The Devil And The Pastel Pink Sea
Well, imagine our surprise.
There was very little realistic prospect of any other outcome, particularly in light of the same judge – Lady Haldane – ruling last month that the definition of “woman” was not limited to biological reality.
In doing so she placed it beyond any credible dispute that the Scottish Government’s proposed Gender Recognition Reform Act did indeed impinge on equality law reserved to the UK government, because the rules on who constituted a legal man or woman would have been different in Scotland and England.
But what now for poor beleaguered Humza Yousaf?
Because both of his choices from this point are horrible options.
(1) Admit defeat at this point and consign the GRR to the history books. There’s no way of amending it that doesn’t destroy its core purpose – letting people self-ID as the opposite sex. No amount of tacked-on safeguarding, of the sort that the Scottish Government has already rubbished and dismissed, will change that key fact.
Any version of the bill that was compliant with the Equality Act would be worthless to the fundamentalist transactivist campaigners in whose service the GRR was created, while a clear and substantial majority of the Scottish public opposes the bill and/or backs the UK government in the legal argument.
(The arithmetic is complicated because some people oppose the GRR but also oppose Westminster overruling Holyrood on principle, and some support the bill but accept the UK government’s right of veto. But excluding don’t knows the GRR itself was opposed by a 30-point margin of 65-35, while the UK government’s blocking of it was supported by a 20-point margin, at 60-40.)
If Yousaf takes this one on the chin and calls it a day, the Greens will ostensibly walk away from the Bute House Agreement. Now, to all sane people, including a number of his own MPs and MSPs, that would be a win-win. But Yousaf has hitched his wagon to the BHA, for whatever unfathomable reason, and it seems unlikely he’d cave now.
(Whether the Greens WOULD actually quit when push came to shove, giving up their ministerial salaries and status, is another question. We’re not so sure, because they clearly love the little taste of power they’ve been given and the ruling gives them a chance to say “Look, he did his best so we forgive him, it’s Westminster’s fault”. But they’re also deranged extremist ideologues, so who knows? In any event we really don’t expect the question will arise.)
(2) Plough on with this hopeless case, pouring more taxpayers’ money down the drain at a time when the Scottish Government’s budget is already full of gaping holes and committing himself to several more months or even years of almost-guaranteed court defeats, thereby strengthening the already widespread impression among voters that he’s a lame-duck leader who can’t buy a win.
Perhaps more to the point, continuing the fight for the GRR will keep a massively unpopular issue in the news and expose more and more people to the toxic madness of gender ideology. The key to the trans movement’s success thus far has been to operate below the radar, sneaking changes to the law through quietly under cover of something else that’s much more popular, whether it’s prison reform in Scotland, or the abortion bill in Ireland.
As with vampires, sunlight is the gender ideology movement’s deadliest enemy – the more that the general public hears about the subject, the angrier it tends to get, and not just in the cases of people like rapist “Isla Bryson” or paedophile “Amy George”.
So if Yousaf struggles on, not only will he damage himself, his party and the Scottish Government on multiple fronts, but ironically he’ll likely also cause considerable harm to the cause of trans people.
He may perhaps think the first part is priced in already, particularly as Scottish Labour are also enthusiastic backers of the GRR and so have very limited scope for making political gains out of its failure:
But even if we make the heroic assumption that he really believes human beings can magically change sex and is doing all this selflessly for the benefit of poor marginalised vulnerable trans people, it might be reasonable to suggest that an intelligent person would at this point realise he was doing them more harm than good.
Is it really so onerous a task for people wishing to change their legal sex to have to fill in a couple of forms and get a letter from a doctor, which is all the current process actually amounts to? Much of the medical community is already captured by gender ideology, nobody’s going to have a very great deal of trouble finding an unscrupulous or gullible GP to say they have gender dysphoria.
There’s no law against any bloke cutting about in a frock right now if he feels like it, and increasingly men are already allowed freely into women’s toilets, changing rooms and whatever by woke corporations without needing any sort of certificates.
Transactivists keep telling us that having a GRC isn’t a big deal and doesn’t give you any new rights, so it surely can’t be that much of an issue to have to wait a wee while for one if you can happily stroll around “living as a woman” without it.
The First Minister’s party has shed 50,000 members in just four years since adopting “Queer Theory” policies, and 20 points in the opinion polls, and is haemorrhaging both activists and money to the point where it’s having to rob its own branches to stay afloat.
Is this, in short, really the hill Humza Yousaf and the SNP want to die on?
The entire catastrophic saga of transgender ideology is a mess solely of the Scottish Government’s – and more specifically Nicola Sturgeon’s – own making. It has already shattered the once-remarkable unity of the independence movement and left a heap of smouldering ruins behind everywhere it goes.
Yousaf haplessly botched one gilt-edged chance to hoik it into the bin when it brought Sturgeon down. Whether he has either the brains or the strength to clutch at this new opportunity remains to be seen, but he’s blundered so deep into the quicksand at this stage that we’re not sure either choice offers him a hope of escape.
Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end for Yousaf and also the SNP.
Thank goodness that this GRR bill is dead. It’s well-understood and medically known as gender dysphoria.
Can the grown-ups please take back control and stop pandering to the mentally ill?
Let’s hope it’s a 3rd option & he resigns.
link to news.sky.com
Never thought I’d see the day I’d be thankful that a UK Tory Govt. overruled a Scottish SNP Govt.
Says more about them than me.
Indy for Scotland!
SNP OUT!
To all those listed below, you just took a helluva beating.
Adam, George (Paisley) (SNP)
Adam, Karen (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP)
Adamson, Clare (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
Allan, Alasdair (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Arthur, Tom (Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
Baillie, Jackie (Dumbarton) (Lab)
Beattie, Colin (Midlothian North and Musselburgh) (SNP)
Bibby, Neil (West Scotland) (Lab)
Boyack, Sarah (Lothian) (Lab)
Brown, Keith (Clackmannanshire and Dunblane) (SNP)
Brown, Siobhian (Ayr) (SNP)
Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green)
Carlaw, Jackson (Eastwood) (Con)
Chapman, Maggie (North East Scotland) (Green)
Choudhury, Foysol (Lothian) (Lab)
Clark, Katy (West Scotland) (Lab)
Coffey, Willie (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP)
Cole-Hamilton, Alex (Edinburgh Western) (LD)
Constance, Angela (Almond Valley) (SNP)
Dey, Graeme (Angus South) (SNP)
Don, Natalie (Renfrewshire North and West) (SNP)
Doris, Bob (Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn) (SNP)
Dornan, James (Glasgow Cathcart) (SNP)
Dunbar, Jackie (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP)
Duncan-Glancy, Pam (Glasgow) (Lab)
FitzPatrick, Joe (Dundee City West) (SNP)
Gilruth, Jenny (Mid Fife and Glenrothes) (SNP)
Gougeon, Mairi (Angus North and Mearns) (SNP)
Grahame, Christine (Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale) (SNP)
Grant, Rhoda (Highlands and Islands) (Lab)
Gray, Neil (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Greene, Jamie (West Scotland) (Con)
Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green)
Griffin, Mark (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Gulhane, Sandesh (Glasgow) (Con)
Harper, Emma (South Scotland) (SNP)
Harvie, Patrick (Glasgow) (Green)
Haughey, Clare (Rutherglen) (SNP)
Hepburn, Jamie (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth) (SNP)
Hyslop, Fiona (Linlithgow) (SNP)
Johnson, Daniel (Edinburgh Southern) (Lab)
Kidd, Bill (Glasgow Anniesland) (SNP)
Lennon, Monica (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Leonard, Richard (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Lochhead, Richard (Moray) (SNP)
MacDonald, Gordon (Edinburgh Pentlands) (SNP)
MacGregor, Fulton (Coatbridge and Chryston) (SNP)
Mackay, Gillian (Central Scotland) (Green)
Mackay, Rona (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) (SNP)
Macpherson, Ben (Edinburgh Northern and Leith) (SNP)
Martin, Gillian (Aberdeenshire East) (SNP)
Matheson, Michael (Falkirk West) (SNP)
McAllan, Màiri (Clydesdale) (SNP)
McArthur, Liam (Orkney Islands) (LD)
McKee, Ivan (Glasgow Provan) (SNP)
McKelvie, Christina (Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse) (SNP)
McLennan, Paul (East Lothian) (SNP)
McMillan, Stuart (Greenock and Inverclyde) (SNP)
McNair, Marie (Clydebank and Milngavie) (SNP)
Minto, Jenni (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Nicoll, Audrey (Aberdeen South and North Kincardine) (SNP)
O’Kane, Paul (West Scotland) (Lab)
Rennie, Willie (North East Fife) (LD)
Robertson, Angus (Edinburgh Central) (SNP)
Robison, Shona (Dundee City East) (SNP)
Roddick, Emma (Highlands and Islands) (SNP)
Rowley, Alex (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab)
Ruskell, Mark (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Green)
Sarwar, Anas (Glasgow) (Lab)
Slater, Lorna (Lothian) (Green)
Smyth, Colin (South Scotland) (Lab)
Somerville, Shirley-Anne (Dunfermline) (SNP)
Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP)
Stewart, Kaukab (Glasgow Kelvin) (SNP)
Stewart, Kevin (Aberdeen Central) (SNP)
Sturgeon, Nicola (Glasgow Southside) (SNP)
Sweeney, Paul (Glasgow) (Lab)
Swinney, John (Perthshire North) (SNP)
Todd, Maree (Caithness, Sutherland and Ross) (SNP)
Torrance, David (Kirkcaldy) (SNP)
Tweed, Evelyn (Stirling) (SNP)
Villalba, Mercedes (North East Scotland) (Lab)
Whitfield, Martin (South Scotland) (Lab)
Whitham, Elena (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) (SNP)
Wishart, Beatrice (Shetland Islands) (LD)
Yousaf, Humza (Glasgow Pollok) (SNP)
The Green’s Position :
Ms Chapman (Green MSP) said “This is a devastating day for equality. It is a democratic outrage, crushing basic rights and equality for some of Scotland’s most marginalised people. It shows the huge limitations and constraints on devolution and confirms that the UK Government refuses to see our trans siblings for the people they really are.”
I say it is absolutely no such thing. It is a straightforward matter of statutory interpretation and it is a ruling of a court whether a particular course of action is lawful or otherwise. If, of course, you only accept rulings of courts when they agree with you, that is known as ignoring the rule of law, which is the order of the day in Scotland.
The obvious solution is to declare Scottish independence now, in order to enact the tranny law.
– the trannies are so powerful, the ukgov would probably shite it – worldwide coverage, backed by billionaire money.
Stonewall outranks the supreme court.
‘Aye, there’ll be rivers ay mascara an snotters runnin’ in the streets ay Stirlin’ the nicht…’
What does it say about Lady Haldane’s credibility with her ruling in mind.
As for the Greens there’s no way that bunch of degenerates will give up any power now that they’ve tasted it, and true to form they’ve wasted millions of taxpayers cash already on hairbrained schemes not thought out properly.
I see Yousaf pushing on with this GRRB madness simply because the majority of the chamber supports it, even though the public don’t want it. If it was about protecting and strengthening the SNP in Scotland the GRRB would never have been tabled in the first place, so no Yousaf won’t really give a toss if this further damages the party, simply because come 2026 they’ll go into power with whatever party (including the Greens) makes the offer to meet the target figure to form a government.
Also the SNP has blown millions of pounds of taxpayers cash via incompetency, blowing millions more won’t mean anything to them, they’ll still get their large salaries and benefits until 2026, and possibly beyond. The up and coming Scottish budget will be laden with promises and botches just to get it through the chamber, lets face it, if the SNP really cared about Scots or Scotland under Sturgeon and now Yousaf, we’d have left this union after Brexit.
