The Drowning Man
Posted on
July 22, 2023 by
Chris Cairns
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
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Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
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Wings Over ScotlandA tall tale
Wee Books
Video
Probably a robbery
Transphobia
Doing a Starmer – the act of throwing away a massive lead over the Tories.
Five years ago I would have thought “This will help the SNP and Indy!” but of course that’s down the pan too. What a mess.
Seems to me they are lining it up for Starmer big time.
I think that is maybe why they got rid of Bojo, because as bad as he was he would still have defeated Starmer. Plus I think Bojo was not ‘compliant’ enough. It was really interesting watching the way the BBC in particular made it their mission to make him stand down.
Starmer is a bit Hillary like, dislikeable, creepy and a bit sinister. People sense it. He’s another (neo)con man, a Blair.
Sunak however is perfect. I could probably win an election against Sunak. He is more bland, more vacuous than even Starmer, which really took some finding.
Starmer will go along with every neocon war, be an absolute slave to the US, do fuck all to help working people, do fuck all to curb mass immigration, do fuck all to fix the NHS, which of course is why he is getting the job.
I’d love to see a pissed off Farrage re-enter the scene down south. I could see him taking huge bites out of both the Tories and Labour if he did. I suspect the totally over the top bank account banning attack on him is telling us they really fear this.
If Farrage formed a populist, UK nationalist party I think he would have the potential to do a Trump and win. Sunak or Starmer… what dreadful meaningless ‘choice’ that is. Anyone even slightly likeable or charismatic would wipe the floor with them.
Three cowardly, despicable characters. I see noone in that picture that I could ever vote for.
Mac – Historically, it has always been Labour that has stepped-in to save the NHS and they have done great work in the recent past to strengthen it. I speak as an erstwhile Labour voter although I would rather shoot myself than vote for them now.
I think the leadership both in England and Scotland is pretty meaningless. The people have been manipulated into a possition where they no longer know their arses from their elbows.
The rules which steered our generation through life have bee jettisoned and we live in a mad confused world.
Is Scottish independence really that important given the calibre of our politicians and the stupidity of our electorate?
If it hadn’t been for the hated Tories, we would have passed all the disgusting gender legislation presented by our Scottish representatives and would by now be moving on to providing sexual access to our children.
Even tho’ I am an atheist, I’m beginning to think that some sort of evangelical conversion is required in the Western world where the whole of the media is exposed as the work of Satan.
Humza’s a good Muslim. He’s not allowed to take a belt.
Though he certainly needs one.
Frankly I wonder who cares about child benefits being restricted. Like huge energy prices and huge corporate profits for the energy companies does anyone really care about that. Or an underfunded NHS. Or soaring food prices.
Truly if these things were important then folks would be doing something about it. But they aren’t.
Either folks are too well off or they just take whatever they get. So if they don’t care why should anyone else.
We’re all neo liberals now. Who needs a life belt.
Mac 8:37.
I agree with much of what you say re Starmer and Sunak. But on the latter you missed out one important fact concerning his (planned ?) unelectability – and one that I am sure the Establishment factored in when they were selecting him – his ethnic background.
There is no way he would have been selected had his name gone forward to the deeply racist Home Counties Tory Party. And even less prospect of him being enactable as PM in England more generally.
This is why it didn’t happen. He has been elected by no-one expect his own constituents.
He was selected to give the Establishment shill Starmer a free run!
: )
For an additional twist, is Sarwar explaining to his southern superior that that’s the only way they can survive (open water polo) in Dundee – or simply that his dada* already had it covered?
*(in which case every Scottish accent/ teatotal hating racist at police Scotland/ COPFS has had plenty time to cough cough up these particular institutions’ verification vis a vis the actual SNP membership and leadership voting data)
For SNP to appear electable, Westminster austerity measures need to be ramped up to maintain oppositional Punch & Judy Show. No matter how bad things get, keeping up the appearance of hope, for Scotland, SNP’s one and only tactic.
Westminster, happy to maintain the status quo, red for blue, same policies, with the Union in safe hands, from impotent
self serving clowns in Holyrood.
SNP now restricted to one of the minor characters of the House of Commons puppet show, though crucial to Westminster’s strangle hold on Scotland. The saddest part, SNP is a willing accomplice!
Prof John Curtice was on TV last night explaining what the by-election results meant in the bigger scheme of things. I watched it for a few seconds and then walked out the room. What he said was that it is a slam-dunk for Labour and that there will be no need for coalitions of anything like that after the next GE.
I think as most on here do of Starmer. But, he does have the gravitas that Sunak lacks and that is what makes the difference. On the world stage when your leader is being photographed with other world leaders, that counts in people’s heads. Frankly, it’s inevitable and so just accept it because it is unlikely to change. Labour in Scotland are absolutely dreadful from top to bottom, but there is some prospect of life becoming better under Labour in the UK.
If the current strategies of all political parties remain the same until polling day, the turnout is guaranteed to be the lowest since records began, in Scotland and England.
Somebody throw the electorate, a lifebelt, for fucksake!
#StirlingDirective
Some prospect of life being better under Labour……
I still remember Blair getting in.
Reading the Dail Hail Fascist fanzeen front page with the latest SNP and Scotland bad front page.
Scots Ministers Shamed over jobs disaster!
It seems economically inactive residents in and around Airdrie and Shots is up at 40%.
So they base this on being of working age.
So that could include kids aged 16 still at school,
Teenagers at College and University,
People on sickness or disability benefits or people who have decided to retire before age 66.
Such a condemnation aimed at Scottish unemployment when the last figures I can see shows Scottish unemployment at 3% and England at 3.9%.
It augurs well that their new fake journalist and pathological liar Boris claims that if the BBC Business Editor has mislead the public regarding the Farage Banking farce she must go.
Was there ever a pot that called a kettle blacker than Bonkers Bojo.
Corbyn should stand as an independent in SIR Starmers seat.
Is Scottish independence really that important given the calibre of our politicians and the stupidity of our electorate?
Independence at the moment before we sort out our political, media and societal outlook would be positively dangerous. Whoever grabs the initial power would have an inordinately influential ability to corrupt the founding institutions that offer long term control of the country.
It could be similar to the Bolshevics grasping control of post Tsarist Russia
akenaton
Independence is as important as ever to get away from the shitshow of the never ending failed two party state.
You keep mentioning the Tories saved us from gender legislation LOL! Bullshit. The gender recognition would never have passed in an independent Scotland because it would have been thrown out of parliament by the public.
We’d have our own constitution & our own way to sack politicians.
It was passed (against public opinion) because we have the fcked up Westminster system where we can’t sack politicians who go off script.
The UK government is becoming increasingly fascist & totalitarian & with two parties singing from the same deplorable hymn sheet. We need out more than ever.
SNP won’t do it, their gig is up, but another party will rise.
Mac, what use would Farage be for a UK nationalist party?
It used to be too wee, too poor etc to be independent. Now it’s too chaotic to be independent according to some commenters.
Scotland has badly needed to regain independence for 316 years, and still does, as much ever. Wait for conditions to be right for independence and you will never do anything except wait.
If the findings on the EveryDoctor site, check out their NHS Privatisation Map, ever get aired by the MSM then it could easily scupper Labour’s chances.
Keir Starmer over £150,000 from US donors whose primary interest is private health care and breaking into the UK market. Many other Labour MPs also highlighted on their map. Yvette Cooper being the worst and third highest behind two Tories, John Redwood and I forget the other one’s name.
Of course you would expect the few left leaning rags to keep schtum about it. The Daily Heil etc. may be sitting on it until nearer the election.
? brilliant, well played ?
Beauvais
Exactly.
We need to get out. Scotland isn’t even in the same room never mind on the same page as England & what’s more the voters seem perfectly happy with voting for shite – AGAIN.
Starmer has had to ditch the working class to even get within a sniff of power. Just as Blair had to before him. & Sunak had to be personally selected by MPs (he’d never have been voted in otherwise) to do the racists bidding.
Whoever said we share the same values as next door is clearly deaf as well as dumb.
We’re not heading their direction. With the new police laws at their disposal they’re only set to get worse.
Trying to guess political outcomes is as fraught with uncertainty as using a McGills timetable to guess when the next bus will arrive, if at all.
@Effijy 10:08
Still banging on about BoJo.
Get a life.
BTW, it’s “Shotts”. Show some respect for your own culture.
@Beauvais
Too thick, too corrupt, too woke. That’s our politicos.
Things have changed.
Just don’t call it progress.
Chic McGregor
They all have shares in energy & medical.
Lining their own pockets.
I don’t get the dependants on here. (Unless they’re rUK)
Scotland will be starved of funding for our NHS.
They spend less then we get less – that’s how the pocket money works.
Instead of clapping for the NHS it’ll be dig deeper if you want to keep it. Even though there is nothing wrong with it & it’s the bureaucracy & management that’s drowning it.
Geri
Innarestin to see dated concepts like the “working class” getting an airing.
As the UK has spent 20 years importing people to do the work, the reality is that the working class are becoming a different ethnicity to the rest of us.
That complicates politics quite a bit.
Over 1 million foreigners chose to come to the UK last year, but don’t let that fact interfere with your “they’re all wacists” fiction.
Willie @ 9:08 am
“Frankly I wonder who cares about child benefits being restricted”
Scotland’s historic low birth rate is no accident, it is directly related to government policies. Policy on housing, education, health, law, employment, immigration, media, gender-identity, ‘benefits’ etc etc are all essential influences of the low birth rate. Even the previous 2011 census told us that Scotland’s population was only growing since around 2000 through in-migration and this process has accelerated since then. That essentially means Scots are being replaced with people holding to other identities.
Geri, I was wondering if you actually live in Scotland? You seem to have great faith in the Scottish people, who in my experience are politically ignorant. We allowed ourselves to be conned by Murrell & Co for years, haven’t any idea what an independent Scotland will look like, have costed none of our few actual policies and over the last twenty years have been content to let someone else worry about the safety of our women and kids.
The Tories DID save us because we as a nation are too damned lazy to conduct our own affairs or take responsibility for anything.
We have allowed ourselves to be dominated by crooks and sexual deviants of all descriptions our young people seem to have relapsed into the old Scottish crime of sectarianism or are addicted to social media.
We get the leaders we deserve I suppose.
O/T: Independence Live now streaming the Stirling Directive event.
@Geri
There is only 1 Scottish MP on the map. No prizes for guessing who.
@sarah
Yeah, the sound quality was insufferabley bad, I pulled out of the stream. Disappointing doesn’t begin to cover it.
@ Chic McGregor: sound quality is always a problem BUT I feel we must stick with it to show support for the people who are working so incredibly hard to try to win our freedom. [I only have hearing in one ear so find it a struggle to listen but it’s the least I can do!]
IndyLive should just give up if this is the best they can do. Only 140 people left watching, no-one can hear a thing.
All bigged up and going nowhere. A farce like this does the movement a lot of harm.
sarah says:
22 July, 2023 at 1:12 pm
@ Chic McGregor: sound quality is always a problem BUT I feel we must stick with it to show support for the people who are working so incredibly hard to try to win our freedom. [I only have hearing in one ear so find it a struggle to listen but it’s the least I can do!]
NO! We do not ‘stick with it’
Either we fund IndyLive properly and they spend the money on suitable equipment and find people who know what they are doing or they give up. They are making us a laughing stock with productions this bad.
akenaton
Governments come & go.
Every five yrs – or whatever term we set, they can be replaced.
We dunno what shit will be ahead but we definitely know what shit we’re leaving behind. A dysfunctional union that only serves one master no matter what shit England elects.
The union is dead.
John Main, if it walks like a duck.
They drive around in vans & break international laws on refugees. They ARE racist. Johnny foreigner is the scapegoat. The Tories & labour set the immigration laws. They do the same as they did with the French – someone else can pay for it. Yet saps like you lap up the daily fail bullshit it’s someone else’s fault, it’s the French, it’s the EU, it’s the ppl traffickers – nope, it’s government failures to implement their own policies – too busy stealing from the treasury pot themselves to be fckin about with immigration centers.
Link for text of the Stirling Directive.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/07/22/stirling-directive-full-text/
Ian Brotherhood says:
22 July, 2023 at 1:27 pm
Link for text of the Stirling Directive.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/07/22/stirling-directive-full-text/
I see nothing new, and who exactly is reading this?
Alf Baird @11.58am
Absolutely bang on Mr Baird about indigenous Scots being replaced with people from elsewhere. Like Ulster before it the Plantation of Scotland is well underway.
It is a strategy well practiced before by our Southern neighbour.
You make mention of the 2011 census figures Mr Baird but do we not have figures more recent than that. Was there not a census a few years ago that could tell us all about the demographic change in Scotland through immigration from most especially our southern neighbour. Certainly seems from what one sees and hears that huge areas of Scotland are being inundated with immigrants from the south. You can hear it very clearly when you go to the north of Scotland and the Scottish Islands but their are huge influxes into our cities too.
So why do we not have the figures? Could they be being hidden from us. And who is doing the hiding.
Colonialism is a dirty filthy business. The British exterminated out Indian tribes in North America using small pox. In Tasmania in Australia they wiped out all the local aborigines. And the reservations, that was another beloved policy.
And of course, our neighbour Ireland sustained horrendous death and emigration when the the famines struck in the mid 1800s and when the British shipped out corn and other food stocks as a weapon to cull the Irish. ( and ditto the Scottish Clearances of which little or nothing is taught in Scottish schools)
But yes, England has catch’d Scotland and now will hold it fast. The land and the resources that is but not the people.
@Wil!ie.
The Registers of Scotland clearly show that English in flow to Scotland is way below that of other countries. I know people think it is numerous. but actually it is not.
P!enty of Scots also move to England.
Bob Mack@2.13pm
Not sure the points that you are making. Scotland has a population of just over 5 million. England has a population of over 56 million, which is ten times the size of Scotland.
Based on limited arithmetical logic, if ten percent of England moved to Scotland it would completely equal Scotland’s present population whilst a 100 percent of export of the present Scottish population would only have a ten percent impact on England.
I’d be delighted however to see the numbers.
Not sure either about the comment that you make about the inflow of English to Scotland is way below other countries.
Alf @11.58am.
How man generations of these incomers will it take for them to realise that they need independence, two, three, four? Its all but certain the majority of the first two will vote for the status quo.
And what of our culture and history the first generation (those moving from England to Scotland) will have absolutely no interest in it they’ll bring their own culture, again how many generations will it take for Scottish culture to come to the top with them in mind, I fear it won’t.
There’s a huge change underway in Scotland at the moment and its detrimental not just to Scottish independence, but to the very idea of, if you like Scottishness, no defeat by the auld enemy could’ve accomplished what is happening right now, Westminster with the aid of House Jocks is close to subduing Scottish hopes of dissolving the union for the foreseeable future.
With regard to population replacement being used as a means of cultural genocide look up Operation Lentil. It is not just the West which has blood on its hands.
Re Scotland being colonised by England, take a walk around Glasgow city centre. I work with my eyes, during lockdown I saw what I think may have been him from Rape Crisis Edinburgh in George Square talking to the New Scots who now sit on the benches there. In February in Union Street I saw three New Scots arguing over a half ounce of heroin which they had just nodded up the street to our own drug afflicted to alert them to, they were waiting up closer to the Gordon Street end to score.
Re Scotland only taking five hundred refugees, all five hundred of them ride around the pavements of Govanhill on electric powered bicycles by the look of it.
