paperwork ( self employed) ….. Aaaaaa FFS effin war has broken out an the Hame Guard are in the Pub .
Thankfully some decent posts can be gleaned thro it all, thanks.
Jimmy , I interpret MSM as “Mostlyanti Scottish Mediapish”
Jimmy and any other first time visitors , welcome and step into the body o ooer kirk .I’m sorry , please accept our apologies .
” Ye picked an affa nicht t cum in aboot”.
I assure you tho’ , you will be made very welcome.
Please drop by soon. tonight’s commotions as most unusual.
As Paula says ” Normal Service will be resumed”
@ Thepnr Give your list vote to the SSP. Make an old man happy. I did not think Ian Brotherhood was that old. Ha Ha
@Dal Riata
Aye! The spectator has a cybernat article based on ‘one’ tweet but patronises other SNP tweeters who said decent things about her. Par for the course.
🙁
But let’s not go there please…Just a lorra lorra hassle!
Anyhoo I’ve still got her early LP’s 🙂 But never watched her TV stuff.
Petra says:
Reason being to include us would have led to some people being upset if their choice of name wasn’t selected. Balderdash!
I’m just wondering Petra … if this really was their excuse for NOT involving the public what on earth they thought about the Scottish Government’s idea about doing exactly that when it came to naming the new Forth crossing!
I find it amazing that the government of this country has 1,000 times more trust and confidence in the people of Scotland than a wee clique of wannabe ermine claokers when it comes to selecting a name for a public building.
Back from a break. And we have much more to concern ourselves with than the minuscule ‘Scottish’ Green Party. They matter nowt.
What concerns me is the American ‘patriot’ who told me that Scotland would not be allowed to be independent. And he was a proper Patriot.
More of which presently.
@Petra at 1.16 am.
Thanks for your kind words. Your own post has the passion that I admire and take a delight in when reading ATL articles and BTL comments that have it in spades. Keep it up!
Does anyone else have any idea what’s going on on this thread tonight (every other thread in fact)? Is there a clique of people, formerly friends, who have fallen out?
Whatever the case it’s become extremely off-putting especially as the same people seem to be involved in some kind of personal vendetta …. additionally so many people against one which makes it even more upsetting.
I’ve tried to follow this saga, day after day, when I know that I should just by-pass every post but it would seem that it has something to do with someone who stated they supported the Green Party, and I thought they did, but now say they don’t and that it’s all been some kind of con to annoy another.
We all post on here, mostly using pseudonyms, but rely on each other to speak the truth as we know it to be. Conning one person, for whatever reason, basically relates to conning us all, especially if we don’t know the individual personally.
What about everyone involved calling some sort of truce and letting us all get on to the same footing that is working together for an Independent Scotland?
Training Day…wiz he a patriot missile…
Coat oan, just leavin’…
😉
@ Lady Arbroath 1320 at 1:40am
I think it just highlights a typical embedded ‘elitist’ mindset in Scotland, Lady A, and that is that when some individuals feel that they are in a position of power (and the rest of us …. 5,000,000 people … are inferior beings) they abuse it by making own decisions (yes the wannabe Ermine crew). Anything we have to say would be deemed to be worthless.
I read that four out of the five names they chose included the word ‘Royal’. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that one or two people of the thirteen involved were intimidating, royalists, called all the shots and hope to follow in the footsteps of Ms M Mone. I’ve been involved in meetings like this and now wear the tee-shirt.
On a positive note I think that the wee cliques in Scotland will be (are now) getting the message and that is that as Bob Dylan would say ”The Times are a’ Changing.”
Anyway LA better get off to bed now. I’m a Maggie Thatcher 4 hours sleep a night type of person (all we have in common, lol) but I’ve got to get up 6am!!!
link to sjwiki.org
“But I come to you… only out of… CONCERN!”
To folks who are new here, don’t worry about some of the silliness going on above in the comments. It is a sad fact that due to the influence of this site, there are often trolling attempts by people seeking to cause division. It is usually obvious who those people are. Best to ignore.
As regards the hospital in Glasgow, it is symptomatic of the way in which the glasgow Labour party and its placemen, will happily waste vast sums of money, just to raise a union jack, or help push ‘britishness’.
All of the NHS in Scotland needs to spend wisely right now, and yet here we see a Health board literally squandering 100,000 pounds on a renaming exercise, for no good reason. Those responsible should be sacked. It is utterly outrageous.
Even if the decision was taken to rename the hospital, it should, as others above have pointed out, have involved the local Glasgow community to choose the name. I am pretty sure had that happened, it would NOT have involved thon lizzie woman from down in England.
In short, all the NHS is under tight financial pressure, due to Westminster cuts, and for a health board to literally squander such a vast sum of money in this way is utterly indefensible. No ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, sack those responsible.
Ironic to see the so-called ‘Scottish’ ‘journalists’ running with a story from a Wings over Scotland FOI request – two whole days after it broke.
As regards the Greer chappie from Scottish greens, and the utter bilge he punts on a regular basis, I agree with others, Mr. Harvie needs to get rid of him. He is doing untold damage to the Scottish Green party. From my experience, he is NOT representative at all of what most Scottish greens think.
I’ve never voted anything other than SNP for close on 40 years so I shall offer up my opinion of the Greens thus.
To quote the inimitable Johnny Lydon.. “Never trust a hippy” which I believe was a veiled reference to a Mr Richard Branson and look what happened there.
Edinburgh Calling.
When Scotland is Independent in 2020 the name can be changed. ‘The Scottish – – ‘ . One of the best Hospitals in Scotland. Glasgow can be proud.
The Greens are the most sleekit manipulating, greedy, public money wasting liars. They collude with Unionist/Landowners to prevent land coming into the public domain, against the majority wishes and the public interest. They renege on their own policies and make people’s lives more difficult. They are a disgrace.
They are in Unionist/Landowners pockets and are funded by them. They have campaigned against essential roads, resulting in deaths and delays. People couldn’t get to work. Wasted Millions/Billions on Inquiries. £2Million in one Inquiry and then complained when £2Million had to be cut from Education. They are a menace to society.
Prevented the predestrianisation of City Centres. Colluded with Unionists to waste £Millions and illegally building carbuncles which the majority were against. People are protesting on the streets.
Petra: Alex … with his wee boy attitude towards the currency issue ‘it’s oors … sterling … and we’ll have it’ without backing this up with some kind of sound legal argument didn’t help at all.
He needed no legal argument nor lawyers. Carney, governor of the Bank of England, confirmed sharing the pound was possible – assuming politicians wanted it.
Well, we all know how much those Westminster politicians love Scotland. There lay the problem – many a voter believed the ‘Troika’s’ bluff that they would not let Scotland have the BoE as lender of last resort. That was a critical issue Salmond failed to address adequately because he genuinely believed they were bluffing.
In the end it wasn’t about money. What the Troika was saying was, you will not be allowed to regain nationhood.
Fits a the racket ye’s woke me up wi the rumpus, dinna mak me thump oan the ceiling wi ma brush!
link to youtube.com
Special thanks must go to Rock and Paula Rose for appearing in this sketch. 🙂
Im off to get some of that “SPECIAL” black pudding from the butchers!
Dont be scared newbies whooohahahahahaaaaaaa
______________________________________________________________
Graham Doig says
“I have nothing but respect for this site and those who comment.The knowledge and understanding some of you have is impressive and helps make this site the the ‘go to’ place for those of us who want our country back.”
What Graham said!
Anytime you need a chauffeur Mr Doig. 😉
_______________________________________________________________
Andy Wrightman knows full well, why the SNP Scottish Gov can did little about land reform because Scotland voted NO. The Scottish Gov’s powers are limited, Landowners have to be compensated under UK/EU law. A ‘a right to property’, in inshrined as one of the clauses of the Human rights Act. @ Landlander Peat Worrier. The Scottish Gov would need £Billions to buy them out. Westminster illegally and secretly took all of Scotland’s resources, and continues to do. Total taxes raised in Scotland £54Billion. Total taxes raised (pro rata) in the rest of the UK £39Billion.
The Greens do everything they can to prevent land coming into the public domain. They are in the Unionist/Landowners pockets and are funded by them. They even campaign against wind farms, essential road building or improvement, predestrianisation of city centres, against the majority wishes and the public interest.The Greens even campaign against Scotland’s, ‘right to roam’.
Another agent provocateur liar. Slagging off Nicola. When they should be joining the SNP and fighting for Independence if they really wanted land reform. Scotland would have to wait for Independence even to tax land. Under UK Law (Scotland voted NO) land is exempt from tax to keep farms together. Larger farms produce more. Food and drink is one of Scotland’s major exports.
The Scottish Gov doesn’t have £Billions to buy landowners out (UK/EU Law) because Scotland voted NO and the Greens/Unionists have illegally squandered and wasted £Billions of Scottish revenues. The Green/Unionist hypocrites,
Ian Hislop is a liar
Morning John, great summary of the preceding events, as usual.