@Geri
“Let’s hope it’s a 3rd option & he resigns.”
Entirely agree, Geri. The only problem, as you well know, is which eejit might the pay-role vote replace him with?
I guess as long as they have access to the public purse to pursue or defend Court actions, no matter how hopeless, our devolved administration will continue to indulge their eccentricities and hobby horses at our expense.
Not until Scotland is bankrupt can I envisage any change in this behaviour.
I suppose the question has to be why things got this bad? For those saying UK State MI5/6 were also flying the trans flag and pandering to these puttyheads. Money talks and the likes of Google were bankrolling the people who have been pushing this but I have not seen Drag Queen Story Hour taking place at the Islamic nurseries where I live, maybe not their target audience.
8 or 9 years ago if someone had told me I’d be cheering on a UK court decision against the Scottish Govt I’d have laughed them out of the room. Now I’m cheering not only that but also a speech by (the otherwise awful) Kemi Badenoch asserting the rights of women and how ‘Stonewall don’t make the law’. How far Scotland, and the cause of independence, has fallen…and how sad.
My wonder is not what the SNP do, what will the Trans lobbyists do…Are they already in league with Labour / Scottish Labour?
Surely they know a dead duck when they see it and are smart enough to pivot?…or have they been rebuffed already?
The Greens will do nowt but grumble into their craft beer..they have already said they would be open to chatting with anyone to get back into power…very flexible it seems.
RoS; Well said!
We all know the real motive behind this was to have unchecked self-id in Scotland
I am who I say I am whenever wherever
Tough if it bothers or even endangers women and girls
Tough if it blows the doors of the safeguarding of children
It really was Scottish transactivism’s holy grail
And its grimly ironic we had to depend on Westminster Tories to keep it at bay this time
We’ll just have to be ready when they have another go
As they surely will
This has never been about trans people & equality.
Its transing away the gay & deeply homophobic.
Permission to mutilate before they can change their minds.
It kills two birds with one stone.
Parents who don’t want a gay kid.
Play things for porn addicts.
Genuine trans people have lived amongst us perfectly fine.
They have the exact same rights as everyone else.
That isn’t what they wanted. They wanted to trans out the gay & sexualise children & as women are the gatekeepers to access – they were to erased too.
The gob almighties have a fetish they want to force public acceptance for – like exposing themselves with zero consequences. Those Muppets are exhibitionists. They couldn’t give a shit about body dysmorphia (which all of us have to some degree – we’re just not extreme about it to the point of contemplating taking a knife)
The Scotish government shouldn’t be legislating for fetishists.
Time this was put to bed. We’ve all had enough of them cancelling venues, cancelling employment, heavy censorship, sexualising children & being absolute arses in public.
We’ve all had enough daylight lol..
The Holyrood response will be to fly the trans flag at half-mast as Kaukab Stewart recites a self-penned lament and Mad Maggie Chapman denounces the court as an instrument of the cis, heteronormative patriarchy to passers-by and pigeons.
I wonder what the SNP membership is NOW
Oh what a tangled web we weave /
When first we practice to pretend men are women
Yousaf is intrinsically bound to more than the unhinged Greens and the Bute House Agreement. The entire nomenklatura class of the SNP holds to the anti-scientific tenets of Gender Identity.
Ditch the GRR Bill and researchers, office workers, SPADS and young family members will be beyond placating. This small army of sinecured functionaries are indoctrinated into the precepts of Poststructuralism. Graduates of the ever-expanding nebula of University courses with Politics in the title that has been perhaps the preeminent “growth industry” which can be attributed to the Permanent State in the last 30 years.
The Permanent State required a means to control the populace and divert their attention from interfering in “their” purview. Their end goal is a never ending, binary, culture war which prevents us from rebelling against our minimum wage, zero hours contract, existential cage.
Poststructuralism deifies individuality and disparages the collective. Any casual observer of history knows that any concession wrestled from the establishment by the workers was obtained through the organisation of collective agency. This is the crux to understanding the utility of Poststructuralism to the Permanent State.
There is some degree of consensus that puts the point at which the Poststructuralist virus escaped the academic laboratory and entered the real world at roughly 2013. By this point, legions of humanities graduates indoctrinated in Poststructuralist dogma had spread into the political ecosphere. These young, middle-class graduates found a welcome berth in what became NuSNP. Constituency staff, researchers, SPADS, even some elected representatives were inculcated in the utility of Poststructuralist credo.
A breed apart, they formed a Mafia of the mediocre, a self-supporting group to reach otherwise unattainable heights like a Catalan castell.
STEMs graduates are conspicuous by their absence in NuSNP (or any other mainstream political party for that matter).
I see Yousaf pushing on with this GRRB madness simply because the majority of the chamber supports it, even though the public don’t want it
No, it’s because the Scottish people don’t want it.
Demoralising the Scottish people is part of the the plan. Humza can’t stand you, and he’s told you so.
Clowns with power are the most dangerous. Not all trans sexualised children, but a lot of people pushing for this have one aim, to break down barriers and hoodwink people into accepting pedophilia.
They’ll be pulling their wig hair out at this ruling. The whole absurdity of the trans movement and the push back is finally gaining some purchase (only some but the signs are more positive each passing day). Most women just want to feel safe and for their children to be protected and prevented from making life altering decisions towards medical interventions promoted by this cult. Well, it was the hill that Nicola Sturgeon died on and it may well be the same fate for Humza.
It’s worth noting that a certain religion is more comfortable with the idea that someone is in the wrong body than that they are attracted to and act upon their attraction to same sex individuals. It’s in keeping with archaic world views that self mutilation and sterilisation are better than homosexuality.
“‘When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.‘
Theodore Dalrymple
Republicofscotland @1:54pm is right. The SNP has built itself over the past 10 years as the Progressive Party. Throwing away the GRR would be throwing away all they hold dear. As Vivian says there’s a large cohort of their supporters, proxies and advisors would not countenance walking away. After all it’s not their money being wasted. Then there is the “what comes after”. What is Yousaf going to do and where is he going to go as the prime betrayer of the trans agenda. Short of making peace with his maker and marching off to Khan Younis to seek redemption, he’s likely to be out on the streets if he backs down now. Besides what’s a few million here or there when it takes everybody’s mind off the serial failures everywhere else?
Sigh. Are there any brain cells left among SNP politicians? The British Establishment will be more than happy to fight you on a highly favourable battle ground (for them) such as unpopular gender reform. They will wipe the floor with you and will continue to wipe the floor with you for as long as you are stupid enough to continue with this. Why play into their hands?
If you really want to make the British Establishment very uncomfortable, then support Ash Regan’s Referendum Bill. Do something that will really support the people of Scotland (especially the majority of those that voted for you). Even if most of you are primarily motivated by a need to secure and retain a comfy political seat, even what little you have will eventually be taken away from you, if you continue to dump on your supporters in this way. Do something useful while you still can.
The entire thing about gender has become a nonsense, and it is to the shame of Scottish politics that it has been allowed to become so.
Ordinary Scottish people are in the great majority fundamentally decent, and wouldn’t wish lives of misery on others. But we also don’t want the entire of society to be upended for a tiny minority. There’s an accomodation to be found there, and up until a few years back, it wasn’t a problem. Now, the Greens and SNP have made it a huge issue, and they don’t have popular support to do so.
Today’s ruling is a good result for Scottish society.
I never did understand what was the rush that made the pretendy parliament spin up from its usual 3 day week, and put in night shifts just to get this patent nonsense over the line.
There’s a million real problems to address – highest ever taxes and worst performing public services. Record waits for medical attention and tumbling educational standards. Crippling heating bills in a country blessed with energy.
Political parties that get more wound up about Slavic civil wars or endless unresolvable Middle East religious hatreds than the state of their own country.
It’s a strange crowd down in Edinburgh.
The reason I praised Katielass04 yesterday is due to doing the proper research, weather that information can be useful in the future or not may be unimportant as is with parts of law Acts that have no authority other than localised like Ordinance Acts.
It was the fact that background research had been done,
It is annoying in its very ignorance to keep stating that we have a Scottish Government and a Scottish parliament.
Scotland has neither, both are under the UK government placed in Scotland as management of Scots and Scotland as a branch office,
A true parliament of Scotland would not have reserved matters to another parliament outside its borders nor would it have another Countries Crown parading over its laws with big size nine feet,
Perhaps if we did have our own government and parliament “we” here in Scotland could and would be able to hold the people in our own parliament more accountable by a better Scots legal system, instead of this amalgamated cross dressed legal system shared with the UK.
But a managed branch office government and parliament to Scotland knows how to be contrary and cause chaos,
It also can quite adequately manage to make The governance of Scotland look appalling from afar to outsiders.
With its court cases spending Scottish public money,
But The UK parliament and UK crown can easliy make Scotland governance appear crazy, at the same time managing the “hero” look reserved to the Uk governance toco e in at a very late stage to rescue Britain from Scotland.
Scottish people need to know why the secretary of State is chosen by the UK and Why so many civil servants under UK legislation are causing chaos, and why the governance of is not entirely in Scottish hands.
It is to easy for a controlled governance of Scotland to do the following.
Create the PROLEM, create the REACTION, create the SOLUTION.
A real Scottish parliament, not a wee pretendy Scottish parliament may be a wee bit more feared of going against the public opinion on its own doorstep, without the UK crown laws and media to protect it.
Has the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain, submitted her resignation yet?
Part of her function is to offer legal advice to the FM & his Cabinet (of which she is a member, of course!).
Either she is offering terrible advice & the FM (& his SPADS) is incapable of seeing it as such; or she is offering good advice & the FM (& his SPADS) is, again, incapable of seeing its worth.
UselessAF’s government has lost two important cases in the CoS this week. Why is Bain still in post? She should either resign on the point of principle that her apolitical legal advice is being ignored for party political reasons or be sacked on the grounds that she’s a no-user & her advice is keich.
It’s actually an easy decision for Yousaf. He’ll phone his boss Sturgeon like he always does, and ask her what he should do.
‘Ian Smith @ 3.13 says “it’s a strange crowd down in Edinburgh”.
Aye, it’s a queer lot right enough.
Throw the bricks if you want. I’m past caring.
How much of our public funds has Humza and this team of airheads haemorrhaged so far in unwinnable court cases?
How much more of our money is this man determined to throw away?
Until when do we, the Scottish public, have to keep funding his nonsense and the suppression of information?
If it was obvious the Scottish “government” could not win the court cases, why did they pushed forward deliberately throwing our money away?
Are they really so thick they think this is in any way or form an acceptable use of public funds in the middle of an economic crisis, or are they just doing it on purpose to completely and irreversibly piss SNP voters off to ensure Labour has a chance to win by the back door in the next GE?
There has to be a mechanism to make these chancers pay from their own pockets the legal costs of court cases when it is obvious from the beginning they do not stand a chance in hell of winning.
It is completely unacceptable and a clear display of power abuse to keep wasting our public funds in loss causes just to keep happy a Green party hardly anybody voted for, a bunch of perverts desperate to destroy the concept of women so they can gain free access to children and potential criminals hiding in the shadows of anonymity.
Enough is enough. There has to be a way to present these idiots with a bill to compensate taxpayers, from their own pockets, for the unnecessary wastage of public funds they have deliberately inflicted on Scotland pursuing either nonsense and abhorrent policies nobody voted for, or legal loopholes to continue suppressing information of high public interest and allow potential criminals and perjurers escape proper scrutiny.
The very definition of succinctness:
‘Is this, in short, really the hill Humza Yousaf and the SNP want to die on?’