Start paying attention to newspapers which are owned by non Scots and the articles in them penned by non Scots calling for pregnant Africans to be brought to Scotland to give birth followed by an article by the same activist, sorry, journalist, decrying the two child benefit cap.
@Ian
Thanks for the link
@Sarah
That’s me telt. But honestly, could hardly understand a word.
Apropos of nothing really, a real non-sequitor, as I am well out of it all – the binfire that is Scotland as I have been living in Hungary now these last two years. The phrase, ‘turning in his grave’ brought this irony to mind. The phrase was used recently by a journo in reference to the newly elected Keir Maher’s namesake (Keir Hardie) – who is a 25 year-old entitled eejit of a gay guy who refers to feminists as transphobes etc. etc. (yawn). And then I joined up the phrase,’turning in his grave’ thinking of the Scottish Poet, Edwin Morgan (also a magyarphile), who left One million quid!!! in his will to the Scottish National Party in 2010, who really must be turning in his grave at all these current SNP fuckers.
Now that has to be the very definition of irony if ever i saw it.
@ Chic McGregor: you have to suffer for Scotland’s sake! 🙂
It would be interesting to see polling on independence voting intentions by English people who live inScotland. John Curtice?
Belter Chris unfortunately it only serves to highlight how totally fecked the working classes are, especially we Scots
We are not only served by trai to rous scum we are hobbled by stupid Scots who keep electing that scum , and we have a more stupid english electorate who keep foisting their scum onto us
Humza Yusaf may have had a lifebelt thrown to him by Kid Starver and his Scottish bag man. But he is also quietly helping himself to the YES movement. I noticed a picture in the National where he was photographed with YES placards and flags. The article said he was campaigning in Dundee as “…part of the SNP’s summer of independence” and “making the case that the SNP is the only party willing to stand up for the interests of Scotland…”
There was nothing to indicate that the SNP were involved at all. This is not the first time he has done this. Earlier this year he ‘borrowed’ a street stall from YESGovan and used it to promote the SNP and himself.
I am not an SNP member but I am a member of my local YES group. I strongly object to the YES movement being appropriated in this way.
If anyone sees this around the country, please call him out on this.
@ Bob Mack
Can you provide a link to that data from the Registers of Scotland. Had a quick search on phone as out and aboot today, but wasn’t able to see specific or open pdf files. I’d be interested to study it later.
There was this article from a few months back. And I’ve also recently had a chat with a health worker who stated out 200 newborn children in my area, only 20 bairns were to both Scottish parents, which is really quite astonishing when you think about.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/healthy-demographics/
Said a couple of days back in sort of jest, that Scottish seals seems to have more rights to exist and thrive in Scotland than our own young adults, a point proven by their successful land grabbing exploits and increased breeding rates when compared to Scottish humanoids.
willie @ 1:55 pm
“So why do we not have the figures? Could they be being hidden from us.”
According to census records Scotland’s population stalled at around 5 million between 1950s and 2000. Scotland’s birth rate remained fairly positive but higher out-migration of Scots (heavily incentivised until 1970s followed by major de-industralisation and mass unemployment in 1970s-90s) over much of the period held back natural growth of the indigenous population.
It is mainly since ‘devolution’ in 1999 (i.e. colonial administration) that Scotland’s population has fundamentally altered, with in-migration steadily rising above out-migration, and the Scottish birthrate falling to its lowest on record. This means Scots are not reproducing themselves and the population is now only growing through in-migration.
By around 2013, Scotland’s population had grown by some half a million to around 5.5m in little over a decade. There are now suggestions that the more recent ‘hidden’ census could show that Scotland’s population has risen even faster to 6 million or more, a rise of another half a million or so within the past decade. The majority (i.e. above 50%) of migrants coming into Scotland come from one country, England, and this has been the case over most of the period since the ‘union’.
A population rise of 20% (approx 1 million) mainly through in-migration from England in barely 20 years is quite remarkable, more especially for a country experiencing near zero economic growth.
Lack of sovereignty means a lack of control over most matters of national importance including a nation’s population, inevitably with very serious outcomes in terms of the constitutional question and more. It is quite clear that Scotland’s population has been intentionally reduced historically since the UK ‘union’, and is still being ‘managed’ by the British state today (who else?), albeit not in the interests of Scots or independence.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/determinants-of-independence-demographics-2/
Alf Baird,
Colonialism has changed the Scottish population.
But not because there is evidence of a union actually having taken place or proceeded past the starting point , other than what Englands governments propaganda tell us to believe and we fall for the hoax treaty hook line and sinker.
Today Scotland and its nation still are taken in by the hoax and propaganda that spews forth, , and seem to think that is a better outcome than acknowledging they were hoodwinked.
It seems to be about saving face rather than facts.
Alf Baird
It seems entirely plausible that Scotland’s population is 6 mill or more, and it seems entirely plausible that the majority of immigration comes from England.
It seems implausible that this is “managed”. If you have evidence that this state of affairs is being “managed” can you provide it?
People will be fleeing the increasingly difficult and declining conditions in England, to a better situation in Scotland. This will happen naturally, it needs no malign influences to make it happen.
That’s how it looks to me.
@Alf Baird (5.45) –
Looking at those figures, it’s hard to see how we can go into another referendum with any confidence unless the franchise is amended.
Today’s Stirling Directive contains a paragraph to that effect but doesn’t go into any great detail, just says it should be residency-based.
Have been reading ‘Wretched of the Earth’ and it’s mind-blowing, forced me to reassess the whole thing from square one. That’s why I’m now questioning the wisdom of pressing for a referendum anytime soon – perhaps more effective to start severing ties with Westminster and UK institutions as far as possible.
If Scotgov can’t or won’t make a stand on our behalf then we’ll have to do it ourselves. How? I don’t know. But we, the citizens, have to do something because it’s been plain for a while that our ‘representatives’ have no intention of lifting a finger for anything other than virtue-signalling pish.
@ Scots Renewables at 1.20: “Either we fund IndyLive properly and …or they give up.”
That is the problem apparently – they have had a crowdfunder since January 2023 for £6500 which has garnered £3808. independencelive.net/crowdfunder
My spouse born and bred where he still lives, cannot find a local anywhere,
He went back to his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents house to see it,
The house was inhabited from someone south of the border,
And when checking for a chat with old neighbours couldn’t find one in the radius of five miles,
When we eventually found a old couple, they were so pleased to hear a old neighbour, we were invited in for tea and bannocks and ended up staying for two hours reminising, about old other old neighbours as they had no locals in their area,
It was sad that the newbee’s were fenced and gated of with private no entry or trespassers will be prosecuted signs, away all day with no connection to the wider Country or neighbor.
Most did not know whom their next door neighbour was, indeed their culture of mistrust was bought in with them and amplified.
Because in that community for hundreds of years in the past every one chatted and knew each other and helped each other out.
My spouses family ran the local mill for generation after generation.
Sad, so sad,
I think you have to be voluntary blind not to see the increased activity and advertising in Brit nat papers for Scotlands housing market, houses and land for sale in Scotland, destinations and holiday homes for sale compared to say 20 years back,
Managed, certainly media managed, and whom manages the media in Britain,
Along with all the small agri grants which bought hundreds of horse lovers and alpaca’ lamas and then the other group that are here under rewilding Scotland with governments funding also.
Definately managed and advertised in media,
John Main says: at 6:22 pm
“It seems implausible that this is “managed”…”
Aye, there’s an awful lot of stuff that seems implausible to you though so no great surprise there.
You even regularly comment about migration and the factors that influence it, and yet you fail to see anything untoward in Scotland’s situation.
How blind or dumb do you have to be ignore the reams of evidence of the disparity in population growth and demographic figures over the past few hundred years for the two Kingdoms in this supposed equal union.
No constituent part of the UK should have advantage over another… yet the KoE was approximately 5 times greater than the KoS in 1700, but now it’s 10 times larger. So London Rule restricts KoS’s population growth and extracts wealth from us by with the policies it has implemented over 300 years, then once Scotland is effectively down to bare bones and weak to the point of failing, initiate strategies that create the environment for immigrants to pile in.
If all these English folk that have moved to Scotland thought it was so shite in their own homeland, then it’s a pity those circumstances didn’t motivate them to do something about it, rather than just taking the easy way out and decamping to a better life up here with all the negative that creates for our own young Scots. Nearly quarter of a million quid for a poorly insulated pokey wee cottage in my area now.
Good luck getting a mortgage for that as a young indigenous local working at Tescos on a part time contract…
Ian Brotherhood – The only problem with your idea is the Westminster and UK Institutions are the only ones that work. Your own Jim Sillars has been saying that for years. Scotland is in no shape to go it alone and will not be for a long time. The SNP have had time enough to ruin Scotland and that is what they have done.
I cannot express the depth of contempt I feel for our politicians who are still refusing to take any action to affirm Scotland’s right to withdraw from the Union or even consult the Sovereign People.
The only way to protect our culture and social attitudes, such as described by James Che above, is to regain our separate statehood.
It is the same in my locality, James. On my rural road of 4 small crofting townships [no longer properly crofted – just sheep] there is a handful of local families. They are completely outweighed by incomers, and not Scottish – most of them very pleasant and willing to integrate but it isn’t the same as having centuries-long connections. And of course house prices have rocketed completely out of reach of local families.
The way of life that served for so long has gone – the last dairy cow for a crofting family was in the 1970’s, the last hay crop perhaps in the 1990’s. The people who fished commercially from the crofts finished in the 1980’s. In the whole district there is only 1 speaker of Lochbroom Gaelic, a lady well up in years. My old neighbours wrote and sang songs in Gaelic as a normal thing to do, as part of their ordinary life, not as musicians. It makes my husband and myself very sad to see the changes, all for the worse.
This is why we do what we can to try to rescue Scotland from being overwhelmed by a destructive neighbour’s influence. Until our politicians can be brought to see and do the right thing we can only apply pressure – and we think that the http://www.liberation.scot route is worth following and is something we can all sign up to as it is non-party political.
@ Captain Yossarian: “Scotland is in no shape to go it alone and will not be for a long time.”
Captain, I know plenty of people who could run Scotland perfectly well right now, as I expect do you. You are correct about our politicians and controlling civil servants – awful, useless individuals, but they need not be the ones in charge.
Get the Sovereign People back in the driving seat choosing representatives plus some of the most capable of our existing politicians [Alex Salmond, Joanna Cherry, Kenny MacAskill, Neale Hanvey, Douglas Chapman..].
@Captain Yossarian (7.15) –
I’m not claiming to have any answers or ‘ideas’ that haven’t been tossed around a thousand times previously.
And you may well be right about WM/UK institutions being more functional than those we have in Scotland but that’s no reason to stay attached to anyone’s apron strings.
Ian Brotherhood – If you cast your mind back to the Fabiani Inquiry. My experience has been that this is very typical of the Scottish civil-service and has been for the past 10-years. Operation Branchform will, we all hope, turn a corner and prove to us Scots that, in Police Scotland, there is something worth saving. It’s not a case of being tied to apron strings because these people can do lasting damage to you with impunity and you only need to look at the Salmond example. I made my mind-up after watching Fabiani that Holyrood wasn’t for me and I think that, as a former Labour supporter, Labour could be just as bad for Scotland as the SNP have been. I think the Nationalists have a credible message, but they need to start again from the bottom up because no-one wants a continuation of this.
Sarah – I agree with you to a point, but Alex Salmond is not a popular public figure any longer. I trust him, but the majority don’t. That’s a result of the treatment that he has had at the hands of the Scottish civil-service and Police. Formerly trusted institutions that let us all down because when the Police charge someone and take him to the High Court, that is not easily forgotten in Scotland because we all grew-up trusting the Police and we find it hard to believe that they could have got it so wrong. I have respect for Kenny MacAskill but it’s not going to be enough. The public should support all of you and they clearly don’t.
@Captain Yossarian (7.59) –
Yes, agreed.
Alba is the ‘starting again from the bottom up’ and it doesn’t matter if some folk still don’t trust or like Alex Salmond. He’s said that himself. Alba has all the genuine activists now.
If SNP can’t/won’t commit to the Scotland United initiative then it’s finished, just as Labour slipped the noose over its own neck by ‘getting in bed’ with you-know-who. No-one expects Alba to work miracles so the real losers, yet again, are those who simply want an independence party they can trust which is also in a position to effect real change.
That’s why more of us (and this is just a gut-feeling, I can’t back it up with anything) are placing whatever faith we have left in the constitutional route. I still haven’t digested the SALVO/Liberation Scotland latest but it appears to broach the franchise problem. If that garners enough interest and support to make Alba look at serious franchise review then it’ll be worth it.
You state that Nationalists have a credible message, and that’s true. It’s just a shame that they don’t happen to be in the SNP/Green government.
This is all getting a bit delusional.
People move to Scotland from all parts of the U.K., entirely voluntarily, without any Government plan, and for their own reasons: work, for love, for environmental reasons, retirement, because it’s more affordable (outwith Edinburgh) than most places in England. Thinking that there’s some secret state plan to replace Scots with incomers is absolutely senseless.
A lot of Scots move to other parts of the U.K. as well, for all of the same reasons. I did.
As for restricting the franchise of any future Indyref to native born Scots, that’s insane. It would be challenged by judicial review if even suggested. And there’s 750,000 Scots born people living in England, Wales and NI who would crowdfund some very sharp lawyers to make a case at the judicial review. I suspect most of us would vote No, as we are quite happy with the status quo.
John Main @ 6:22 pm
“If you have evidence that this state of affairs is being “managed” can you provide it?”
It is well established that a great many states and especially imperial powers (including Britain) have implemented population policies, such as those of resettlement, in order to strengthen the racial character of regions perceived to be either depopulated or ‘under threat’ by ethnic groups seeking e.g. greater autonomy, self-determination, or independence / decolonization.
Significant (if not dramatic) recent and ongoing patterns of demographic change occurring within Scotland, where the indigenous ethnic group seek independence, appear to reflect such a ‘population policy’; the latter would of course be expected to be mostly covert, which may explain the still ‘hidden’ recent census results.
John Main
Of course we are managed.
The clearances never ended.
There are young man still living with their parents up north & on the islands because they’ve no place to live. Huge PRIVATE estates (owned by English) so no land to build on or tent farmers thrown off the land by land agents with extortionate rates knowing fine well the farmer will be forced out so they can make way for holiday homes & lets.
These pricks think they’re *managing the land* because Scots are too stupid to do it themselves & it’d be reduced to scrub land & laid waste if we didn’t have them to totally control it. As long as Lord hee-haw, from mount bollocks, has a pretty herb garden shaped as a Celtic cross eh? He thinks he’s *giving back*
The island of Islay, stunning. PRIVATE. Whole town wiped out. No schools now & no residents. Close the Brewery – replace it with fck all – ppl leave to find work elsewhere.
Also whole waterfront property of offices in Edinburgh. Abandoned & left to rot in a prime location. Andy Wightman traced it to the Cayman isles to an *anonymous* owner & that’s where it ended..
Huge swathes of Scotland sold to anonymous ppl. You don’t need to be Einstein to know it’s the English selling & buying it. It’s not us eh?
That was another reason to Brexshit. EU were introducing land registry. Who owned what & where. The Brit establishment couldn’t have that made public.
You must live in a world where blinkers come fitted as standard..