Anyone who’s this far down into this thread, I urge you to watch John Kings clip, it’ll set you up for the day 🙂
(We’ll have no trouble here! – I’d forgotten just how funny that is!)
John King and Gillian , you swines !
I hated League of Gentlemen – absolutely gave me the heeby jeebies – and you led this unsuspecting innocent straight to them .
I may never trust you again!
Ronnie Anderson , did you have a super time in Mallorca?
Are you sorry to be back in wet n’ windy Scotland?
Hi Gillian
glad it made you laugh. 🙂
Dorothy Devine says
£I may never trust you again!”
There’s a space right behind Paula Rose if you want to get in the queue. 🙂
@Grouse Beater 6.59
That’s how I read it Grouse. Anyone who spent five minutes looking at the Fiscal Commissions report on currency choices would understand that the position put forward was not wrong or poor in any way. It was the position most in keeping with the spirit and word of the Edinburgh agreement. Quite literally its very last line:
“The two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom.”
The sterling zone, even in the short to medium term would have ensured currency stability and the least upset to cross border trade in the view of the commission and the SG. A quite conciliatory and generous stance in fact. One I’m less inclined toward these days for the simple reason they’d pull the same stroke again and of course my own heart has hardened somewhat in the past ten month.
Its also of course one of the reasons why they insisted on no pre referendum negotiations. There was no settled detail to give to potential voters on any range of issues from currency to division of military goods and all points in between. The whole stance by HMG was to keep the public as ill informed as possible, paint the future as uncertain and frightening. Then of course deny or stringently limit the YES campaign’s access to the media in order to address these fears.
We know the rest. 🙁
@John King
You’re a very naughty boy. 😀
Macart: We know the rest. 🙁
The rest is taking sovereignty back.
We are clear now we won’t ever be given it. Any contract with a Westminster signature upon it is worthless.
Good morning folks. Pleased to see that we have returned to normal after last nights wee rammy.
Robert Louis @ 3.06. Talking about the renaming of the new hospital. Aye I agree with you when you said “those responsible should be sacked. It’s utterly outrageous.” I would go further. I would make them repay the NHS the £100,000 that they have wasted.
I’m sure that they are all well remunerated, and also it will remind them that it is public money (i.e. yours and mine ) that they are throwing about. Should make all people in these types of positions stop and think a bit more.
Hello Wingers,
Whats the Stramash all about.
I have not read much this week.
Been a hectic week so far..
Checked in this morning and you have all been arguing and Trolling.
😕
Tut Tut
Keep your eye on the prize and dont get bogged down with the minor details.
Iil be back later to check on you all.
😕
@Grouse Beater
Far as I’m concerned Grouse, my government sits in Holyrood. 🙂
Everything that was supposed to happen with a YES vote (it wouldn’t) has happened with a NO vote. The Tories have ruined the Oil sector. The Oil companies, Health Clubs (sports), NHS, public service, Police/Fire/social services are all in decline. Public funding have been cut. Interest rates are going up. The bombing continues, migrants ‘are swarming in’ according to the Tories. The rich are getting richer, the vulnerable poorer and children are starving.
Westminster and the Royals have been give a 10% increase. Rail funding in the North has been cut and HS2 will make rail journeys throughout Britain even longer. Higher earners will Pay £20 a week to stop children starving, but will fund Trident. The debt is increasing.
Some of you have been very naughty, you’ll all know who you are and I’m not referring to the handbags thingy from last night. 🙂
—————————————————————-
It is understood around 6000 affiliated and registered supporters have signed up in Scotland, boosting the 15,500 membership electorate by nearly 40 per cent.
————————————————————–
link to archive.is
Is 15,500 real members, just another guess?
what?
like this?
link to youtube.com
or this maybe?
link to youtube.com
or fitaboot this?
link to youtube.com
I will ever forgive the fella with the best handshake and the best T shirt in the world – but it may take time John!
( actually handshake wise it’s a tie ‘twixt you and Mr Brotherhood)
OT but just did the registration of voters online – could anyone from Glasgow City Council explain why the IT company they used is based in Berkshire and while they are at it inform said company that the ” change button” was non existent?
woops scrub that last link
it was this one I meant to put up.
what am a like? 🙁
link to youtube.com
PostScript to the renaming of the new hospital: they forgot to rename the helipad which apparently still says, in very large lettering, Southern General Hospital.
Ken500 says: 8:56
“…..The Tories have ruined the Oil sector. The Oil companies, Health Clubs (sports), NHS, public service, Police/Fire/social services are all in decline. Public funding have been cut. Interest rates are going up. The bombing continues, migrants ‘are swarming in’ according to the Tories. The rich are getting richer, the vulnerable poorer and children are starving. Westminster and the Royals have been give a 10% increase. Rail funding in the North has been cut and HS2 will make rail journeys throughout Britain even longer. Higher earners will Pay £20 a week to stop children starving, but will fund Trident. The debt is increasing.”
…. but “Bake Off” is back. Yay!
@John
Aye, zackly like that. 😀
I must admit, it’s disheartening to see myself being called a “closet unionist” or “malicious and underhanded”, just for being a Scottish Green.
I’m one of those weird people who’s both left-leaning and liberal, which really only leaves one place to go. If the shove for renewable energy or a citizen’s income were policies for anyone else, we’d hear about them. Equally, I’m comfortable that I don’t support SNP policies such as monetary unions or lowering corporation tax.
None of this should mean that I support the behaviour of Ross Greer. Sadly, he’s one of a lot of Green big hitters (I know, I know) that I loosely term “graduate politicians”. Never had children to feed, never had bailiffs at the door, never had debts mount up to unpayable levels, never really lived life.
Sadly, many of my friends during the general election asked me if any Green candidates were over 25 and had a real job. When you see people like Greer, Beattie-Smith or Ramsey celebrated, well, it’s tough to make yourself electable… To the point where we were beaten by UKIP in some constituencies.
It’s bad.
But for every Greer, there’s a Harvie; for every Beattie-Smith, there’s a Wightman; for every Ramsey, there’s a McColl. Many Green policies are radical, thoughtful and insightful, while also being more practical that a lot of detractors would have you believe. While you might find the behaviour of someone like Ross Greer lamentable, that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly cool to insult every Green as if they’re some sort of leper.
Frankly, a lot of you should know better.
Until the new hospital in Glasgow is renamed with a non royal name, I will continue to call it by its old name – the Southern General. I urge all of you who despise Brenda and all she stands for, to do the same. Glasgow folk will know which hospital you are referring to.
More yesterday’s news.
Carmichael court case hearing today and tomorrow. Nothing in the media not a peep.
Will it be yet another case fail on a technicality?
Lib Dem PC (police constable) non-story but it must be true as there wasn’t a Scottish one to photograph. Surely those are non-Scottish polis in the photo, but hats off to the Lib/Dems.
link to archive.is
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!
I know this doesn’t exactly conflate with the cost of re-naming the Sou Gen, but can anyone tell me if this is another cost the Scottish taxpayer will be lumbered with, while not getting any benefit?
It’s to do with both the amount of money being spent on converting the Olympic Stadium into a multi- purpose venue, about £272m I believe, to which West Ham United who will be occupying the place, have contributed just £15m, and also with the annual running costs which are estimated to be £2.5m.
It appears that the present Westminster Government have decided that, we, the taxpayers, have to pay most of the costs for this football club’s relocation. Another London dividend?
Chris Whyte: Disheartening to see myself being called a “closet unionist” or “malicious and underhanded”, just for being a Scottish Green.
Out as a Brussel sprout.
Just joshing, Chris. I’ve not read the discourse.
The Greens committed a violent act on Embra imposing trams – slower than a taxi to the airport – when an electric bus costs $1 million USD, and needs no road dug up, disrupted for years. And Greens wound their own supporters, green cyclists, when wheels are caught in the tram lines. The trams are a terrible blunder, and a costly one all round.
Nevertheless, Greens are necessary as alarms while we rape the earth, but as for electable politicians, no. Not yet a mature enough party to negotiate with Isis, or North Korea, or the USA’s empire. And certainly no antidote to the ferocity of the British establishment.
I googled Ross Greer and find that his age is “not known” here
link to edit.yournextmp.com
What is wrong with the Greens that they have children at the top of the list for Holyrood 2016?
There were complaints about the SNP selection procedures for WM2015 but this is beyond parody!
@Fairliered 9.34.
Exactly so, and so shall I.
I accept, some of the pro-republican posters on here, such as Fairliered will “despise” HM the Queen. But calling her “Brenda” doesn’t help.
Left to her own devices, I suspect HM would quite happily potter around Sandringham, breeding horses and presiding over the local WI. In reality, she is a somewhat toothless figure-head.
In her 63-years as Head of State, the only piece of controversy I have heard of her being involved in, was to catch Harold Wilson out, when he hadn’t read his brief properly and didn’t know about the plans for Milton Keynes.