And this straightforward question (and its no doubt predictables response), must surely expose the blind and sublime arrogance of the SNP, greens and all their fellow ideological travellers for all to see. Some things never change.
Just wish a competent journalist would ask Yousaf if he’d be happy to pray beside a TransMan at his mosque?
Would his Mosque be happy to accept a Transman into the male section? A TransWoman into the female section..?
I think the answer to both questions would be a firm ‘No’.
Apart from woman trouble our dear leader now has tranny trouble.
A lot of people here BTL asking essentially the question: why is ScotGov spending so much taxpayers’ money on this matter? I’m with people on that. It strikes me that this wasn’t a manifesto commitment, it’s clearly beyond the devolved powers, it’s clearly going to fail, and it clearly isn’t a priority for Scotland, or even a cause held by a majority of Scots. So why?
This should be raised as a direct challenge to Yousaf at the next FM’s questions. Or by journalists beforehand.
Recently attended a branch meeting that had Murray Foote as a guest. He seemed quite a nice bloke, when asked about “The Vow“ he provided a highly compelling, articulate and convincing narrative about its genesis, effect and the subsequent impact on him personally.
But if only he could have told a story – any story – about the direction, structure and purpose of the SNP under his leadership. If he had one he didn’t let on.
It was his opportunity to lay out a narrative of his vision, mission and strategy, that he didn’t do so more than likely, and disappointingly, meant that he didn’t have one; but, hey ho, never mind, we got a WhatsApp channel…
Dubh says:
8 December, 2023 at 4:09 pm
Just wish a competent journalist would ask Yousaf if he’d be happy to pray beside a TransMan at his mosque?
Journalists are only curious about people’s religion when they’re Christians.
Why did Sturgeon resign?
My only explanation is that the completely unacceptable waste of public funds is the entire raisson d’etre of the gender bill.
Nobody believes it. Dozens of generations would laugh it out the room. But is keeps hundreds in ‘work’.
Politicians, academics, researchers, spads, lawyers, media, charity, tech. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, it just needs to be something that can be campaigned for, debated, written about, researched, legislated, publicised, blogged, litigated, arbitrated, codified, regulated.
The taxpayer, the customer, the heretics and the accused are an open piggy bank for banking careers and pensions.
“Part of her function is to offer legal advice to the FM & his Cabinet”
Is it? She could have fooled me.
I thought her function was to steal control of the legislative and executive powers from the people of Scotland and hand them to the crown to prevent independence.
Isn’t that what she did when she blocked the entry of the referendum bill into Holyrood and then invited an English court and English judges to wave the 19th century English principle of “parliamentary sovereignty” on our noses making a complete mockery of democracy?
Wasn’t that also what the previous lord Advocate did when he joined forces with the UK gov legal representation to trash the Keatings’ case which was simply seeking to prove Scotland’s legislative power could legislate for a referendum without Westminster’s consent, if that is what the people of Scotland wanted?
The figure of the lord Advocate appears to have been the linchpin who, for the last 9 years, has ensured the crown has successfully usurped control from the people of Scotland over Scotland’s legislative body to stop independence, wrecking any barriers between executive, legislative and judicial powers in the process and with it, any hope of democracy for Scotland.
And Sturgeon and Yousaf, allegedly pro-independence nationalists, invited this profoundly undemocratic figure right into their cabinets. That would be akin to inviting Dracula into a blood bank’s security team: it is setting yourself to fail. Inviting such figure into their cabinets proves, in my personal view, that Sturgeon and Yousaf were always determined to stop independence and they never intended to facilitate it, or, heaven forbid, attempt to deliver it.
There’s a lot of potty in the chamber, right enough.
MurrayBlackburnMackenzie have been active.
See here.
link to murrayblackburnmackenzie.org
Here
link to murrayblackburnmackenzie.org
“That this had to be sorted out in court reflects a failure on the part of the Scottish Government. But it also reflects badly on the civil service, the Scottish Parliament, most of the opposition parties, and many third-sector organisations, who likewise, treated the arguments and interests of women with disdain.
We are now seeing exactly the same failures play out in the changes to prison policy announced this week. Ministers and opposition parties should learn from the mishandling of gender recognition reform in Scotland. MSPs now need to send the Scottish Prison Service back to the drawing board, and insist that this time it listens to women.”
It truly astounds me the mess Nicola and her team have made of the party.
From 120k members to a rump of 25 possibly.
From being awash with money to counting the pennies.
Branches with reasonable numbers on paper but nobody attending or interested.
Don’t get me started on the list of policy failures ( I count around 50).
It is very hard to believe this is incompetence.
Still Humza wants to be the continuity candidate!!!
They have until Sunak calls an election to pull Salmond back, rejuvenate the yes movement and the wider yes movement, in all its forms or face unemployment.
Even then then they still have to face the issue of perjury and fraud case as an election approaches Dorian will come under pressure to lift the gagging order to highlight the corruption. I see Ms Wark getting another show from the BBC
“Just wish a competent journalist would ask Yousaf if he’d be happy to pray beside a TransMan at his mosque?”
I doubt the above would have Yousaf batting an eyelid, Yousaf is a career enhancing politician and that means he’s for sale to the highest bidder, and he would promote whatever agenda was on the table in any given day.
We know for sure that Yousaf isn’t interested in Scottish independence, his actions speak louder than his words and there’s been no movement on the indyfront from him.
Yousaf said this after the court findings, and its totally expected from a politician of his calibre.
“The only way to guarantee we get true self-government is through independence.”
“He added: “This is a dark day for devolution.
“Sovereignty should lie with the people of Scotland, not a Westminster government we didn’t vote for with the ability to overrule our laws.”
Yousaf is not to be trusted he’s a grifting careerist willing to take orders to advance his career.
LGBT+ groups urge FM Yousaf to continue the fight.
“LGBT+ charities and supporters of the reforms, which would have made it easier for transgender people in Scotland to legally change their gender, have called on the First Minister and his Government to continue fighting the court battle.
Vic Valentine, manager at Scottish Trans, part of the Equality Network, said: “The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill would significantly improve the process that trans men and women in Scotland use to update the sex recorded on their birth certificates, so that at important moments of their lives, such as registering to be married, they would be able to show a document that reflects who they truly are.”
Meanwhile Alba’s Ash Regan has said.
She (Regan) pointed to the £230,000 spent on legal fees, arguing they had been “wasted” through pursuing the case.
Vivian O’Blivion & Ian Smith
The woke ‘cottage industry’ is rampant in most of the private sector especially the big ones signed up to DE&I policies.
This may be the beginning of the end of the Trans movement as we know it but overall, woke which this sprang from is too ingrained in our society now, especially as it safeguards the livelihoods of many a middle class careerist and possibly a future one for their children.
With reference to that photo of Humza with the rest of the crew of hypocrites and charlatans
AND Dens list of msps @ 1:30 8th Dec.
I think this list was from Rattlecans sometime ago pre X.
Just look at the range of positions and responsibiliies that they held in committees and government and yet they voted for GRR … They are hypocrites and charlatans.
Here we go ….
Social Justice
Social Security
Justice and Fairness
Health and Sport
Education Enterprise & Culture
Equal Opportunities
Justice and Home Affairs
Health Social Care & Sport
Finance & Resources Committee
NE Scotland Regional Transport Partnership
Racial & Religious Prejudice
Equalities & Human Rights & Civil Justice Committee
Care Leavers
Improving Scottish Health
Education and Skills
Justice and Policing
Heart and Circulatory Diseases
Rural Affairs & Environment
Public Petitions
Public Audit & Equal Opportunities Committee
Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse
Criminal Justice Committee
Armed Forces & Veterans
Drug & Alcohol Misuse
Women in Enterprise
Life Sciences
Economy & Fair Work Committee
End of Care
Women Families & Justice
Mens Violence Against Women & Children
… All those in Dens list, members of the Scottish Parliament, in all those positions and committees all voted for women to lose their rights WTF!
Its not that they did not have some skills, look at their education and backgrounds …
Cabinet Secretary & Social Care
Occupational Therapist
Public Health Minister
Cabinet Secretary for Justice
Justice Minister
Councillor
Hospice Nurse
Degree in Pharmacy
Womens Health & Sport
Minister for Children & Young People
Solicitor
Suffragette WSPU
Minister for Environment & Land Reform
Ministers for Rural Affairs
Glasgow Childrens Panel
MA History
Minister for Mental Wellbeing & Social Care
Deputy Leader Aberdeen City Council
Royal Marines
Primary Teacher
SNP National Secretary
Degree Politics
Patron Arbroath St Thomas Swim Club
FE Higher Education & Science
MS Society
… And yet they all voted for women to lose their rights, WHY?
WHY are they still in government?
There is a third option but it requires a contextual fact; that Yousaf’s job is not to win, that would ostensibly provide independence, and not to lose, that would open the way for a more effective apparatus for independence, but to limp along sucking all of the air out of the room, acting as an entertaining and distracting gong show that also has the corollary benefit of implicitly and repeatedly demonstrating that ‘this is what Scottish self government looks like, so best leave it to your much wiser overlords and masters’.
The SNP has become the most effective device the British establishment have in slowing or destroying Scottish independence. In any form, ever.
John H says:
8 December, 2023 at 3:33 pm
It’s actually an easy decision for Yousaf. He’ll phone his boss Sturgeon like he always does, and ask her what he should do.
……………..
Question – which phone will Yousaf use when he calls Sturgeon for instructions?
His official Scot Gov issue phone, or a private one, perhaps even a ‘burner’?
Answers on the back of a used stamp . . .
Garrion, this is the only sensible explanation.
This stuff is way above Holyrood.
It pervades all western countries.
The Tories and their right wing allies are using the perversion of the SNP, Greens, Labour, Democrats etc, as a way to drag the voter base to support fascist Statism.
The only thing which can save Yousaf now is a war, most likely civil. This will be engineered with him leading from the front in a chauffeur driven scooter whilst the Greens will unleash the armoured tricycles.
Anton Decade t,
Armoured tricycles are very Green. No cow farts coming from them, but bloody useless for Scottish terrain. Too heavy to get uphill, too tippy going downhill. The perfect Green transport. Going nowhere slowly.
But what now for poor beleaguered Humza Yousaf?
Call an election & fight it based upon support of the bill. Of course he won’t because they’d lose horribly but the other options he has are actually worse but it might help end the Bute House Agreement and put this generation of Greens back in their place.
The problem Trans rights activists have is in the year since the bill came to light for most people is that the general public are becoming much more informed of a debate that’s been mainly online or in academica or on the fringes. The effects of TRAs on people’s actual lives are being rejected solidly and the only way they can proceeed now is but pushing through badly drafted legislation.
The damage this is going to leave will take decades to heal. Independence is over for a generation & trying to recover from a depression (call this time what it is) should be the priority of any government rather than fight for porn-addled men and confused brainwashed children.
If they do not stop this nonsense, but go on with a case that cannot be won, they will raise cain because we have all had enough of this absolute rubbish. Women had best be prepared for an escalation in the violence perpetrated against them whenever they try to meet as a sex group to discuss their rights. The malicious and vindictive TRAs are going to punish females for this. We really need to decide now whether it might be possible to sue the SG (SNP and Greens) if they refuse to accept the court’s judgement on the grounds of negligence as to public monies and towards the Scottish public’s safety. These idiot politicians will not stop till they have to pay out of their own pockets.
How much public money is being spent on Stonewall and its arms, and how much is being spent on unnecessary surgeries, hormones, puberty blockers, etc? That money could be ploughed back into psychiatry and psychology counselling services to help these young people through puberty and safely out the other side. ‘Mental health’ has become another fashion fad as in, “this or that or the other is affecting my mental health”. No doubt many things do, life affects your mental health, but to make a virtue out of it is so stupid as to verge on the insane.