So there’s huge private estates, foreign owners of waterfront offices, no land to build on, no work, beautiful dilapidated towns not for sale in an area crying out for somewhere to live …but you don’t see any evidence we’re managed ffs! ppffftt!
Andy Wightman could put you right. Scotland’s land reform was shelved by Sturgeon & Harvie made sure he left the Greens. Sabatours for the Brit nat state. Liars who promised reform & did absolutely fck all unless it was Trans..
@sarah
Oh I have done. 56 years in the SNP until recently, at least hundreds of miles tramping streets delivering leaflets, canvassing. Innumerable party meetings, conferences. Have even stood (under duress) for election. A Founder of private think tanks on indy from pre-browser days. A founder of Independence First which had the first marches on Holyrood for independence and innumerable on line posts and private emails regarding independence. Wrote a Scottish constitution in 1997. Involved in a serious supplication to the UN regarding UK goverment infringement of Scotland’s right to self determination. Been there, done that and even designed the T-shirt.
Ian Brotherhood.
I’m hoping they take it all the way to decolonisation.
It’s my understanding there are strict UN observation & the franchise is strictly limited.
This needs to be done externally, imo.
Working with our imperial masters on a domestic footing is bound to fail. They’ll just rig it again with the breaking Purdah etc.
I’ll be voting for Alba/United for Holyrood but hope Liberation & Salvo carry it through too & everyone comes together.
Re, Grouser
They’ve been doing that for yrs. Especially in WM when a Tory wants to slag off AUOB & the YES movement as being a nuisance with the resident SNP Holiday rep chiming in to agree its embarrassing. As he always did in the SNP fanzine with his buddie Neil Mackay for the Herald. The YES placards are just props they use for a photo & electioneering.
A Scot Abroad says: at 8:38 pm
“People move to Scotland from all parts of the U.K., entirely voluntarily, without any Government plan, and for their own reasons: work, for love, for environmental reasons, retirement, because it’s more affordable (outwith Edinburgh) than most places in England…”
Ding Dong! Winner! Aye, a pokey wee cottage at over 200k is more affordable to them than it is to a young local.
Christ, even “Show me the money” Main might just begin to grasp this now, or he’ll maybe just double up on the blinkers in the Plato’s cave dweller stylée he seems to revel in.
@ Chic: I feel exhausted just reading your CV! You are a hero. I think that perhaps you are entitled to retire and cultivate your garden now. Or at least pick and choose what campaigns/events you will engage with. 🙂
Alf
I believe that happened in 2014.
Remember the BBC was reporting *tens of thousands* of ppl registering to vote across Scotland only a week out from the vote.
In a two yr campaign ppl seriously left it that late to register? I don’t think so!
Geri,
“…EU were introducing land registry. Who owned what & where. The Brit establishment couldn’t have that made public.”
There’s always been a public record of who (or which company, charity, trust etc) owns property or land in Scotland:
https://www.ros.gov.uk/our-registers/land-register-of-scotland
If it’s a company, trust, or charity that can then be looked up on different registers. There might be a few that are abroad, but it’s not very many.
The biggest landowner in Scotland is a Dane.
@Geri (9.00 & 9.17) –
Hear hear hear.
If you fancied gathering those thoughts together I’m pretty sure Off-Topic Scotland would be interested in publishing.
offtopicscotland@protonmail.com
Dan,
almost all property in Scotland is privately owned. The social (and similar) housing sector is around 7% of all properties. And privately owned property is bought and sold on the open market.
So, is it part of your Scots Indy master plan that you are going to change that? That people will be offered different selling prices, depending upon who they are? Or maybe just nationalise the lot?
That’s not going to be popular.
John Main says
Everyone is banging on
And he’s right.
That’s for keeping everyone right.
You really should have your very own blog to save you blagging this one.
Just think you could block any negatives about Tories or Boris or heavens forbid Scotland good.
Salivate yourself to sleep on that thought but remember to tell everyone where to find your other blog.
Effijy, re your 10:15pm comment,
what’s the point of having two separate echo chambers, when the point is debate? Or if debate becomes too polite and erudite a concept, at least an exchange of views?
Nobody ever came out wiser from an echo chamber than they went into it.
@sarah
No hero, just the same as most thinking folk. We try to get away from it, back to a normal life, but the continuing injustices, propaganda and sheer smugness of our self-appointed ‘betters’ is intolerable and infuriating and promotes a response even in feeble old age. We have no choice, no buckets of sand deep enough to stick our head in for any lasting peace.
Good to see the Alba Party youth convenor Christina Henry sending an email out, calling on the BBC to take the opportunity to step in an secure the Scottish National Football Team games for everyone to enjoy.
I think of old people stuck in care homes, hospital wards with the limited channels they have.
Alongside the rest of the nation of Scotland, who want to see Steve Clarke’s heroes on the television.
The Alba Party. A party that’s listening outstanding!
Chic McGregor @ 9:12 pm
“Oh I have done. 56 years in the SNP”
Ever done a reasoned analysis of colonial society, though?
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
@ Geri at 9.38
I don’t doubt for a moment that some people who were not ordinarily resident in Scotland signed up in 2014. But there were also a significant number who had either never seen the point of voting, or who had dropped off the electoral roll because of the poll tax. You’ll remember that councils tried to take advantage of that after the referendum, till Alex Salmond stopped them.
At our Yes hub, in a town of about 50,000 people, we advertised the deadlines for registering to vote (which was 2 September, so no-one registered “only a week” in advance) and for applying for postal and proxy votes. We had a stock of forms, and checked that they had been filled in correctly before taking them to the Joint Valuation Board offices*. Between our hub, and our activists who canvassed the queues at the job centre, we helped well over a thousand people to register; whether they actually voted, of course, we couldn’t know.
If every council area added 1-2 thousand voters that way, then it would have increased the total by “tens” of thousands, and yes, a lot of them were last minute.
*The rules have changed since, so now we couldn’t do that. People must register themselves, but we could still, I think, provide forms and check the information.
@ A Scot Abroad
There are numerous ideas and proposals for addressing housing issues in Scotland over on Common Weal’s site should you or anyone else care to consider alternative strategies and initiatives.
https://commonweal.scot/library/policy/?_sft_subject=housing
Do you even acknowledge there are serious fundamental flaws in the current housing setup when young people cannot afford either the rents or mortgages on property in their locales?
Best hope that holiday cottage of yours in Perthshire doesn’t catch fire as all the old retirees and holiday home owners have displaced so many young able bodied folk out of the communities there that the fire services in some of the towns now struggle to muster a crew.
Nothing says an area is a thriving success more than a load of smouldering ashes that were once valuable holiday homes because there isn’t adequate fire service cover in the area…
Hi James Che.
Your continual use of the word “whom” when you actually mean “who” is really jarring.
You type,
Most did not know whom their next door neighbour was, indeed their culture of mistrust was bought in with them and amplified.
and
Managed, certainly media managed, and whom manages the media in Britain
when you actually mean “who”. I have explained to you, previously, the difference between “who” and “whom”.
“YOU do something to IT/THEM”. Similarly, Who does something to whom? “Who” does something; “Whom” is to what that something is done.
It has nothing to do with dyslexia. “Who” is the active element; “whom” is the passive element.
IE: “Most did not know WHO their next door neighbour was”
and
Managed, certainly media managed, and WHO manages the media in Britain
Who does the bell toll for; it tolls for whom it tolls.
Please accept this comment as educational, not critical.
@Alf
Thanks for that, I will read your paper and comment tomorrow.
For now, in short answer to your question, I have engaged in very considerable analysis of colonial mindsets and control mechanisms in my longish life but more tomorrow, time for my horlicks.
Dan,
That holiday cottage in Perthshire is on the farm my sister and I jointly own, where she and her husband farm the land and live in the big house. If someone inspired by you were to burn it down, then they’ve just burned the cottage of a Scotswoman and Scotsman. My sister hasn’t ever lived outside of Scotland apart from 3 years of university, and is unlike me, who she calls wandering Jack. She’s a Scot who stays at home, makes a living from the land, and employs Scots. I’m a Scot abroad, almost always have been since I was an adult.
There’s three other cottages on the farm, let out at well below market rents to some of the farm employees. It’s her business, I’m just the silent partner in the capital. She runs it.
You
What’s the first step to international recognition and what exact action, is that recognition of? It’s all a bit vague. I’m becoming weary of all the dancing around the main issue.. A fraudulent Scottish Parliament, devoid of democratic process. Sue the bastards!
@A Scot Abroad –
On a school trip (1974-ish) we were taken to Saltcoats.
A big bus arrived.
It was very exciting.
On the way down the radio played a dedication for us, it was one of the girls had sent in the request. Radio Clyde. We all went a bit mental. (It was Abba – Waterloo)
When we got to that section of road where the sea-line first becomes visible, one of the guys wet himself. He had never see the sea, he couldn’t compute the size of it.
We must’ve been about 11 years old at the time.
@ ASA
And do you actually have anything of substance to add on the subjects of young folk being unable to afford to rent or buy properties in their locales, or the fact that the fire service cover in these rural areas is comprised.
It was so obvious you would respond taking the line that I was somehow trying to inspire fire raising, instead of actually dealing with the aspects that communities’ viability and sustainability are being compromised due to unaddressed socio-economic issues.
Crazy cat
I stand corrected. The report was actually 2 weeks out (BBC Article dated 2nd Sept 2014.
I’ll try link the article direct in another post incase it goes into moderation
It says..
***Figures obtained by Scotland 2014 show in the past seven days Glasgow received more than 9,000 applications, Renfrewshire 5,000, and Shetland and Orkney almost 1,000.
Edinburgh has received 30,000 in the past couple of months. Several other centres said they had “backlogs” but they would meet the deadline of processing them by 11 September.
Other areas, such as the Scottish Borders, Dundee, Highland, Angus, and Perth and Kinross said they have seen “unprecedented” numbers.
In most areas, registration staff worked through the weekend and until midnight on Monday and will be working until midnight on Tuesday/Wednesday to cope with demand.**
That’s an awful lot of late entries. Did they have to provide residential details? I know the objective was obviously to get ppl out to vote but those amounts just seemed odd to me at the time with only 2 weeks to go.
//www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29024311
“ Geri @0446 am “ . I thought at the time the high percentage of postal votes was “ highly suspicious” . I recall thinking that it would only take a few thousand votes per constituency to “ rig it” . Recent events as regards “ leadership elections” and Murrell’s “ liaison “ with security services does nothing whatsoever to allay my suspicions .
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snps-stephen-flynn-writes-to-uks-top-civil-servant-demanding-answers-over-independence-spending-probe-4228201
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/royal-aide-quits-job-after-30529845
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/humza-yousaf-says-support-independence-30529690
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snp-ministers-shamed-scotlands-workless-30527929
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/snp-tory-donations-police-scotland
2 years ago, even senior figures in the Tory party were conceding that Scottish independence was “inevitable”.
Then NS resigns and the SNP’s most established policians duck the opportunity to lead us to the sunlit uplands.
It all seems very strange.
If wrongdoing has occurred, any financial irregularities are likely to be a useful smokescreen to obscure much more disturbing political corruption that has blighted any claim that Scotland is capable of self-governance.
The good people in the SNP have been castrated and it is very difficult to identify any serving minister who commands respect.
Were there to be a referendum today, I would vote no.
The reasons are pragmatic rather than ideological. It would not be safe to transfer more power to either the SNP or the Holyrood parish Council.
2 years from inevitable independence to not a cat in hells chance.
That is the scale of Sturgeon’s achievement.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeons-book-publisher-collapses-30527219.amp
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/readers-letters-time-to-rein-in-snp-when-it-comes-to-reserved-matters-4226444
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-left-snp-deeply-30512146
https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/snp
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/snp/index.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/nicola-sturgeon
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-mps-spend-thousands-expenses-30530542
Viscount Ennui – I’m all agreed on that. There was always two competing visions for independence:
1. By Sturgeon and Swinney
2. By Salmond and MacAskill
Sadly, the Press preferred option 1 and called Sturgeon a great communicator and that meant that we all listened to option 1 rather than option 2.
I am personally relaxed to see the Nationalists do well because most of what you read on WoS is agreeable to me and that is Nationalism.
They need to regroup under a new leadership and get some new ideas, or restate some of the old ideas with renewed energy and get the facts researched and underpinned with some rigour.
That’s what I reckon. The movement has been let-down by a pair of bad leaders who were only ever in it for themselves, a complicit civil-service (including the Police), lawyers and a lickspittle Press.
Captain. Why was this situation regarding M&Co allowed to come about? A number of people on this forum pointed out years ago that Nicola was more interested in twisting social issues than advancing the cause of independence and they were ignored or vilified.
Does the bright image of sunlit uplands, misty mountains and tartan blind us to the reality that we are one of the most politically inept, or corrupt nations in the West.
Captain Yossarian
Westminster is in no shape to run the United Kingdoms, and will not be until the economic disasters perpetrated by Gordon Brown / Liz Truss and Brexit are negated.
You’ve got to wonder if the present incarnation of Labour at Holyrood are any better than the old incarnations? Maybe they’ve just learned from the Swinney and Sturgeon years that, in Scotland, all you need is a compliant Press on your side and that means you can get away with just about anything. There should be a lot more to being successful at governing than capturing the Press, but I’m not sure that there is. The Press always used to be seen as championing democracy, but I’m at a loss to work out what remnants of a Press that remain in Scotland actually represent? We cannot do without them, but there is an argument that they actually do more harm than good.
Oneliner – The Salmond trial and the revelation that the rape victim was not even in the building at the time, the jailing of Murray for the crime of jigsaw identification, the Fabiani Inquiry and Operation Branchform put Holyrood miles ahead of Westminster in all matrices which are bad.
Dan
Nobody is denying that locals have been priced out of rural properties. It’s a problem affecting the entire UK.
It stems from an every increasing discrepancy between the number of residential properties and the number of people. The completely unsustainable increases in the number of people is cheered on wildly by some on here as it “shafts England” or some such puerile nonsense.
I questioned Alf Baird’s assertion that this was “managed” by nefarious, shadowy actors in order to damage Indy. His response clarified that he has no evidence to back up his assertion.
Your response clarified that when given the opportunity to misrepresent one of my posts, you will always seize it.
There are more people just about everywhere than there are homes for them. The obvious answer is to build homes and supporting infrastructure, everywhere. There are two problems with that: 1 Money will have to be taken from something else – I don’t know where – but like everybody else on here, I will scream blue murder if it is something I care about. 2 The vast new building projects will substantially degrade wherever they are put – especially in the remoter areas of Scotland. People will scream blue murder about that too.
Of course, meantime, we could stop importing new people (600 000 last year) and let all these pizzas go undelivered and the elderly bottoms go unwiped, to the screams of blue murder on here about “wacism”, run down of the NHS, etc.
Feel free to suggest your own answers to this UK-wide problem, although a vague assertion that it will all be magically solved in Scotland by Indy, so just have faith, won’t garner much credibility from the rational readers.
Oneliner
How do you propose to negate Brexit?
Does your ignoring of the economic disasters perpetrated by the Chinese Flu and The War signify you can’t be trusted to comment sensibly about the economics of the UK or iScotland?
FFS I’m so glad I’m banned from commenting on Wings. It’s all just a huge wind-up!
Thank you Stu!