The Queen is, I suspect, a cypher, manipulated by the self-serving courtiers and career civil servants of the Establishment – who pray fervently every night for her continued good health, because they are terrified of the winds of change which her Heir may unleash through the Establishment when he ascends the throne.
@ Dorothy Devine The answer tae that ? is Naw N Naw,ah wiz in Majorca & Melting, oony how ah missed yous lot,the Wifi connection was terrible.
But it did give the Wife a much needed break.
As usual I come in at the tail end of posts. Pretty strange stuff this time, but Rock a troll, seriously? Cobblers!
**** Maths Higher Exam question ****
Q. If Scottish Labour have 6000 new members how many members does it have in total?
1. 15,500
2. 155,000
3. “None of your feckin business”
A lot of people do know better. How radical, and thoughtful policies are sweep aside as elected Green/Unionists get their snouts into the public trough. Renege on their own policies against the majority wishes and the public interest.
Do they expect Nicola and Co to break the (UK) Law and go to jail, on Land issues. A tenant farmer sued a Landowner and lost. The ‘human right to property’ (UK/EU Law) was unheld. The tenant farmer shot himself. If Scotland was Independent unproductive land could be taxed. Estates are taxed on business profits (UK Law) 18%.
The Queen is what she always would have been a tax evading wealthy landowner. Glamis estate Strathmores, Royals etc. £45Million a year. Supposed to be impartial anything but, reneging on responsibilities. Involved in illegal wars etc.
I spent the best part of two years in the Suff’rin General and the care I received was of the very best. It will always be the Southern General to me and I think, to everyone else no matter what its official name is now.
@ john king 9.17.
Great clip, John. A wonderful punch-line.
You’ll get your just desserts one day, I’m sure.
Getting my Crombie…
@Rock says:6 August, 2015 at 12:02 am:
” … I am waiting for Robert Peffers and Brian Doonthetoon to answer my question but they have suddenly gone very quiet about our “sovereignty””
And if you were not too far up your own rectum, in order to pay proper attention, you would be aware that I have posted several times that I am rather busy ATM re-designing . That means re-educating myself in the HTML and CSS mark up languages.
My old website that was written and designed some considerable time ago. It was thus designed under HTML 4.0 and both HTML & CSS have moved on and the old site will not run now.
So I must re-learn both HTML5 & CSS in order to redesign and upload my old stories, poems, photos and videos in a more up-to-date manner. You may thus await my more detailed replies to your requests for some considerable time.
Briefly, my views, (and the legal situation regarding sovereignty), remain exactly as they have since around the late 1940s.
Apologies for my earlier post the Carbunckle court case is 7/8 September.
I’m about as sharp as a beach ball today.
Back to Ross Greer. I dig the wrestling masks but can anyone suggest why he has an image of a totalitarian mass murderer on facebook page? Is Chairman Mao cool amongst the Greens?
link to facebook.com
I wonder when GCHQ is going to release my last post – over 45 minutes they’ve held it while the check background, and over two oft repeated ‘enemy’ names.
“There’s no limit to what a man can do, or where he can go, if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
Was suddenly reminded of this, and I think ‘someone’ may have taken it as an invitation 😉
The two headed llama Scotland and England and there’s Dr Doolittle
What a dillamma! 🙁
link to archive.is
@ CameronB Brodie 11:19
I dunno about Chairman Mao, but I found Mr Greer’s sport and activities interesting on that Facebook link. Airsoft?
From Wiki -“Airsoft is a game in which participants eliminate opponents by hitting each other with spherical non-metallic pellets launched via replica firearms called Airsoft guns.”
Now, to me,that doesn’t sit well with the Greens non-violence stance.
“Peace and Nonviolence: Violence at ALL LEVELS OF HUMAN INTERACTION must be rejected and succeeded by relations characterised by flexibility, respect and fairness”
From Wiki, about Scottish Green Party policy. (My emphasis.)
O/T Australia are 46 for 7 in the 4th Ashes Test. Shame.
Where’s the dough coming from?
—————————————————————-
The ex-MP also warned, given the “likely outcome” of another SNP majority at Holyrood next May, it was imperative for her party to avoid a “bun fight” over who should be on Scottish Labour’s regional lists.
————————————————————-
“Put it to the Scottish membership” she says regarding Indy 2.
Will that be the 6,000 or the 15,500 or the new 21,000ish 🙂
link to archive.is
KOF
I’m not wanting to crucify the lad but I think someone needs to have a word with him. Perhaps we’re simply getting old. 😉
@Ken500
RE:SNP and land ownership, you seem to be forgettign that the SNPs track record is pretty dire and they also have verious establishment and landowner links.
Examples:
The current land reform bill could have happened years ago – so why not, if it a priority? Progress has been glacial.
The Land Reform Review Group has 4 key members 2 or which reprented large landowners ans estates with the Chair who is convenor of the Church of Scoland, itslef a major land owner. The majority on the Group seem to represent Landed interests, estates and trusts. How can the SNP be serious about Land REFORM with such a clique? Why no Andy Wightman?
The current bill has yet again been watered down and the Scottish government does have the power for some key changes: In the consultation it proposed to ban land ownership from offshore tax havens (750,000 acres in Scotland). This has now been dropped. Why and who in the SNP allowed it? Where is the transparency? The buck stops with the minister responsible but all Scottish ministers are accountable and obviosly Nicola.
So Ken500, independence would not change any of that one iota.
p.s. sorry for typos — shouldn’t eat lunch and type at the same time 🙁
P.S. I helped develop and then worked at Scotland’s first airsoft site. I could tell you some stories. 🙂
Chris Whyte 9.28
I’m not really up on all that’s going on in the Green Party.I don’t know much about the personalities involved.I think the Greens have brought forward some pretty good stuff.Some of it is flying a kite on a long piece of string,but I consider that to be a necessary part of progress.Lets get all the ideas out there and have a good rummage amongst them.That has to be the role for the Green Party at the moment.Mr Greer hinders this.He is no asset to the Green Party or the green movement.Pity.
O/T
I just had an email from a no voting friend, or dare I say, frenenemy, arghhh! Anyway, as we are off topic sort of, it now seems they think that, “England has found a voice to express opposition to the tories”.
I do wonder whether they think about Scotland’s voice then, and how much more deafening it could have been had they stopped worrying about England ( eternally perplexing to say the least) so much and voted yes.
O/T
Yet another in the long line of UKAY HOORAY series tonight on ITV – ‘The Wonder of Britain’.
And that’s before we get round to the 75th. Anniversary of The Battle Of Britain waiting on the starting blocks.
EphemeralDeception says:
“independence would not change any of that one iota.”
The primary role of the SNP for most of its members and supporters is to achieve independence.
After independence, I would expect new politics and indeed parties to develop. Then, anything and everything is up for change, should Scottish voters decide.
CameronB Brodie
hehe … Whit ye mean gettin’? 😉
I’m a Green member and I despair every time I see Greer anywhere near an official communication or, indeed, his own Twitter feed – a sanctimonious, self-righteous and seemingly not very bright liability who is never going to win the party any friends.
Unfortunately he’s first on the Green list for my regional seat next year and as it stands, it’ll take me a lot of convincing that I want him representing me…and a hell of a lot more to get involved in campaigning for him.
That said though, I saw someone saying they’ll be voting for Solidarity instead of the Greens because of this particular issue..deary me. That’s a strange moral compass, that.
The British Media is the English Media
So in Scotland we get both in one because our “Scottish Media” is in fact English
All news is reported as British when in fact the Scottish content is minimal,they even use the same weather map perspective of our Teensy Weensy Tiny little country
In terms of what English folk think about what goes on in Scotland, they simply don’t think about it until it’s mentioned and then they immediately react by repeating the English Media line because they mostly know no different nor care
Our economy is non existent in the average English mind
As far as they are concerned all the money is earned in England and they are forced to, in UKIP Language, “Shovel it over the border” to us moaning Jocks
Our Government is belittled at every opportunity the SNP are laughed at in order for them not to be taken seriously
Every Unionist Spokesgit MP or MSP or Journalist is believed and revered as experts nomatter the shite they talk and SNP Ministers are something to be tolerated until real people come along
Mundell, Carmichael, and of course the last of the Mohicans, thon Wee Labour shit Murray are all serious Politicians and to be respected whilst any of our lot produce a big Sigh of “Well they would say that wouldn’t they” (The SNP)
Lots of folk are saying we shouldn’t have another Referendum for a long time to make sure we win, and I’m kinda wondering about that, because the rise in population we’re experiencing is not Scottish it’s from immigration from all over and they’re more likely to vote NO next time due to the fact that for the most part the new Scots voted NO the first time from fear of either being kicked out or other reasons that we all know
So would not sooner rather than later because of our youngsters coming of age be better before we are to few in our own country to have a chance of winning
I’m sure some of you folks will have numbers and stats worth referring to that might show something else but this is a feeling I’m getting
Or a bad pie
gus1940
By a ghastly historical coincidence we are condemned to war anniversary coverage for ever.