The pandemic has affected all of us, but we need to get to grips with reality. During WW II, people were being bombed, men of military age were shipped off to the war, women struggled on alone, often having to do dangerous war work, children were shipped off to families in the countryside, not to see their own families for five years, men came home to children who were so young when they left, those children did not know them, both men and women had been changed by what they had seen and done. All those things amounted to very real hardship and stress. The West is crumbling under the weight of its own virtue-signalling and obsession with non-existent ‘gender’ and, often, ‘normal’ ‘mental health problems’ that are part of growing up and facing the realities of life.
I’m not sure about the SG’s children’s human rights legislation either. Is it yet another route to get round the restrictions of the law in relation to access to children or to persuade children that they are really in the wrong body and their human rights entitles them to tell mum and dad to do one while they lop off body parts or consume quantities of hormones that will leave them sterile? I hope not.
I think that few, if any of us, have ever witnessed so much insanity in the name of fairness. “Trans’ simply has no definition either in fact or in law. No evidence exists to even suggest that it is a ‘thing’. 99% of the adult men are either heterosexual AGPs or sexual fetishists (the latter the most common.) The females are, by and large, a diverse group of neuro-diverse people (as are many of the young boys, with autism, ADHD, anxiety, etc, being prevalent), or they are lesbians, (with many of the young boys being femme gay) or they are consumed by a social contagion and narcissism.
The AGPs normally have their private parts removed by surgery, around their late thirties/forties but the fetishists keep their crown jewels, and, although they come from different places, they are both a danger to females, even if not physically, which they can be, of course, but, rather, psychologically. They are both a danger to children. All of this can be proved, but the SNP/Greens refuse to listen. They will be made to listen eventually.
Johnlm says: 8 December, 2023 at 5:54 pm
This stuff is way above Holyrood.
It pervades all western countries.
The Tories and their right wing allies are using the perversion of the SNP, Greens, Labour, Democrats etc, as a way to drag the voter base to support fascist Statism.
The Tories, a party historically against immigration, have let both legal and illegal immigration get out on control in their 13 years of power and their only solution is Rwanda which will only affect about 0.01% of annual illegal immigration.
Now with the centre-left who as John Young has pointed out has hypocritically supported GRR despite their supposed principles, it is hard not to jump to any conclusion about the intentions of the political class regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Western societies has a whole has lost their moral compass and direction.
Just finished watching Shane MacGowan’s funeral. Twas very moving. Having both Scottish and Irish blood I realised this afternoon how closely related we are. Music,literature, art,and so on. One thing in particular we share is a hard life.
Wake up Scottish folk fgs. Slowly, slowly catch the monkey.
I really despair.
PacMan
Point taken
I’ll withdraw the word ‘Tories’ and replace it with Financiers.
I think the banking system blew a gasket in the September 2019 Repo Crash.
Moves toward totalitarianism have been underway since 911 at least.
Gen Z have known nothing else.
Time is a great healer. It’s also a great obfuscator. I believe your FM is in post as one could have confidence that he wouldn’t be the sort of chap to waste valuable assembly time on raking over old coals or ‘bickering and arguing about who killed who’. As time moves on memories fade; documents disappear; the majority- who have livelihoods to gain- forget the issues-and failed politicians achieve a certain dull glow by virtue of distance of time.
That in my view is what is happening right now in Edinburgh.
Distraction -such as ludicrous policies and appeals- is good, too…
3rd option – Sit tight until a Labour Government in Westminster introduces Self ID. Job done!
Eddie Munster says:
8 December, 2023 at 2:28 pm
“-a lot of people pushing for this have one aim, to break down barriers and hoodwink people into accepting pedophilia.”
Yep. Yousaf the chief idiot will keep going with this because, as Wings has shown repeatedly, the Scottish Government has somehow been persuaded to let perverts set the agenda. Presumably they think it’s a ’right-on’ and ‘Progressive’ cause and the proles will come round to it eventually. Scots Nats will still vote for them because the party has ‘Scottish’ in the name…
Three strikes and yer out..
Looks like Big Ecks political nous and timing is spot on again; going to court to vindicate his good name constantly and repeatedly traduced by the SNPs entryist cliques and the Green Slime tutu skirt brigade seen for the loons they are day by day in their madcap dash to the political cliff edge.
Call out those who plotted his annihilation which will lead them and theirs to the political abyss and take the reins of a rejuvenated independence driven political party working cooperatively with the wider currently disenfranchised Yes movements.
In my opinion, watching with interest.
Humza Yousaf: “This is a dark day for devolution”
No, it isn’t, Mr Yousaf. Today is a day like any other for devolution because keeping the door open for Westminster to trash Holyrood legislation whenever Westminster (or the crown) wants is precisely what devolution was designed to do. You, like your predecessor with the ridiculous court case on the referendum bill, by incompetence or design, simply served them the opportunity on a platter.
Power devolved is power retained, Mr Yousaf. Even the dogs in the street know that by now. It is a bit embarrassing that, being the FM of Scotland and, despite devolution having been standing in Scotland for 23 years, you still do not seem to appreciate the practical implications of that.
Humza Yousaf: “Sovereignty should lie with the people of Scotland, not Westminster government”
Sovereignty ALREADY lies with the people of Scotland, Mr Yousaf. It is you and your predecessor who have insisted in handing Scotland’s sovereignty to the Westminster government, Westminster parliament and an English court, time and time again for the last 9 years.
It is about time you stopped embarrassing Scotland and started leading by example by reasserting Scotland’s popular sovereignty rather than continuously watering it down, just as you did when you handed the stone of destiny to the English monarch, and just as you are doing right now, keeping the lord advocate in control of Scotland’s legislative body, or just as you are doing by abusing your position of power to force legislation on Scotland next to nobody voted for.
Humza Yousaf: “Today’s judgement confirms beyond doubt that devolution is fundamentally flawed”
Goodness, Mr Yousaf, and you are only realising of this NOW? Did you really have to waste our precious public money in this ridiculous charade to learn that obvious point?
Humza Yousaf: “The court has confirmed that legislation passed by a majority in Holyrood can be struck down by Westminster”
As we all, but you, it seems, already knew, Mr Yousaf.
Humza Yousaf: “the only way to guarantee we get true self-government is through independence”
Well, Mr Yousaf, and did you really have to waste over £200,000 of our precious public money to find that out when everybody in the country already knew that? What have you been doing in the SNP all these years if you have only learned this now?
So, Mr Yousaf, what exactly are you going to do to deliver and guarantee that self-government?
Are you going to do something? Anything? or, just as your predecessor did during 8 long years, absolutely nothing other than dishing platitudes and soundbites?
I tell you what, Mr Yousaf. You really want self-government for Scotland or you are just bluffing?
Because it is in your hand to deliver it next week as it was, for 8 years, in the hands of your predecessor to deliver it.
How?
1. Send the Lord Advocate that you placed in your cabinet packing and as far away from the executive and legislative bodies as you possibly can.
2. Send the UK civil servants packing and replace them with Scottish ones
3. Remove the Crown Office from the jugular of the CPS
4 Restore the barriers between the judicial power and the executive and legislative bodies. In other words, restore democracy.
5. as FM and leader of the majority party and the Bute House Agreement, gather the majority of pro-independence MSPs, bring to parliament and pass a bill to reject the Scotland Act so Holyrood recovers all legislative powers and the Scottish government gain all executive powers in full.
6. Once that is done, communicate to England and the UN the intention to terminate the Treaty of Union and Act of Union with England, and communicate the day the union officially ends in line with the timeline established by the Vienna Convention in the Law of Treaties.
7. In anticipation of the Kingdom of England behaving as a hostile partner, seek intervention from the UN to act as a mediator during the negotiations with the Kingdom of England to dissolve the union and distribute common assets between both union partners.
8. Recall Scotland’s MPs from Westminster and set up a negotiation committee with the most capable MPs/MSPs in preparation for the negotiations of the dissolution of the union and division of common union assets.
9. Bring to Holyrood and pass an Act to end the treaty of union and the act of union with England setting up a date for independence day.
10. Seek membership of EFTA
11. Instruct the negotiation committee to immediately start negotiations with the representatives of the Kingdom of England.
12. Call Scotland’s first general election as an independent state
13. Dissolve the SNP
Now, Mr Yousaf, do you have enough conviction, courage and will to deliver self-government for Scotland, or are you, just like your predecessor was, another professional charlatan who talks the talk but never walks the walk?
Over to you, Mr Yousaf.
Mia @ 4:40 pm
“Wasn’t that also what the previous lord Advocate did when he joined forces with the UK gov”
The deceit goes back ower twa hunner year, if no afore, to Henry Dundas, ‘Lord Melville’, kent as ‘the Great Tyrant’ for hauden Scots doun, an hauden Scotlan ticht, servin anely England’s croun.
Ruairidh says:
8 December, 2023 at 4:35 pm
Why did Sturgeon resign?
Magic question Ruairidh. I’d like to know as well. The visit to parliament a few days before she resigned must have tipped her over the edge. That’s my guess. ‘You are going to be arrested.’ Maybe that was enough in itself.
Stuart writes: “The key to the trans movement’s success thus far has been to operate below the radar, sneaking changes to the law through quietly under cover of something else that’s much more popular, whether it’s prison reform in Scotland, or the abortion bill in Ireland.”
Exactly! Or, as in this case, they masquerade it under the “equality” banner with a serious lack of detail of their true intentions. The SNP were not elected on a gender ticket, they were elected, mostly on an indy ticket. Under Sturgeon & Yousaf they have used and abused the electorate. They are also routinely abusing our taxes to pay for their avoidable legal cases.
And now for that match-winning hattrick, Salmond to give them the legal kicking they so rightfully deserve. Have a great weekend, Troops. 🙂
£230,000 spent on legal fees?
C’moan, that’s only about 20 mobile phone bills!
Stick another penny on the Scottish income tax – she’ll be grand.
@Mia (7.18) –
Hear hear and hear again.
Have C&Ped your comment into a tweet. It should be seen by those who don’t come here.
😉
Johnlm says: 8 December, 2023 at 6:43 pm
Hopefully the blockquotes work this time 🙂
According to Reuters post-Brexit deregulation of the City of London has produced a damp squib and not produced the results needed even though the vast majority of it has been implemented.
link to archive.is
Financial services is the only thing in the UK that produces the wealth required to run a functioning society and we have been surviving so far by putting everything ‘on the tick’.
It may be the totalitarianism that you mention is the only way that the UK state can do to keep a lid on things?
We are gubbed anyway so independence might be the only thing to secure at least some sort of long term future for Scotland but guess what, that isn’t going to happen until Yousaf?
But anyhoo’s, we were promised the broad shoulders of the British state in 2014 so we need to live by that decision.
Mia 8 December, 2023 at 7:18 pm
So what you’re advocating is that Humza break countless laws and risk almost certain imprisonment for a minority of the population? And I mean a minority, because I doubt even most SNP supporters would favour a coup. Do you really think even a majority of politicians would back that? And what would the UN do in support? How did the Catalan independence attempt go? Did the UN interfere?
If you think that it’s doable and there is support for it, get elected.
Perhaps someone can clarify for me? As I read it, today’s decision was made by SCOTLAND’s highest court. Is this correct? If it is, the SCOTLAND’s highest courts found in favour of the UK Government’s contention, that the GRR Bill is outwith the competency of the devolved Scottish Government, under legislation which Scotland entered into in 1998.
Neil Singleton says: 8 December, 2023 at 8:08 pm
According to the Herald:
link to archive.is
The Scottish government could go down this route and end up in UK Supreme Court hoping that it rules the legislation is in the competency of devolved settlement.