Dan – In my days in North Africa, I remember an old guy approached Colonel Gadaffi and said: “I cannot afford to live in this country any longer; I cannot afford a house”. Gadaffi said to him: “Pick any house you want to live in, move in tomorrow and I’ll pay”. Next day of course, hundreds of Tuareg decamped from the desert and moved into luxury apartments in Tripoli and put signs on the doors and windows which said: “We’re with Gadaffi”. A few months later, Gadaffi was dead. Shot by his own people who he had previously thought loved him. So, I don’t fancy the SNP’s chances if they tried to govern in North Africa the way the govern here. As I say above though, Labour could be worse. A better idea may be to decamp of these tools out of Holyrood and use the building for something decent, honest and useful – like a luxury brothel for example.
John Main @ 9:23 am
“His response clarified that he has no evidence to back up his assertion.”
On the contrary, resettlement is a well-established imperial/colonial population policy, you only need to read relevant literature incl many scientific works on the subject to understand that.
In any event, recorded demographic data in Scotland confirms resettlement has occurred here, and in a major way particularly since devolution and the rapid rise of an independence movement amidst calls for independence, and this is an ongoing process.
The more recent and unprecedented ‘hidden’ state census data further suggests confirmation of such a policy, clearly aimed at keeping the natives in the dark as long as possible.
In addition, there is considerable and increasing anecdotal evidence as btl responses here and elsewhere confirm. Plenty of evidence there for those with eyes to see.
Briandoonthetoon,
You’re actually wrong in your sentence, Who does the bell toll for; it tolls for whom it tolls.
It should be For whom does the bell toll; it tolls for whom it tolls, according to your own educational comment. Otherwise, I agree with you!
Although his party (SNP) opposes nukes in Scotland Pete Wishart has said.
“we do recognise the serious implications for the UK and Nato should the nuclear fleet ever be removed from Faslane.””
This was said in mind with terrorist attack on Nordstream II pipelines by Norway and the USA, and that UK under sea cable might also come under attack.
Alf Baird
I don’t know how to write any more clearly than I already have.
The argument is not about immigration to Scotland. That’s an established fact. It’s about whether that immigration is planned or managed as part of some colonialist initiative.
Your latest post again fails to provide any evidence that Scotland’s demographics are being deliberately sabotaged as a means of thwarting Indy.
In the absence of that evidence, simple pressure of numbers, combined with uncontrolled immigration into the UK and the consequent market forces driven explosion in property prices, explains all of Scotland’s population increase.
I find it quietly amusing though, that the posters who cheer on inwards migration to England, in the belief that this will “fuck England”, fail to understand how that process just displaces affluent English buyers over the border into Scotland!
Until Indy, the only consistent and rational attitude that any pro-Indy Scot can adopt is one of total opposition to immigration to the UK. Maybes we can agree on that at least.
No credibility offered on here, of yesterday’s event? No remedy for severe constipation, it would seem the Stirling Directive solely relies on huffing and puffing and a lot of pushing.
The crossword is gonna take a while!
Seriously, is there any plan, by any group, to resolve the democratic process, in Scottish courts? Scots Law commands access to democracy, the UK supreme court has no jurisdiction to deny the people of Scotland that right.
Separately, the devolved parliament is there to be utilised as Westminster sees fit. That control has no bearing on Scots Law and freedom to democratic process!
A Referendum duly enacted as Scots Law sees fit!
What’s the Stirling Directive organisers role in all of this? Are they simply messengers?
“I cannot express the depth of contempt I feel for our politicians who are still refusing to take any action to affirm Scotland’s right to withdraw from the Union or even consult the Sovereign People.”
Scottish MPs have been putting their own interests before that of Scotland’s for centuries and now MSPs are doing the same, only now its getting to a tipping point where if the current MPs/MSPs don’t start acting fast in the interests of Scots via dissolving the union it might be too late with all the incomers from South of border flooding Scotland.
Alex Salmond’s heart is in the right place but even he doesn’t go far enough or is radical enough to get us out of this union, Sturgeon the Judas has done so much damage to the cause that someone one will real courage and a conviction to dissolve the union as FM is required, I see no one at Holyrood or on the horizon (maybe Neale Hanvey) who has what it takes.
“The argument is not about immigration to Scotland.”
Min.
That exactly what its about, Scotland doesn’t have control of who can come to Scotland that is reserved to a foreign country’s Home Office which allows people from a country with a 50 million+ population move to a country with a 5 million+ population and a tipping point will (if not already with regards to ditching this rancid union) be reached.
No other nation in the world allows a foreign country to say who can and can’t live in their country.
The only way to counter this, with dissolving the union in mind, is to make sure that those English incomers (the largest group) are disenfranchised on constitutional voting as some other countries do.
So Part-4 of Hepburn’s and Yousaf’s bog roll, I meant Building a New Scotland (independence prospectus) is out and it all sounds so rosy, everyone will be enfranchised and anyone who wants to be a “New Scot” will be given a Scottish Passport.
Its all pie in the sky bollocks from Hepburn and Yousaf to dupe voters into keeping this lot in office, I don’t know how many papers and plans the SNP has announced and had published via their fanzine the National since Sturgeon the Judas crept into Bute House, and now her puppet successor Yousaf is doing the same.
We’re going nowhere with Yousaf at the helm.
@Republicofscotland (11.00) –
The section of the Stirling Directive mentioning franchise was written by Peter Bell.
Here’s a reply btl on Iain Lawson’s blog, by xaracen:
“should not be a casual achievement”
If you are taxed, then you get a vote in return. Cast iron rule of democracy.
Shame, as everybody in Scotland gets taxed, just about for everything we do.
In one view then, that’s Indy fucked.
Then again, build a case for a low-tax Scotland post-Indy, and every Scottish tax payer, Sovereign and New, might support it.
But as that’s just another variant of “Show us the money”, maybes a non starter.
I was just re-reading this article over on Grousebeater’s site from last week. (not sure why link states _trashed when article is called Selling off Scotland)
https://grousebeater.wordpress.com/2023/07/16/__trashed/
And I notice there’s another one related to Kenmore today.
https://grousebeater.wordpress.com/2023/07/23/the-scottish-ghost-town/
RoS
Norway didn’t blow the pipelines. Get a grip.
I doubt the Great Satan was involved either.
404 is in the frame. Probably entirely by themselves.
The BTL comments get more mental every day.
There is no way on God’s green earth that the franchise for a future IndyRef would allow only ethnically Scottish people (by what criteria? How far back do you have to go? Do you need to prove that a forebear fought at Bannockburn?).
There are some serious idiots commenting BTL. And I’m not in that category.
Brian doonthetoon.
I have had to live with my childhood abusive education a lot longer than you, like myself you will have to learn to live with it.
I can only read and write to a certain degree due to being self taught from a dictionary sitting locked in a bathroom as a child, hardly enough to string sentence together.
My first beatings and caning came at four and a half years old for not speaking the Queens English,
By a teacher that only taught english or british history,
Anything Scots was not allowed,
From a very early age I understood Colonialism long before most adults,
I have used the self taught ability for the purpose of freeing the people of Scotland rather than selfishly thinking of myself,
Mainly into records.
It is wiser to learn why the people of Scotland were beaten under Colonialism, than to wallow in self pity,
It would not do you any harm to investigate and research why Scotland was browbeaten into a believing that it was in a hoax treaty,
In some ways my appalling education set me on a path that most british educated Scots in Scotland have never gone and unionist Colonisers on this site still try deter us from,
They Scoff at us for being to stupid after they encourage our stupidity,
There are a number of ways to be educated, perhaps the first is not to believe every thing you were taught by your Coloniser.
One day your education might catch up with mine regarding the fallacious treaty of union played upon Scots,
Meanwhile lets focus on freeing the younger people of Scotland from being forced to become foreigners in and to their Country prevented from learning their own culture and mother tongue. To live in piece on their own soil in control of their land and their own sea,
The workings of Colonialism on Scots, while in or out of a treaty is evidenced by my abused education by British union mind ethuisiasts ready to cane strap or beat it into the Scottish children.
Untold and not spoken of in MSM.
That is more important than than a misplaced word.
ASA…
“There are some serious idiots commenting BTL. And I’m not in that category”
Don’t sell yourself short…
Brian doonthetoon,
To add to the Colonial beatings in school please add the other hiccups that childhood, such as being three quarter deaf from the age of eight, dyslexic and colour blind,
Yes I got beaten at school British education in Scotland for those as well, i think they justified it under being awkward.
I may be semi illiterate due to my schooling but they remained the bullying ignorant Colonial adults that instilled rather than deterred in me the want to free Scotland.
A Scot Abroad says:11:59 am
“There are some serious idiots commenting BTL. And I’m not in that category.”
————————-
You are the category.
When I read the unionists posts and belittling Scottish people of derogortry comments , it is a bonus, a memory kept alive,
A reason to continue the fight to free Scotland, from that behaviour towards them,
Without the unionists claptrap, mind manipulation games and bullying continuing to this day I may have given up long ago,
So unionists on Wings over Scotland do us all a big favour, it reminds us of why we continue the fight,
So a big thank you to unionist trolls that constantly act as a ever present day reminder of why we want a independent Scotland outwith the UK.
A Scot Abroad said;
“The BTL comments get more mental every day.
There is no way on God’s green earth that the franchise for a future IndyRef would allow only ethnically Scottish people (by what criteria? How far back do you have to go? Do you need to prove that a forebear fought at Bannockburn?).
There are some serious idiots commenting BTL. And I’m not in that category.”
If you are referring to Ian Brotherhood’s citing of my comment on another blog, then you are just doing your usual dishonest framing again. I didn’t say a future IndyRef would allow only ethnically Scottish people, I specifically said both those who owned Scottish sovereignty however defined AND others who earn an honorary sovereignty should be considered, given that independence is a constitutional decision.
Scotland’s sovereignty MUST come into the franchise because it is owned, not by a monarch or parliament or a government and especially not a foreign government, but by Scotland’s people, and therefore by the bulk of its electorate. Any collective decision made by that electorate engages their sovereignty when it becomes relevant, as constitutional matters like independence absolutely are. Sovereignty matters and must be respected, and only an idiot or a fraud would deny it!
And whether or not you are in the category of serious idiots commenting BTL, you are undoubtedly in the category of serious frauds commenting BTL.
Ian @11.24am.
Ian.
Sounds pretty good but who do we have that will implement this? The current FM isn’t interested in indy.
**If you are taxed, then you get a vote in return. Cast iron rule of democracy.**
Don’t talk utter shite.
There are international laws PROTECTING a natives territory from being flooded & overpowered by someone else or everyone in the world would be picking off territory to invade, ya eejit!
Paying Tax is fck all to do with anything – especially on constitutional matters.
It is perfectly LEGAL to restrict the franchise on constitutional matters.
You’re beloved England does it with every election & referendum.
Idiots.
ASA – you are as thick as shit to Scotland. Your about to call in the SAS if Scots even dare change the franchise regards yer judicial shit! Zoomer!
Main.
From one of the most respected journalists in the world, who reported on US atrocities in the Vietnam war, such as the Mai Lai Massacre.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
Xaracen,
all of that guff about sovereignty being in the hands of the Scottish people is just ancient, completely overtaken by history, utter and total nonsense. It’s not written down, it’s not in the law, it’s irrelevant post 1707, and serves only to inflame the spirits of a-historical idiots.
Post Indy, you can claim it back if you want. But Indy isn’t going to happen any time in the next few hundred years, because the demography is changing, and those coming into Scotland (from wherever) actually want to be in the UK, and not ruled over by a bunch of mad Saltire-waving idiots.
John Main
I do not ignore – I précis. A discipline from which you could benefit.
You were better (?) at drawing.
Geri,
you might want to look back at how the USA was founded. It all started with the simple to understand (although you may still struggle with it) phrase “no taxation without representation”.
No voters are going to be awfully disappointed when it sinks in that the demise of the SNP is NOT the demise of the YES movement.
Labour has fired the warning shot. *There’s no money* Who will be first for punishment? Scotland & her pocket money while they strip the wealth from the North sea.
Young ppl aren’t as daft. Especially since Brexshit. Queenie is dead & with it any notions of being in the shit together. When they’ve nowhere to live, no food, 2 child policies & no outlook while they see all our wealth exported to a foreign country.
ASA,
There you go again talking yer uneducated pish.
When did the treaty of Union, an internationally recognised treaty, expire?
Have you told England yer excellent news that it’s outdated pish?
The treaty of Union & Scotland’s WRITTEN constitution is very much alive, well & exercised in parliament & the Royal oath King Chucky has just taken.
ASA
What is that to do with anything?
Absolutely nothing.
America didn’t sit in a GB parliament. And????
Feck all to do with international law on treaties & territories.
Btw, those founding fathers, you may struggle to know, actually pinched some of Scotland’s written constitution as their own. Amazing eh? For something that’s outdated pish according to you!! The font of feck all BTL..
I see ASA has appeared, speaking up for the landlord class.
Pol Pot knew how to deal with landlords, and students; don’t go too far now, just for a week or so, just to put the fear into them.
– also, polpotism is a two-fer as you can wipe out the woke by attacking them from the mega-ultra-left, calling them “bourgeois” and “reactionary”. They will be locked in bamboo cages, then pulled out to a screaming inquisition by a commissar who shouts “giddy mau!” – and points between their legs – PENIS BOY YOU HAVE PENIS YOU NEVER BE A WOMAN YOU FRAUD YOU FAKE …
– thatcher loved her little pot and sent her special dudes, the SAS to train them; only grade one mandarins can understand the mysteries of the 12 dimensional chess going on here, which is why the little people need to just -trust- the govt … not all genocide is wrong you know … certainly not if we think its a price worth paying
there are problems and there are solutions. Pragmatism and utilitarianism.
ASA’s class has no future in our bright new tomorrow; it might get ugly, but it’s a price worth paying.
Geri,
the Treaty of Union isn’t internationally recognised by any international body. It predates any of them by around 250 years, and all they recognise is the UK. If pressed, all that they would say that it’s nothing to do with them, and is an internal matter for the UK.
John Main
Your precipitate response to my post failed to recognise that I was responding to Captain Yossarian. He did not mention Chinese Flu and WWII in relation to Scotland’s future performance. Had he done so, I would have responded.
Did you get that – ‘precipitate’?
I was processing the belongings of a dead relative the other day, I found in an A4 ring binder a printout of the wee blue book I made for them in the runup to 2014. Not so wee anymore, but such things are great for the older people, no? He voted YES, so it was worth it.
– anyway, flicking thru it, it is reasoned, sober, demystifying and – answers all “the stupid fucking questions” the wings limpet troll brigade keep banging their drum about; none of these are dealbreakers.
We see the systemic rot of the troll brigade – to go round in circles, not going forward.
time for a choon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fDTUhlYMdc
mind you, the SNP make the yoon trolls look like william wallace, they’ve got the bus stuck in reverse.
@Geri
“no taxation without representation”
Stated by people who invaded then stole the land from the indigenous population, who didn’t get a vote.
Like the all the ancient guff of there being a treaty between Scotland and England.
The people whom signed the treaty in Scotland are in it with England I suppose,
But the nation of Sovereign Scots did not sign the treaty, they were deliberately not asked too by the Commissioners and politicians deciding against putting it to a vote.
That leaves those that signed alone in the treaty whom were representatives of sovereign Scots of Scotland, nor of its territory,
They were just random rich blokes whom presumed that they had title deeds to all of Scotland and were slave owners of all sovereign Scots.
A presumption but not fact.