All years ending in 4-8 are catered for by the 1914-18 war. Then for years ending 9 back round to 5 we have the glorious (?) events of 1939-45 for recycling.
Thats just the decade anniversaries. If we have anniversaries every 5 years, we get a double dose. Never mind Waterloo etc.
It is just endless. FFS cant they give it a rest.
Our European friends must find this obsession a bit weird.
call me Dave
It is understood around 6000 affiliated and registered supporters have signed up in Scotland, boosting the 15,500 membership electorate by nearly 40 per cent.
————————————————————–
link to archive.is
Is 15,500 real members, just another guess?
The number must be wrong because Dim Jim and Dipity Dug Swore on the BBC that they had 20,000 SLAB members before
these supposedly new recruits arrived??????
That really is the trouble with Westminster parties agreeing that lying is the way forward in politics.
Should they ever consider being truthful, who in their right mind would believe them?
Galamcenalath – I am sure that is true in a general case but does not wash for the land reform.
It is a Scottish gov Bill happening now and they have watered it down and they have chose land owners who imo have a conflict of interest to dominate the grou
Some explanation from the Snp is needed otherwise collusion will various landed interests is the only reasonable conclusion.
Glamaig-that is what keeps the rabid Brit Nats happy. War porn.
O/T
Just trying to read ‘London Calling’ at the moment. GA Ponsonby forensically joining the dots to show the breathtaking extent of BBC bias has made me so angry that I can barely read more than a chapter at a time.
I know broadcasting is ‘reserved’, but what is to stop the SNP from having a manifesto promise next year stating that this is no longer acceptable, and that if the SNP were elected they would use any means necessary to give Scotland her own broadcaster.
Following the election they could initially attempt a negotiated agreement with the WM government to hand over broadcasting rights. If this was unsuccessful within a specified time, the Scottish Government could take them over anyway.
What could WM do? Imagine what would happen if they attempted to arrest members of the Scottish Parliament.
O/T
@ gus1940 says at 1:11 pm ”Yet another in the long line of UKAY HOORAY series tonight on ITV – ‘The Wonder of Britain’. And that’s before we get round to the 75th. Anniversary of The Battle Of Britain waiting on the starting blocks.”
Today’s the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshoma and Nagasaki. I notice that the BBC and so on aren’t broadcasting any programmes relating to that. No doubt not wanting to remind us all that we, the Scots, have Trident right on our doorstep.
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
‘Trident made up of four submarines carries up to 40 nuclear warheads on board. EACH of these warheads is EIGHT times more powerful than the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima.’
The Scottish CND will be ‘remembering’ Hiroshima and Nagasaki at events taking place across Scotland this week for example Mairi Black will be speaking tonight at Barshaw Park, Paisley.
link to banthebomb.org
link to banthebomb.org
OT from the Rev.’s twitter.
I find this quite shocking in it’s stupidity and blindness to the inevitable anti-social ramification. It looks like Theo Clifford wants to undo the last hundred years or so of social progress. IMO, he either has a barely rudimentary understanding of what he invites, or he is just an evil ….
I actually specialised at Uni in planning for self-build housing development in the developing world, so I’m not just bumping my gums. Slum settlements develop as poor, predominantly rural migrants move to cities in order to improve their standard of living but are unable to enter the housing market any other way than building houses out of tin cans (e.g. Lahore, Pakistan, used to expand by 10,000/year, coming up towards the end of last century). They do not choose to live in squalor but are forced to through economic impoverishment. Is this the future Mr. Clifford welcomes?
I was actually suggesting the introduction of ‘third world’ solutions into British planning system almost thirty years back and was laft at. However, I certainly wasn’t, and would never promote the deregulation of the housing market. Planning procedures may not be perfect but that is no reason to chuck the baby out with the bath water.
Simple solution – review and reform Greenbelt status, especially around London. This would help free up more land for affordable housing development, where it is currently most needed.
link to adamsmith.org
O/T did anyone hear Bertie Armstrong of the Scottish Fisherman’s Federation on GMS this morning sometime around 7? I found what he was saying objectionable. I dont have access to iPlayer right now, I really want another listen to that to double check what he was saying.
“Head of News & Current Affairs – BBC Scotland”
link to indeed.co.uk
… the job descriptions seems to have some omissions like …
– you will ensure bias against the SG and SNP
– you will take any action required to preserve the Union
– you will take every opportunity to promote Labour (North British branch)
P.S. The problem being the greater the supply of land for housing development the lesser the house price inflation. Que bono?
Another good article by weeginger in The National …. suffering from Kezitis.
link to thenational.scot
Chunky Mark ….. £100Bn on Trident while disabled wear Nappies
link to youtube.com
Heard the Scottish fishermens sob story this morning, just another BBC = SNP bad story. Yesterday it was the police cant remember wot it was the day before, but there was something .. oh yes the exam results!
On renaming the new Southern General Hospital there was a letter in The National suggesting it could be named the Mary Balfour Hospital.
She was one of the “leaders of the Glasgow !st WW rent strikes and the Women’s Peace crusade”.
“contributed to the health of the City when elected one of the first women councillors”.
“Established the frist family planning services in Glasgow..set up the Elderpark Child Welfare Centre, close to the site of the new hospital”.
“Led the campaign for free school milk, municipal warehouses and food quality control”.
Quite a contrast to the queen.
Apologies, that s the Mary Barbour Hospital, not ‘Balfour’.
Yes, these innumerable anniversaries equate to the “endless war” as predicted by Mr Orwell.
Sounded like he was lining up the balls ready to blame the evil SNP and Marine Protected Areas for the next scallop fishermans death.
From the SFF’s own Environmental Policy document
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation supports the
principle, laid down in the UK’s Marine Acts, of the
creation of a network of Marine Protected Areas for the
conservation of biodiversity and geodiversity features.
Cooperation with UK Governments and with the statutory
government conservation advisors – Scottish Natural
Heritage (SNH), the Joint Nature Conservation Committee
(JNCC) and others – on the selection, proposal and approval
of sites is high on our list of priorities.
As I say I need to listen again before I can be sure of what he said.
Marine Protected Areas are there to ensure there is actually an industry in the future. At one time the sea was teeming with herring and look what happened.
Joseph Lister’s pioneering work on antisepsis at Glasgow Royal has saved the lives of countless millions. Why would you look anywhere else for a name for the hospital.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Glamaig says:
Bertie Armstrong is another UKOK Scotland too wee too poor and too stupid fellow traveller
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Trying to explain the Holyrood voting system to near and dear relative who had intended to vote SNPNo1 and Green No2 i emphasised that the system was designed to ensure no party gets an overall majority .
The gobsmacked response was “God we will get trams in Kirkaldy if they do as they did in 2007 to wreck the SNP budget”
They now intend to vote SNP No 1 AND
@ Thepnr
I like the SSP Thepnr but i really dont think its time yet for you guys to go mainstream its much better if you continue to do the sterling work you do in the halls and meeting places of Scotland.
I know you guys are hungry for responsibility and want in on the action its a good sign keep it up and you will get rewarded one day from the electorate.
But not the next one the next one in 2016 is the most important out of the 3 election events,we must give the SNP an overwhelming support and put Nicola in charge with a huge mandate she can slap the onions with,plus it will give us a better idea of where the indy movement stands.
The SSP`s turn will come in 2017 the council elections as we might need all indy parties to go into coalition to stop the onions doing it again,so get working for that SSP the people of Scotland need you to be on your game for that one.
P.P.S. I forgot about the move to create a Northern Powerhouse, by overhauling the north of England’s transport infrastructure. I’m confused. No, actually, I’m being buggered. A popular pastime for the denizens of Warmonster, apparently.
@ Petra.
Was at the Hiroshima rememberance event in Coatbridge today at noon (the Peace Park Drumpellier Loch).
Organised by John Wilson MSP and Frances (NLC Councillor).
Dignified and very moving.
agree with others re SNP constituency AND regional votes.
It is VITAL for independence that SNP get a majority. If they don’t there will be all sort of jiggery pokery to undermine Holyrood and prevent any future referendum.
Good document here to explain with illustrations.
link to scottish.parliament.uk
From the examples you can see if SNP do well in the constituency vote they need a HUGE number of regional votes to get any extra seats.
SNP + SNP
Politics starts AFTER independence.
Another OT from the Rev.’s twitter. I’ve not heard that Big Stick track for donkey’s. Cheers. 😉
@Tinto Chiel says: 6 August, 2015 at 12:20 am:
” … I thought I had already outlined how this could be done: vote for an SNP manifesto with independence as its policy and, with a majority, you have your sovereignty. The individual monarch is essentially irrelevant if the people are sovereign. Forget your purring queen.”
It is actually far more simple than that, Tinto Chiel. As I’ve pointed out several times, every SNP member has an equal say in party policy. This policy must be made after a democratic vote at national conference.