Neil Singleton says;
‘SCOTLAND’s highest courts found in favour of the UK Government’s contention,’
Aye.
Have just finished reading the complete judgement which extends to 65 pages. Recommended for those who suffer from insomnia.
But what leaps out at you is the fact that out of many points raised by dear Dorothy, she didn’t win on one of them. So it wasn’t close, it was 25 – nil to the ‘Brits’. And that from a Scottish Judge!
And the case had nothing to do with how it is being portrayed by Humza and his mob.
He will be strongly advised by Dorothy to forget any appeal, the judgement is a tour de force and is unassailable, so he will have to put his big boys pants on and suck it up. And he will no doubt continue to mimic Prince Harry with his moaning of victimisation and misrepresenting what the case was really about, instead of what he is supposed to be doing – getting on with achieving independence.
It’s contagious.
£140 million so far to Rwanda for something unlikely to happen.
An arrangement that requires UK to accept a number of refugees from Rwanda.
Parliament will be asked to declare Rwanda is safe while simultaneously saying judges cannot ever say it is not.
Also sections of the ECHR are to be ignored by the UK judges though Rwanda is expected to comply totally.
I wonder if there is any part of the scheme that might conflict with Scottish law
Lorna Campbell says: 8 December, 2023 at 6:23 pm
Lorna, I’m not disagreeing with the main thrust of your post but I would like to pick up on the above part.
I know we are constantly bombarded by the media that we are suffering a major crisis and our ‘youth’ are suffering major problems but how bad is it really?
I have been working from home since the start of pandemic although I go into the office once a week so it is hard to gauge from work colleagues who have kids about how bad things are but when I do go out, I don’t see the kids looking like they are about to do themselves in or want to turn into the opposite sex.
I can’t help but feel that there is an element of ‘creating a problem’ in order to provide a solution of additional layers of the state as well as private sector functionality like medical services in order to deal with it. In essence our youth are becoming commoditised.
As mentioned by other posters, as more of the general public are exposed to this then there will be a push back and I think it is starting now.
Is it something we should dismiss and hope for the best? Of course not but I think we need to keep it in perspective.
sam says: 8 December, 2023 at 8:31 pm
Ignoring the legal aspects of this idiocy, if it got implemented and was up and running it will only affect about 0.01% of the annual illegal immigrants who come here.
Given such low odds, it will be no deterrent to those who want to come here illegally. It is nothing but an expensive ploy in the hope of swaying traditional Tory voters at the next election.
@Sam 8:31
That’s good tax payer’s hard earned money that would have been better spent on reparations to grifters claiming unprovable connections back half a dozen generations.
Agreed?
Pacman @ 8.38pm
For a short time I worked in a civil service type organisation, during which we were constantly provided with solutions to problems that we didn’t have. But we were made to carry out the solutions, so we had to create the problems which we didn’t have in the first place in order to comply with the directions.
It’s how public administration operates – tramline mentality. If one office has a problem, they all have it. Regardless.
A return to farming soothed the troubled brow. And we didn’t invent problems. There wee enough real ones.
“So what you’re advocating is that Humza break countless laws”
Whose laws? Would that be Scotland’s laws or the laws from the Westminster he has just been moaning about because it trashed his government in court?
Didn’t he tweet that sovereignty should lie on the people of Scotland and not in Westminster?
Didn’t he tweet that we need self-government?
We cannot have self-government if he continues forcing us to abide by the laws imposed by another country’s government and parliament. We cannot have self-government if he continues handing our sovereignty to the MPs of another country.
Do you advocate for him to do nothing and continue to string us along with platitudes, just like his predecessor did for 8 years?
“and risk almost certain imprisonment”
So, you do not think he has the conviction or the guts or strategy to even attempt to deliver independence. In other words, you think he is just a professional charlatan, just like Sturgeon was. I thought as much too. But thank you for your refreshing honesty.
“for a minority of the population”
According to an article published in the National, support for independence is at 54%. That is not a minority.
Didn’t Sturgeon set a sustained majority for independence as a red line to deliver a referendum?
Well, where is it? The 19th of October came and went and the referendum is nowhere to be seen.
“I doubt even most SNP supporters would favour a coup”
Precisely, so why is Yousaf pushing down our throats the coup started by Sturgeon when she rammed through parliament the toxic GRR nonsense without a mandate for it and against the will and interests of the majority of the people in Scotland?
“Do you really think even a majority of politicians would back that?”
If they want independence, then yes, absolutely. Because what exactly have those politicians done to deliver independence during the last 9 years other than fabricating obstacles, handing vetoes to Westminster so our referendum could be stopped, and waiting for Westminster to chew up all Scotland’s assets transforming it into a wasteland before it decides to spit us out?
“And what would the UN do in support?”
Mediate in the negotiations so these actually happen fairly rather than allowing our partner to abuse power or string us along.
“How did the Catalan independence attempt go?”
What does that have to do with Scotland?
Where is the treaty of union between Catalonia and the rest of Spain? I have never heard of one, have you?
The situation of Scotland is not the same as Calalonia’s as you well know. Scotland is a constituent part of a bipartite, international treaty. Catalonia is not. So why are you attempting to conflate both as if they were in the exact same situation? That is incredibly dishonest and does not favours at all to your argument.
“Did the UN interfere?”
Did Catalonia invite the UN to intervene? If they did, in which category?
There is no treaty of union with Catalonia so there was no need for the UN to mediate the dissolution of a treaty. I do not think Catalonia considers itself a colony either, therefore there is no decolonisation process for the UN to mediate in.
“If you think that it’s doable and there is support for it, get elected”
So if, according to you, members of the public have to do all the hard work that politicians were elected to do, all while these politicians, sit on their hands dishing repetitive soundbites and enjoy the big salaries and perks of the job, what exactly have we needed the current elected pro-independence MSPs, MPs and the FM during the last 9 years for?
decoration?
for them to treat us as their laughing stock?
For them to exasperate us with their inaction to test our patience?
Or for them to treat us as guinea pigs to test their toxic policies on?
Pat Blake @ 8:08 pm
“what you’re advocating” is force.
Which merely confirms that “colonialism is force” (Fanon).
Merganser says: 8 December, 2023 at 8:56 pm
Thanks for the insight.
From what you say it has always been here but for the likes of myself who has never had interactions with the state it is bewildering not to mention a bit worrying the power it can exert over people’s lives who are in need of help.
So pleasing to read on here that Gordon Dangerfield is representing Salmond in his latest legal action. I was wondering what he was up to. What a formidable combination. I devoured everything GD wrote. Class thinker. Really insightful stuff. Can’t wait to see what they do here.
As for the above, the SNP will plough ahead with their nine plus year suicide note. Why would they change course now.
Tommo says:
8 December, 2023 at 8:23 pm
Neil Singleton says;
‘SCOTLAND’s highest courts found in favour of the UK Government’s contention,’
Aye.
……………..
And there, Ladies and Gentlemen, lies the reason for ensuring the independence of the Judiciary, right here in sunny Scotland.
The Scottish Government is as subject to the Rule of Law as is the UK Government, subject to the very laws our governments past and present have enacted. Without the oversight of an independent Judiciary, governments could simply ignore all laws, and behave like Putin, and all the other dictatorial despots we could list.
Remember, in 1707, the Scottish side successfully negotiated that the Court of Session would “remain in all time coming within Scotland”, and that Scots Law would “remain in the same force as before”.
THAT is why we still have such a successful system of law in Scotland, and one that is NOT based on English Law. Perfect it may not be, but we have seen it do good work this week.
Whether or not we care to admit it, the continuation of any semblance of democracy and decency in any government ultimately depends on the judiciary taking a stand when it is put to the test. We might just have seen two examples of that this week.
I believe the Scottish Government was probably correctly advised, before it started its section 35 Appeal, that its chances of success were somewhere between none and bugger-all. It was quite obvious, and almost inevitable, that the s.35 appeal case was a loser from the very start.
So, why did Scot Gov run the case? “Public Relations” is my guess. They really believed the public (that’s 99% of us by the way) are too stupid to see through their trickery, or too apathetic, to be bothered, and that we are powerless because we are not ‘organised’. That last point is true, with one little caveat – the Judiciary. OUR Judiciary.
They wanted us to be conned into thinking it was the English who thwarted their wonderful Gender Recognition scheme.
The plain fact is that the Scottish Judiciary has just stopped a dreadful abuse of power and process that I think 99% of us are pleased to see has been stopped, because that 99% could see the potential for extremely serious harm being let loose among our most vulnerable people. The independent Judiciary has done just what 99% of us would have wanted.
‘Good Job’, says I.
Now what? We 99% have to sit tight and await the SNP and Scottish Government responses.
Will they try to bury the Information Commissioner and Section 35 fiascos over the holidays when they think no-one will notice? They can dream!
The US rep at the UNSC checked his texts and sent messages as Mansour, the Palestinian rep, warned that millions of lives hang in the balance.
Utterly disgraceful. And not much better from UK, who abstained.
To hell with them.
And a big fat Fuck Right Off to anyone who bleats ‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’
If you’re a human being and you genuinely feel that way then you’re not really human at all.
This is a fucked up world we’re in, that’s a given, but we’ve forfeited the right to even ask ‘God’ to help us. We deserve no help from anyone after this because, aye, ‘we are the bad guys’ right enough.
Mia, you may have some good points, but please don’t try to embed them in three volumes of War and Peace. Nobody reads that much.
@Mia –
A Tweeter called @InJail4 awarded you a GIF of a hat-tip in response to your tweet and I said I would pass it on.
Hoots!
😉
@ Mia: many thanks for your valuable analysis. I agree with every word. What a useless bunch of parliamentarians we have who won’t lift a finger to assert Scotland’s rights and powers and thus rescue us from the economic and societal disasters that are being imposed on us.
“A dark day for devolution”
Good!
Devolution is a shite state of affairs.
Neil Singleton @8:08 pm
Cracking observation and intervention sir (/mam!)..
That is to say, if we are to assume that the root source of all the shenanigans is the sick English public school boy biscuit game /humour about Scots being men in skirts the corresponding assumption about it’s consequence is that the High court just banned wearing of the kilt and annuled all our marriages, for better or worse!, on a technicality, ahaha!
Accordingly the appeals court might need to sit as early as Monday to reverse the decision and signal defacto independence – Forcing Humza to become the first Western nation willing and able to help talk Israel back from any further self harm..
Meanwhile stag/ hen weekend for everyone thanks to some extraordinarily kinky/ filthy bastards – so be careful out there!
Mia 8 December, 2023 at 8:57 pm
“Didn’t he tweet that sovereignty should lie on the people of Scotland and not in Westminster?”
Tweeting doesn’t constitute a coup.
“We cannot have self-government if he continues forcing us to abide by the laws imposed by another country’s government and parliament. We cannot have self-government if he continues handing our sovereignty to the MPs of another country.”
Sorry but he doesn’t want to go to prison and he has nowhere near enough support to avoid it if he tries to achieve independence without a referendum. It’s highly possible the SNP vote will be much smaller after the next election anyway.
“According to an article published in the National, support for independence is at 54%. That is not a minority.”
Support for independence through a referendum is one thing but pulling away is another thing entirely and it would cause massive problems for Scotland, instantly. Also, people can be very bold in a poll. To break away would require Scotland to be ready to do so. If Scotland was ready, it could win a referendum. Scotland is nowhere near ready.
“So if, according to you, members of the public have to do all the hard work that politicians were elected to do, ”
A politician is just a member of the public who got off their bum and did the work to get elected. Unfortunately saying stuff is easy, doing it is hard. The law and a multitude of different opinions get in the way. If it didn’t, Trump would still be the POTUS and Rwanda would be hosting asylum seekers.