With out a doubt and on records both in Scotland and England the names are recognised which people in Scotland signed their names to linking up with England,
But that was not us, the sovereign Scots in the rest of Scotlands territory,
So the Scots cannot break or breach or leave a treaty of union they are not in can they?
@Republicofscotland (12.47) –
‘Sounds pretty good but who do we have that will implement this? The current FM isn’t interested in indy.’
I haven’t the faintest idea.
We won’t be able to take stock until the Murrells have been dealt with. If they get off with it all then we’re in uncharted territory. Likewise, if they’re hammered and end up in jail then we still have to deal with HY and his band of fannies as well as the Alphabetties and everyone who’s been shielding them.
Where do we even start?!
Geri,
Scotland didn’t have a written constitution in 1776 (and didn’t have one before then either). Some of the founding fathers were Scotsmen, but very many were not. The US constitution draws mostly from Magna Carta. There’s a lot of academic writing and historians connecting the two, along with the 1689 English Bill of Rights.
Xaracen
I wonder WTF an earned, honourary sovereignty is. Maybes you will tell us, but I won’t hold my breath.
Payment of taxes in Scotland is as good a way of earning Scottish sovereignty as any IMO. If Scotland isn’t prepared to allow residents of Scotland a say in things, then Scotland shouldn’t take their money.
As a typically grippy Sovereign Scot, I will take this further. I bet there’s a fair few sovereign Scots who would willingly exchange their sovereignty for a lifetime tax exemption! I know I certainly would, given how little my sovereign Scot status has got me so far.
Cold, hard cash, or semi-mythic intangibles. I know which counts most for me.
ASA
Scotland is internationally recognised – especially by all those who were forced to exit eh?
The institution’s of the world recognises the UK is in a treaty.
They would say it was an internal matter, we seen that when Cameron tried to beg everyone & their dug to speak against independence in 2014. They rightly told him to FUCK OFF. It was for the Scots to decide..
But here is the important bit for you to digest. A treaty can END at ANYTIME one party decides it wants to. We cannot, under international law, be forbidden from an exit.
Every country in the UN agrees on a ppls right to self determination. Including the UK who signed up to it. That doesn’t mean everyone except you Scotland!!
You are spouting absolute nonsense.
SCOTLAND decides who votes in her country – not some eejit on Wings who doesn’t even live here & by their own admission is proudly boasting they’ll break election rules & vote via their sisters spare shed.
Yer union is dead. Scotland will decide when she’s had enough. In every single election going forward. Scotland decides who votes in those elections that do not NEED to include their branch office in Holyrood.
Confused,
Pol Pot was deposed before Thatcher came to power. And the SAS never trained forces in the then Kampuchea. That’s the most outlandish theory on this set of BTL comments, which beats even the lunacy of some form of committee deciding who is Scottish enough to have a vote on Indy.
Multiliner
Hope you don’t mind me renaming you with something more accurately descriptive 🙂
Anyways, I will continue to look forwards to you someday attempting to respond with something useful.
BTW, do you really believe WWII is still relevant? I know there’s a fashion on here for harping back to the past, but this is defo a new one to me.
O/T: calling Breeks. You were at Holyrood yesterday whereas I haven’t yet listened to the event there. I read your comment on Yours for Scotland, hoping to see an explanation of what yesterday was about as I am rather flummoxed. Can you explain, please?
@Confused (1.38) –
The fact that characters like ASA are sanguine about dropping in here to boast about larping as lairds for a few weeks every year sums up the urgent need for them to be completely barred from voting in any future referendum, GE or any other ballot.
If Alex Salmond and Alba grab this issue by the short and curlies then we’ll see a lot of ASAs sitting up to take notice. They could set the bar really high – say, e.g., you must have been resident/working in Scotland for at least a decade. Permanent residency should be something like a minimum of eight months of the year. I don’t know, these are just random thoughts but it has to be addressed.
Under no circumstances should ASA and his ilk ever be allowed to vote in Scotland. Never ever again. It may already be too late to undo much of the damage they’ve done but the longer we wait the harder it’ll become.
@Confused 1:38
Here’s one you can have for free:
“Let us destroy the Kulaks as a class”
Fits on a T shirt, even without translation from the original Russti.
I sincerely hope you will order up a few and start wearing them out and about. In fact let us know in advance so we can tag along and observe.
Bob W,
you’d be surprised at just how much invading and stealing of territory went on in north America between different tribes, even before the Europeans turned up. It’s a bit of a fallacy to talk of “the indigenous people” as a singular entity: they weren’t. In many ways, they were even more divided than the peoples of Europe, and constantly at war with each other. Having your land stolen by a different tribe or by English settlers mounts up to much the same thing.
The only way forward is to take it completely out of the politicians hands. Go back to basics. Start a convention & also public assemblies. Alex & Tasmina are doing that already with touring Scotland.
Get the SNP out of Holyrood & Westminster & instal only independent candidates standing on a united front. Imo.
We only need to win once then it’s game over..
If there is a ref to ratify then it must be observed by the UN.
A domestic footing would be open to abuse as we’ve seen repeatedly over the decades..
A single party is open to being corrupted. Individuals would be a lot harder – especially over 100 lol. Bit like jury service. It’d maintain integrity & they’d be voted out if they go off script – rather than be whipped by one tractor..
“FFS I’m so glad I’m banned from commenting on Wings. It’s all just a huge wind-up!
Thank you Stu!”
You’re not banned. You’re on pre-moderation for repeatedly breaking the rules.
John Main said;
“Xaracen
I wonder WTF an earned, honourary sovereignty is. Maybes you will tell us, but I won’t hold my breath.”
If you possess average reading comprehension, and your response proves you read what I said, then you know precisely what I meant by ‘honorary sovereignty’.
@Geri 2:25
Totes agreement for once.
Declare your candidacy and stand. Set out your pitch, run it up the flagpole, see who salutes.
You, Breeks, RoS, a few others from amongst the regulars on here. You all know what’s best for Scotland, you all deride the incumbents as pervs, thickos and tractors, you all claim to be laser-focused on no-compromises Indy.
Should be a shoe-in for the lot of you.
John Main
It will be a shoo-in. Young ppl aren’t daft & neither is the aging population on a shite pension.
The union has absolutely ZERO to offer Scotland.
Zero.
Across ALL age groups.
Across ALL demographics.
If ppl want socialist policies.
If ppl want to travel the world to study.
If ppl want to keep an NHS.
If ppl want a good standard of living…
Then the UNION is NOT for them.
You Muppets forget – we’ve lived experience.
It’s shite & it’s about to get a whole lot shittier.
You have to come up with reasons to stay. After Better Together bullshit, that faded to ashes before the ink was even dry – good luck! Yer gonnie need it!
Xaracen says:
Don’t tell him Pike!
Naw, just my little joke. Xaracen actually says:
Don’t tell him!
Gonna leave you off my earlier call for the regulars to stand for office and do things right for Indy. I reckon a secret manifesto is a sure fire vote loser.
Soz.
@Geri 2:59
So you are standing for election? Cool, big respect.
Keep us all posted – don’t you be a stranger now.
It can be anyone.
It’s not like they’ll be taking their seats eh?
The result is what matters.
Then we can start organising the furniture.
Tsk, Tsk, John – you really haven’t been paying attention have you? Maybe take yer head out yer arse & at least read the articles Wings goes to the bother of writing.
Stephen O’Brien @ 10:44 am
“Seriously, is there any plan, by any group, to resolve the democratic process, in Scottish courts?”
That would seem the obvious place to begin to test the many apparent violations to the Treaty of Union including its corrupt formation,and especially insofar as Scottish sovereignty is concerned. However, it is perhaps difficult to hold out much hope with a justice system beholding to another crown.
In writing and passed at roughly the same time as the Magna Carta and equal in constitution is the Claim of Right for Scots,
This piece of Scottish Constitution was recognised by England, when they were under the illusion that they could buy Scots Sovereignty from a few random blokes who signed their name to join a hoax treaty link with England.
Regardless that the treaty never proceeded past its conception for all Scots, or for their territory, it goes with saying that Englands parliament of Westminster still recognised the Claim of Right in 2018 as part of Scottish Constitution as did Charlie whom? Was not Crowned king of Scotland or the Scots this year,
People have to decided wether the treaty of union is real or not, if they presume it to be real then Westminster parliament cannot hold English style Sovereignty of Parliament. While Scots hold a Claim of Right of Sovereignty within that said parliament, agreed to by England.
If on the other hand we have not proceeded into a treaty of union as I surmise from the records then that Sovereignty still belongs with Scots as people.
The magna Carta is the parallel to the Claim of Right. Except Westminster, and the EU have been chipping away at the Magna Carta for hundreds of years, and the EU more recently by changing it with new laws and legislation and statues,
Sovereignty that belongs to the people cannot be sold, exchanged, bartered or entered into a treaty without the Scottish people who own that Sovereignty, for it did not belong or reside in the Scottish or English parliament,
The Scottish Claim of Right came as part of conceptual treaty agreement that had its roots in Scottish history, but nevertheless was rekindled and was passed pre- union date as Scots law and part of the Scottish constitution,
This would not alter if Scots were not in a union with England as it is still Scots law,
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
This the problem Ian, come 2026 the SNP will probably do a deal with BLiS and the Greens, to remain in power or do some sort of power sharing deal, and that will take us up to 2031, which is another eight years of unchecked migration from South of the border, along with the continued anglicisation of Scotland which is well under way, along with the stealing of our wealth.
I honestly think that we can’t allow the SNP to waste another eight years, of false promises on independence, the cause needs to be taken out of Holyrood’s hands, and put into the hands of the people.
The problems we face are multiple, how do we inform enough folk (Scots) that sovereignty rest with them when the entire media in Scotland is hostile to the cause, we are also up against the English security services some of their personnel commenting in here, and the likes of GCHQ diverting close to 70% of folk away from signing Salvo petitions by creating fake Salvo websites.
Some indy websites such as Yours For Scotland and Peter A Bell’s are trying to get the message out to Scots that they are sovereign and not some foreign monarch or foreign parliament 500 miles away in a foreign country, but as of yet it doesn’t appear to be enough.
The SNP government and the foreign media are ignoring our cause, we must get the message out to the people that Scotland is a wealthy nation and that Scots WILL be better off without the union.
Getting the message out that Scots will have cheaper fuel bills etc with independence is vital to changing soft noes and hardening the stance of soft yes voters.
“You, Breeks, RoS, a few others from amongst the regulars on here. You all know what’s best for Scotland, you all deride the incumbents as pervs, thickos and tractors, you all claim to be laser-focused on no-compromises Indy.
Should be a shoe-in for the lot of you.”
Let me see where to start with the above dross, no party would entertain us because we wouldn’t comply with their gravy train policies or Woke policies, or indy plans why do you think the likes of Craig Murray was rejected by the NuSNP.
Alf Baird,
Do you realise what you said.
That Scotland does not have a Crown in Scotland,
This was in evidence when Charlie and the UK government? Approached the kings crowning into two separate catagories,
One for England and separate one for Scotland.
However when Charlie was not Crowned king of Scotland in Scotland, did not wear the Scottish Crown or regalia,
This leaves two separate realms and kingdoms as of pre-union times.
Surely if Charlie was king of Scots, he would have been crowned as such.
It actually defies the treaty of union agreement whereby the monarch should be Crowned king of all Great Britain.
However is crowned monarch of England and Wales separately from Scotland, and in a separate service.
Is the crown justice system in Scotland and the treaty of union little more than hearsay propaganda.
It can be surmised that the Crown and monarch are not in Scotland other than imposing Colonialism under a fallacious treaty of union.
Ian Brotherhood,
thanks for that. Makes me more determined to register (quite legally, and pay my council tax) at either my sister’s cottage or in my flat in Edinburgh, if my tenants there decide to vacate. I’d enjoy voting in Scotland again.
And you can guess how I’ll vote. For the Tories, and should it come to it, No.
James Che, at 3:42pm,
“…In writing and passed at roughly the same time as the Magna Carta and equal in constitution is the Claim of Right for Scots”.
Magna Carta: 1215
Claim of Right: 1689
Roughly the same time?
They ain’t equal in constitutional terms, either.
@Republicofscotland/Geri –
I’m not sure if Dougie Lockhart posts here (under a different name perhaps?) but we were chatting via Twitter about the Swiss system. Haven’t read much about it but that’s the type of thing Wikipedia is good for.
There was some suggestion that SALVO/Sara Salyers have been looking at it. It would certainly give careerists and seat-warmers something to think about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland
“Pol Pot was deposed before Thatcher came to power.”
“After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese on Christmas Day, 1978. In the months and years that followed, the US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand. He was the enemy of their enemy: Vietnam, whose liberation of Cambodia could never be recognised because it had come from the wrong side of the cold war. For the Americans, now backing Beijing against Moscow, there was also a score to be settled for their humiliation on the rooftops of Saigon.”
“To this end, the United Nations was abused by the powerful. Although the Khmer Rouge government (“Democratic Kampuchea”) had ceased to exist in January 1979, its representatives were allowed to continue occupying Cambodia’s seat at the UN; indeed, the US, China and Britain insisted on it. Meanwhile, a Security Council embargo on Cambodia compounded the suffering of a traumatised nation, while the Khmer Rouge in exile got almost everything it wanted. In 1981, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said: “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.” The US, he added, “winked publicly” as China sent arms to the Khmer Rouge.”
The Trans brigade is the death to the SNP, Labour & lie Dumbs on both sides of the border.
Voters will stay at home, like 2017, unless there is an alternative to vote for & that isn’t Tory.
Independence has a plan.
53 independents.
ASA
That’s the stuff. Keep voting for a party that hasn’t won in Scotland in nearly 70 yrs LOL!
We’ll all be shitting ourselves I’m sure..
Yer not the sharpest tool in the box eh?
Thanks for the link Ian this caught my eye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_initiative_in_Switzerland
“In Switzerland, a popular initiative (German: Volksinitiative, French: Initiative populaire, Italian: Iniziativa popolare, Romansh: Iniziativa dal pievel) allows the people to suggest law on a national, cantonal, and municipal level. On a federal level it may only change the federal constitution, not propose an ordinary law. Along with the popular referendum and in some cantons recall elections, it is a form of direct democracy.”
I think the best way to get Scots onside is to show them that they’d be financially better off outside the union, loyalty for most only goes so far, and with the current cost of living crisis, Brexit etc, showing folk that they WILL be better off outside the union is the way to go.
Of course again its getting the message out there when Scots are probably the most propagandised people on the planet. Social media only goes so far, what we need is a army of folk out there talking to Scots and showing them hard data that they’ll be financially better off outside the union, we’ll get no help from Holyrood on this one, the people must convince the people that ditching the union is the way forward and being armed with the knowledge that the people will be financially better off without the union is a powerful tool to have in ones tool box.
Nothing motivates folk like the thought of getting more money or lowering their bills.
Asa,
Note:
It was rekindled in 1689,
The genius of every election being an indy ref means that if it’s a NO then voters will be forced to live under Unionist policies.
It’ll be nice to know that was helped along by rUK (who don’t live here) as their prescriptions & health service is removed along with over £600 million mitigation of toxic unionist policies. LOL!!
Can’t have unionist parties using separate policies. Sir kids Skintalot understands this as it’s against electoral rules – he even confirmed it to the dullards at the back – all directives come from London only – that’s all policies.