So, if you are a member, just propose another referendum at your local branch meeting. If it is seconded it must be dealt with. If it is unopposed it goes forward. If opposed it must be debated and voted upon.
Same process is conducted at National conference and it either becomes party policy or the motion falls. If the majority of the party wish it, then it will be so, and if a majority of Scots vote for the SNP then they will also be voting for party policy.
Yes,
Both votes for SNP, then depending on the timing etc and regardless of ref result- none of us vote in UK GE 2020.
Mandate that…
Iain Macwhirter on Andy Burnhams Tuition fees hypocrisy – ‘You really couldn’t make this up’.
Yes you could, and they do, how do you think they won the referendum. Duh.
Didn’t hear of any H-BOMB REMEMBRANCE event in Argyll & Bute today…
Not surprising as the pseudo-conservative, aka ‘independant group’led council probably ”forget’ on a daily basis that we have…
SO MANY NUKES IN ARGYLL THAT WE COULD DEEP FRY EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD in the western world at the flick of a switch.
I can’t go a day without a dose of the Rev where is he
I am starting to twitch
how about delaying Ref til 2021, and between now and then boycott European and WM election.
Last SNP mp to leave the ‘house of (formerly known as) commons’, don’t forget to take the mace, fake stone of destiny, oh and your expenses forms.
I know there is some ongoing discussions regarding the constituency vote and regional vote for next years Scottish General Election.
I therefore decided to do some calculations based on the differential Fourier series applied to a binomial flux capacitor curve, and I have to say the results were very surprising.
Here comes the science bit, apparently no SNP candidates are actually guaranteed a win based on the FPTP system, so basically not to vote SNP/SNP would be frankly absolutely mental.
Brian Powell says:
6 August, 2015 at 3:25 pm
On renaming the new Southern General Hospital there was a letter in The National suggesting it could be named the Mary Balfour Hospital.
She was one of the “leaders of the Glasgow !st WW rent strikes and the Women’s Peace crusade”.
“contributed to the health of the City when elected one of the first women councillors”.
“Established the frist family planning services in Glasgow..set up the Elderpark Child Welfare Centre, close to the site of the new hospital”.
“Led the campaign for free school milk, municipal warehouses and food quality control”.
Quite a contrast to the queen.
Now be Fair, Betty is one of the finest shakers and Wavers of a gloved hands the nation has ever known.
Indeed if it were not for her, we would have Dad’s Army on at 3pm on Xmas Day. Annus Horriblis.
Did anyone ever work out how she managed to dodge the Bedroom Tax? She has a 100 spare bedrooms and she does get income support! Can even keep dogs on her limited income, just like on benefits street. lol
Surprised there has been no mention of Mary Seacole as the ideal person after whom to name the Deathstar.
As a Glaswegian, I can only understand if someone is saying the “Southern General”. I know exactly what they mean. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital means nothing to me, especially as there are so many it becomes meaningless (like all these ocean liners…).
So how about some hospital being named after Mary Seacole. And maybe at some stage, if we are feeling in a royal mood, we can name a few after Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Guise, Queen Margaret….
Re… Holywood 2016….. as we so often said in the indyref, it’s not all about the SNP! Solidarity has commitment to an indyref in their manifesto. I dare say the same goes for the SSP. Are any Women for Indy candidates or RIC people standing? Surely, as long as the Holyrood seats are filled by those committed to independence, that is what we want? What matter if they are SNP or SSP???
GOBSMACKED…
On BBC, a ww2 veteran, implying that because Japanese children were sharpening sticks, that proved that Japan would never surrender, and it was morally justifiable to boil them in radioactive tar.
EVIL OLD CODGER.
OT: On now CLASS-A-FIED Edinburgh University’s
link to livestream.com
Telegraph has a map overlay for british cities showing damage by an atom bomb,
London is described as “The English Capital”, Edinburgh as “The UK’s seventh largest city”
They really know how to treat us like shit!
Kenny says
“Are any Women for Indy candidates or RIC people standing? Surely, as long as the Holyrood seats are filled by those committed to independence, that is what we want? What matter if they are SNP or SSP???”
You are probably right in some sort of fully PR system. We don’t have that.
The list vote is processed in regions. This means any party getting below something like 8-10% gets nothing.
Also, if RIC, SSP, Green eat into Unionist parties shares, good. But, will they? It’s more likely to split the pro Indy vote. The risk in giving the list vote to someone other than the SNP is that Unionists, like even UKIP, get seats.
If Indy matters most, vote SNP/SNP.
kids company
need a kids cot enquiry
shug says:
6 August, 2015 at 5:12 pm
“I can’t go a day without a dose of the Rev where is he
I am starting to twitch”
Aye, he’s up to something, Shug. It’s the waiting I can’t stand…..
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk…/the-real-state-of…/
@ Ronnie
The link isn’t working. did you mean this article?
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
Robert Kerr says: 5:59 pm
Telegraph has a map overlay for british cities showing damage by an atom bomb,
Is there a link¿ sounds very little englandy… A map my arse…
…for the record…
TO MEASURE THE EFFECT OF A NUCLEAR WAR
REQUIRES A GLOBAL VIEW, OR AT VERY
LEAST AN ATLAS, SUCH IS THE
KNOCK ON ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER.
Going Green can be bad for your Health
My pal phoned me this afternoon to tell me he had just arrived home from the hospital having had 8 stitches in his forearm and a dislocated shoulder repair
He had decided to not take his car to Aldis for some groceries and instead use the bike
Now he has a box thing that goes on behind the saddle and kinda buckles in place
So off he trundles to the shop parks his bike and goes inside with his two bags for life coz he’s Green like that No plastic for him
Purchases his shopping, loads it into his back of the saddle box thing and sets off for home, which is less than a mile away
200 yards he gets, has his handlebar clipped by a wing mirror from a (wait for it) Green Beetle hits the deck and Robina’s your Aunty ends up in AnE all because he decided to save petrol and be a good guy
Did I laugh? well yes a lot, still am
Shouldn’t though eh
Hard finding footie link for Aberdeen game.
Try this..and pick game …fingers crossed. 🙁 15mins to go.
link to firstrowsportes.eu
Robert Kerr says:
“London is described as The English Capital”
… we wish that is exactly all it was!
Ignorance, arrogance, disinterest, stupidity – the old chestnut of England / Britain / United Kingdom all being interchangeable to the feeble mind.
Here you are. Nuke away. Try any bomb.
Target: Glasgow or anywhere…google map.
Choose bomb type
reset and nuke
may have wind direction.
Google them there are more out there.
link to carloslabs.com
O/T
Please help out a fellow Winger if you can spare a few bob for Boorach. Age 71-he lives alone in a converted van which has just about reached the end of its road & he’s about to start chemotherapy for lung cancer.
Please help him if you can
link to crowdfunder.co.uk
Thanks to those who responded to Linda’s & my posts last night. It was very good of you :-)He didn’t know that his friends had set up this appeal!
Tinto Chiel,
“I thought I had already outlined how this could be done: vote for an SNP manifesto with independence as its policy and, with a majority, you have your sovereignty.”
The point is, are we sovereign NOW or not?
According to Robert Peffers and Brian Doonthetoon, we are and have been for a long time.
I say that is total rubbish and hot air.
If WE are sovereign, we don’t have to go through the SNP or anyone else.
There is no procedure to get rid of the monarch.
Let alone the monarch, 71% of us want Carmichael to resign but are completely powerless to boot him out.
A Scottish judge has already found him innocent in secret.
And what about our sovereignty over the BBC? They cheated us out of independence and we could nothing about it.
In reality we are NOT sovereign.
In reality, we are as much subjects of her majesty as are the English.
Just because a Lord ruled that we were sovereign doesn’t make us sovereign. We have to have a procedure to exercise our sovereignty.
We have been a colony of the English for 308 years.
Sovereign, my foot.
If you want independence, don’t trust the Greens one bit.
Or ex-Greens.
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto. First three are the historical ones 2 + 3 are the Japanese cities.
It shows which country tested and where, speeds up as time elapses. 🙁
link to youtube.com
I’ll be voting SNP/SNP until we achieve our rightful independence and freedom from the madhouse in London. A wee something in the post for Boorach too. Good luck to you son!
Of course there is one right that we can all exercise if we choose
The right to remain silent
@Robert Kerr
London’s status as the capital of England, and later the United Kingdom, has never been granted or confirmed officially—by statute or in written form.
Rock says:
6 August, 2015 at 7:56 pm
The point is, are we sovereign NOW or not?
Of course we are.
The catch, and it is absolutely crucial, is that 55% of the population either don’t yet realise this, or more worryingly they just don’t care.
Thanks…if I may call you Dave..
Grim viewing….
Do a majority of Scots really think that…
SNP = BAD?
NUKES= GOOD?
Didn’t think so..
Robert Peffers,
“And if you were not too far up your own rectum, in order to pay proper attention, you would be aware that I have posted several times that I am rather busy ATM re-designing”
I guess such language is fine by the self appointed guardians of this web site.