You might not think that UK laws should determine Scottish actions but lawyers and judges do.
Alf Baird 8 December, 2023 at 9:04 pm
“what you’re advocating is force.
Which merely confirms that “colonialism is force” (Fanon).”
I’m not advocating anything but pointing out consequences. There would be no need for force. I don’t see Humza requiring any, should he be arrested. And I think that we’re all in agreement that he’s not that committed to the cause.
The idea that Scotland isn’t subject to UK laws is not a well thought out one. Are you suggesting that every law made since the union is void? Are you sure that you know what might suddenly become legal, or illegal? Would the death penalty for treason suddenly return? What was the age of consent back then? 10?
@IB 9:48
Tired of being told to care about the Pallys more than the Pallys who continue to prolong the war do.
They need to show how much they care by putting their guns down and their hands up. Then it’s all over, and the humanitarian aid and the rebuilding can start.
So they won’t get what they wanted. TS and as you said, it’s a fucked up world. As they head off into the prison camps they can console themselves that by their sacrifice, they saved countless lives of their own people.
This ruling potentially opens the floodgates for a massive number of claims against the Scottish Government and against other public and private bodies that have imposed unlawful gender self-ID policies for very many years. For that reason, I suspect that the Scottish Government will appeal this judgement to the Supreme Court in London. Oh, the irony…
Examples of potential claims include biologically female prisoners being subjected to biologically male prisoners who self-ID’d as a woman, women who lost out on an employment opportunity to a male applicant who had self-ID’d as a woman, hospital patients being forced to share a ward with biological males who self-ID’d as a woman, sports women losing medals, prize money and sponsorship to biological males who self-ID’d as a woman, women in changing rooms and public toilets who have been subjected to biological males who had self-ID’d as a woman, women using rape and abuse crisis centres and similar services being subjected to biological males who self-ID’d as a woman, men and women who have suffered in the workplace, including some who lost their jobs, for objecting to the unlawful self-ID policies, businesses who incurred legal and other costs (including staff training) in order to interpret and apply the Scottish Government’s unlawful self-ID policies and staff in all sorts of jobs suffering the stress of having to interpret and apply the Scottish Government’s unlawful self-ID policies. These are just a handful of examples. I expect there are a great many more.
Many of the public and private bodies could have claims against the Scottish Government, who forced their unlawful gender self-ID policies upon them on threat of funding withdrawal, contract loss etc.
The potential number of claims is huge. The potential cost of these claims could easily run to hundreds of millions of pounds, potentially billions.
Those responsible for imposing these unlawful policies need to be held to account.
Sturgeon’s govt conducted a consultation into the proposed GRRB. Then refused to publish the results.
They conducted ANOTHER consultation into the proposed GRRB. And refused to publish the results of that one either.
I assume if the results had been favourable, we would have seen them.
However, for months now, the ScotGov line has been spun as “this was a widely consulted piece of legislation”, without saying what the results of those consultations were. Naturally, no-one in the Scottish media is going to be so gauche as to ask.
Even today, the nauseating Shirley Anne Somerville was spinning that line on the BBC.
And they’ve made me cheer Tory interference in Scottish affairs, and I’ll never forgive them for that!
Say what you like Stu,
but if the goal is to run the Independence Movement into a wall…
Humza”s actually doing brilliantly!
Sarah, at 11:06 pm,
Scotland doesn’t actually have any rights or powers, beyond the Scotland Act 1998.
There will be lots wailing that it’s got some form of ancient guff from centuries ago, claims of right, declarations of Arbroath and other nonsense, even Queen Anne not being properly coronated, but it ain’t actually the case. That ancient shit is totally irrelevant today.
link to caltonjock.com
Tired of John Main inventing history and being insulting.
John lmao. I totally agree. Maybe he should throw that line to the Israelis.
Annedon. An FOI on the consultations should do the trick. Publishing the replies and who had been consulted would be an eye opener.
Pat Blake @ 11:47 pm
“There would be no need for force.”
The colonial situation is pretty clear to those who really study the matter, albeit still a little obscure to the mass of the people.
Colonial forces are extensively engaged, as should be expected ‘whenever colonialism is imperilled’ (Albert Memmi).
When a colonial administration ‘takes the people up a blind alley’ it ‘becomes an implement of coercion’ (Frantz Fanon).
Imperialism ‘is geographic violence’ (Edward Said).
Colin Dawson @ 9 December, 2023 at 12:50 am
You could well be right.
The simple fact is self-ID is not legal here at the present time and organisations have no legal right to implement practices that allows this but they have.
As you say it could open the floodgates to claims against these many organisations.
It is ironic that the Scottish devolved administration was being used by those in favour of self-ID to get it legally implemented in order to force the rest of the UK to do so yet it could well be defeated by the law system that the devolved administration needs to operate in.
Interesting times ahead.
Didn’t North Ayrshire council win some award for putting gender bender books into schools?
Maybe some parents should get together and sue them , then they could supply books for reading, writing and arithmetic.
Now that the S35 challenge has thankfully been struck down, the Scottish government can move back to focusing on everyday bread and butter issues.
Alf Baird 9 December, 2023 at 9:21 am
Since most countries, including England have at some point been colonized and as both England and Scotland have been colonizers, it’s an odd raft to cling to. Frankly it makes Scotland sound a bit pathetic. Which my Scottish DNA strongly objects to. Suggesting that the masses are too dumb to know that they’re colonized is insulting. Maybe they just don’t agree with you? Maybe even if they see it your way, some of them don’t care?
I can totally understand the desire for freedom from a remote and largely uncaring central government. It was exactly what powered Brexit, but at the same time few want to be worse off after the break up than before. To my mind Brexit has gone better than I ever expected, especially given the mass tantrum of WM, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Without those, people would be wondering what the fuss was all about. But the UK was only wedded to the EU for 40+ years. Untangling the UK and Scotland is much, much harder. On both of us.
This idea that Scotland could find a legal loophole and suddenly be free is ill advised. Look how long it took the UK to leave the EU. There was a mechanism for leaving the EU. Time was granted to make deals. There is no such arrangement here. Your ideas rely on WM being generous in how they behave but it’s not a given if you don’t do it with a legal referendum. WM won’t refuse you forever but it’s not fair on either country to demand to leave every few years. It costs. Aside from the costs of the referendum itself, it impacts confidence in both countries. It affects investment. I noticed last night that the tax office in Cumbernauld was closed in 2022. I would not be surprised if that wasn’t a decision spurred by the knowledge that one day Scotland may no longer be part of the UK. It won’t be voiced but the issue will be in people’s minds as they decide where to base things.
Please, for both countries have a plan. Work out what would have to happen to be a separate country – DVLA, Passports, banking, pensions, taxation, borders, trade deals, business and business decisions, etc. And yes, the question of whether Scotland will join the EU or EFTA should be settled too. Unlike project fear, you don’t have to only imagine the worst cases but you can’t only plan for the best either. If you think that Scotland can go it alone then act like you can now. By that I mean take responsibility for decisions made by your leaders and Civil Servants.
I’m astounded that 35% of the public support this bill.
You really have to ask why has sturgeon and co put so much money and energy into effectively destroying the SNP. They must have known the negative effect this bill would have plus the prosecutions of prominent independence supporters and the police investigation into SNP finances. All this since the sturgeon took power.
So who is the ultimate beneficiary of all this.
@Anthem
Takes two to tango.
Takes two to conduct vicious fighting with collateral innocent casualties.
Plenty of posters forever calling for one side to give up.
Makes sense to call for the other side to give up too.
Sure, there would continue to be sporadic outbreaks of violence, with random casualties on either side (AKA business as usual in that part of the world), but the “genocide” would stop.
And the humanitarian aid would come in.
Something good that may possibly come out of this; all the trans activists realise that a UK wide setting is the best way to push for gender reform, begin leaving the SNP on mass and join the Labour party, believing that that is the best vehicle for them to be in to further their agenda.
If this happens, we have these clowns out of our independence movement and they can ruin an all-Britain party instead. That would be a pretty good result to be fair.
The freak show is over.
Pat Blake said;
“The idea that Scotland isn’t subject to UK laws is not a well thought out one. Are you suggesting that every law made since the union is void?”
Not every law, Pat, but quite a lot of UK law may well be fraudulent.
It’s a simple deduction from the premise that the Union consists of two sovereign partners, which means neither is subject to the authority of the other. A second premise is that neither of their two sets of MPs can represent the Union on their own.
Thus any legislation passed in the UNION parliament by an English MP majority but lacking majority approval by Scotland’s MPs cannot be presented as a valid UNION decision, simply because the Union’s two sovereign partners didn’t agree it, so no UNION majority passed it.
Note that essentially only England’s MPs can do this, because only they can achieve a simple majority on their own despite even a unanimous Scottish vote against it.
Neither Scotland nor the Union belongs to England in any legitimate sense, and England is not entitled to pass Union legislation on its own. If it thinks it is then it must accept that Scotland is equally entitled to do so, and that means there was no point to the Union in the first place, since that was what both bodies of MPs did in their own territories pre-Union anyway.
Presenting such a unilateral law as UNION law is fraudulent, and on a national scale, and arguably an international scale.
Xaracen then you aren’t an equal partner and never were. So get to some court and prove that you should have been. Except in 2014, those living in Scotland and entitled to vote decided that they preferred the status quo. And, if you weren’t in a union then you never joined the EU in the first place and thus were never dragged out. All the things that you are part of because of being in the UK, are also void. So if you proved your case, you’d instantly be without any trade deals or even part of the WTO. You passports would become invalid overnight. What other problems might arise from this gotcha way of dissolving the union?
But if Labour are new UK Govt within next 12 months, they are just as crazy as SNP, Greens, Libdems and this will all be revisited upon homosexuals, lesbians, women and girls, once more.
20 000 now dead in Gaza.
John Main and his propaganda is disgusting.
Mia
Excellent posts!
Don’t forget too that GRR was the brainchild of Evans.
She sold the idea to Sturgeon by telling her the UN & Stonewall had an awards scheme to collect deviant points & that was it, the narcissist was all in looking for a tin trinket for her campervan dashboard.
It was the yoons who planted GRR as a way to derail independence – that would tick along nicely in conjunction with that other scandal at the time (the one we can’t talk about) but everyone seen right through it (along with judge & jury) & the wheels have came off.
Seemingly Westminster top appointed advocates & policy advisors continually advising fkd up policies & giving bad legal advice + Sturgeons intake of only accepting sycophant z listers & deviants who’d be too thick to cotton on they were being played.
The whole house needs clearing.
Dumbza & the SNP need to go.
Labour are no better. They’re just a different version.
The only one with the smarts & strategy to clean from top down is Salmond.
Devolution is long past it’s sell by date. Scotland doesn’t vote for yoons yet they fill Holyrood, from top to bottom, to work against Scotlands interests.
These legal costs are nothing compared to the money wasted on their salaries to be a continual thorn.
Pat, two separate sovereignties are exactly equal in authority in that neither is obliged to submit to the other’s authority. That’s what sovereignty means. No court in the world would deny that, and neither should you.
Pre-Union, England had no authority over Scotland, and the same went for Scotland over England. Then the Treaty was agreed, and guess what? Nothing in the Treaty changed the sovereignty of either kingdom, because nobody involved in negotiating, agreeing, signing, or ratifying the Treaty had the necessary authority to change those sovereignties.
The two kingdoms just agreed to give up their own independent self-governance for joint self-governance of both territories from a single shared parliament. And it had to be joint because neither kingdom was (nor is) obliged to accept the decisions of the other kingdom, because of their sovereignty.