Want Tory? Fine, then live with them. It may turn out to be just what’s needed. Just like Ruth the mooth removed ppls disability cars LOL! Her rise abruptly ended when fickle feckwits realised she was a Tory with Tory policies..the media darling wasn’t so appealing after all as disabled folks aids were removed..
well done republic for digging out a proper source; all I say does have sources but am too lazy to post them, I just “remember things” – I think going way back, thatcher was on, of all places, blue peter, and she was taking calls – she said something about “moderate elements of the khmer rouge” and the caller asked “who is that, then …” – and the conversation ended
war mad chickenhawk ellwood also loves the taliban
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23662545.tobias-ellwood-taliban-transformed-afghanistan/
as meat loaf almost once sang 3 out of 4 aint bad
the anglo has no moral compass, you have to grasp that, it’s we do what we want and the BBC comes along afterwards to spin it. This is who you are dealing with. Harold Pinter made a great speech about it.
Apparently some people claiming to be Scots have only learn’t Englands version of Scottish history.
The monarch was not king or queen of Scotland,
Charlie and hit bit of other are not king and queen of Scotland,
That brings disparities into wether they can hold the Crown in the justice system in Scotland,
It debases the crown lands in Scotland or treasure trove that in England and Wales belongs to the Crown.
The present monarch? or his mother? were not crowned king or queen of Scotland, nether were the predesessor’s
They were not and could not be be Crowned king or queen of Scots either, separately from England if the treaty is to be held true,
But that was what was attempted, two separate coronations in 2023. And the same for his mother.
They are definatly king and thing of england in England,
OT but not. Jessica Curry was given an honorary degree on Friday. Abertay. Her speech started and ended with trans.
Oh the wee souls, poor perverted men. What a shame. Pity she didn’t say anything about WOMEN in Afghanistan or India. I wonder why? Spoilt the day.
ASA.
You are a excellent example of what has happened in Scotland.
People owning more than one house, living elsewhere voting as a unionist, while pushing house prices up locally preventing youngsters from renting what most times of the year is a empty house that makes its money from the electorate in Scotland,
And Scotlands independence supporters are well aware of temporary residence addresses before and after Scottish elections in 2014.
You can pay Council tax for as little as one month, if you decide to move again, you will have deliberately falsified a Scottish election. By predetermining that plan.
Were you in Scotland for a short period in one of your many accommodations in 2014? Or were they rented out for other unionists to vote in Scottish elections.
Your boast on how to play elections in Scotland has not gone unnoticed.
Why isn’t there a political party, a politician, a police force an audit office or a media outlet fighting to bring justice and badly needed funds handed out to Tories by Tories
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/09/26/contract-winning-firm-owned-by-tory-donor-sees-major-financial-boost/
All the talk about franchise and we have the assorted tractors telling us as usual we canny dae this or dae that, it’s no fair peepul who pay their taxes need represented, the chief arsehole does he remind you of anyone, maybe another Scots but tractor , tells you that nae other country will listen or talk tae yeese if ye dae this or dae that wae the franchise, BUT funny enough the next door neebur done every fuckin wan o these things when the brexshit vote took place, and guess what NAEBODY speaks tae them , NAEBODY listens tae them , NAEBODY buys things fae them, EVERYBODY has ostracised them, fuck off wae yer PISH
As for the franchise, it should be put to a vote instead of politicians TELLING us who gets to vote on our FUTURE ,try telling people in the housing schemes Easterhouse, Castlemilk and elsewhere that people who are making their housing unaffordable and are causing the SNHS to come under severe pressure DEMAND a vote on OUR constitution
@Confused (5.10) –
I take it you’re referring to Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Brilliant, thanks for the reminder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH96tuRA3L0
Geri,
you don’t vote for whoever you think will win, you vote for whichever candidate has the policies that appeal to you most.
The Tories have never really done well in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t got a right to put their ideas forward.
I’m moderated aye but you don’t even let me post Stu?
What happened last Friday was a fucking disgrace. Abertay. Aye. Jessica Curry trans left right and centre
John Gas Main
Co-ordinate geometry’s the wee boy for you – then you get the points.
@ Confused
” war mad chickenhawk ellwood also loves the taliban ”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23662545.tobias-ellwood-taliban-transformed-afghanistan/
Must be getting concerned about where they’re going to source their – literal – opium FOR the masses . Getting that primo Afghani smack not as easy as it was when Uncle Sam was calling the shots , sorry , bringing Democracy to that country of ingrates .
Must be time for one of those entirely coincidental ” Drug Epidemics ” as the working class lift their heads off the deck from another boot in the face from whatever set of worthless corporate pimps * wins * the next election/s .
Worked at treat in places like the Black inner city communities of late 60s/ early ’70s USA – coincidentally when organisations like Black Power where demonstrating ” by any means necessary ” meant exactly that .
Likewise in late 70s/early 80s Scottish cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh ; again , amazingly , just as the Thatcher value-stripping rampage of unfettered , feral Capitalism was unleashed on a largely unsuspecting U.K public . What a c……
Ahead of the curve as per , that beacon of hope n freedom n plutocracy – USA – has it’s own * raging * drug epidemic ; laying waste principally to those less-than-blessed sons n daughters of the Republic locked in the apnea of The American Dream
I have read a few times in recent days that Operation Branchform is reaching some sort of climax. Let’s hope that Police Scotland have done a respectable job this time. It’s of course impossible to predict what will happen but it is at least possible that some senior SNP figures will end up in the High Court. Is this the first time in world political history that two successive political leaders have ended-up in the highest criminal court in the land? If it is, what does that tell us about the Holyrood experiment? I say that because there is every chance that a Labour administration is coming down the tracks and will flatten us all with an entirely new breed of indifference and malfeasance. Who wants to wait around for that? In my opinion anyway, it has been a total failure and is not worth saving.
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
23 July, 2023 at 2:26 pm
“FFS I’m so glad I’m banned from commenting on Wings. It’s all just a huge wind-up!
Thank you Stu!”
You’re not banned. You’re on pre-moderation for repeatedly breaking the rules.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
I’m so naughty. 🙂
Your ‘pre-moderation’ doesn’t seem to work. It’s a con!
Would you not be better of just banning me and not kidding me on that there is a possibility that my post might upload provided I’m good and don’t call anyone a nutter?
This personal abuse you are referring to I actually learned from you and I so admired your style I tried to copy it. 🙂
The Wings BTL posts are riddled with so called ‘personal abuse’ which I think is great. I was just copying the ‘in house style’.
Hey not to worry I can’t guarantee if you re-instate my rights I won’t resort to personal abuse again ‘cos as I say there are too many posters on Wings who wind me up.
@RoS 5:00
“Nothing motivates folk like the thought of getting more money or lowering their bills”
Woohoo, show us the money just grew in support by 100%
Thanks RoS.
(robertH, ianb)
The glaring “anomaly” of how the US and “the war on(for) drugs” couldn’t shut down the opium trade, but the taliban could … is something never asked about. Again, ties in with Pinter who beautifully explored the “dont talk about it” school of elite journalism. I once asked my dimwit cousin who served over there “how many poppy fields he had torched”. Quizzical looks.
I hear the USA is now on fentanyl and crystal meth; they pull out, just as they don’t need opium. From another view, the drugs trade produces such vast money flows they HAVE to be “managed” or it could destroy the system, altenatively in times of crisis, drugs money might be the only thing producing market “liquidity”.
ellwood is just a hired mouth, but his attitude represents elite thinking – once the dust has settled, it’s back to doing business, in particular the trillion dollars worth of lithium in afghanistan; this is not about “wimmins rights”, it’s about the chinese getting first dibs on it.
– nothing stands in the way of business, usually. Even in ww2 people paid their debts (usually through Switzerland) – the seizures by the US of foreign assets putting a chill through the world as the US “can no longer be trusted” – they will steal your forex reserves, and your gold bullion and then give it to trannies. All this green tech needs loads of exotic metals – the green revolution will mean more “extractive industry” than before – this is just “realism”.
It’s something that bugs me locally – Glasgow/Lanarkshire – has become a “narco state”; there seems to be 2 economies, one withering on the vine, and yet another flourishing, but for “no apparent reason”. Where I live it is large cars, huge houses, mysterious fires and a lot twats with the fake tan and tribal tats. It looks hugely corrupt, but all those who know anything of it, are doing okay by it – drugs money does at least circulate in the local economy, in these cost of living/austerity times. The cops grab a kilo on the motorway once in a while, and we all sleep soundly.
Confused.
You are welcome, Thatcher was also best friends with the nasty dictator General Pinochet, as for Ellwood he has a history with the 77th Brigade, he also attends MIC meetings the latest in Munich.
Racism; Tribalism; Nationialism.
They’re all exactly the same thing: merely looked at through difference focal length lenses.
Bigotry is the common them.
Colons, semi-colons, spelling…they’re all exactly the same thing…different elements of writing that aid the expression of meaning…their common theme is that Mr Scroggie doesn’t know how to use them.
Thicko…
We know what the Tory policies are – they’re the exact same as the English Tory ones.
No, they shouldn’t really be in this country at all unless they register here with the electoral commission.
All they do in Holyrood is disrupt & act like wasps at a picnic & collect a wage they’re not entitled to. Unelected & useless. (24 yrs unelected serial loser, Murdo) They’re not there to serve the people of Scotland. They’ve been rejected for over 70 yrs. That’s 70 yrs of salary+ expenses to serve a London master.
24 yrs at £75k + expenses at Holyrood for Murdo since it opened.
Achievements: 0
Mind – These are the total wasters who voted against giving kids a free school meal & voting against ending the pay cap for vital emergency services. (Just after Grenfell & Manchester bombing)
Selfish, parasitic wankers.
Let them fck off to London & stand for election & let Holyrood have actual Scottish parties that serve the interests of Scotland.
We are separate countries.
This is brilliant, a guest article on Barrhead Boy by Leanne Tervit.
https://www.barrheadboy.com/leanne-tervit-what-is-poverty/
@ Captain Yossarian: the Branchform result won’t be “this side of Christmas” said Alex Salmond in a TV interview last week.
@Geri (8.29) –
‘All they do in Holyrood is disrupt & act like wasps at a picnic…’
Just laughed so hard I fear something’s ruptured.
🙂 🙂 🙂
The Stirling Directive, in summary:
twitter.com/TheIndyNinja1/status/1683042186424623106
Lol Ian.
It’s true. They offer Scotland absolutely nothing. They’re just an expensive irritant.
Three London based Tory parties in Holyrood. When their salaries could fund three Scottish ones who actually serve the country they are elected to serve.
James Che,
I didn’t have a vote in Scotland in 2014. In fact, at the time of the referendum, my vote was in Norfolk, and I was literally abroad, on secondment with the Foreign Office at an embassy in a Latin American country, project managing the install, training, data population and go live of a new software system my company had developed for them.
How my tenants in Edinburgh voted was up to them. No idea. I know how my sister and her husband voted in Perthshire: both of them No.
Anyone remember Duncan Hothersall?
Turns out Duncan implied that such and such a character is Woman H and now someone tweeting from ‘abroad’ has tweeted what DH was ‘implying’ and others are now retweeting it here and that means we could all be in contempt of court but if loads and loads of people do it Spartacus-style then it’ll be mayhem and I’m not going to say who it is because I don’t want to go to the jail but anyone who’s been paying attention will know who it is.
And remember where you heard it first – Duncan Hothersall.
For how long can SNP adhere to the Union and the political scene, before their implosion is final?
Their supposed ‘delay’ of self-determination, excused only by those supporters afraid to procede. Doubt sown by the ludicrous bar of 60% polls for YES, before a campaign is presented. That same campaign for which funding is long gone, makes progress even less likely.
Funding in general, a real sticky wicket.
In the meantime, the resignations continue and the new Stirling Directive, organisers, on further review, intend to apply extra pressure on SNP, to deliver.
A strategy that will take time. The question being, how much time does SNP have left as a credible force and what will it’s parting shot be, on the way out?
@Confused
Re opioids, the Sackler family in the US cut a deal in that they would hand over x amount of money for the carnage wreaked by the deliberate massive over prescribing of their addictive prescription drugs in return for it being written into law that none of them could be pursued individually for damages in the civil courts.
I lived through the smack addled early/mid eighties in Glasgow and in my mid teens was the only one in my circle of friends not injecting. It was a whole heap of fun being the only one in the room not jagging. The local chemist ended up closing down because they were robbing it blind. Have buried friends both here and in US because of it which is why I mentioned upthread witnessing it being dealt in the town earlier this year by people who we have granted leave to move here. Anyone familiar with the drug trade will know that a fair chunk of it also comes up from the likes of London, Liverpool and Manchester and that what is intercepted on the motorways or trains is basically a token gesture.
Ebenezer Scroggie @ 8:05 pm
“Racism; Tribalism; Nationialism”
Postcolonial theory tells us about all three aspects in relation to a colonial society:
– colonialism is racism, with fascism at its root;
– the colonizer uses tribal leaders to his advantage;
– the colonized only become nationalists in order to reclaim their sovereignty.
@Ian Brotherhood
This Duncan Hothersall?
https://wingsoverscotland.com/dishonesty-and-delusion/
Alf Baird,
you are not an expert in colonialism. You aren’t even knowledgeable about the basic history or data of it. Why you persist in pushing so much nonsense (referencing an extremely narrow base of 3 or 4 academics who are themselves widely discredited) is a mystery. At any rate, your theories are misunderstood history, and worse, fail to reflect that Scots are the very greatest of all colonising nations in global history. Oh, yes, we are. Far, far, far above the English, Welsh and Irish in our shared endeavour of the world’s greatest Empire. Scots absolutely ran the British Empire, on which the sun never set. It’s over now, but we were the motivating force, from New Zealand through to the Americas, via Africa, the Middle East, with a hugely disproportionately impact on south Asia.
Why not go back to the day job of being a grandiosely titled “Professor” at a fourth rate Poly, to teach dullards about containers and ships?
@ Ian Brotherhood: is Duncan’s tweet trending? I don’t do twitter so can’t tell.
@Anton Decadent (10.22) –
Aye, the very same.
He used to comment here, way way back.
Looks like he may have landed himself in some serious bother. He blocked me ages ago on Twitter but others have checked his timeline and it seems that he’s deleted the comment where he effectively jigsaw-identified the Alphabettie known as ‘H’.
As Craig Murray has already pointed out, DH probably won’t get his collar felt because he is a Yoon and is therefore entitled to ‘The Garavelli Protection’.
But any of the rest of us who dare even allude to Duncan’s jigsawing mischief can be charged for contempt?
Fuck that.
They can’t arrest/jail all of us.
I won’t even post the link to the tweet here, but it’s easy enough to find it all on Twitter, it’s turning into a Spartacus-type gig.
Anyway, here’s a belter of an old soul/funk track to finish with, it’s called ‘Jam, Jam, Jam’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj8qIHeqEnE&list=RDfj8qIHeqEnE&start_radio=1&rv=fj8qIHeqEnE&t=0
😉
Oh deary, deary me.
Hotdogstalls gonnie get it!
@Sarah (10.53) –
Haven’t seen it trending. So far as I can tell he must’ve deleted it.
But the cat’s oot the bag.
Alf
Just listened to your show on Scottish ports being sold.
The English government will owe us billions for selling what didn’t belong to them.
ASA
Scotland did not benefit from the Empire. If you were a Scot you’d know that. Yer mask is slipping.
There were *individual* Scots who sold other Scots into slavery & benefited personally.