“I guess such language is fine by the self appointed guardians of this web site.”
“Rectum” isn’t a swearword. But it seems to me you’ve flung plenty of provocative and personal rudeness out in this thread, so you’ve got no business being a crybaby about getting some back.
The goings-on last night were embarrassing from both sides, you’re all grown adults. I go out for a few hours to play poker and the place turns into a primary-school playground – no wonder I can’t take a proper holiday. Get a grip or I’ll lock comments every time I leave the damn house.
@ Rock 7.56.
To answer your question, we are sovereign now and how we exercise that sovereignty is outlined in the quotation you gave at the start of your post. I won’t repeat my argument, because you just seem to wish to ignore it and go on to make the same irrelevant points over and over again about other posters.
There is an old German metaphysical joke, which goes as follows:
Berlin, night.
A policeman finds a man looking at the road under a streetlight.
“Lost something?” he asks.
“Yes, my keys,” says the man.
The policeman has a good look on the road but can see nothing.
“Are you sure you dropped them here?” he enquires.
“No, says the man,”I dropped them over there,” indicating the darkness beyond.
“Then why are you looking here then?” asks the policeman.
“Because there’s no light over there.”
At the moment, you remind me of the citizen under the street light.
call me dave says:
“Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945”
Actually, 1945 to 1989.
USA 1032
Russia 715
France 210
UK 45
China 45
India 4
Pakistan 2
Additionally Israel probably exploded one in 1979 off South Africa.
Sheesh! I had no idea quite so many have been exploded.
Luigi,
“Rock says:
6 August, 2015 at 7:56 pm
The point is, are we sovereign NOW or not?
Of course we are.
The catch, and it is absolutely crucial, is that 55% of the population either don’t yet realise this, or more worryingly they just don’t care.”
What can the 45% who think they are “sovereign” do about it?
As a “sovereign” Scot, how do I start the process to get rid of the queen and replace her with an elected president of the Scots?
As a “sovereign” Scot why should I have to rely on a political party to exercise my “sovereignty”?
Am I “sovereign” or is a political party or the rotten to the core justice system sovereign?
308 years and still a colony of England.
Sovereign, my foot.
I think I’m going to get all shivery every time I see a comment by Tinto Chiel.
Tinto Chiel,
“@ Rock 7.56.
To answer your question, we are sovereign now”
“Sovereign” Scots, still a colony of England after 308 years.
Long after the poorest colonies became “sovereign” and “independent”.
We can’t even get rid of an MP who got elected by lying even if 71% of us want him to resign.
We are the laughing stock of the world.
Keep on dreaming that you are “sovereign” if it makes you feel good, or prove your “sovereignty”.
I have no wish to pretend I am “sovereign”.
The Tory Viceroy of Scotland, re-elected with the help of the Greens, decides what rights I will have.
@galamcennalath says:
call me dave says:
“Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945?
Actually, 1945 to 1989.
USA 1032
Russia 715
France 210
UK 45
China 45
India 4
Pakistan 2
Additionally Israel probably exploded one in 1979 off South Africa.
Sheesh! I had no idea quite so many have been exploded.
Still nobody has linked the steady increase in cancer to the increasing radioactive fallout, strange that.
@ galamcennalath says: If Indy matters most, vote SNP/SNP.
I do agree with that. I would say that what matters most for me is, just ahead of Indy, what is best for Scotland (meaning the people of Scotland).
At the moment, I feel that indy is best for Scotland. I honestly believe that Scotland is being treated as nothing more than a colony and I would never believe a single word uttered by a unionist politician.
However, I have seen time and time again that it does not pay to be expedient or pragmatic and you should always vote according to your principles. Pragmatism only gives short-term gains.
For example, what I mean about what is best for Scotland. I am involved in the cases of many refugees, especially Syrians, Kurds, Afghans. It pains me to say it, but when I write to SNP MPs or MSPs about certain cases, plights, etc., they never ever even answer my letters. The same goes for Patrick Harvie of the Greens when I wrote to him in his capacity as legal spokesmen for the SGs.
Now, I would even vote for a unionist if a unionist were to help me in such a case. It is not enough to just vote SNP, just as it is not enough to simply gain independence (and let the multinationals and TTIPers move in and plunder us no less than WM).
I would even vote NO if I felt that would be best for Scotland. Of course, I know it is not and would never be. But my number one priority is Scotland and its people.
There is a simple way to get indy — and be guaranteed at least 60% in the next referendum. It is obvious that if Scotland had voted Yes, especially by a low margin on 18 September 2014, we would have been offered the moon the next week by WM to stay.
I honestly believe WM would have basically offered a million pounds to just about every one in Scotland to have us stay. If you don’t believe me, take time to investigate what Scotland withdrawing from the UK would have done to the country’s current account, currency, place on the UN security council. 5 million x 1 million would have been cheap at the price.
So we need a whistleblower to tell us just what he contingency plan was in the civil service or government for a YES vote. Find out this information, publish it and you are guaranteed a YES vote in the next indyref.
Some REALLY informative posts on here tonight. Thanks for that (them). …….
A ‘MUST read’ …..
@ Capella / Ronnie at 7:21 says:
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
‘MUST watch’ …..
@ call me dave says at 7:41pm ‘’Here you are. Nuke away. Try any bomb. Target: Glasgow or anywhere…google map.’’
link to carloslabs.com
”A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto.’’
link to youtube.com
The ‘MONSTERS’ are built in Barrow in Furness by BAE England providing at least 5,000 jobs. Housed in Scotlandshire providing 500 jobs (and not all employees are Scots).
”The Astute-class are the largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy, combining world-leading sensors, design and weaponry in a versatile, potent vessel. There are seven Astute-class submarines in various stages of build and development, with the lead ship HMS Astute commissioned into the fleet ….. Each Astute submarine is 97m long – greater than the length of 10 London buses. Armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, they are able to strike at targets up to 1,000km from the coast with pinpoint accuracy — equivalent to driving from London to Paris and back twice.”
link to youtube.com
Largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy, combining world-leading sensors, design and weaponry in a versatile, potent vessel. Aye right!
link to youtube.com
@ Kenny says at 5:50pm ‘’As a Glaswegian, I can only understand if someone is saying the “Southern General”. I know exactly what they mean. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital means nothing to me, especially as there are so many it becomes meaningless (like all these ocean liners…).’’
On a lighter note ….. Stanley Baxster – Launch of the Queen Mary
link to youtube.com
link to crowdfunder.co.uk
Fund now £1700. If you havent donated Please give this crowdfunder consideration,make Boorach,s life easier Thanks.
Evening, Rock.
I rather think your reply makes the point I was tying to make in my previous post @ 8.59. Repeating ineffectual arguments doesn’t make them less so, Rock.
@louis.b.argyll
Been watching a poor Aberdeen performance. 🙁 Beat.
Aye the radiation genie is out the bottle now right enough. It must have an effect on the population. It was up to 1989 but I was in too much of a hurry to see the footie.
I see Tinto Chiel is caught between a Rock and a hard place again have we not had enough of the Unionist and BBC spurs in our gluteous maximimus since the budget without all the in fighting.
Lets not repeat what happened at Swarkestone Bridge we are within a few months, if things go right, of defeating the labour party in the councils. Then all Scotland can reflect and consider where we go.
55% needs to be 65% or better so we must all stick together and convince the doubters towards independence.
Time for a new thread!
@ Rock.
Trying, not tying.
Apologies.
And, since we’re old friends, please call me Tints.
@ Tinto Chiel want tae borrow ma torch ha ha,& your wasting your time with the Rock,he,s out to direct this thread again.
@ Bill McLean well done Bill i hope more Wingers do as you have done & help out a Fellow Winger. A little,as suits your means, would mean a lot to the Boorach Project folks.
Kenny,
.. you say WM would have paid every one of us, to stay…probably true.
But like the Act of Union itself, in reality only a few hundred need to be paid of.
And these days, instead of landowners, those types are media people and lobbyists.
Between the two, any lie can be sold. And is.
Big Rons: have you any spare AAs? I’ve only got AAAs.
call me dave: I’ve tried to be reasonable. You’re speaking to the wrong guy.
Pax vobiscum.
ronnie andersson need any special attention?
Just spotted something that’s going to add a wee bit more to the cost of the renaming that’ll come out the public purse if not the NHS. Road signs.
There’s a never ending stream of folk on Facebook pushing for IndyRef 2 next week.
If you dont want one till the time is right , folks need to get Posting on Facebook.
This thread has been going so long that the frequency of Rock’s appearances is (naturally enough) starting to synchronise with tidal movements.
Just sayin’…
@ Paula Rose Naw am fine,jist getting into gear after Hols,was in Maryhill Foodbank,& looking towards our next outing wherever that may be.
@Tinto Chiel
Ditto! 🙂
Mathew 13.5. & 13.6
Clydebuilt at 10.43
And they are right.