But guess what? England’s establishment completely ignored Scotland’s sovereign rights within the Union, and our worthless MPs let them get away with it. And they still do.
England’s establishment is cheating Scotland out of its full rights as a sovereign partner in the Union through nothing more than pseudo-legal chicanery and dodgy pseudo-democratic arithmetic.
I never said we were not in a Union, I said that the Union’s governance of Scotland fraudulently denies Scotland its full say in that governance, and as a result much of UK legislation must be considered invalid because it was passed improperly.
You’ve provided no counter argument to that, and nor has anyone else, suggesting you don’t actually have one, so you are just blustering misunderstood nonsense instead.
54% in favour of Scottish indepemdence. How might that be moved up?
Polling tells how. New Economics Foundation in 2015 says:” An economy is only as strong as what it delivers. The UK public, when asked, is consistent and clear about what that should be: secure, well-paid work; high levels of personal wellbeing; effective public services that guarantee good health and education; low levels of economic inequality, and a healthy environment.
A more recent poll is the Panelbase one of 2022.
Based on 1017 Scots from 16 years-up, with fieldwork on 5-7 October 2022, those likely to vote, when asked:
“If the Scottish Government put a Wellbeing approach at the heart of its economic plans for independence (a plan that recognised that quality of life, equality, fairness, sustainability, happiness, and health are all outcomes that should be given equal weight to economic growth), whilst committing to increase the state pension from £141.85 to £225.00 per week in an independent Scotland – how would you vote in a Scottish independence referendum?”
61% said Yes. This is the breakdown. Only women over 55 recorded a majority for No (52%) while 72% of younger men (16-34) and 83% of younger women, said Yes.
Among the middle-aged (35-54), 55% of men and an equally impressive 67% of women said Yes.
I posted links to the Harry Burns talk on creating wellness on another thread. I suggest it might be good to circulate that link as widely as possible and as often as possible.
There are two other links. One is a discussion involving Harry Burns and David Walsh about the current state of health inequalities and the absence of political powers open to any Scottish government to prevent the harm being done by UK policies. The final link is to a short animation dealing with the stalling and fall in like expectancy across the UK.
If anyone is interested I’ll find those links and try to post them here.
Xaracen 9 December, 2023 at 2:41 pm
“Pat, two separate sovereignties are exactly equal in authority in that neither is obliged to submit to the other’s authority.”
So if you’re right, do something about it. Form a new party. Collect money for a legal team and take it to court. Unless of course no court will take you seriously? Why isn’t Alba going with this? I take it as read that the SNP won’t because they’re out to trick you and don’t really want independence. Are you waiting for a multitude of MSPs to amble by and have an epiphany? Congratulations, you’ve sold the idea to Wings, now build on it.
But. Shouldn’t you still have a plan for independence? Or are you happy to suddenly be free and then ask “what now?” and expect WM to be reasonable in negotiations? What if there are regions of Scotland who don’t want to be dragged out of the UK? Are they your colonies?
Alba is already doing something about it.
You seem to forget, denying democracy is a relatively new thing.
Only since they look like losing.
Thatcher, Blair, Cameron all knew of Scotlands right to leave the Union. It’s only nawbags since who’ve gone full totalitarian Dictatorship who deny it but making up pretendy bullshit they have supreme authority. They don’t.
Scotland is also a country. If a region decides they want independence then that is Scotland to deny. Which parts? As if we need to ask! It’s her territory & only a fool would annex a part to England. If ppl don’t like it, move. Simples. We’ll not be having any of that NI annexed shite here.
It’d be of no worth anyway as an enclave.
Anyone know or have a link to the actual judgement?
Obviously the special defence of each case it’s own merit and being only able to adjudicate the case as put before them might come into play but, with specific reference to the idea of S35 being baked in from the beginning (and this never used by more sincere servants of the union), it:d be interesting to learn if the appeal was rejected on the basis of Scots law or some bastardisation of contract and English statute
ie did the judges say something along the lines of:
(a) a woman can’t have a penis ya daft bampots or,
(b) the democratically elected parliament of sovereign Scots that reconvened on whatever day 19 oatcake shall be forever subservient to terrorist supporting war criminals, or otherwise, as elected by the people of England – and we need now to be hung by the neck for treason/ christmas, etc
Jesus, Xaracen still persisting with the lunatic idea that Scotland and England are co-equal within the Union, and each get 50% of a joint vote.
It’s completely nuts.
Pat Blake said;
“So if you’re right, do something about it.”
I am doing something about it; I’m making people aware, on blogs like this one, that the UK’s English establishment-based governance of Scotland is deeply abusive to Scotland, deeply undemocratic, deeply unconstitutional, breaches the sovereign and democratic rights of the Scots, breaches the terms of the Treaty, and has been stealing Scotland’s wealth for centuries, all to the great harm of Scotland and her people.
The Union might have been a good idea if it had lived up to its obligations under the Treaty and dealt fairly with Scotland, but the English establishment was never up for that and it shows, and I want them entirely disestablished. The Union needs to die, no second chances. The more that Scotland’s independence hurts the English establishment the better.
Uncharitable? Tough shit!
“But. Shouldn’t you still have a plan for independence?”
My plan for independence is to vote for a party offering it, and to support institutions that are working for it on other grounds. I used to think that was the SNP, but they’ve turned out to be a bunch of shysters with their own agendas, and independence isn’t one of them.
I joined Alba, but the jury’s still out on them yet, and they’ve still to get their feet under them. I also supported Salvo from its first day, and will continue to do so, because it shows promise since its plan is to sideline Westminster and its courts entirely.
What’s your plan?
“Congratulations, you’ve sold the idea to Wings.”
Aha! That’s a good start, the plan is working!
@Sam 2:55
That sounds great, throw in a daily hard-boiled egg and I’m in.
Haha, just my little joke.
Alert readers see your post for the tripe it is. Any pie-in-the-sky promises that omit affordability are just so much hot air. And as for the government promising happiness to those who vote for it – seriously, WTF is wrong with you?
The best constitution so far derived in world history, the American one, promises no more than the pursuit of happiness. If they were smart enough 200+ years ago to understand that no government can promise it’s voters happiness, what happened since that folks like you lost their wisdom?
Ass
Explain who gave England 100%
Point to the exact part in the treaty of Union.
& We’ll be having none of that mystical phantom known as the *UK* bullshit. The great OZ.
Scotland & England are in a treaty. That treaty was 50/50 or it’d never have been signed. Scotlands Sovereignty & her territory were not up for negotiation. The treaty was signed with non negotiable terr. Scotland is a sovereign nation then & still remains so. No one ever erased it.
If you think she did – then point to it in hard writing.
Xaracen – love yer posts. You should submit them to Stu or Yours for Scotland to be published to a wider audience. Do you have a blog?
Alba are the only ones doing anything in both parliaments at the moment. Ash Devo bill & Neale’s Devo bill. We can only see where they lead.
A convention should be called & I hope ppl like you & Salvo are with it. The treaty, & specifically what it doesn’t permit, is our way out of this takeover.
There is no magical superior being named the UK. It’s two kingdoms. Two crowns. Two Sovereignties. One treaty that neither is erased.
The one nation Tory pish doesn’t fly. Proof it doesn’t fly is in the fact they’re trying to write a new one that binds Scotland against her will.
Xaracen, at 4:44pm,
You ain’t doing anything about it at all. All you are doing is continually pushing a lie about voting rights.
You are actually taking the cause of independence backwards.
Johnlmao says:
“Look at me everybody, admire my virtue signalling!
See me, I care deeply about the casualties, I really do.
But I think we all agree there’s a right way to stop the killing, and then there’s a wrong way.
And if the killing is stopped because the wrong way is adopted, sure, plenty of innocent men, women and kiddies will live, but I will be racked by my disgust and horror and white hot rage that ideological purity was sullied.
So if anybody tries to stop the killing the ‘wrong way’, shout them down everybody – shut them down and shout them down at every turn.”
They assassinated dr Nahed Al-ahrazin, Prof Refaat Al-Areer and a few more journalists and their families today after warning them they were coming.
You disgust me.
Johnlmao says:
Crazy name, crazy guy.
Still, nobody is beyond help or redemption. Embrace the light, Johnlmao.
Call for both sides to stop fighting, exchange hostages and prisoners, and negotiate a lasting cease fire by making hard compromises to their stated goals.
It’s not about what your bruised ego is suffering, Johnlmao, it’s about what’s happening to all of the people caught up in this tragedy. It’s about finding a future for all of them.
John Main
Your ignorance is astounding.
Israel, the USA and the UK don’t want a ceasefire, they block all attempts.
Excuses are found to stop the return of hostages.
It is interesting that you use both terms hostages/prisoners, refer to the Gaza people as Pallys,
deny genocide, accuse one side with fake accusations of r#pé and killing babies.
Straight from Zionist propaganda sites.
You are disgusting
Geri,
it was spelled out in the Treaty how many MPs each nation would have in the new Parliament.
Scotland got 45 MPs, Wales 27, and England 486.
The Commissioners of England and Scotland both agreed the voting system would be one vote per MP. Not a majority of Scots nor a majority of the English, but one vote per MP, each MPs vote counting as one vote.
Xaracen is completely deluded. You appear to be drunk most of the time you post.
@geri at 5:29pm;
Thanks, Geri, I do post comments elsewhere, and YFS has put up an article or two based on my comments, and I’ve had some extended arguments with a couple of commenters there. It’s where I acquired the confidence to comment here on similar topics. Mostly it comes down to folks struggling to accept they’ve been lied to about the Union’s true constitutional basis for many many years by the UK’s English establishment and their tame press and broadcasters.
@ASA;
You’re getting desperate, ASA. And what exactly is so lunatic about the idea that Scotland and England are co-equal within the Union? You’ve never bothered to explain why they shouldn’t be.
Which bit of ‘equally sovereign’ doesn’t work for you? You said you knew what sovereignty means? Were you lying?
Johnlmao
It’s Innarestin that you post fake accusations of me posting “fake” accusations that are actually true. Just how many twists do you have in your pretzel? If dealing with a “normal” poster, I would call your bluff.
Alert readers will see my problem and understand the futility of me continuing to debate with you.
Feel free to vigorously massage your throbbing ego by claiming victory though.
It’s Setterday nicht, enjoy a big mouthful of greasy bedroom carpet pile with my best wishes.
Xaracen,
What’s so lunatic about your idea of this co-equal voting shit that you keep posting is you. It isn’t laid down anywhere in text or unwritten constitutional convention, nobody apart from a lunatic is even pretending that it exists, and it’s going nowhere as an idea at all. You just embarrass yourself.
John Main
Posting Israeli propaganda is not proof of anything.
Nothing has been proved or even investigated yet.
If you make accusations you should provide sources.
You are disgusting
If he goes, what happens to Bute House?
Someone who knows something about it told me that wherever Muslims pray their official prayers, the Islamic belief is that that place becomes the ‘earth’ or ‘land’ of Islam. Even if they just pray once on that piece of territory, or real estate, they can claim it.
All this on the premise that the world is divided in two, between Islamic land/ earth and pagan (infidel), non-Islamic (or not-yet-Islamic) land/ earth. And once Islamic prayers have been said on a particular piece of territory, the Muslim right to it can never be effaced.
Is that what was really happening at Bute House on the evening when Humza took possession of it as First Minister? If so, the irrevocable claim was made. And was that why the video was made? Not only made, but made public?
Maybe it wasn’t intended as just a nice little home video, made by and for a small group of friends? Maybe it was deliberately intended to send a message out and about, far and wide, the true import of which would be immediately picked up by some people – those in the know – while others, including most Scots, would be completely oblivious to it.
There was hardly a whimper in the Press. But we can easily guess what would have happened if it had been Kate Forbes instead of Humza, and she had so much as said a ten-second prayer which even seemed to be in any way Christian, even if she never mentioned Christ, and couched it as generally and blandly and non-denominationally she possibly could.
If we want to be an independent country – as I always have done – that means joining the world, as Winnie Ewing said long, long ago. ‘Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on!’ or words to that effect. Well, we had better grow up, and begin to cop on about how the world works. And that includes finding out about all the different forces and influences operate within it.
‘What kind of Scotland do we want?’ is still a very big question. And so is ‘What kind of Scotland could Scotland become once we are properly adrift – or set free – in our own waters, but also in that big, wide, global ocean, which has all kinds of beasties in it?’ Once we are no longer in the clutches we want to get out of, which other Big Beasts will immediately want to get us into their clutches instead? And how will we fare in that ocean with all these big good or bad competing beasties in it?
That is going to take some mighty navigating skills… Anyone, even against his professed or presumed beliefs, beginning to ‘feel a wee prayer coming on…’, as I. M. Jolly would say? Maybe we’re going to need it…
This crap about gender is yet another tell-tale sign that the SNP leadership are in league with London to destroy the main vehicle for independence and full Scottish autonomy.
Practically everything Humza ugly bloke has done in politics has been designed to alienate people from his party. This is because the guy is a London agent, and not a very good or discreet one.
It is impossible to believe that the membership of the SNP voted for this clown, and it is inexplicable why Salmond hasn’t simply took the helm at the SNP once again, which he could so easily do.
The fragmentation of the movement and the silly alienation tactics that are constantly rippling through the SNP have got London’s fingerprints all over the back of it.
It could not be more obvious that the SNP is crawling with London plants, and the fact that Salmond is messing around with a party who poll at 3% has got to make you wonder if he has been roped into the London orbit as well now.
Over 50% want tf away from the utter scumbags and parasites in London. So we genuinely need to ask why we are seeing so much deliberate fragmentation and alienation tactics being deployed.
It is quite simply unhealthy for democracy to have the percentage of want-aways constantly climbing while the vehicle for achieving full autonomy is being continually, blatantly, and deliberately sabotaged.
@ASA, I asked you; “what exactly is so lunatic about the idea that Scotland and England are co-equal within the Union? You’ve never bothered to explain why they shouldn’t be. Which bit of ‘equally sovereign’ doesn’t work for you?”
Your response;
“What’s so lunatic about your idea of this co-equal voting shit that you keep posting is you. It isn’t laid down anywhere in text or unwritten constitutional convention, nobody apart from a lunatic is even pretending that it exists, and it’s going nowhere as an idea at all. You just embarrass yourself.”
Well, well, well, ASA! You really have got no idea at all how to support your stance, have you? It’s all instant visceral bollocks backed up with random bluster, bravado and a choice insult or two with you, isn’t it? You don’t know how to play this ball, do you? So you’re having to play the man instead.
Maybe you should sleep on it and we’ll try again in the morning. As for ‘it’s going nowhere as an idea at all’, I beg to differ; it’s been getting traction here and elsewhere for some time now.
And I’m not in the least embarrassed, because I can comfortably support my stance.
One of my local Tory Cllrs is proud of the fact she has a Degree in Gender Studies. The Sexual Deviants and Gender ID Creeps have infiltrated every Political Party in the UK and are neck deep in our schools. Ironically these same creeps who are sponsored by MI5/MI6 want to negotaite with Putin. that is a clear sign they are brain damaged.
Xaracen,
you can’t comfortably support your stance, because there’s absolutely fuck all to back it up. Nothing in law, in text, nothing in the unwritten constitution, and nobody at al apart from your lunatic rumblings dayi g so.
You could double your numbers with Geri, but he/shit is completely bonkers as well.
A Scot Abroad @ 10:18 pm
“there’s absolutely fuck all to back it up. Nothing in law, in text, nothing in the unwritten constitution,”
On the contrary, even Westminster committees provide ample assurance that a majority of Scotland’s elected MPs can end the union any time they like. Now might be a good idea, if the SNP were not so heavily infiltrated by British agents.
“46. The United Kingdom Parliament can dissolve the Union. Article I is not entrenched. That is apparent (1) because the Articles only bind Parliament as conditions of the Union established by Article I; and (2) because it would be contrary to common sense to argue that the English and Scottish peoples could never by a lawful route democratically decide upon independence from one another.”
link to publications.parliament.uk
Baird,
you’ve got no idea as to what works in reality. The U.K. parliament works by numbers, and Scotland’s got about 10% of the vote.
Get back to your “academic” wankery. You are a stain on Scottish life.
A Scot Abroad said;
“You’ve got no idea as to what works in reality.The U.K. parliament works by numbers, and Scotland’s got about 10% of the vote.”
The parliament’s numbers and the way they are interpreted do not reflect the constitutional basis of the UK. That is why the Union doesn’t work in reality. If it did there would be no independence movement.
The UK Parliament doesn’t work by numbers, it abuses by numbers.
No takers on analysing whether the judiciary is trying to impose sovereignty of the crown on we the people yet so I’ll append a wee note for any future/ present historians/ anthropologists still wondering whatever happened to the scots.
ie IF the judges manage to escape on the grounds of the case set before them – and that case does not include something along the lines of we may be behaving jointly and severally as kings of Siam, but women with little pink elephants and beard hiding face nappies will not be loitering in the ladies on our watch, etc, etc, etc..
THEN Scotland (but for lack of desire!) escapes too because the Scotland Act/ Sewel Convention is demonstrably impotent whenever an irresponsible English (/British) government wants it to be 🙂
@johnlm
Agreed but remember to try walking a mile in their shoes and that, especially if you don’t know them personally (or can’t fully remember all the fun times), you can be as imaginative as you like with possible mitigating factors before making judgements that absorb any of the frustration.
In John’s case he could be Jewish, hate his pally neighbours, or have reasons for adding insult to injury so horrible only his poor departed aunt P wants to hear but, if you read carefully, he could also be telling you the argument that people with authority wanting an end to the insanity need to communicate to those seeking vengeance (admittedly the point may be lost on psychopaths and crooks committed to avoiding judgement of their own sin)
ie setting aside whether war with an unrecognised state can be legal (and the implications that clarification of that conundrum could have for the Donbas), and whether he’s committed an actual pre hate crime legislation hate crime (incitement to violence) in making it, the assertion that the (intentional) killing of innocents can/ will/ should not stop until weapons are surrendered and hostages returned infers that palestinian allies have a worldwide right (being at war) to murder innocent allies of Israel, and vice versa, until such time as crooks on both sides return their hostages.
It’s complete bollocks of course, but, somewhat astonishingly, it also appears to be the current stance of the UK and US at the UN!
Alf Baird 12:31
As a somewhat bemused observer of this heated debate about something similar to the question about the pin and the angels …
You state: “Scotland’s elected MPs can end the union”.
You then quote: “the UK parliament can dissolve the union”.
Seems obvious enough to me that in practical terms, these statements are contradictory.
The vehicle which the UK parliament has “authorised” is the Scottish referendum, which was duly held in 2014, lost, and in agreement with the T’s& C’s applying, won’t be allowed a re-run for some years. These are the facts, and the wishful thinking won’t change them.
Seems obvious to me that new approaches are needed, and two are provisionally on the table.
The first is the Claim of Right hokum, which falls clearly into the realm of the Ancient Guff. Nuff said.
The second is the plebiscitary election route, which has the remarkable attribute (for Scotland) of being current, relevant, and potentially popular, with a potentially popular leader (Regan). Another positive attribute is that it passes the “lawful” and “democratic” conditions you quote, and has the merits (if kept simple) of being comprehensible to the most politically detached, tribal, Scottish voter.
My money is on the plebiscitary election route as the only route capable of potentially delivering a popular, democratic, lawful majority from within Scotland in favour of Indy much before 2035.
All the “with one bound, Scotland was free” dreamers will huff and puff, but to no practical effect. Their energies would be better employed if harnessed to something that might just work.
@StuartmcTavish
There is a lot of truth in your post I think.
JM likes to say unpleasant things using allusion, whereby he can deny that he necessarily believes those things.
He claims he was a teacher.
Let’s hope it was in flower arranging or some such, for the weans’ sake.
Bet he loves the idea that we are discussing him. Lol.
Stuart Mctavish
I am going to extend you the courtesy of assuming you post here in good faith.
I have been consistently posting about how a conflict between two sides that are each practically and religiously sworn to annihilation of the other can be stopped.
I see only a symmetrical solution, where both sides accept a bitter compromise that leaves them short of their ultimate objective – for both sides, their enemy is not annihilated. Within that compromise, there is room for other objectives to be realised, e.g. hostage release, prisoner exchange, UN assistance with aid and rebuilding, UN peacekeeping forces on the ground in contested areas.
Worth pointing out too, the folly that plenty in our secular society practice – the lazy assumption that other people’s foundational religious belief can be discounted.
Only one other thing to say at this point; in the real world, might may not be right, but might is always might. That reality cannot be wished away.
If my assumption holds true, that you are indeed posting here in good faith, please do continue.
John Main said;
“You (Alf Baird) state: “Scotland’s elected MPs can end the union”.
You then quote: “the UK parliament can dissolve the union”.
Seems obvious enough to me that in practical terms, these statements are contradictory.”
They are not contradictory, and you haven’t demonstrated that they are. Both or either party to the Treaty of Union can end it, and it doesn’t require their joint agreement to do so. The UKP might not want to end the Union, but it can do so if it decides to.
“The first is the Claim of Right hokum, which falls clearly into the realm of the Ancient Guff. Nuff said.”
Given the Treaty guarantee of the CoR’s permanence, it’s your assertion that’s hokum. Ancient the CoR may be, but it’s still current in Scotland’s statutes and beyond Westminster’s legal power to abolish or amend.
The problem with your second approach is that it depends on Westminster’s acceptance and co-operation, which entirely defeats the object of the enterprise. Westminster and its English establishment is not entitled to be the arbiter of Scotland’s democratic decisions, especially when they engage the sovereignty of the Scottish electorate.
Sorry Xaracen, but if you are saying that Regan’s plebiscitary election idea needs Westminster’s acceptance and cooperation, then again, we’ve reached a fundamental failure to agree point.
This needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
If ANY party stands on a crystal clear plebiscitary manifesto promise, and gets freely and democratically voted into power in Scotland with that mandate, then no true democrat on earth is going to deny they have proven that Scotland wants Indy.
And if that means every single Scottish MP or MSP under house arrest on instructions from WM, then so be it. At some point, given a crystal clear democratic mandate, we need leaders who are prepared to stand up for us.
Anyways, if you disagree, take it up with Ash Regan. She stood for SNP leader and hence Scotland’s FM on that platform. If she’s now reneging on that, just a few short months later, then TBQH, she’s just another pie-in-the-sky chancer who can get tae.
John Main @ 9:40 am
“The vehicle which the UK parliament has “authorised” is the Scottish referendum”
If you read the Westminster privileges committee report again, which James Che provided direction to, you will see that Scottish independence has little if anything to do with any ‘authorised’ referendum as you call it.
The report acknowledges as ‘common sense’ that Scotland may exit the union alliance by democratic means. ‘Democratic means’ tells us that a majority of Scotland’s national elected representatives can end the union, in much the same way it was created. This was always the case since 1707, until devolution when the unionist establishment (and the SNP) changed the narrative and goal posts.
Scotland is in fact already de jure independent with its third elected nationalist majority; all it would take is for a majority of Scotland’s representatives to withdraw from Westminster and the union is over. Even a Westminster committee is telling us that.
link to publications.parliament.uk