Scotland, THE COUNTY, gained very little as we can see from the centuries of slums.
If you don’t believe Alf then take a good look at the 70+ countries who left your *Empire* & absolutely THRIVED once they shook off the shackles of Brit nat oppression.
No one ever begged the Brits to come back either & neither will Scotland.
There’s some excellent examples for you to start with.
Anyhoo, Alf’s education is public knowledge. Let’s read your qualifications for balance. You may also want to familiarise yerself with the rules on here.
I’m sure we’d all hate for you to be on constant moderation. We’d all be heartbroken. Not.
@ Ian B: Cat’s oot is good enough – fingers crossed!
Ian
Isn’t he also involved in that grooming shit that’s been implemented in schools? I’m sure that idiot was one of the advisors to the Scottish government.
A fortnight away and the troll is still going for it.
I was on some good ferries, too.
Geri,
try looking at what built up Glasgow, the docks, the shipbuilding in the Clyde, the squares and municipal buildings, and attracted nearly half a million west Highlanders in the 18th and 19th centuries to go there for work.
Aye, the Empire’s trade.
Hi Alf
Keep doing what you’re doing, in fact do it more often. I can see the resident brits here hissing, spitting and gnashing their teeth with steam belching from their ears on seeing your posts, it really does send them nuts!
The reason it sends them nuts is obvious, they can’t let knowledge that Scots fit the bill as a colonised people become mainstream. Your posts here are working well and more and more people are seeing the light.
As an aside and on the subject of sovereignty: Sovereign citizens
England 1
Scotland 5.4 million
DaveL
**As an aside and on the subject of sovereignty: Sovereign citizens
England 1
Scotland 5.4 million**
Nice one!
Alf
Sorry for the late post, been really busy today.
Read your paper and agree with most of it.
Here is a basic outline of my beliefs taken from notes written about 24 years ago but I had already developed them long before that.
In my view cultural identity has nothing to do with race.
Locally, in North Western Europe there has been so much movement of people and repopulating of new areas (Yes, N & W Europe is a newly populated area anthropologically speaking), that every region consists of many racial elements, and has done so, as long as it has existed since the last Ice Age.
For me culture exists on discernibly different levels.
At the most fundamental level, the Primary Level there are the great imponderable philosophical questions, which although imponderable, still command our belief.
For example such as whether things are predestined/pre-ordained or not. The moral ramifications from this are obvious. If you believe that everything that is going to happen is inevitable and immutable, a logical enough belief based on cause and effect theory, then the apportioning of moral responsibility to individuals becomes meaningless.
Social and moral benchmarks invoked by a culture to guide us on behaviour, on what is accepted as right and wrong, would also be just pointless window dressing.
The settled cultural consensus on such big imponderable matters usually underpins the cultural beliefs in a large pan-national area.
In our region of the planet the accepted belief regarding the above example is that the future is not predestined, there is such a thing as Free Will, we can come to decisions which can shape the future by our actions. We do, therefore, have individual moral responsibility for our actions.
Indeed, so ubiquitous is that Primary Level belief in Europe and America and many other areas, that it is quite difficult for people to imagine now that Free Will and moral responsibility might be subsumed by beliefs in fatalism or some all powerful deity who has complete control over what will happen.
However, there still exist pan-national regions where the cultural consensus is fatalistic or believe that the future is in the hands of some superior being.
Furthermore, if you go back in Europe a couple of thousand years or so, pan-national areas with such beliefs existed in Europe.
Back then we can divide Europe into three pan-national areas, where, as far as we can discern from archaeology, existing myths and legends and classical commentary, they amounted to Primary Level pan-national areas. If I call them Germanica, Meditterania and Celtica I think most will get what I am getting at. Germanica was strongly predestinational, mankind was already doomed to perish in the final battle, Ragnarok. Meditterania too believed the future was decided by the Gods and that future could be seen by Oracles and soothsayers.
Celtica was different. Of course their myths abounded with fortune tellers too, too good a story element to leave out. However their predictions were conditional, requiring the protagonist either to do or not do something before the prediction came true.(see Geasa).
Also early Christian ‘Monks’ from Celtic areas c 400AD (see Pelagius, Celstius), maybe even from what is now Scotland, espoused a Christianity which eschewed the predestination of the then established Judaic-Christianity of Rome. On going to Rome they actually had great success in selling the idea of Free Will and determining your own fate but short lived due to the Visigoths taking of Rome. They fled to North Africa where they encountered St Augustine of Hippo who, possibly because of his debauched youth, was a very strong advocate of predestination.(wasn’t my fault gov. couldn’t do anything else even if I wanted to).
This lead eventually, to the Celtic Christian view being declared heretic by Rome and various and repeated pogroms in Britain, France and other Celtic areas ensued over decades.
However, it was St Augustine’s ‘double-predestination’ which was eventually quietly dropped. Free Will and the moral responsibility that goes with it won out in the end, give or take a few interludes. (That ongoing belief battle, once appreciated, sheds a new light on the big picture view of European history.)
It is perhaps due to ancient Celtic ideology that the West now generally believes in free will, if you do wrong you’ll pay for it, good guys white hats bad guys black hats, an innate sense of right and wrong and the belief in its universality.
The cultural Secondary Level.
This is philosophically based on the premises set by the collegiate beliefs of the Primary Level.
The main function of it is to attempt the creation and refinement of a cultural benchmark. A cultural reference people can use and recognise as belonging to their culture.
It is at this Secondary level that I believe national cultural differences first occur simply as a result of centuries of philosophical debate and ideas stemming from that. Influenced by the history, myth, legend and other.
The differences lie not in the constituent topics requiring cultural benchmarking, e.g.s Loyalty, Courage, Compassion, Honesty, Egalitarianism, Justice, Public Service, Loyalty, Compassion, Persistence, Confidence, Honesty, Courage, Fair Play, Patriotism, Education, Hospitality, Generosity, Physical well being, Medical Provision, Dignity, Beauty, Honor, Work Ethic and so on. Those will be pretty much the same list of concern topics for all the national cultures under our pan-national Primary Level area.
However at this level I believe we begin to see national differences, even between geographically close nations like England and Scotland.
That difference is largely manifested by the priority order accorded to the items in the list.
This is typically on a national basis, but sometimes regional.
For example IMO Scotland would have Compassion and Fair Play as a higher priority on their list than would the SE of England, likewise, the SE of England, IMO, would have Confidence and Loyalty higher in their list than the Scot’s.
Of course, each individual has their own priority list, but through the (see Tertiary later) cultural feedback mechanisms, individuals are aware, if only at the subconscious level, what the ‘norm’ for his/her nation/region is, and are therefore aware of their own relative position and will also feel emotional pressure on those values that they hold that are most out of position from that national/regional ‘norm’, to re-appraise and adjust towards the order of that ‘norm’.
That priority order should inform and be enshrined in such culture bearing institutions such as the legislature and the laws they create, the justice system, the education system, the welfare system, the health care system.
The cultural Tertiary level.
This is the very important emotional feedback level,
This is ‘carried’ by Music, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Certain aspects of Literature, Participative Arts (Dancing, Ceilidhs etc), Certain aspects of Language, TV output, Theatrical output etc..
Some of these relate to the Primary but mostly to the Secondary cultural level.
The two main tasks for this level are to adequately inform on cultural priority levels but also as a vehicle for suggested change and improvement.
The Quaternary cultural level.
We are now talking about things that may even be considered by some not really cultural due to the relatively short lived and
continually changing nature of them.
Things Culinary, Sartorial and even linguistic.
Haggis and kilts to give two examples, fall into this category.
They do have cultural use as a brand identifier or as a badge by which cultural membership might be identified but that is about all.
When I began my search for what defines cultural identity many decades ago, I was pretty convinced language would be key, so I set about the task of learning Gaelic, Spanish and German and even a bit of Old Irish. Sadly, my conclusion after much arduous study (I am not a natural polyglot) was that it was of little cultural value. Really, you can fully impart even the subtlest ideas in any language.
There were some interesting possibly unique cultural nuances like the the use of mo versus agam in Gaelic and a seeming distinction based on the categorisation of possession in terms of how permanent it is but over all,
It is getting late. I’ve given an indication of how I view culture as a layered hierarchy.
I’ll end with stating my beliefs regarding culture.
My beliefs are as follows:-
1) Every culture has the right to exist.
2) No culture is ‘better’ than any other.
3) From 2) No culture has any rights or privileges over any other.
4) There is no genetic requirement for membership of any culture. Anyone from anywhere if brought up within any culture from a formative age will become a fully functional member of that culture.
5) Diverse national cultures are a good thing. The different perspectives they offer are not only conducive to the most rapid progress of humanity but stop the World from being unbearably boring and enrich individuals who appreciate these different perspectives.
Just in case it doesn’t go without saying, there are some things
which must be not be allowed as ‘part’ of someone’s culture.
Oppression of other cultures, expansionism/imperialism, granting of any privilege on a basis of culture, denigration of other cultures.
These may or may not be allied to concepts of racial purity, either way they are not logically acceptable if you hold with my 5 points.
I hope I have clarified my position.
Sorry, no time to go into imperialist nationalism versus civic nationalism.
Judging how ASA plans to vote in future Scottish election even if he only in Scotland temporally paying taxes, or not, one never knows in unionist cases,
But his actions plans really confirm the need and question that arises,
Should someone be proven to reside in Scotland for longer than one month, six months, etc to time period regardless of temporary paying tax,?
Perhaps there should be a minimum limit in Scotland as a proven lived at address for say five or more years, along side Council tax or income tax evidence,
That is a good example how Scotland is and can be cheated in their elections.
Replay 2014.
James Che,
I’ve paid the council tax on my flat in Edinburgh on a monthly basis since 1997. Of course, I pass that on as part of the rent I charge to my tenants, but your proposal has holes in it.
Mornin’ Stu
Hope you are well and full of the joys on this bright Monday morning.
The good thing about the ‘pre-moderation’ malarky is that you read my ‘posts’ or maybe not anymore.
I have what I think is a helpful hint for you this morning.
If you want to rid the BTL comments of personal abuse here’s my suggestion:
Put ‘flame baiting’ ahead of ‘personal abuse’ on the list of reasons to ‘pre-moderated’.
You have a couple of pretty serious ‘flame-baiters’ posting here on Wings. It’s not hard to spot them.
Put the ‘flamers’ on ‘pre-moderation’ and watch the personal abuse disappear.
Have a nice day. 🙂
I see Labour are now going to ‘modernise’ the GRA…so they’re now officially TRAs too. Starmer is going to be a fkn nightmare in power, Thatcher’s economics and the Greens’ trans politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/24/labour-vows-to-modernise-simplify-and-reform-gender-recognition-act
@ ASA
But all your personal documents where you are required to state your primary residence won’t be at either of your Scottish residences if you live in Norfolk. You know, things like passport, driving license, insurance declarations.
All that information is held on databases so it isn’t hard to check.
It also wouldn’t be hard to filter for recent movements within certain date parameters on the electoral roll database, and then cross check those vote registrations are legit and adhere to whatever franchise is used for a particular electoral event.
Of course this is actually done already in Scotland to a degree because we use different franchises for different elections so voter eligibility changes for each.
Plus there was Settled and Pre-Settled status rolled out for EU Nationals due to “Brexit”.
James Che – No-one is cheating in Scotland’s elections.
I see Jonas Vingegaard won the famous Tour de France. I remember when the last Frenchman won it, Bernard Hinault, back in the mid-80’s. Since then, it has been a succession of drug-addled Johnny-foreigner types. The French really need another French winner.
Perhaps they should introduce a residency clause – stay in France for 5-years minimum or you cannot enter our race – something like that? Would that do?
chic.mcgregor 1.58am
“Sorry, no time to go into imperialist nationalism versus civic nationalism.”
Thank fuck for that chic.
Towbar, what they actually said… (qquote below from Guardian)
Dodds said: “We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act.
“Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services.”
DaveL @ 1:01am
Nice one Dave, re sovereign citizens England 1 : Scotland 5.4 million, and hear,hear to the advice to Alf; couldn’t agree more.
Captain Yossarian says: at 7:47 am
“No-one is cheating in Scotland’s elections.”
How would you know?
But there was effectively a cheat embedded right at the start of the reconvened Scottish Parliament due to the voting system used, as eluded to in this article.
“It also created a conjuncture unforeseen by the architects of devolution in the first Blair government, who deliberately chose a (broadly) proportional electoral system so as to minimise the risk of a Nationalist majority in Parliament ever moving Scotland towards independence.”
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/snp-scotland-victory/
If the UK is so great and democratic then why don’t we use the same FPTP voting systems as used for Westminster UK government, and for England’s parliament… Oh, forget the latter as they don’t yet appear to have their own devolved Parliament.
Dan – You are seeking to blame everyone else again. Holyrood is a devolved administration. If it used its powers for the benefit of the public and was seen to be doing so, then it would be granted an independence referendum and that happened at the end of Alex Salmond’s time as FM. Sadly, Alex Salmond cannot return. It was an act of self-immolation by the SNP. Will you ever return to being a political force in Scotland again? Ask Labour….once trust is gone it is very difficult to get it back again.
@ ASA
“At any rate, your theories are misunderstood history, and worse, fail to reflect that Scots are the very greatest of all colonising nations in global history. Oh, yes, we are. Far, far, far above the English, Welsh and Irish in our shared endeavour of the world’s greatest Empire. Scots absolutely ran the British Empire,”
Big straw man argument here. That wasn’t what Alf was talking about.
This is what he wrote.”Postcolonial theory tells us about all three aspects in relation to a colonial society:
– colonialism is racism, with fascism at its root;
– the colonizer uses tribal leaders to his advantage;
– the colonized only become nationalists in order to reclaim their sovereignty.”
That colonialism is racist is easily shown. The life of the Scots born slaver James Irving is a good example.Irving was a ship’s surgeon on a slave ship, then ship’s captain and slaver out of Liverpool. He also identified himself as a devout Christian.
On his first voyage as captain to West Africa his ship was wrecked. He and his 10 man crew were captured ashore and sold into slavery in the Saharan desert.
Irving wrote to the British Vice Consul in June 1789 for help thus: “For the sake of Almighty God, neglect us not… Let that spirit of humanity which at present Manifests itself throughout the realm actuate you to rescue us speedily from the most intollerable Slavery. Suffer us not any longer … to be the Slaves of Negroes, which reflects an unpardonate Negligence on the man who should see them liberated. If we are allowed to stay here to toil and be maltreated under a vertical Sun, we Shall soon be lost forever to ourselves, our Wives and familys, our Country and all we hold dear.”
Irving noted in his journal:”One of us had saved a Bible, from which we selected some Psalms and Chapters, suited to our forlorn situation; and received considerable comfort and benifit from reading them.”
The bit in the Bible about doing unto others…. etc was overlooked and Irving referred often to his captors as “barbarians” and “savages”.
Irving and his crew were eventually freed.His experience as a slave did not deter him from continuing his slave trade. He died on a slaving trip soon afterwards.
His attitudes to those he enslaved can be seen in his letters home. Before his captivity he wrote these words. “…our Black Cattle are intolerably Noisy and I’m almost Melted in the Midst of five or six Hundred of them.”
A coloniser, a racist, a user of tribal leaders to his advantage.
ABruce says:
24 July, 2023 at 8:20 am
DaveL @ 1:01am
Nice one Dave, re sovereign citizens England 1 : Scotland 5.4 million, and hear,hear to the advice to Alf; couldn’t agree more…
Just to add, that one sovereign person in England, is by literal definition, the only “Scot” who ISN’T sovereign in Scotland, as affirmed by the Declaration of Arbroath.
@ Captain Yosarian
No I am not seeking to blame anybody. I am merely pointing out the discrepancies in voting systems used and the ability to properly administrate the implementation of different franchise options.
When I was a party member I had access to the electoral roll and I’ve seen a second home owner registered for a general election at a property that definitely wasn’t their primary residence. But it could be they were actually registered there for tax reasons rather than just to get a vote in the area.
Having been a project manager you should be well able to observe design differences and flaws in systems that deviate from sensible convention which make things far from efficient and straightforward to implement.
That school you were involved with was a perfect example of a fucked up design. I just took one look at the building design and shook my head. Loads of weird angles and levels may be stylish but it was an engineering shitshow as all those compound angles intersecting at wall and roof junctions are just design, build, and maintenance nightmares to get absolutely right and ensure there are no leaks.
I recall I googled earthed that school and then zoomed out and travelled across to Scandinavia and zoomed back in to look at their schools, and as I expected they just used far more simplistic and sensible conventional designs that mean building, maintaining, and retro-fitting down the line will be so much easier and cheaper.
It should have been just a simple primary school built on taxpayer dime, if someone wants to get all arty then they can do it on their own dime.
Even if the foundations were or weren’t a structural issue, the fact it had big puddles forming on the access pavements shows how shit the engineering and signing off of build was.
Same old though, as pointed out the new retail build in my local town has incorporated the main road and carpark flowing right down to the shop entrance with just a 4 inch wide gully drain and no storm level drainage in place. The first thunderstorm made it impossible to access the shop, another couple of inches of water and the entire shop floor would have been flooded.
The brand new tarmac in the carpark has already been dug up because the leccy connection to the car charging points failed. But that is kind of expected when to save money they use aluminum conductors over copper, and with aluminum being more reactive and prone to dissimilar metal corrosion and high resistance issues it just means it will cost more down the line to rip all the stuff out again due to shorter service life and faults.
“Scotland did not benefit from the Empire”
Thank fuck. We can tell all the “reparations” grifters and statue toppling nut jobs tae get tae.
Haud oan though. The reparations grifters are just as busy in Glasgow, Dundee and other Scottish cities of exemplary non-imperial purity as they are in “wacist” England.
How come?
DaveL said;
“As an aside and on the subject of sovereignty: Sovereign citizens
England 1
Scotland 5.4 million”
I like the way you think! 😀
But we can take that a little further;
The English monarch isn’t sovereign, he lost that to the old English Parliament in 1689, effectively making England’s MPs sovereign. But that parliament ceased to exist in 1707, creating an argument down south about where its sovereignty went, and if it even still exists. Westminster’s English establishment has held for a long time that it retains continuity with its former self, and thus its sovereignty, but there are good grounds to dispute this. The establishment also holds that its old sovereignty now stretched up to cover Scotland, too, and that is also disputed because there are no good grounds for that assertion, just pseudo-legal bluster that falls to dust as soon as Scotland’s own sovereignty is mentioned.
So depending on whether the UK Parliament has continuity with the old English Parliament, or not, the figure for England is either 591, or 0.
As for Scotland, since the franchise for Scots voters taking part in a constitutional referendum hasn’t yet been settled, or even properly examined, the Scottish figure is uncertain. Further uncertainty arises from the fact that the most recent Scottish census hasn’t yet reported, so we don’t know what our current numbers are yet. There have been suggestions that it might have reached 6 million or more, and that much of the rise may be due to in-migration from England. What is clear is that you have to be old enough to vote, so that must knock off a significant chunk, since while a 15-year old may be a sovereign Scot, if she can’t cast a vote it can’t be counted. I’m guesstimating 3.5 million, and it might be lower.
So, Sovereign citizens:
England 591 or 0 (depending on continuity)
Scotland 3.5m to 5m (depending on franchise)
Dan – As far as the engineering shit-show goes, we’re within days of a conclusion. “If we ignore this for long enough, it will go-away”. No it won’t.
Just as the public needs to have confidence in the honesty of our politicians, the public also needs to have confidence in the honesty of our engineers.
Scottish engineering used to lead the world and for the past 150 years that has been the case. I think that both of us have benefitted in life from that perception?
Sadly, we have now been overtaken by the Americans.
As far as voting franchises go, nothing is perfect.
sam @ 9:42 am
If you (and the abusive ignoramus ASA) care to read up on postcolonial theory you would understand that colonialism is always a co-operative venture with native elites who take on the ‘values’ of the oppressor and thus condemn themselves by their behaviour.
Such elites behave much like the oppressor and protect his interests, although their actions can be even more extreme as their main task is to hold back the people and strongly (even violently) rebuke their efforts to secure nationhood and liberation.
St. Giles was full of such an elite just the other week as they witnessed a faux crowning that never even happened, an occasion which only confirmed their highly privileged (albeit precarious) position within a colonial society, as well as their ‘colonial conditioning’.
Captain Yossarian
**If it used its powers for the benefit of the public and was seen to be doing so, then it would be granted an independence referendum**
WTF?!? LOL
We don’t need anyone granting us anything! Scotland will decide. They have no authority here other than the one they imagine in their head.
You really have to laugh at such arrogance. It’s a treaty. Treaties end. We do not need to jump through various hoops to do it or meet certain tests.
Scotland will decide when she’s leaving.
DaveL
It’s probably 6 million.
But that’s a problem, not an advantage. Soz.
I’ll leave you to work out why, but if you can’t, it’s all spelled out for you upthread.
Students have two votes too in local elections?
One for where they go to university & one where they live permanently?
Seems odd to me & open to abuse.
Geri – When a clear majority in Scotland (say 60%) want another independence referendum, then it will be granted. It will not be granted otherwise, because they are far too disruptive. As Brexit showed.
And look at this fucking clown Harvie…
Let’s not use the simple efficient ever growing abundance of renewable leccy supplied to pretty much every house in Scotland to power quiet electric storage heaters. This idiotic fucker thinks it is environmentally sound practice to rip out state of the art storage programmable leccy storage heaters and fitting an entire expensive new wet heating system with an ASHP, new larger and complex watertank and pumps using reams of copper pipe (needs to be significantly more copper used as the pipework has to be larger diameter to flow to the new larger radiators because the systems run at a lower temperature than oil and gas fired central heating boilers.
Stupid cunt should stop trying to put the onus on homeowners by guilt tripping them with greenwashing shite. If the twat had any credibility he would realise economies of scale mean that a state owned or better regulated energy policy that supplied residential and business properties with reasonably priced renewably produced energy through the existing leccy grid is the way forward, not clagging loads of complex shit onto every house that takes up large amounts of mineral resources and intensive energy processes to create.
Aye, PV solar panels fitted on the north facing roofs in Scotland will save the planet. Just get in the fucking sea now ya total radge.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/07/24/harvie-moves-to-kill-off-more-votes-greens-wrecking-of-independence-continues/
Now you can be aghast that I swear a fair bit, but it’s out of utter frustration at the ineptitude displayed by those in positions of power, but just remember, it isn’t me that’s pissing away millions of quid on harebrained shitty policies.
I’d say six mandates, no action by Sturgeon to deliver on any of them is proof positive she was in a co-operative venture with Westminster.
She feathered nine yrs in power.
They feathered no threat to a referendum.
@ Dan
I read that piece in YFS earlier and had the same reaction you eloquently expressed above .
That fucking tiny-brained buffoon Harvie seems determined to finish-off what pitiful dregs of credibility this calamitous SNP/Green Gov , retain ( fast approaching zero ) ; in the process inflicting even more damage on the case for Independence . Maybe we should thank him for the former . The latter is an inexcusable aberration . Another poisonous legacy of the Sturgeon era .
He and they ( his emetic cohorts in his own Party & the SNP clowns that allow this madness to go unchecked ) should be hauled out of Holyrood by the scruff of the neck and sent back to whatever planet they descended from . ASAP
50%+1 is the international accepted standard.
Bojo *Get Brexshit done – oven ready* only had 42% of the vote. By your logic that was illegal & not acceptable?
It is not upto London, or its politicians – to decide if something will be too disruptive or not. Their job is to implement the *will of the people* as Mayhem was often heard say..
Harvie is just one big Westminster saboteur to waste as much money as he can in Holyrood.
He will be collecting his P45 soon. A warning to any future government to punt them back to the political fringes where they belong.
@Alf Baird 9.42 am
Thanks, Alf.
Not just the “elites” who take on the values of colonialism, I suspect.
The Wedderburns lost everything at Culloden where the two teenage brothers fought alongside their father. The father was killed, the brothers taken prisoner.
Because of their youth perhaps they escaped hanging and were transported to the colonies to become, in effect, slaves.
They served their “bondaged” time. Then went on to become slave owners themselves and become enormously wealthy.
To protect their wealth they married into other wealthy families and moved from slavery to the elite.
It is the psychological shift that interests me.What seems to happen stems from racism. Black people are sub-human.
I think this can also be seen at work in today’s UK. Not only racism towards ethnic minorities but in the demonisation of the disabled by the UK government.
It is mmost peculiar that unionist tell the Scottish population that you need a higher than 50% to get independent Scotland.
I would have thought we alredy have that vote in the bag long ago.
( They ) only need 50% vote of the signatures that signed on the treaty of union for them to end their treaty with England,
This is were Scots are played for stupid by unionists,
99.9 % of Scots had or have not yet voted to join the union, nor were they asked to. (Deliberately)
Why do the rest of Scottish people need a vote to leave a union they are not in?
It is only the signitures to the treaty that need vote to free themselves if they want that, that is up to them,
But the rest of the Sovereign Scots not need a % vote to leave a union they are not in.
Dan @10:55am
“Now you can be aghast that I swear a fair bit, but it’s out of utter frustration at the ineptitude displayed by those in positions of power…”
Dan, Emma Byrne’s book “Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language” talks of how swearing can be a useful tool in rhetoric.
Byrne is a London-based artificial intelligence researcher and writer.
This is what she says about the use of ‘bad language’:
I’ve read quite a few of your posts now, Dan. And I think you’re honest and credible. – all that swearing must be working. 🙂
sam @ 12:20 pm
“It is the psychological shift that interests me.What seems to happen stems from racism. Black people are sub-human.”
Appreciate the info. Colonialism creates a psychological condition, hence well worth further study to better understand the ‘mindset’, of oppressed and oppressor. Colonialism depends on ‘debasing the colonized’ group, whoever they may be, which is the racist aspect.
However, on the ‘co-operative native’ aspect, as Memmi, Cesaire, Fanon etc all found, ‘colonialism may also wear a black face’. Just as for us, colonialism can also speak with a Scottish voice.
Alf,
Sorry my post was cut short and a bit garbled towards the end, I don’t usually stay up that late these days.
I hope you got the gist of it.
If I give an overview of how , by my system, cultural identity should work, it should clarify things. I realise even the cut down detail given was bit of an attention challenger but I think that had to come before the overview.
So how does it work?
The Primary Level may be succinctly described as the belief level. ‘Belief’ because they concern fundamentals that cannot be proven. This does NOT need a God or Supreme being although for some, that may be the case.
For example, an atheist who believes no God of any kind exists (probably most of us) still has to have a belief on whether things are predestined or not. Or if I may be allowed the physics expression I am more comfortable with, deterministic.
We live in a pan-national cultural area where the gestalt is that the future is not deterministic, that we can make a difference by our decisions and actions, that Free Will is not merely an illusion.
But there are those who believe in a purely deterministic Universe so how does an individual arrive at their own belief?
Most individuals will simply subconsciously absorb the gestalt belief of their pan-national area without even thinking about it.
But that’s fine, not all cultural identity elements need to be acquired through conscious analysis. Indeed, some might say, those acquired subconsciously are more important in terms of cultural identity.
The established fundamental beliefs in a pan-national area are very important for establishing broad guidelines within which distinct national cultural identities may form.
If the fundamental beliefs of a pan-national area were to change it would have a profound effect on the distinct cultural identities of nations/regions within that area.
Luckily, such seismic changes are very rare.
Our distinct national cultural identity is set by the priority order we place on those areas which encompass culture. Law, justice, welfare, education, research, art, music, theater, well being. It is a priority order which should come from the people, what they consider is more important, what they think should be emphasized. That will should be made a reality by law and by appropriate allocation of what will always be a finite resource.
Hence the secondary layer of culture is created, the one which distinguishes between nations and regions.
It will not remain constant, nor should it. It will change naturally through ongoing debate and discussion among the people or in response to new external circumstances or new technological or medical advances or existential threats like climate change or Covid or Brexit.
There should be a mechanism where that current cultural consensus is rapidly made manifest. Mostly, that mechanism is the legislature which makes the law and allocates funds and the judiciary which implements that law.
In an ideal World every citizen would be well informed with plenty time to weigh up an issue and vote on it with a button. The whole population would then be the Government.
In reality, we know that a lot of folk can’t be arsed to learn anything and won’t be motivated to vote. Worse than that are those who can’t be arsed to learn anything but still vote for fun anyway based on the colour of the advocate’s shirt, or how sexy they are, or how funny they are.
So we have a system of elected representatives who are supposed
to make manifest the will of the people, a will born of the consensus of the priorities of the people which should mirror
or embody their cultural perspective.
Sadly, we know that is not really what happens. First there is predilection for hubris among those who apply for the job. They know better than you so they don’t need to listen to their constituents, even though they demonstrate time and time again, Bragg, Truss, Johnson, Braverman, Hancock, that the average man and woman in the street is better informed than they.
Then there is the party system, with whips.(no quips) Then there is bribery and corruption and cronyism of all kinds and for those who are troublesome but won’t be bought there is coercion of all kinds. And of course lying to the public has become almost obligatory even when there is no political gain to be had from it. All carried on in a self justifying bubble which completely isolates them from what the people’s actual priorities and concerns are.
A rotten pile of corrupta with very few exceptions.
You could be forgiven for thinking that far from being there to enact the cultural perspective of the people they instead act as an anti-cultural organism.
However, even in that cesspit setup, usually the power of public opinion does manage to assert itself, mainly through opinion polls approaching election times.
But the direction of travel of Democracies is not good.
Cultural perspective change should percolate up from the people. Countless discussions and debates informed by history, life experience, newspapers, TV, myth and legend, social media, drama, literature, music and song, learnings from other cultures, education and so on can and will evolve the cultural perspective of the people. This is the tertiary layer.
It should be working to keep people accurately informed as to the current state of play and to allow potential change to be raised up the flagpole.
For that reason, Scotland’s tertiary cultural layer has been under concerted attack for several decades. From the great clear out in TV in the 70’s, through historical revisionism in academia, pro-Union censorship in the MSM (usually by omission but increasingly by just plain lying.) infiltration of the arts and concomitant pro-union massaging. Generally denigration of all Scottish cultural aspects. The choir book lyrics are easy to memorise, ‘Scotland Bad’.
And of course our legislature and judiciary have been given the treatment as well
It is astonishing isn’t it that despite all that costly intervention into our culture bearing institutions and the virtual elimination of what should be an intrinsic part of the maintenance of Scottish culture that a distinctive Scottish cultural perspective still survives?
Friends reunited, better together again, in-deep open water:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/that-sinking-feeling/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0__eWU1N12c