When do you think is the right time? After they have demonised Nicola and the economy has settled down and the poor and the vulnerable have stopped complaining about the cuts.
As Ted Heath and Harold Wilson and Gordon Brown found out there is no right time.
Now is the right time to start Indyref2 campaign. How do I know? Because the unionists are in frantic terror about the prospect of one.
@ call me dave:
11 He replied, The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.
You are awful, but I like you. Commiserations to a Dandy Don from a Steelman.
It’s been a long thread, Wingers.
Sleep well.
Rev,
You’d be well within reason to reign in some of the ‘defending by attacking’ attitudes.
P’s been weird having a frayed thread.
Last night on here was like a Hogmananay party at ma ‘ol mum and dads hoose except I stayed oot the barney.
Mbe Stu will throw us a bone noo.
Munguin’s Wednesday posts are worth a glance (while we’re waiting for the poker game to end).
link to munguinsrepublic.blogspot.co.uk
A reply to @louis.b.argyll at 5.11 pm (Sorry, it’s long!)
“Didn’t hear of any H-BOMB REMEMBRANCE event in Argyll & Bute today…
Not surprising as the pseudo-conservative, aka ‘independant group’led council probably ”forget’ on a daily basis that we have…”
I live pretty damn close to the ‘epicenter’ of Argyll & Bute’s council headquarters. And unless you’re someone or some company that’s doing fine thank you due to A & B Council’s munificence, almost everyone I talk to, No voters as well as Yes voters, agree that the whole monolith is due a huge re-think and many of its councillors – though not all – are useless, lazy and incompetent.
Rumours of corruption and ‘back-scratching’ refuse to go away. Some councillors have been there for years and years, quite happy to, somehow, keep getting re-elected while keeping their duties to a minimum; some seem to be happy to pick up their councillor’s salary while doing bugger-all to merit it; the Masons has a strong grip on affairs locally and some councillors seem to spend more time dealing with their Masonic Lodge duties than their actual council duties.
The council refused to fly the Scottish flag, the Saltire, during the Scottish independence campaign, on the flagpole sited in Lochgilphead, where the A & B Council’s main offices are. I, personally, wrote a number of requests to A & B Council during the referendum campaign asking why the Saltire was not being flown and was the decision a political one and received ‘blah-blah, council policy, blah-blah’ replies. Replies that basically said, ‘Nya-nya! We’re not telling you anything – so there!’ Others that I know received similar fobbed-off replies at that time.
It wasn’t until a month or so ago that the Saltire was grudgingly flown by A & B Council once more on the Lochgilphead flagpole (I believe there was a similar situation and result in Oban, though I’m not certain about that), and only after a facebook campaign (I don’t use facebook myself) was set up to expose the doings of the A & B Council and their refusal to fly the flag of Scotland – in Scotland, and countless requests were sent to them for some answers.
After the Saltire reappeared it was admitted, though not in any forms of honesty, by A & B Council that the refusal to fly it *was* a political decision as the Provist, whose name escapes me at the moment, had made the decision pre-referendum not to let the flag be flown during the independence campaign!
It had been said by people during and after the campaign that it was a political decision by the council, though at that time it couldn’t be proved as they wouldn’t admit to anything, fobbing people off with their blah-blah responses. And then, there they were admitting, though not in so many words, that it *had been so* all along – outed! Despicable behaviour.
Oh yes, and the Saltire only went up at last *after* Armed Forces Day, which entitles the Union Jack to be flown for five days before or after the day itself. And, of course, A & B Council had the Union Jack, plus sundry other unionist flags, flying high and proud – for a week!
And them doing any H-bomb rememberance events today, or any day…? Ha! Aye, right. They are as pro-union as can be: you’ll just not get them to admit it.
A & B Council is a decrepit, inefficient, inept and possibly-corrupt monolith in need of very radical change. It has lumbered along for far too long, ripping-off the people of Argyll & Bute who get nothing in return.
It covers far too big an area. It should be divided into smaller, local councils, possible examples being Ardnamurchan and district; Oban & Lorne; Mid-Argyll; Kintyre; Bute; Cowal and district; Helensburgh and district; Inverary, Dalmally and district; Arrochar & Lochgoilhead; Faslane and district(!); Mull and district; Islay, Jura and district, (others?)… That’s at least 12 possible councils right there which are now under the auspices of one bloated Argyll & Bute Council wasting money left, right and centre!
Disband it. Bring local government back to local people and their communities. And the sooner the better.
Looking good so far for the #4wardsSNP council by-elections. Forwards SNP 🙂
Would be great to see them take Glasgow council at the next council elections.
Wonder if it would have helped much in the indyref if the SNP/Greens controlled more Scottish councils?
Hi Rock.
You typed,
“If WE are sovereign, we don’t have to go through the SNP or anyone else.”
That’s a fine example of an opinion. However, it could be helpful to the rest of us if, perchance, you could suggest how we, the sovereign people of Scotland, achieve whatever it is you want to achieve, bearing in mind that only 45% voted for independence and that the percentage of support for independence has only crept up a point or two since September 2014.
So, with reference to your quote above,
1. What do YOU want to achieve?
2. How do you suggest the answer to ‘1’ is achieved, without going “through the SNP or anyone else”?
3. If the answer to ‘1’ is independence, do you believe the wishes of the 45% should overrule the wishes of the 55%, remembering that 100% of the people of Scotland are “sovereign Scots”?
4. How would you legally and peacefully dismiss the wishes of the 55% who voted last year, to achieve your answer to ‘1’?
Sorry, O/T
Have you read that fucking disgrace of an article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian pleading for everyone to lay-off his old pal Ted Heath for alleged paedophilia – and, basically, everyone else who is being, or going to be – hopefully – investigated for the most heinous crimes imaginable?
Think of the accused! Forget about the victims!
Just unconscionable. And beyond all words of condemnation.
The British Establishment’s bought-and-sold ‘journalists’ sticking up for the evil criminals of the British Establishment.
And brought to you by the “left-leaning” Guardian…
link to archive.is
Michty mee what a couple o nichts.
sorry Calll Me Dave , my technical abilities struggle with the AFC links you post.
Ach well mibby I didnae miss much , thanks for the commiserations Tinto Chiel .
I saw SM on Sunday , sounds like you have persuaded him to stay for another season.Im sure he will be good.
Here’s hopping we ,all have a good season.
Good luck with our resident Green basher, you do a good job.
With all this capers via Calais , why is the Rosyth to Zeb ferry not being used ?
Or is it being used but everyone keeping quiet about it , so as not to attract attention ?
Read a good quote tonight from TOBIAS SMOLLETT.
“Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.”
Wizny me rev
Jist sayin
We need a #Nicola’s fault
@ BrianDTT Thinking of running up tomorrow Julie has somthing on in Pollockshaws on Sat & has very little badges.
Phone Pete, Ronnie. He’s in Ninewells till lunchtime so out of contact.
SNP win all 5 local by-elections. 4 in Glasgow and 1 in Hamilton. Labour topped the poll on 1st preferences in 2012. So 4 technical gains if we went by FPTP.
@ BrianDTT ok will do Thanks.
Dal Rata, you say, and it was long,… due to A & B Council’s munificence, almost everyone I talk to, No voters as well as Yes voters, agree that the whole monolith is due a huge re-think and many of its councillors – though not all – are useless…
Spot-on… and over West we have nearly all pro-indy members. The fact that they are not now all SNP is because of that party’s membership commitment not to work in groups with tories. Fair enough, but it caused a ‘largest party’ to crumble..Anyway…
The existing areas/committees would be sufficient, along with community councils, 3rd sector providers and new community ownership groups, to administer the community interest, much like an island council.
Without a major re-organisation more power and the confidence to use it, should be given to councillors to challenge the way the business is run, and tell the accountants and auditors that this is what the people want.
The present set up is only ‘risk free’ because everything is tied to market value, and therefore ‘covered’ by expensive financial product.
There are no real equivalent values given to geographical differences and enhanced community engagement.
@ BrianDTT Thanks Brian
Thanks, Marcia, for the good news.
Congrats to Big John Ross in the Hamilton council by-election and to all successful candidates in Glasgow.
May The Force be with you.
Marcia at 12:27
The full Glasgow results are on the council website at link to glasgow.gov.uk
Two straight wins and the other two got there after several countbacks of the preference votes. Worth noting that Eva Bolander got 48% on the first count to Labour’s 28.6% and this is Gordon Matheson’s ward where he topped the poll at the last full council elections.
A good night …
Percentage of the vote in tonight’s Glasgow elections.
SNP – 52%
Lab – 28%
Green – 8%
Con – 7%
Lib/Dem – 2%
UKIP – 2%
Others – 2%
Do you think next time I go to the Carnival I should show my SNP card
I might win all the coconuts or even thon hoopy ring things
Clean sweep! That’s cheered me up. 4-holds & 1 gain 🙂
PS:
Betty goes on the buses. Costs plenty.
link to archive.is
On the subject of perpetual war:
link to medialens.org
More on our blessed perpetual war:
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
link to archive.is
For more background, here is the man that many think was the inspiration for current Anglo/American foreign policy regarding the middle east.
link to foreignaffairs.com
callmedave@9:04
I see no deception in anyone signing up to vote in the Labour leadership elections. The only qualification appears to be that, “… they are required to confirm support for the aims and values of the Labour Party.” Now if, by that, they mean the aims and values as expressed in the original party constitution I’d agree to them in a heartbeat. It’s not my fault that most Labour politicians are the ones who no longer support their own party’s aims.
More on our blessed perpetual war. God save Big Brother…er, Her Majesty.
link to journal-neo.org
btw, Bernard Lewis sought to use the re-emergence of an Ottoman-style expansionist Turkey, as a battering ram to use against Russia’s southern flank. He also hoped for a rise in Islamic fundamentalism to undermine Turkey’s modern industrialisation and the emergence of a modern, secular democracy. Such a powerful regional player would pose an obstacle to the Anglo/American objective of Balkanising the missle-east.
link to journal-neo.org
O/T
I noticed this a couple of days ago and it still makes doubt what I am seeing.
I was watching Scottish News and Weather on BBC Breakfast and during the weather forecast I noticed that not all the boxes showing the temperature are the same size. There is an odd man out.
Bear in mind the BBC in Scotland map utilises perspective so. The further north it goes the more shrunk the effect.
The effect is more noticeable when it comes to Shetland.
It looks nothing like Shetland just some spots.
But take a closer look at the box showing the temperature for Shetland. It’s larger than the other boxes.
I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation
‘More SNP/Green Councils’
The Greens go with the status quo – the (Labour)Unionists. They are colluders. They are sleekit and untrustworthy and renege on their own policies to get their snouts at the trough. They are a disgrace. They waste £Billions of public money, against the majority wishes and against the public interest.
OT again, sorry. Remember how Donald Trump was being likened to a mobster?
link to rt.com
Ken500
This isn’t an SNP only sight Ken. Give it a break please.
Site even.
@CameronB Brodie
Couldn’t agree more. The independence movement is much bigger than any one party and this site is tied to no party. Any and all are welcome as far as I’m aware and I’ll judge no person who votes their conscience. I may disagree with their choice on occasion, but if independence isn’t about free choice and free will, then its worthless.
We’re a broad inclusive church and that’s the way it should be. 🙂
Labour seem to have got about half of the unionist vote in Glasgow last night.Thats consistent with current polling.
Macart
I was going to say something like that but couldn’t. 😉
@Ken500
I can’t understand your comments at 7.07 about the Greens being “colluders”. I agree with their stand against the Trump destruction of a SSSI at Menie in order to further his property development profits.
See the Trump connections to organised crime – CameronB Brodies link to an RT article above – and the attack on Martin Ford, Chair of the Infrastructure Committee at the time who wàs subsequently ousted and then joined the Greens, who is “colluding” and with what?
I recall you were very much in favour of Trump.
“We’re a broad inclusive church and that’s the way it should be. :)”
And yet again Sam says it the way it really is,
yer makin the reast o us lazy Sam. 🙂
A great result in the by elections- if the electorate keep voting for a party that is defined by its desire for Scotland’s independence then independence is inevitable. The YES movement is evolving and adapting.
I was just wondering – is the Rev currently playing in: The oldest-established, permanent floating, poker game in Bath?
This thread is now the day before the day before yesterday’s news. Fold the deck and give us something new to get our teeth into please Rev.
Mornin’ John
I’d just stopped by for my daily King’s summary. 😀
“This thread is now the day before the day before yesterday’s news. Fold the deck and give us something new to get our teeth into please Rev.”
While we’re awaiting something new to get our teeth into would anybody care to give me their opinion on this
any opinion would be welcome good, bad or indifferent, but don’t be too harsh I’m a sensitive soul 🙂
link to videobin.org
Graeme
Martin Ford /LibDem? stopped the AWPR for 10 years. Even masqueraded as a LibDem to get political power. The Labour/Unionists voted against it for 30 years, even though folk could not get to work. Gave a rat road over th developers (Grandholm) which caused traffic chaos. £Billions have been wasted in Inquiries etc. The Trump Development was supported by the majority and still is supported. Trump has been contained under Scottish Planning Laws just like any other developers. The Green were in the Local landowners pocket Lord Fortescue Irvine (funded) to stop the land coming back into public use, because the road passed by the Estate. Martin Ford as ‘LibDem’ chairman of the infrastructure committee stopped the expansion of the airport, AWPR, campaigned against the Wood UTG Project, all of which had majority support. One of the local Green campaigner wanted a Cafe in the alternative scheme, not because of Green issues but because if their eye on the main chance. The local economy has lost £Billions because of lost revenues and public money that has been wasted. People are protesting in the street and the Council is under investigation.
The by-pass is now being constructed because of the SNP. The economy has lost £Billions and public money has been wasted, in Inqiry after inquiry because of the Greens. Martin Ford forced an Inquiry because of his ego (his expulsion from the LibDems) which cost £2Million and then complained when £2Million had to be cut from the Education budget.
One Green vote with the ‘status quo’ has stopped the UTG Project the majority wanted (wasting £Million) £33Million is being spent vandalising the Art Gallery. The city centre has not been pedestrianised but a carbuncle is being build that will be leased back over 30 years and will cost £Millions (Billions?) adding to the traffic chaos.
Education and essential services are not being adequately financed.
If anyone protested about the Greens behaviour, they made up a heap of lies and put the Police to their door. Tried to get them handcuffed, photo-ed and mouth swapped and put in cells. Leading to solicitor bills etc. They believe in a Police State.
The Greens are truly despicable.
The Greens put the Police to people’s door aided by their LibDem cronies who control the local Police committees.
Aw Graeme, ye micht hae warned me. Noo ye’ve made me greet.
Never fear, we’re still fechtin the guid fecht, and ye ken whit, we’ll win in the end.
Heid up, dries the auld een, and onwards.
@Ken500
The Greens are truly despicable.
Try some carrots.
How is Andy Wightman going to manage the ‘right to property’ clause enshrined in the Human rights Act in Scottish/UK/EU law? In a non Independent Scotland.
Phronesis
Needless to say no mention of the by election results on BBC Breakfast News (PQ) or on GMS.
The Greens are cheaper, they can be easily bought by landowners. A bunch of neeps.
Greens have polled lower than UKIP
SNP have won (Grange) Glasgow from the Greens.
The BBC will claim that they have satisfied their duty to report as there is a paragraph about the council elections on the scrolling ‘Scotland Live’ part of the website.
The fact that most people will not bother their arse to scroll through a whole day of comments to find this paragraph doesnt seem to have occurred to them.
gus1940
“Needless to say no mention of the by election results on BBC Breakfast News (PQ) or on GMS.”
Now if there had been any good news for Labour North Britain ..?
🙂
Progress continues.
What no mention in the Hootsman. Maybe later then eh!
link to archive.is
link to archive.is
Bored with this topic?
Want to be a more interesting person?
Looking for something to exercise the brains cells?
This will make your blood boil:
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
This will tell you something of Scots history:
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
This will give you facts to fling in their face:
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
@ Gus 1940 We will get the election results from Bbc/Stv as & when,by witch time it will be historic,no one will be any the wiser as to when these elections took place.
@ Dr Jim
“Wizny me rev
Jist sayin”
Ya big sook 🙂
Next essay this weekend:
‘A Yank in the Bank’ – a look at Scotland’s compunction to stick an American in every movie it makes. Meanwhile…
For nosey folk keen to get the skinny on Tinsel Town:
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
“Aw Graeme, ye micht hae warned me. Noo ye’ve made me greet.”
Weel if it made ye greet it’s canna be too bad
Tears of joy next time round 🙂
Graeme
Got to say I am alarmed at the idea of people getting their mouths swapped by the police. Imagine who you might get swapped with.
Apologies Ken 500, surely a typo
@ Socrates MacSporran, the rumour is that the Rev’s card game is at a crucial stage…
…he only needs Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife for a full house.
Lol David
Seems you can play poker and do the twitter thing. We’ve been abandoned to twitting and poker, oh and a bit of footie. Rev, I’ve been through the shakes and getting ratty now. Please we need you back here. Pretty please.
Still at least with the twitting going on we know he’s not been done in by ‘them’.
The Rev has already posted the next article 🙂
Hi Graeme.
That’s a decent video! Good choice of music and your selection of pics tells the story as it unfolded.
Award yourself something!
8=)
Hi Mealer.
I notr the the SNP’s share, 52%, is in line with recent polling.
Obviously, a fair proportion of that share is disillusioned former Labour voters. We, the SNP AND indy supporters, have to be careful that we don’t make them return to the red fold for any reason.
Analysis of the results here:-
link to scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk