The endless road
Okay, folks, time to put our hands up and admit it: we got this one wrong.
We thought they’d be subtle.
The proposal revealed in today’s Times, which will be discussed at today’s meeting of the SNP’s tame, dissent-purged NEC, is the most abject capitulation imaginable, a scarcely-believable kicking of the can still further down the road to the middle of 2026.
It had already been hinted at yesterday by Tommy Sheppard in The National:
Now, with our usual scrupulous fairness we should note straight away that The Times has put a spin on the story – so far the proposal is just that, and there’s no official evidence that Nicola Sturgeon is in fact “preparing to” adopt it.
But read in the context of the sudden recent barrage of articles from leadership hyper-loyalists like Marcus Carslaw, Pete Wishart, Alyn Smith and Stewart McDonald all pouring cold water on the “de facto referendum” idea, we can be pretty confident that this is Sturgeon’s kite that’s being flown.
In a sane world SNP members would be in full open revolt at this point, but such is the level of brainwashing within the party that the reaction on social media last night and this morning mostly comprised flat-out reality denial.
[EDIT 2.52pm: the story has of course now been confirmed as true.]
The true purpose of the proposal is of course to try to defuse the growing calls for a snap Holyrood election this year to be used as the de facto referendum, fulfilling the SNP’s previous solemn and unequivocal promises about a 2023 vote.
(Incidentally, we really must stop here for a moment to enjoy Alyn Smith.)
And while Wings has been pointing out for some time that such a strategy is possible within the Scottish Parliament’s rules, an alert contributor yesterday discovered that it’s considerably easier than even we thought.
Because what we didn’t realise was that the Scotland Act 2016 made a little-remarked but very significant change to the laws governing the operation of Holyrood. To be more specific, it gave the Scottish Parliament permission for the first time to alter the terms of the Scotland Act 1998 which govern how the Parliament is run.
As you can see, one of the areas it opened up to amendment was Part 1, Section 3.
That matters because it’s the section that determines whether the Parliament can vote to dissolve itself and call an early election at a time of its choosing. As things stand that requires a two-thirds majority – something which could have been achieved by tactical list voting for other pro-indy parties at the 2021 election but was deliberately scuppered by the SNP’s “both votes SNP” policy.
But because of the changes in the 2016 Act, the Parliament can now vote to change that rule, so that only a simple 50%+1 majority is required.
Constitutional law expert Aileen McHarg confirmed our alert contributor’s assessment:
And the amended text of the Scotland Act 1998 makes expressly clear that Section 3 is excluded from the prohibition against modifying it.
And there it is. It’s as simple as that. All that needs to be done is for the SNP and Greens to pass a motion removing the need for a two-thirds majority, and then vote to dissolve the Parliament and hold a new election. There would be no vote for a new First Minister, no possibility for the Unionist parties to do anything to foil the plan. We’d move straight to a general election.
People like Pete Wishart have used the relative complexity of the alternative route to deliberately mislead people about it by pretending that it would result in Douglas Ross or Anas Sarwar becoming First Minister.
That was always a lie, and Wishart knew it. But he counted on people’s unwillingness to parse Holyood’s standing orders and work through the flowchart of the plan.
The new revelations, however, provide a simple black-and-white two-step strategy which guarantees a Holyrood election within weeks if the SNP and Greens choose to deploy it: vote to change the majority rule, then vote for an election. Job done.
If and when they don’t, Yes supporters should demand answers as to why they’re so desperate to avoid an easy shortcut and instead travel eternally along a path without end, whose final destination never gets any closer.
The SNP should prepare for another wave of membership resignations.
Freedom comes first but Freedom can only be effective when Most of the people know what’s going on,Most of the time.
Optima,Scotia,Mensa,Alba…..Jenga !
I’ve ran out of expletives. I’m not surprised, just feeling utterly defeated – more so, because the cult followers STILL don’t see they’re being conned. No idea what it will take to make them open their eyes.
Well, well, getting panicky or what? Aye, it seems like a determined, coordinated effort to kick the can again, I’m afraid. The usual suspects sounding off already. If the FM had no real intention of keeping her word, then why on earth did she make such a bold promise after the SC ruling? Was it a desperate attempt to save face? If so, it has only made things a lot worse. And dangerous for the SNP leadership. People (voters) are sometimes hesitant, but they are no daft. Sooner or later, they will decide that they have had enough of this nonsense and punish them at the ballot box. They got away with the “Scotland will never been taken out of the EU” false promise, but this time they may push the people too far. Maybe, maybe not. We will soon find out IMHO.
We would need leadership willing to do this for Scotland, unfortunately….
David says:
14 January, 2023 at 12:02 pm
The SNP should prepare for another wave of membership resignations.
Why? Surely anyone who is still an SNP member after all these years of deliberate delaying tactics, witch hunts and GRA nonsense is fully committed to the cult of Nikla? There simply cannot be anyone left in the party who is of sound mind.
‘If and when they don’t, Yes supporters should demand answers as to why they’re so desperate to avoid an easy shortcut and instead …
travel eternally along a path without end, whose final destination never gets any closer….’
I fear there is a significant chunk of SNP Independence Supporters for whom the policy of ‘travel eternally along a path without end, whose final destination never gets any closer’ is exactly what they want, even if they do not admit it to themselves.
Now watch The Glorious Leader beg Westminster to change section 3 of the Scotland Act to a protected provision.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the SNP hierarchy have known about s3 for some time and were hoping it’d never be discovered by anyone else.
If there are still any doubters left in the party I’d be very much surprised… what’s left are clearly ex Labour infiltrators post 2014. They’re in full view now, nowhere left to hide.
Shappard is just another now cozy feet MP loving the limelight and the sound of his own voice.
There is no way that Sturgeon would ever risk her own position by calling a Holyrood election. why would she when she has silenced all opposition, milks the SNP and Scottish govt for two massive salaries.
Why risk all that when you know you can always be in control but never actually deliver what you were elected to deliver
Doesn’t matter. L Ron Sturgeon could boot the living fck oot a guide dog puppy on live TV and her zombies would still be facing Bute House every hour on the hour and saying 10 Hail Nicolas.
I don’t think anybody in Scotland with a couple of connected brain cells will be surprised by the ongoing can-kicking
What will be fun will be seeing how they argue against using powers they currently have to change the procedural rules
It would appear that Ms Sturgeon must now pee or get aff the chanty.
As before, I’m glad SNP HQ appear to have finally realised the folly of a de-fact GE. the downsides far outweigh any benefit.
Unfortunately, I’m equally sure that they will prove unwilling to do what’s needed next:
1. Utilise a HR election for that purpose (I’m relaxed about waiting)
2. Asking for SNP to be allowed to stand unchallenged in the constituency but then accepting it/they must then also ask for its/their list vote to go to other Indy parties (incl. ALBA)
The only way we win now is by changing the narrative. The only way we can change the narrative is by having a Unionist rout at HR – something even the most entrenched journalist couldn’t ignore.
It’s very revealing that the SNP is increasingly desperate to avoid independence at any cost. I mean, it’s almost as if they haven’t done their homework and don’t want anyone to find out.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the captain is trying take the ship down with her?
luigi @12.17 “People (voters) are sometimes hesitant, but they are no daft.”
I don’t share your generous opinion about the electorate.
I am laughing like an audience member in one of the earlier Billy Connolly appearances ie poleaxed with uncontrolled laughter to the point of actually stopping breathing at the absurdity of it all.
Would we not move straight to a Holyrood election?
I understand why Sturgeon and her gang do this – loathsome as their behaviour is, it achieves their own purposes.
But what fills me with shame is how such a large number of ostensibly pro-independence Scots can’t see through it. I’ve seen this behaviour referred to ever more as ‘cult-like’, and I could not agree more. These people are brain-washed. I know the 1984 comparisons are most obvious when looking at the gender debate: if you can get people believing in absurdities like ‘2+2=5’ or ‘your sex is whatever you say it is’ then everything else can follow. But probably most of these zombies read 1984 as youngsters and told themselves they’d try to resist. Ach weel.
Guess I can scratch giving Rishi his prenup busting GRC in exchange for an S30 from the list of potentially cunning plans hitherto kept secret.
That’s it then. HR plebiscitary election in 2023.
No ifs or buts.
Anybody checked out what the bookies are saying?
So this is Sturgeon’s hamster wheel Scotland, where every day is winter and Christmas never comes.
To know how easily we could escape the SNP’s dead end makes it all the more frustrating.
Why has it taken one of your readers to spot this law change? Don’t the SNP/SNP govt employ numerous advisers to explore options like this? Or are they too busy with transgender agenda or doing down Alex Salmond/Alba?
“Why has it taken one of your readers to spot this law change? Don’t the SNP/SNP govt employ numerous advisers to explore options like this? Or are they too busy with transgender agenda or doing down Alex Salmond/Alba?”
Well, quite. In fairness I didn’t spot it either, because the Scotland Act is all but unreadable, but then I don’t have a whole army of taxpayer-funded researchers to go sifting through it all, AND I’d already come up with a workable plan anyway.
Even a threat to initiate this scenario would actually force Labour, Lib Dems and the Tories to produce some kind of vision for a future Scotland rather than coasting along for years on end seemingly doing f***all to earn their opposition stripes.
To these three parties: after the clusterf*** of Brexit, which none of you are proposing to alter in any fundamental way, how does staying in the Union offer Scots a better future than breaking away now and joining EFTA before the year’s out?
What a choice!
The Union: choosing between heating or eating or dying of cold and hunger?
Independence: out on the randan every night, followed by a full Scottish fried breakfast, free Irn Bru, free Buckfast, free stovies, playing floodlit golf after midnight, and hunting rich people through the heather?
The rabbit I referred to in an earlier post looks like making an appearance from the hat. Alongside the carrot. And the can again for another kicking.
Nicola Sturgeon (quoting Paul Daniels): ‘You’ll like this, not a lot, but you’ll like it’.
SNP fans: ‘We love it Nicola’- Lovely bunny, yummy carrot. Gies a kick o’ thon can.
That article is pretty emphatic and, crucially, such a clear expose of SNP intentions. Wings articles generally leave me deeply angered by SNP’s intended lack of action, but this one takes my breath away.
Fuel-poor Scots, having to decide between heat or eat, should be taking to the streets over this.
While Alba and other contributors are working hard to deliver the positive message of independence, all other, fed-up Pro-indy still campaigning for it should right now set this aside, and instead concentrate all efforts into campaigning against, and exposing, the closet unionists within the Scotland-damaging SNP party. Yes, we know the msm protect the Party, but there are legal, grassroots ways of exposing nests of rats.
How to deliver this message far and wide, beyond the narrow, vent-my-spleen borders of social media? Well, word of mouth always offers mileage.
Never discuss religion or politics: I think, instead of remaining politely quiet, the discussion of ‘politics’ should be considered essential in 2023 Scotland, most especially when many of those ‘not interested in politics’ are the headline-junkies holding the country back.
Well, we can see now why the infiltration of the SNP by the cultural Marxists was so easy: 1. keep saying you stand for independence but do your level best to thwart it, 2. rely on the loyalty of the membership to the point of infinity (stupidity is very often not a finite quality), 3. denounce those who see through the charade as ‘dissidents’ and ‘troublemakers’, 4. remove anyone strong enough to stand up to the con and ‘expose’ them under a pretext. Why don’t the SNP use the Denton’s Document template, suitably reworked, to destroy the UK’s anti independence policy by pretending to be Tories and undermining from within? After all, it worked with them, didn’t it? Sturgeon, Harvie, Slater, et al: we’re the Great Pretenders.
David Rodgers says on 14 January, 2023 at 1:21 pm:
“Why has it taken one of your readers to spot this law change? Don’t the SNP/SNP govt employ numerous advisers to explore options like this? Or are they too busy with transgender agenda or doing down Alex Salmond/Alba?”
You can bet everything you’ve got they know all about it, David. Trouble is, as their priorities do not involve indy anywhere in the top-5 list then they’re hardly going to pursue the easiest of routes. Which in turn shows Sturgeon up further for what she truly is: a self-serving skank. Time will tell. 😉
Stewart McDonald uses his weekly column in The Scotsman to propose “unionists should be invited to the SNP’s special conference in March to put forward their point of view in an open, friendly, and respectful environment.”
McDonald does exactly what his case handler in Foggy Bottom tells him (after running it by Nicola of course).
David Rodgers @ 1:21 pm
“Why has it taken one of your readers to spot this law change? Don’t the SNP/SNP govt employ numerous advisers to explore options like this?”
Good point David. Though perhaps one reason for this is, as Albert Memmi explained it:
“The gradual selection of the mediocre which necessarily takes place in a colony is further worsened by a restricted recruiting ground.”
In line with this reality and ‘cultural division of labour’ we might expect the bulk of the meritocratic elite appointed to manage a colony to be anti-independence and hence never searching for a way out for the oppressed group, rather the opposite in fact. In other words a colonial meritocracy, which is mediocre, is tasked with stopping independence. Which, paradoxically in a sense, should make it easier for the colonized to escape….much as the good Rev appears to have discovered here.
They are confidence tricksters because they know their intended audience is just desperate enough to grab any fig leaf available, and they play on that hope.
Back in 2019 Boris wanted an early election, which the Fixed Term Parliaments Act didn’t allow. So Boris simply changed the rules – as it was in his power to do.
NS has the same power to call an early HR election but wouldn’t. Maybe she doesn’t really want Indy, maybe she is scared of failure – I can’t see into her soul so I don’t know. But it seems to me that if you want big political changes – whether it’s Indy or Brexit or whatever – you need to be as bloody minded as Boris or Farage or even AS. Wishy-washy leaders don’t lead countries to independence because they haven’t the stomach for it. It’s that simple. You’re not going to break up the UK – which is what Indy means – without being willing to frighten the horses. Trans bollocks is easy, all the cool powers that be will pat you on the head for it and you’ll get to be on telly in the US; Indy takes guts and bloody mindedness. Scotland just doesn’t have that quality of leadership.
The road to Independence has become a mobius road. Neverending,
@John Main 1:20pm
So I checked the bookies odds. You can get an incredible 15 to 2 against there being an Independence vote in 2024. You get can’t even get odds on 2023.
A hollyrood election this year in advance of the UK election seems right.
The holyrood election sets the mandate for the UK election. The UK election then in a majority of seats and the union is over.
I heard at a branch meeting the proposal to have the UK election getting permission to have a referandum and thought it was a joke. I certainly laughed.
How can any nationalist see this as a plan.
“The UK election then in a majority of seats and the union is over.”
I don’t know how many times this needs saying, but a majority of SEATS is WORTHLESS. The chances of the international community recognising any claim to independence based on a MINORITY of votes in something we ourselves had called a plebiscite are 0.000000000%.
Nobody will give a toss what Maggie Thatcher might or might not have said (which nobody can ever actually source a quote for properly) in 1979, or how the Westminster FPTP system works for elections. If we’re saying this is NOT an election but a referendum, we have to bloody win it, and that means getting more than half the votes.
The snp rebels need to rebel – simples.
The Alba Party special conference has now started and can be viewed via the Alba Party website.
The snp rebels need to rebel.
Don’t be too harsh there are lots of problems needing attention here in Scotland.
These pesky kids who play ‘knock door run fast’ need to be sorted out & charged with a hate crime.
link to archive.is
‘Knock and run away’ may qualify as hate incident for police’
The road to independence does not lie in the direction of the Snp, nor in the devolved westminster government,
This is merely street talk, gossiping to delay, with no action, and no sense of justice, circling around to catch your own tail everytime.
And I for one are fed up with the same fairy stories,
There are more serious routes to Scottish independence and probably more genuine than chasing the Grimms fairy tale baddies in Scotland of the positioned snp and green goblins.
(When you are ready for grown up talk) I might produce some evidence with regards real info that can actually provide a foundation for, and route to a independent Scotland.
Its up to you wether you want regime change of a political leader in Scotland only,
or wether you want the Country of Scotland to be actually independent. For those that are not comprehending this,
There is a big difference.
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
14 January, 2023 at 2:13 pm
Nobody will give a toss what Maggie Thatcher might or might not have said (which nobody can ever actually source a quote for properly)
Pretty sure she only said it in her memoirs Stu, I have read it online when someone pos the relevant page
Quite incredulous that a Wings contributor has found this vital clause and all the long term
SNP politicians, some of whom are lawyers, and their puppet Lord Advocate either don’t know about it or want to keep it buried.
In a real democracy the First Minister would be forced to reply why if they were serious about independence have the done absolutely nothing about this get out of Westminster’s Jail card
Absolutely sickening to see SNP sinking deeper and deeper into the political gutter holding hands with the Tories
Please watch Sunak’s arrogance and ignorance in this interview as he is forced to confirm his corrupt English court has declared Scotland to be an English Colony where democracy doesn’t apply
link to twitter.com
Outstanding journalism. You are leading us to Scottish Independence. 50+1 you say.
You’re the only person in Scottish politics that has shared with us this key information.
Thank you.
Alf Baird.
Have you read the Colonial stock Act.
It includes the Caledonian and north British Railway Companies) order confirmation Act 1894 legislation and bills that have gone through Westminster,
This is just the tip of the ice burg, a teaser for you, proving Scotland is a Colony.
It taken me a bit of time in research, but the out come is rewarding for most of us that want complete independence, not just political party regime change.
More to come on Westminsters views as a Colony Scotland.
Unless I live to 110 then I have not a chance in hell of seeing Independence
There should be no excuse now for anyone to vote or support this SNP government or party for that matter, if you still support the SNP you are not interested in Scottish independence.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
Get the SNP out wherever you find them at council level, MSP level and MP level.
Eventually the SNP membership will comprise of just SNP elected representatives and all their staffers. Yes this article clear shows you the SNP don’t want to rock the boat. Self interest is more important!
There is only one route to independence. You need a pro independence government at HR. They have to spend 10/15 years forgetting about grievances and fights with Westminster. They have to use that time to build up Scotland. THIS WILL NEVER EVER EVER happen while we have an SNP govt. Scotland being a small country should be easy to manage and get it buzzing. After 10/15 years the government could then say to the electorate “look what we have done, if we were independent we could do even better”. Support for independence would soar and WM would be unable to refuse a Ref. The current strategy will never deliver independence.
You have to laugh really. The SNP’s position on first past the post voting is that it is unrepresentative and should be replaced. But when they hoover up 80% of the seats with 45% of the vote they hail the result as representative.
In fairness to Stu, it is impossible for him to research all avenues and all angles, he has only so many hours in day,
He has been like a one man band for such a long time.
This is why we need to pick up the baton of our own research a little bit more and print what we find to spread the information and knowledge in Scotland and on here,
So it was a reader that found that information out, well done, it helps all of us. We are all readers that can help a very busy Rev Stu in this way.
So here is some of my own research why “Westminster” places the word “Colony” in front of the word, Scotland
Colonial Stock, Westminster Act, 1889-1904. Caledonian Railways and Canals of Caledonian and North British Railway Companies order Confirmation Act 1894.
More info to come as Scotland, a Colony of Westminster.
Ex-FM Alex Salmond calling for a special Holyrood election in October of this year, to be used as a de facto indyref. You’d never get Sturgeon the Judas asking for this.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
“THE Alba Party has called for a special Holyrood election in October, which would act as a de facto referendum and break the “impasse” on independence.
Speaking at the party’s special independence national assembly in Edinburgh, Alba Party leader Alex Salmond said a de facto election in Holyrood would allow supporters to campaign for independence on “home ground”.
He said: “Holyrood offers many advantages over Westminster for such a plebiscite poll – a franchise which includes young people and European nationals, a special election which would be dominated by the single issue of Scottish independence and an electoral system which allows both the number of seats and the number of votes to be measured to assure the validity of the result.”
link to 12ft.io
I would dispute the title of this post .
The ” Road ” is not endless . The road ends where/when Scottish Independence is totally n comprehensively fucked ; when sufficient numbers of supporters are so thoroughly scunnered by everything whatever the fuck that aberrant obscenity is that’s currently masquerading as an Independence Party is doing /not doing start drifting away in ever larger numbers .
It’s called Sturgeon Road
We can see the end of that road quite clearly from where we are now .
” The dream will never die ” . But the dreamers will .
What did Sunak and Sturgeon agree at their private dinner to cause this change of plan?
Perhaps Sunak said ‘now is not the time for a s.30’, but if the Tories lose the next election he has agreed his last act as prime minister will be to grant it just so as to mix a bottle for Starmer to deal with. I wonder.
Part 2.
Legislation, UK.Gov ( General Act 1919 Land settlement ( Scotland )
Compulsory Aquisition of Land for the purpose of small holding Colonies Acts 1916 and 1918.
With the consent of …..F2 the Treasury, Land may…..F2 be aquired compulsorily by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland ( in this Act referred to as “the Board” ) for the purpose of Small holding Colonies Act 1916 and 1918 and the powers of aquiring land by agreement under the Acts shall be exercisable.
More info on the word “Colonies” forthcomin.
James che @ 3:23 pm
Scotland as “Colonial Stock”
This would seem a very good rationale for independence, James. For only then will ‘a people’ and their land truly become liberated, no longer enslaved and plundered as ‘colonial stock’, and now traded openly between global offshore private equity sharks – the new empire as it were, with Westminster acting as ‘middle-man’ pushing a modern form of colonial slave trade ‘enterprise’ at our expense.
And meanwhile the daeless SNP’s offshore capital and freeport supporting elites acting as colonial administrators have yet to even begin that ‘reasoned study of colonialism’, which Fanon tells us is necessary in order for a people to understand what independence really means.
David Holden @ 12th Jan 6:42
I haven’t seen you comment on Pat Anderson’s site for a while – have you joined the exodus? Can’t say I blame you given how ‘woke’ he’s become.
He’s down to about three regulars but still doesn’t seem to realise he’s pissing folk off with his ‘love Nicola, hate Alba’ stance. It’s sad to see – he should have stuck to the fitba.
PS Why not join us exiles on etims for the fitba at least?
For those waiting on the cult wakening up, don’t hold your breath.
Just read a few twitter responses to SNP supporters who’re now saying, they can no longer vote SNP because of this latest betrayal.
The usual suspects saying, we don’t believe Yoon papers.
Does anyone else remember a book by Douglas Hurd (published in the seventies and turned into a TV program ) called Scotch on the Rocks. This is pertinent because of the current position of some to declare UDI
It looks like the times has got there facts wrong. Next Westminster election will be thought as de-facto referendum.
Ruby says:
14 January, 2023 at 2:28 pm
FFS. We did that to folk we knew, for a laugh. There was never meant to be anything hateful about it. Seems like practical jokes will be outlawed – I see an underground trade in whopee cushions coming.
The 2/3rds lie is already being spread on the National’s comments section in regard to the Alba collapse holyrood story.
I’m done with all of the rogues. I’m done with scots people & even family who think Nicola is some sort of messiah. It’s game over & reading & watching these people just fill me with dread.
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
14 January, 2023 at 2:13 pm
“The UK election then in a majority of seats and the union is over.”
I don’t know how many times this needs saying, but a majority of SEATS is WORTHLESS. The chances of the international community recognising any claim to independence based on a MINORITY of votes in something we ourselves had called a plebiscite are 0.000000000%.
You’re right, but wrong Stu. I respect your opinion Stu, you know I do, but you’re wrong about this.
A majority of seats is NOT worthless, it is the threshold whereafter a majority of Scottish Westminster seats cannot be defeated by the minority of Scottish Westminster seats. SCOTLAND CAN THUS ACT! We can issue sovereign edicts.
But only a fool or a very brave man would use that as an instantaneous guillotine style execution for the Union, because as you say, neither the people nor the international community would go for it. So let’s not do that!
HOWEVER! Possessed with an ADEQUATE democratic mandate, and a system’s majority supporting that mandate, there is no reason whatsoever why the Scottish MP’s could not declare it their intention to end the Treaty of Union by a date of their choosing, and thus to end the Union without actually ending it, (a lot like Article 50 declaring the UK’s intention to leave to Europe lodged in advance of the actual departure). Then, our Westminster MP’s remove themselves from Westminster and declare themselves a provisional Scottish government, or better still, an interim Convention of the Estates defending Scotland’s Constitutional Rights and Sovereignty.
The Union would be over, but with it’s actual conclusion held in abeyance, and granted a stay of execution pending a negotiated exit and ratification plebiscite to held (say) after 18 months or 2 years negotiations. Note… a stay of execution which “could” even be rescinded, and Independence abandoned before the ratification plebiscite if that was the course dictated by the negotiations. Thus we encourage and oblige Westminster and more importantly Scottish Unionists to talks.
Naturally, those two years of negotiation would be fraught and difficult, but with Scottish MP’s removed from Westminster, the negotiations would be between Nations, National interim Governments, and literally be inter-national negotiations with no place for UK domestic law or UK Supreme Court interference, and no more Scotland Act holding any sway.
With Constitutional probity on our side, a pro Independence mandate (however technical it might be, – doesn’t matter), and two years of treaty negotiations ahead, and then all to be finalised with a ratification plebiscite, I firmly believe Scotland could, and would, take International Opinion along with us.
A 30 seat mandate IS the threshold we need, it literally is, but not to kill off the Union with a single shattering blow, WHICH NOBODY WANTS, but to blow the whistle and give Union two years to settle up amicably, make the case for keeping it, or if there’s no good faith to be found, for the Treaty of Union will be deemed breached and at an end by default, and irrespective of any mandate.
We quite literally shadow the protocols of the Brexit Referendum. The Brexit vote didn’t drop us out of Europe instantaneously, it just started the process, with a known end-game conclusion “IF” the negotiations failed and there was no interim change of heart. I say Scotland uses the Brexit process as our template.
A “technical” majority, 30 seats, is the “servo mandate” which gets the big wheels moving.
The 30 seat mandate is also using Westminster’s First Past the Post system against themselves. If they’ve lived by First past the post, let them die by it. Why should Scotland cut them any slack and impose on ourselves a George Cunningham style 50% rule? Let “their” lousy system bite them on the arse. Their poxy “rigged” system has disadvantaged Scotland for 300 years and is part of the reason we’re leaving! Using it against them seems perfectly apt to me.
Don’t forget too… We are looking at 30, having returned 56 out 59 before now. They should have heeded the warning of what lay ahead.
I think we need to start hearing both from independence-supporting members/voters in the other parties, especially Labour, and from consistent SNP voters who don’t want independence. What kind of people are we dealing with here? What makes them tick? Are there views on independence coming more from the gut than the head?
Plus to the few unionists who do pop up every now and then BTL, how bad would things have to get under a UK govt before you would consider the Indy option?
Part 3.
Hansard 1803- 2005.- 1950s-1995
Commons sitting- 25th March 1959,
HC Deb Vol 602 cc1472-7
Speech, MR Creech Jones,
I beg to move, in page 5, line 17, to leave out “Colonial” and insert ” CommonWealth”
A great deal of nonsense talked about the Colonialism. One knows that there have been many vicious practices under that heading, We have now reached a stage in human history,
However, when the word “Colony” signifies an anachronism which is no longer applicable to the life of the world as we would like it to be,
Consequently, in the case the British Territories, we have got into the habit of talking of the commonwealth and because the word ” Colony ” is covered with opprobium we prefer to think of what we call junior members of the commonwealth or members of commonwealth or not quite full members of the commonwealth,
What we suggest by Amendment is that henceforth, however fimiliar we may be with the term ” Colonial development and Welfare” We should refer to the funds and the Act as the bill will become, to the commonwealth funds.
(Here we can see from the word term “Colony” changed to the word term “commonwealth” to ease the minds of the Coloniser,
but for little else or change to the countries Colonised such as Scotland, as we see under the ” Compulsory Land Acquisition for the purpose of Small holdings in Scotland actually “titled” small holding Colony Acts 1916 and 1918. Previously mentioned by Westminster parliament under these Acts.
I cannot see there being a referendum for at least another 10 years. There has been no progress in the polls despite all of the gifts SNP has been given: Johnson, Truss, Brexit, Partygate, Covid etc. Sturgeon has now asked 5 different PMs for a referendum and each has told her to fuck off. 10s of thousands of members have left and activists are deflated. The leadership has burnt up all of its political capital on the daft as fuck GRR tranny law and now this row back from the defacto referendum.
The latest crop of MSPs such as Karen Adams Family, Enema Roddick & Audrey Knickers has not inspired anyone and a good week in parliament for the former is if she has not turned up in parliament with a jerrycan of petrol to burn the place down. The old guard are completely stale and uninspiring . The 2016 intake promised much but had all their enthusiasm beaten out of them by Shona Robocrap, Shirley Anne Shitforbrains and Sturgeon. They are now brainless droids who vote for how they are told apart from the 9 rebels who grew a backbone.
Sturgeon has to go but who should replace her? Air Miles Angus is just pompous twat, Neil Gray by name and nature has special needs, Kate Formby is a coward and Humza Useless is just that. My own preference would be Regan who at least stood up for what she believed and totally outclassed Sturgeon, however she is too quiet on other issues.
Whoever is the next FM needs to get a plan in place and the first thing they need to do is tear up the deal with the Greens, remove the power from the NEC and place it back with conference, sack every SPAD & Cabinet Minister, and kick out the wokeratti. They need to promote those with ability and get the public services up and running again to win trust with the public. They need to decentralise power from SNP and recreate a permanent Yes movement which is an umbrella for all Indy parties and non aligned civic society. SNP need to make sure the trains run on time and the bins get emptied and the push towards Indy must come from the people. SNP has had their chance, but it is all over now.
Alf Baird.
It is without doubt under legislation of the British and then later the UK parliament of Westminster that the treaty of the union between Scotland and England was not considered as a equal treaty but rather as Colony of the Westminster English parliament itself.
Alf, there are many such instances in the British legislation from Westminster that they disregard the treaty or its Articles towards Scotland that was meant to create the new ” Great British parliament.
But veers in a uncontrollable manner towards Colonisation of Scotland as preference, begore and after the mythical union.
It is for us to do our homework, to research legislation, statues, committee meetings, and FOI,
We should be doing our homework in stead of leaving it on the shoulder of a few.
@Smitty 5:01
Have an uptick.
Have a thousand of them.
Holyrood election campaign of 2021 was very explicit from SNP that there would be a vote on independence in first half of the parliament. All the talk of mandates and democracy these days will sound a bit hollow if that promise isn’t upheld.
Imagine if WM decided that SNP politicians were failing to demonstrate loyalty to the union and therefore their salaries will be withheld? We would be independent faster than ye could blink. Either that or they would fall in their knees, declare undying support for the union and say that devolution was all they really wanted. With the current bunch in charge, it could have gone either way.
The Independence movement has lots of challenges to overcome. We have a Unicameral Parliament with dysfunctional committees regularly pushing bad law through on the nod. Our Public Services have been trashed in the name of the SNP. We have zero accountability. Our Institutions have failed to provide the necessary checks and balance. We have a cohort of MSPs that are disconnected from public reality. A broadcast network that challenges the UK Government with vigour and is weak and feeble in even asking basic questions of the Scot Gov. And regularly missing records and minutes are tolerated. The common denominator is Nicola Sturgeon. I am of the opinion that anybody as leader of the Independence movement would be much better. Stop her scorched earth policy. There will be nothing left if we don’t. My solution maybe I will join Alba. We are at the low point, we can only go up from here.
Is there a route for the electorate to deselect MSPs and MPs en masse, chuck these betraying rats out of our parliament and force a Holyrood/GE election?
Quite frankly, I have had it with this political fraud and the crown minions burning the fucking breaks of independence, so hard they have been standing on those breaks for the last 8 years.
I must admit I have never trusted neither the official result of indyref nor that of the last Holyrood election. But by jove the way these cretins are showing zero integrity, no principles or sense of embarrassment while peddling back like cowards from a plebiscite, is making sure I will never ever trust the official result of any fucking election until the time the Treaty of union is finally repealed. If at that point it is still obvious the crown keeps bypassing the “reduced powers” it is meant to have and instead it is sticking its hands through some revolving door to continue meddling so the “right” result is achieved, then it will be the time to start demanding a republic and sending the crown packing.
Out with the SNP lot. Liars, losers, betrayers, time-wasters and cowards should never be rewarded with a free ride and a nice pension. They should be given the p45 and thrown out.
To any SNP diehards who might read this, and doubt what is stated in the article above.
I was in the SNP. After 2014, I duly went along and cheered on Sturgeon at the Hydro, with big point foam finger and all. I too fell for the ‘ah, but she has a cunning plan’ stuff, and believed it for years. Then their were the attacks on Salmond, then the attempted stitch up of Salmond. Then repeated procrastination by Sturgeon over indy, making the excuse of ‘needing permission from London’. The final straw for me and many others was brexit. At that point it was her DUTY to stand up for Scotland, and announce that Scotland would not be leaving the EU, as Scotland does not want it. But, as we all know, she didn’t stand up for Scotland.
Now, today, is the confirmation of the final betrayal. The SNP just want to stay in power. Sturgeon, as detailed quite clearly in the article above, has the power to call a holyrood election. SHE CHOOSES NOT TO.
I too once belived Sturgeon was the real deal, but she isn’t. She is a fraud and a proven liar. She has no interest in independence, and simply will NEVER actually stand up for Scotland.
It is time for the ALBA party. The party of Scottish independence.
link to albaparty.org
Effijy says on 14 January 2023 at 2:40 pm:
“Quite incredulous that a Wings contributor has found this vital clause and all the long term SNP politicians, some of whom are lawyers, and their puppet Lord Advocate either don’t know about it or want to keep it buried.”
Yes, indeed! Makes you wonder doesn’t it. There’s no excuse for any of them not to know. It’s their job to know such legislation. If they claim not to be aware of it then it begs the question; just exactly what are you doing to earn your keep as a promoter of taking back our right to self-determination?
Can someone who does social media, ie; Twitter &/or Facebook, get a link to this article placed on Cherry’s accounts please? It may also help if we inundate all the Alba, SNP & Green politicians’ accounts with this article. Wonder if ‘Cozy Feet Pishfart’ knows about it? And how he would deny it? LOL!
Most pro-indy politicians & councillors probably read WOS anyway but let’s not leave anything to chance. The more that know about this the faster word spreads. Get it out into circulation via the Twitter & Facebook accounts of all pro-indy politicians & councillors, folks.
“Sturgeon has to go but who should replace her?”
A proper pro-independence leader. That excludes anybody within Sturgeon’s pretend SNP.
Sturgeon’s pretend SNP seems to be behaving as the crown’s last colonial gatekeeper. If we want independence we need to look forward, not backwards. Looking forward means completely bypassing the colonial gatekeeper that is standing on our way. And that starts by finding ourselves a way to impeach the lot of them to chuck them out.
Mealy-mouthed, self-serving, two-faced, compromised and treacherous bastards, the lot of ’em!
If I hadn’t had enough of these charlatans before, I sure as hell do now!
“WHAT DO WE WANT?
INDEPENDENCE!
STURGEON RESIGN!
NOW!”
It’s just more carrots. Except people can only live on carrots for a while. Then they become indigestible. In other words hope becomes despair, and despair leads to throwing in the towel. We are being played like a fiddle.
Signed up for Alba. Will try to get along to the next branch meeting if possible. Or the one after that. Onwards and upwards.
@, ‘
smitty says:
14 January, 2023 at 5:01 pm
I cannot see there being a referendum for at least another 10 years. There has been no progress in the polls despite all of the gifts SNP has been given: Johnson, Truss, Brexit, Partygate, Covid etc. ‘
What the polls don’t show is a significant change in the demographics in Scotland (an increase of Englanders coming here to retire)….
In that light, the 50/50 polls would indicate that a large chunk of former No voters in Scotland have shifted their vote to Yes.
I spoke to a couple before Christmas. Fit, retired, well off and solid No voters… they had a Scotland the Brief book (from somewhere – not me for once)… and they told me! that Scotland has huge energy resources and the heating bills are a disgrace.
If they are having that conversation and have accepted the reality of Scotland’s true wealth resources, then they will be having that conversation with their circle of friends down at the Golf clubs.
I appreciate we are all at the end of our tethers, but if you can, keep going a wee while yet.
@’I don’t know how many times this needs saying, but a majority of SEATS is WORTHLESS. The chances of the international community recognising any claim to independence based on a MINORITY of votes in something we ourselves had called a plebiscite are 0.000000000%.’
I can see the validity of the above reasoning, although I think it is debatable, however, sadly, if we win a Majority of votes, but get a Minority of seats, Wesminster will argue, ‘them’s the rules and no-one changed them before the vote, so suck it up.’
The reality is, in a Westminster election we would have to win a majority of votes and seats, an almost impossible task, and one that is likely to be even more difficult if one looks at the proposed Constituency Boundary changes, which amount to an all out tory gerrymandering of the map. (No wonder the SNP MP’s staged a bit of a coup at Westminster.)
Mia says on 14 January, 2023 at 6:31 pm:
“Sturgeon has to go but who should replace her?”
“A proper pro-independence leader. That excludes anybody within Sturgeon’s pretend SNP.”
Indeed! Anyone with a basic understanding of how politics work will know that any leader of any party will automatically appoint others below them that they can control. Usually due to having something on them or just knowing their weak-points etc.
So any removal of Sturgeon is only going to produce, at best, very much the same level of incompetent or even worse. And folks, don’t think we couldn’t go any lower than Sturgeon because we can, just look at the imbecilic selection inhabiting the current ranks of Sturgeon’s Nonce Party. And just look at who she has as her 2nd-in-command.
Any proper pro-indy leader does not frequent the current ranks of the SNP that’s for sure. And as far as i’m concerned that is without exception. At one time i touted Joanna Cherry but her refusal to cross the floor to Alba and her decision to stay with Sturgeon’s Nonce Party, especially after everything they did to her, gives me serious doubts about her. That decision tells me she’s more concerned about being electable than fighting for indy.
The Murrell’s also have the top controls all secured and folk like Cherry cannot get anywhere near them. So anyone still thinking Cherry might be planning a coo is living in fantasy land. I’m afraid the fake Ayrshire coo has it all sewn up. LOL! 😉
NOTE to all pedants, save your energy because (a): With the Scottish vernacular i was using coo for a wee play on words and (b): I couldn’t give a fig about your affliction. 😉 LOL!
Goodnight, Troops! Off to watch a movie.
The quickest way to get rid of Sturgeon is for Sunak to grant a s.30. You wouldn’t see her for dust then, she’d be bricking it, thinking she had to do something with it. Same applies to her pals.
Trouble is, Sunak knows that for the Union, Sturgeon and the SNP are best left in post, so he won’t do it while he is boss in Englandshire, but a nice bottle to be mixed for both Starmer and Sturgeon if the Tories lose the next election. A nice present for Starmer to deal with, and a swift farewell from Nicola.
Or perhaps Sunak and Starmer have agreed to do this all along, believing that No will prevail again – it would be chaos if Sturgeon left, and a disaster if she didn’t. Bugger.
If the Yes vote won the Tories could blame Labour for losing. If No won, Sunak would take the credit for putting independence back for a long time, and the Tories get back in at the next election.
Daisy. Correct. W M will be fought on the UK agenda , not Scotland’s. We don’t control the media, so the narrative is not in our hands. Plus Scottish Labour voters, will vote Labour if there is a chance of Starmer getting in.
When in Scotland (Holyrood) they may switch to SNP, or vote for indi in a referendum. Its a high risk strategy to win 50% in a UK( English) election.
It also excludes 16 and 17 year old. It’s got more traps than the Crystal Maze.
As you say for UN recognition we need 50% plus.
So at least 2026 before a vote
Lads and lassies, my first post here. I enjoy the site even though I’m not a supporter of independence. I’m respectful of your viewpoint though, and quite supportive of your stuggles against an increasingly ‘woke’ SNP – we are certainly in agreement that Scotland deseves better than this shower (though it’s extremely difficut to point at any current Scottish party and say – ‘this lot would be better’).
Sturgeon of course is an easy target, but all the same, don’t you think the SNP’s gradualists have a point?
The SNP have somehow managed, against one of the most serially incompetent UK central governments in history, to come up short against it in just about every area you could mention, including the most important ones – education, health, business start-ups, inward investment, environmental policy, you name it, utterly useless. Despite significantly more generous funding under Barnett. (I know there are some woo woo theories about this but that’s all they are when looked into properly).
Outside of the central belt, most people have noticed this. The big blocker as I see it to the independence case is how rubbish Scotland has turned out to be at running itself; how incapable it has been of reforming and improving public services; and, indeed, how corrupt it has become in its issuance of contracts for example, among many other things.
A campaign to reform or replace the SNP must surely be based on notions of probity, common sense, principle. And from there, a plan to show the rest of the UK (and seccession doubters like me) how it’s done. By doing things more successfully.
Given the funding issues and starting where we are, this can only be a gradualist project. You are beating up the SNP for many things, but one thing I think they don’t deserve beaten up for: the gradualists don’t think the case is made, and for that reason, they don’t think they would win another indyref, hence kicking the can down the road.
Personally I think the SNP gradualists are right about that. All the zealotry in the world won’t make ‘one last push’ a successful strategy. And then what do you do? In Quebeck, they packed their bags.
I would feel very sad if Scotland left the UK – I personally believe it works for Scotland pretty well. But I’d feel an awful lot better about the loss if I had any confidence at all in what was to happen in the aftermath of a vote to secceed (and I have precisely no confidence at the moment).
Like dobbies, the SNP is full of British plants.
OT..but over at my mithers whos 91 ..a letter arrived from the electoral register today ,from Tayside (Angus to be precise) wanting a signature update ,”as you had a postal vote in the past” please sign and return to Poole ,Dorset…a these years o Snp governance and wi cannae even employ locals do dae this kind o basics.. WTF have they dafties in Edinburgh let go…explain please readers.!
Daisy Walker says:
Scotland has huge energy resources and the heating bills are a disgrace.
If they are having that conversation and have accepted the reality of Scotland’s true wealth resources,
————–
See russia, doesn’t matter how much resoures you claim to have.
how is a iscot going to afford to buy the privately owned oil and gas assets? and then to leave the international markets would be suicide
An endless road… or a death march. It is a great way to genocide a people or a movement. I think that is what Sturgeon is doing to the independence movement.
Like the Armenians we are being marched up and down the hill and into the desert until most of us just die off or cease caring.
But just another mandate… another few miles until we reach our destination… promise.
I’m not defending Joanna Cherry but you need to give some people the benefit of the doubt if a case can be made. JC is quite open about who her mentor was and as far as I am aware she never disavowed him when scores of mediocre SNP types were only too quick to pretend Alex Salmond was politically dead and morally wounded. Should someone like her leave the SNP, then all hope for the party’s resurrection will be pretty much over.
For comparison, why did someone like Corbyn or John McDonnell and so on never leave Blair’s Labour party? No-one ever gave them a chance of leading Labour – it was so unthinkable, it was never discussed, ever – but they manufactured their own coo and gave it a decent go.
I hae ma doots is all very well but it sounds to me like you’re being too goddamn emotional. If Alex Salmond is the master technician we often give him credit for, then he may have asked Cherry to stick it out for as long as possible and not cross the floor.
Long story short, too many unknowns for us plebs. Best to await events because what Sturgeon says today can be totally unsaid tomorrow. It looks like she’s much weaker but who knows what she might do to injure a young pretender.
I thought the concept of ratification by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, was widely known.
Well, to we anarcho-syndicalists anyway.
Izzie says:
14 January, 2023 at 4:00 pm
Does anyone else remember a book by Douglas Hurd (published in the seventies and turned into a TV program ) called Scotch on the Rocks. This is pertinent because of the current position of some to declare UDI
link to archive.org, one of three books
Scotch on the Rocks is a TV serial based on the novel by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond. The book is the third in a loose trilogy, the other two being Send Him Victorious and The Smile on the Face of the Tiger.
Constituency Boundaries in Scotland is of course illegal if the treaty of union is not to be breached.
This breach of the 1707 treaty happened under Westminster UK legislation namely.
General Acts,
General Police and Improvement ( Scotland ) Act
HC Deb 1st July 1868, Vol 192 c472.
On motion of Lord Advocate, Bill to alter the qualifications of Electors in places in Scotland under ” The General Police and Improvement ( Scotland ) 1862 ” and to amend the said Act in certain respects, ordered to be bought in by the Lord Advocate and Sir James Ferguson,
Although at first glance most people will not comprehend the significance of this, under this Act/s and amendments, it removed and altered the Burghs of Scotland for election purposes. As Alex Salmond noted.
Whereas it is stipulated in the articles of the Treaty of the Union that these should remain in Scotland.
Still hoping you are wrong about this but sadly you are probably right. One can only hope that this make more people realise that independence will never happen under the SNP if they can not even be bothered to have a de facto referendum.
It is a great opportunity for Alba to run all future elections as a de facto referendum. This will ensure people know which party has independence front and center.
The burgh’s were consistently removed under Provisional Orders.
Leith,
Aberdeen
Edinburgh
Broughty Ferry
Dunfermilne
Paisley
Dumbarton
Glasgow
Inverness
I have not finished the names or numbers of burghs that have been withdrawn as yet, but each one singularly breached the treaty of union articles.
I believe there may be as many as 60-62 burghs all told.
BBC reporting that March SNP conference will debate either GE24 or HR26 for a defacto referendum (whatever that means). Vote will be gerrymandered to HR26 then something else will come up requiring more can kicking. No option for HR23.
HR23 is like the climate change deniers – “it isn’t happening, it isn’t happening, it isn’t happening, whoops it’s too late!”
I listened to the Alba assembly. The details of your article outlined. Change the Scotland act. Dissolve Holyrood hold the referendum on 19th October this year.
People will die if they have to wait until 2025. And many Independence activists have already passed.
Interesting to hear Salmond’s perspective on the Stone of Destiny being willfully handed over to Charles, for the Coronation. As a member of the privy Council he says we shouldn’t hand over the symbol of our Sovereignty willfully and cause a stir as our democracy isn’t being respected. Couldn’t agree more.
Also grousebeater’s opinion that we shouldn’t criticise Sturgeon but the SNPs polices itself. We should except that Sturgeon and the SNP are colonised and that we should criticise the policy and not the person.
I’m not sure how I feel about that personally. It’s hard not to criticise Sturgeon when she’s quite literally burning the house down before our very eyes.
Shaking hands with 2 snacks, signing free port deals, auctioning away the ScotWind sea bed sites for a pittance.
I respect all these Independence voices, was excellent listening and I bought the Commonweal book MaCalpine was talking about.
All you hear about from the SNP is the slogan, Scotland’s energy rich. What does that mean exactly, its needs to be broken down into something meaningful in every day life for the working class man to digest, people need to see Independence as an aspiration and a necessity.
We need this independence convention they’re talking about to happen immediately.
The reason that this route, or any other, for that matter, have not been commissioned by the SNP/Greens is because lawyers are tasked with a remit which is usually quite specific. If you say, have a gander at this S30 Order stuff and see how it might pan out, that is what you will get: a cul-de-sac.
Rather, say, I want you to look at any and all routes that have the slightest chance of getting us out of the Union, then list them in order of viability, and, while you are at it, take the Treaty apart, and list each and every breach by Westminster and every theft of our resources, along with the CoR, and every other Scottish constitutional principle, then list every resource and asset still pertaining to Scotland, then pull everything together and tell us what you believe, given the evidence, we need to do to bring about the end of the Union and retain our resources and assets. Head your legal team with someone who is basically, neutral to impress the Unionists and the MSM, but have independence-supporting legal team-mates doing the work. Crowd-fund, if you have to, because it won’t come cheap, but be on the look-out for eager-beaver legal students who know the score and will do the donkey work for their expenses alone or for material for their thesis.
@Karen 9:19pm
No option for HR23. The bookies were right you couldn’t place a bet on HR23 earlier today. And 15 to 2 for 2024 is a bad bet. A 100 to 1 is reflective of the real odds. Ah well themz the rules of the SNP.
@Daisy Walker (6.51) –
‘I appreciate we are all at the end of our tethers, but if you can, keep going a wee while yet.’
Thanks D, that’s thoughtful and kind and we could do with a lot more of it. The ‘debate’ (if it even deserves that description) is now so polarised and fractious, it’s easy to forget that our movement was a joyous positive thing, one that we all felt part of.
Everyone’s circumstances change all the time. I’m one of many who were passionate to the point of obsession about it all, doing the usual humdrum ‘activist’ stuff, and when you’re skint it’s not easy. How many millions of pounds and ‘man’-hours did we, collectively, expend pre-referendum – even if we’re just counting from, say, 2012? It was a colossal effort in the face of overwhelming opposition from every MSM outlet and the clique of self-appointed cultural commissars (aka ‘wankers’) who control every facet of public discourse in Scotland.
We were betrayed by all of them. We know who they are and so do they. (Some of them even have the gall to comment here, posing as independence supporters.) But their role is, essentially, antagonistic and undemocratic. It cannot prevail over the long term.
That’s not much consolation right now, aye, but it may help some of those currently despairing to consider that the ‘United Kingdom’ is doomed. Our campaign for independence is based on fairness and justice, neither of which is of the slightest concern to the British Establishment. They have much bigger problems to worry about.
There’s a documentary about Orson Welles which has an excerpt from an interview he did near the end of his life. He’s asked which is worse – professional disappointment or personal betrayal? He takes less than a second to answer – the latter. By far. The really horrible thing about the way Welles was treated by Hollywood is that no-one seems to know precisely *why* they did the dirty on him. At least if you know why someone has it in for you, you can maybe do something about it or at least understand it.
What we know for sure, right now, is that Scotland’s legitimate independence movement was betrayed, utterly. We maybe don’t know exactly why, or how it happened, or how far back we have to go to identify the root of that betrayal and we’ll never know all the names involved. But we can accept the fact that the betrayal is real – it didn’t happen by accident.
If we can accept that, hard as it is, then we can move forward. But if we don’t – as some ostensibly ‘pro-independence’ bloggers and MSM commentators seem unable or unwilling to – then we will have to resign ourselves to composing dirges about what may have been.
The word ‘genius’ is bandied about too much. But Orson Welles surely deserves to be described as such. He was betrayed by an industry which could not tolerate anyone so unpredictable, so clued up. He was viewed as a danger by people who feared his creative power. Despite being shunned and mocked he continued to work on his own films, raising cash as and when he could to do another segment of the film which was finally released in 2018, almost 50 years after he started shooting it, 33 years after his death. Remember the telly adverts he did for cigars and/or brandy or whatever else? That’s where he got the dosh to do another wee bit and another wee bit…
The Murrells, Wisharts et al are not worth wasting anger on. They will be remembered – if at all – as useful idiots who knowingly helped sustain a desperate, dying Britain. We won’t be remembered either, but at least we know we’re trying to do our own wee bit and so long as we keep doing that there will be something tangible ‘under the bed’ for our weans and grandweans to work with.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Yep, Alex salmond pretty much spelled out today that a change of standing orders would enable a Scottish general election.
Job done.
@Uan Brotherhood 9:51pm
A passionate voice with a passionate message. That’s how it used to be. It’s fragmented rather than polarised. We are at ground zero. Refresh the page and start again. Which is why I joined Alba tonight reboot the computer. A long way back from here but Daisy is right about one thing. If there was a Independence vote tomorrow you would struggle to call favouritism. It’s that close. Which makes the SNP antics all the more galling.
@ Ian B at 9.51: “The Murrells, Wishart et al are not worth wasting anger on.”
Well said. It is doing us more harm than to them. Just take a deep breath and support the good, sincere people instead – there are plenty of them and they need us to help them make the difference in their efforts to regain independence.
There is a touch of the 2014 spirit in the Chain of Freedom project – quite cheering. As well as Liberation.scot, Salvo.scot, and the new parties.
link to youtube.com
It sounds as if Canada & Scotland have a lot in common.
Jordan Peterson is being stitched up in a not too dissimilar way to Alex Salmond. ie with a whole load of ridiculous complaints.
Alex Salmond did have faith in the Scottish judiciary but it doesn’t sound as if Jordan Peterson has much faith in the Canadian judiciary.
A less radical move would simply be to put draught a bill to reverse the parliamentary reform act, taking the holyrood term back to 4 years. There’s no logical reason to keep a 5 year term any more.
We’d be almost 50% into the parliamentary term by now.
Not gonna happen, I know.
Kicking that can!
link to snp.org
@David Hannah 9:43pm
Don’t criticise Sturgeon but the policy. Normally I would agree with that however the SNP is not a properly functioning political party. Sturgeon is policy. Members don’t have an input into policy.
Obviously Sturgeon and the Greens would not propose this change for the many reasons stated in the article and BTL. However if either Labour or the Tory’s proposed it life would be difficult for Sturgeon.
Douglas Ross says lets change the Scotland Act and dissolve Holyrood so you NATs can have a pretendy referendum. Can the NATs vote against it. Probably, but good fun to watch the excuses.
If NATs lose, great.
If they don’t it doesn’t change anything in the real world. Apart from the ongoing desecration of Scotland.
[…] over Scotland puts it brilliantly here […]
@Alan Scott (11.30) –
Are you the reincarnation of Alan Clark perchance?
You sound like someone for whom it’s all just such a perfectly ghastly game.
I give up.
I mean, seriously, I give up.
They were right on one front. Scots ARE too fucking stupid.
Not too wee, not too poor, but definitely too fucking stupid.
There is no possibility of independence with these brainwashed retards deciding who is in control.
The complete obviousness of all that the SNP do, and the typical responses, make commenting almost pointless, like asserting that bears shit in the woods. Here’s something a bit more meaty for yizall; numbers always tell the truth (when they are not fiddled, but that’s an entire other discussion …)
The trouble with reading is – people write shit, as much as they talk … parsing it becomes tedious; numbers, turned into pictures, tell you all you need to know.
Check this out –
link to ukdataexplorer.com
whit, there’s nothing there? Use the drop down menu to select the parameter of choice and let it load – try this one
WHITE – OTHER BRITISH
which really means ANGLO – ENGLISH aka SONS OF PERDITION – CURSED EXPLOITERS OF THE EARTH – Sons of Cain – untermenschen – filthy sassenachs and mutilators of vowel sounds
now move that little mouse around and look at the colours; parts of the Highlands MORE than 30% anglo (this is at the level you can dominate political elections if you collectively vote as a bloc, especially so in fucked up PR systems).
Look at them nibbling away at the Borders; or the Highland plantations. You can also see where these BIZARRE “Orkney Secession” stories come from, just out of nowhere.
NB – the “white other british” (like calling bacon “breakfast meat”) – are likely middle-class-bastards with sharp elbows who “like to be heard” and “want to see the manager”.
This is the data from 2011 – and I AWAIT with expectation, the numbers from 2021, which WILL SURELY BE FORTHCOMING. Maybe the Other British have all went home?
The central lowlands look like a bantustan for natives – a gaza strip with a motorway.
Now, some more – a map of poverty/wealth from worst to best – worst place in Scotland is ranked #1, the best is about #6900; move the cursor around, look up your hometown.
link to simd.scot
– this is reality for most of Scotland. Does it make you angry? It should, unless you had your brains kicked out at birth.
There are real FUN jokes though – move your cursor on the SIMD map to Govan, a place where the people support a certain team’s ghost and have a political position somewhat to the right of Duke Cumberland, more unionist than the queen/king … they are ranked #79 out of 7000, officially “fucking-shitehole” status. Unionism, eh? – how’s that working out for yizall – Bitter Thegither? Did you “pool and share” today under the broad shoulders of the most successful political union in history … (you sad moronic cunts – YOU GOT WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVED – and when is the next “walk” exactly, pray save us from the cannon of the Catholic Spanish coming up the Forth)
We need more maps, or rather one map, with all the different layers of data; next up I want to see – tax revenues, oil and gas production, electricity generation, whisky production, fish production – and with a little bar so you can change the time, and an animation so you can see our stuff disappearing from here, then re-appearing in the Golden Triangle.
Google Maps used to have an open API – NB this is the kind of thing a political party about independence might spend time constructing, if it “wis intae it – but we urnae”.
– and one from the daily mail, put in to have a dig at the Scots, those awful Glaswegians, but in fact, making the point for us
link to dailymail.co.uk
UNION = DEATH
UNION = POVERTY
UNION = DISRESPECT
Well that’s a first!
Pressed on the Twitter icon above…seeing if anything’s worth a gander before bedtime…and some little Musk gremlin with a demonic sense of humour suggested…’You Might Like’…wait for it…wait for it…Peter Murrell (blue tick)!!!
C’est drôle, n’est-ce pas?
Bloody wide awake now…
As usual Confused you batter the nail on the head, all the assertions and information you refer too EXISTS but don’t ask a fake indy party to investigate and collate it for the great unwashed to gain education from it, 8 years they had to provide information that would make gaining independence a canter and yet all they gave us was soundbites
I NOTICE that the SAME adulation and messianic attributes are being foisted on Alex Salmond, will people NEVER learn, LOOK at what those accolades freely given and unearned by a now exposed treacher ous betrayer has done to the independence movement
I thank Alex Salmond for returning to the fray in our time of despair BUT Alex Salmond is NOT the messiah either , he made many mistakes on the road to indy 1, the biggest one we are still SUFFERING from, he STATED after his successful court case that he had information to destroy sturgeon but would not use it until after covid, It is well after covid and Scotland is being destroyed by HIS mistake so where is THAT information and evidence
As others have pointed out Salmond knew all about the COR and Scottish sovereignty WHY wasn’t it front and centre in the lead up to indy1, WHY wasn’t the educational material produced by his SG to show Scotland’s riches being continuously stolen
He agreed to voters from other parts of the uk to be given a vote and still pushes that narrative , yet he MUST have been fully aware of the effect of the increasing numbers of incomers and the danger to our chances of independence those votes threatened
Alex Salmond agrees with the principle of Scottish sovereignty but has made it clear that that sovereignty can only be used by ELECTED officials, YET it is those same elected officials who are BETRAYING the Scottish people and those same officials who have got us in the state we are in
I will say again I am grateful and thankful that Alex Salmond has returned to give us some hope , but PLEASE stop with the sycophancy, adulation and deity worshipping, he has and still does make mistakes (snp 1 and ALBA 2) which has been catastrophic for indy
LOOK at what party loyalty has done TO Scotland
It wouldn’t surprise me if one of these days they’ll embrace thier inner Unionism & decide to stand for elections nationwide.
Probably thinking they could be the new answer to Labour. They’re deluded enough.
None of them have the guts to face the public in an early GE. Hell would freeze over first or the pampers brigade would need to turn on her when the pervs charter is rejected by WM.
Twathater you’re right. We need to get rid of this need for an independence idol to worship. What is it about us Scots that we need one?
Breeks at 436pm,
I agree with much of your analysis. In political strategy, the options available, and the action that can be taken really depends upon what might be called ‘current circumstances’. What that means is, where you and political events are, right now, at this (or any other) very moment.
Here is an example, when the ‘verdict’ of the illegal and wholly unconstitutional, pretendy English ‘supreme’ court came through that Scotland is in fact a colony of England, the delay by the SNP lessened their response. Imagine how much more powerful it would have been, if the very minute that pretendy ‘verdict’ came through, Sturgeon had announced that she would dissolve the Scottish government, and call a Scottish election as a de facto indyref. We now know she absolutely has the power to do so. Think of the absolute hysteria in the global and UK media that would have created, yet she did nothing. But even if she announced that now (she won’t), the impact is lessened, because of the dithering and delay. No political acumen, no strategy whatsoever.
Time and again, we have seen her fail to respond AT THE TIME of major changes imposed by England on Scotland. For example, Brexit, and the enforced removal of EU citizenship from Scots by England. She dithered and dithered and dithered. That is NOT leadership, that is capitulation. Always delay. Always capitulation.
I think therefore, that what you say about a majority of seats in London leading to a clear signal of the intention to end the union, is absolutely workable, and that then sets the context of the debate. Too often we see that it is England establishing the context, whereas it is Scotland that needs to take the initiative, and constantly raise consitutional issues and so-called ‘crises’. This puts London on the back foot, constantly, and pushes the issue of Scotland into the mainstream media. This is something NONE of the many SNP MP’s in London seem willing or able to do. Too busy playing along with London’s made up ‘rules’. Too busy being ‘nice’ and enjoying their lavish salary and lifestyles in London.
In short, Breeks, I think you are correct. Context matters, and such action as you propose would put London on the back foot.
It is something that has not been done since Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister. Sturgeon just seems constantly feart and unwilling to cause a stooshie. Causing a stooshie with London is EXACTLY what is needed. How dare they treat Scots in the way they do. Are we England’s slaves??? Currently, it seems like we are, relegated by an illegal English court (with zero authority in Scotland) to colony status, yet the SNP pretend it is business as usual.
link to archive.is
Police Scotland ask to quiz SNP chiefs in £600,000 donations fraud inquiry
Confused @ 2:21 am
“numbers always tell the truth (when they are not fiddled, but that’s an entire other discussion …)”
Aye, some really crucial data in that map, much of which actually determines whether independence will happen. It tells us that just half of Scotland’s population identify as Scottish only – which arguably explains the Yes vote stuck at around 50%. The other half identify as British, more or less. This is the way the vote splits, according to the post-referendum survey.
This and related data ‘should’ direct indy-minded politicians to focus on what it is that gives us ‘a people’ their national identity, and what postcolonial theorists refer to as ‘national consciousness’, which is fundamental to independence / decolonisation. The same theorists tell us that ‘a peoples’ national identity/national consciousness is dependent on their indigenous culture and language. That would be mainly the Scots language for maist Scottish-identifying folk, a language still not taught to Scots bairns nor given authority/status.
This implies that British or English national identity/consciousness is primarily based on the English language and culture/heritage, as would be expected, and as the census confirms, with cultural assimilation also having an effect on a native population. Which helps explain why peoples in self-determination conflict are always linguistically divided, according to postcolonial research, the Scots being nae different from other oppressed peoples.
It seems likely that the new census data is not being released because the trend on national identity continues to shift towards a ‘more British than Scottish’ outcome, and with the 2014 ‘No’ vote, Brexit and Covid accelerating in-migration from rest-UK. Available census data does tell us that Scotland’s birth rate is the lowest on record and that the population is only growing through in-migration, mainly from England. That can only end one way, i.e. less people in Scotland holding to a Scottish identity.
The data therefore suggests Scotland does not have much time, which means an early election-referendum should be prioritised. Each added year of delay makes independence less likely primarily due to ongoing uncontrolled demographic change – which is what the SNP ScotGov seems to have been tasked to facilitate.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
SusanAHF @ 6:50pm:
The reason a political leader is needed is because it is a political process and someone has to put us is in a position to get to a ballot box to vote for independence.
I would agree with anyone saying not to put too much faith in an individual but some (willing) political figure does need to win a mandate they are willing to pursue so there does need to be some champion of the cause from “the party political” arm of the movement, otherwise it’s only ever going to be folk protesting with no outlet/mechanism of enacting it.
Johnny, a political leader, yes, a messiah , no. Let’s start acting like adults, not acolytes looking for a moses to lead us to the promised land.
Daisy , Ian you cheered me up – until then I was in Big Jock land of despair.
You set me off down memory lane to the heady days in George Square
Edinburgh and Bannockburn and the air thick with hope , optimism and camaraderie.
Then I remember the YES movement and the wet ex BBBC guy running it – they took my money but did hee haw.
Robert Louis says:
15 January, 2023 at 8:00 am
…. Imagine how much more powerful it would have been, if the very minute that pretendy ‘verdict’ came through, Sturgeon had announced that she would dissolve the Scottish government, and call a Scottish election as a de facto indyref…
Agreed, but better still, imagine she had declared an ultimatum before the adjudication, that “lF” the Supreme Court compromised the Claim of Right, the Union would be deemed breached and at an end. The UK would have to formally accede to Scottish Sovereignty and right of Sovereign veto, or, end the Union by their own initiative.
People think I’m just saying it for effect, but in 2016, we were over the line with Scottish Independence right there within our grasp. Sturgeon’s inept capitulation is THE reason why Scotland is not an Independent Nation in Europe.
That, and the weak meek drips in the SNP, who sat on their arses and let her get away with it.
@Alf Baird 9:14
The primary driver to inwards migration from England is the decades-long failure of the WM government to get a grip on immigration. Uncontrolled population movements have predictable effects – throughout England, the predictable effects of overcrowding are that the more affluent and least-tied people seek a new life somewhere more comfortable. On the ground, that equates to older, retired or semi-retired, white English moving to more rural or upmarket Scottish locations because of the disparity in property prices that gives them huge spending power here.
Would things change post-Indy? I hae ma doots. ScotGov is wedded to the shibboleth that we need more people to do the work that we won’t do. Scots are wedded to the shibboleth that we need more services, e.g. SNHS, but that we shouldn’t have to pay more for it. Scots are wedded to the shibboleth that we can’t exist outside of an EU arrangement that comes with freedom of movement.
Some posters on here happily boast that they want us back in the eu so they can personally fuck off to Europe!
You are correct in the sense that the window of opportunity during which native Scots can vote themselves Indy is closing soon. After that, we will have to shift focus and try to persuade New Scots to vote for Indy instead. Show them the money is the obvious tack to start with.
As to your ideas on language and culture, if you already accept we are not breeding at population maintenance levels, what’s the point in teaching this stuff in schools? New Scots aren’t going to be interested, and probably will be hostile to the idea of their kids having to learn it.
link to tinyurl.com
Youtube stream of the Alba Party Special Assembly 2023 held on Saturday 14 January 2023
@Breeks 9:48
You write Europe, but your implied meaning is of course the EU. No independent countries in the EU, apart from maybes France and Germany. All the smaller ones are fated to disappear as the wheels of ever closer union grind finer and finer.
You write a lot of good stuff Breeks, but you can’t resist dropping in oxymorons like these, which mostly negate all of your efforts for alert readers.
Dorothy Devine says:
15 January, 2023 at 9:48 am
Then I remember the YES movement and the wet ex BBBC guy running it – they took my money but did hee haw.
Worse than money, they took away your, and a lot of others’ trust.
Cutting the funding to FoodTrain by the SNP ran Glasgow City Council which is happening in just a few weeks, will see those vulnerable people who need the service, some can’t even get out of the house, end up in hospital and further increasing the pressure on NHS staff and use up precious bed space.
Yet the same SNP ran council is giving hundreds of thousands of pounds to LGBT Youth Scotland.
link to twitter.com?
cxt=HHwWgoC-mZibuOcsAAAA
“Agreed, but better still, imagine she had declared an ultimatum before the adjudication, that “lF” the Supreme Court …”
And even better: what if this political fraud had never done the stupidity of having a member of her cabinet, a representative of the crown nothing less, actively subjugating Scotland’s sovereignty to an English court of dubious legitimacy under the Treaty of Union, an English court which can never be seen as impartial in the matter of dissolving the Treaty because the future of that court (and the judges sitting in that court) is directly affected by its own decision and Scotland unilaterally repealing the treaty?
What part of “impartiality” did this joke of a Lord/Lady Advocate not understand?
Sturgeon had no right to subjugate nor to let anybody from her cabinet subjugate Scotland’s sovereignty to anyone.
She had no right to surrender to English judges the decision of what fucking laws are debated and passed in our parliament and which ones aren’t. If at this point in her career she still does not know what laws can or cannot be debated in a parliament she does not belong in the position of FM.
She has no right to deny Scotland its legitimate right to self determination nor its legitimate right to end this union unilaterally, and yet, that is what this political fraud has been openly doing for the last 8 years if not longer.
That is not what a real FM does. That is not what a real leader does. That is not what an honest MSP does. That is what an unscrupulous, unprincipled crown minion, ready to sell their country, does. Just like those crown minions sitting in Scotland’s parliament in 1706 did.
But I have to say, in all this, what disgusts me the most is that, even after this coward indirectly handed the establishment yet another veto over Scotland’s sovereignty through a joke of an Advocate, who embarrassed her whole profession with her ridiculous submission to a court which can never be seen as impartial, there are still no balls within the large group of SNP MPs and MSPs to stand up to this political fraud, show her the door and change course.
That is why I despair every time somebody asks who should replace her as leader. The entire party is compromised and belongs in the dustbin of Scotland’s political history. If there were any born leaders among the spineless amoebas who have let this political fraud get away with and inflict on us 8 painful years of vicious and deliberate subjugation of Scotland’s sovereignty, they would have stood up and spoken by now.
The only thing the political construct she claims to lead has left of the SNP, is the name and the rosette, which is in itself another example of what a deceiving coward this woman is. She has completely disemboweled the party and transformed it into a New Labour copycat and a trojan horse. Yet, she cannot bring herself to change the name or the rosette in case this blows her PR cover as a fake pro-indy leader.
The SNP died on the 14 November 2014. Time to let its memory go and move on. Salvo and Alba/ISP are the options we have to explore right now.
Nae mates Main
Forever the English Ukipper.
Once an English Ukipper,,, always an English Ukipper.
Still pining for English Ellis.
He’s like a wee lost Dug .
And just like Greyfriar’s Bobby,,,he lies at the graveside of English Ellis every night.
And he is devoid of any foresight that an independent Scotland, with the work needed to build the infrastructure needed for a modern, forward looking nation, would need to increase its workforce tenfold, therefore we would need to look to attracting people from other countries.
Or as the “Mains” of this world call it,,,importing immigrants. Something every healthy economy has done since the beginning of time.
Main/Ellis,,, on here to distract and disrupt,,,pure and simple.
You all lambast the SNP for being a cult but you are just as bad. Your plan will not go down well with the voters you need to win over – constitutional shenanigans at this time of economic and NHS crisis will only play well with independence supporters.
“Your plan will not go down well with the voters you need to win over”
When would another referendum EVER go down well with No voters?
Well said Mia, anyone half-decent SNP/MSPs/MPs has already jumped ship, which leaves the just the flotsam, the detritus, self-serving spineless and gutless SNP/MPs and MSPs left, who we can see at FMQ’s nod like donkeys and clap like seals every time Sturgeon makes an vacuous remark in the chamber.
The SNP are not a party for Scottish independence anymore, all we can do is vote and join Alba, and ride out this bumpy road until its time to remove this lot from office, I can only imagine what further damage Sturgeon will do to Scotland before we remove her and her self-serving MSPs from office.
First up is removing the likes of Pete Wishart from Westminster, he’s had twenty-years of living off the taxpayer and has achieved nothing on the indyfront, he’s now so embedded at Westminster that he wanted to be the Speaker of the House.
Get the SNP out.
@Wilson McBride
I’m guessing the exquisite irony of calling for a tenfold increase in immigration whilst simultaneously slagging off those most suited to come here because of culture, language, shared values, etc. etc. is totally lost on you.
Just consider if the newcomers have better mastery of the “,” than you. Maybes you’ll still be kept on in some kind of heritage role – Scots Indy blogging as it used to be in the old days before we got incomers in to do it right.
Karen says:
14 January, 2023 at 9:19 pm
BBC reporting that March SNP conference will debate either GE24 or HR26 for a defacto referendum (whatever that means). Vote will be gerrymandered to HR26 then something else will come up requiring more can kicking. No option for HR23.
If every SNP branch put forward an amendment to include HR23 in the options it would be interesting.
31st January 2020 was the day I told the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon what they could do with their membership card.
That was the day of her speech to Europe, in which we all thought was going to be the day she was going to unveil her grand plan for independence.
We held off resigning earlier, because we just couldn’t believe that Sturgeon and the SNP would do nothing.
But “nothing” is exactly what they done.
So my cancellation letter went in minutes after that deplorable let down.
And from that day forward, she has proven time after time that she has absolutely zero intention of delivering Scottish Independence.
I still remain totally amazed at the gullibility of the remaining members.
What planet do these people exist on?
“First up is removing the likes of Pete Wishart from Westminster”
If we are going to eject cowards and betrayers from our seats, we may as well aim to eject them all. Wishart is just one of the many who sat on their hands and looked the other way while the masters of this political fraud savaged our sovereignty, laws,, rights and assets.
Should a hefty number of MPs/MSPs had openly revolted, renounced to the SNP whip, denounced her disgustingly undemocratic actions and became independent, it would have stopped this fraud’s masters on their tracks.
We saw nothing of that. I can only see three explanations for this:
a. they support the continuous deception of the people of Scotland, subjugation of Scotland’s sovereignty, culture and heritage, and the continuous pillaging of Scotland’s resources
b. they are more worried of their salary, pension and comfortable life than of Scotland and the Scottish people they were elected to represent.
c. the political fraud’s master is seen as far too powerful and they are scared for their lives. If this is the case, they should have all got together and revealed the identity of that master. It is their duty to represent Scotland’s interests, not the interests of that master whoever they are or wherever they sit.
Together we stand, because only united we will conquer. So let’s unite and chuck this lot of useless self-serving cowards out of our seats.
@Mia says:15 January, 2023 at 10:59 am
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
All been said before, many, many times. There’s no mileage left to this line of “debate”. We’ve all cried in our drams so much there’s now only water left in the glass.
So, Salvo and Alba/ISP.
Who are the potential leaders in these groups? Let’s hear something positive about these people and/or from these people. Let’s get names, put faces to the names, and know what these names stand for.
It’s long past time to move on.
Nae mates Main
Forever the racist Ukipper.
I think the Peter and Nicola will be happy with their weeks work.
Last week the focus was on why are we waiting until the Westminster election for a defacto referendum? With some SNP troops starting to look at defecting to Alba.
Now after floating some kites in the newspapers to further dilute that commitment to using the elections as just another mandate for a referendum they have created a scenario where the SNP rank and file are grateful to St Nicola for going with Nicola’s original offering.
W McBride…
“I still remain totally amazed at the gullibility of the remaining members.”
I too was of a similar mind as to how the Wee Ginger Fuds of this world can be so gullible, but now I’m not so sure.
They’re either feeble minded Sturgeonites who’d put their first born to the sword if the Dear Leader commanded them to do so, or they’re complicit and active in transforming the SNP into a cult of the incompetent, hell bent on Woke extremism and happy to suck from the teat of Devolution until it dries up.
Either way the SNP is lost to the cause of Scottish Independence. The sooner we consign both it and it’s leader to history the better.
Off topic, but what do folk reckon Kenny and Neale’s chances are of getting re-elected in the next GE, and will ALBA be standing any other candidates?
We face an aging population.
Over 20 yrs ago, if not more, countries took action from the risk of becoming extinct.
They offered parents excellent services.
They encouraged ppl to breed by providing the services needed to take out the worry.
Mums could stay at home or return to work, they had a free nanny either way.
Early learning & schools were free.
Dad’s could also enjoy freedoms instead of the daily slog of missing out on early years by working 24/7.
Student education was free. They could pay back thier fees with a visit to the elderly in care homes for a chat or volunteer work helping society.
The problem? It was all free by the government & that was a no no to the greedy bastards in power in England with an only too eager population shouting benefit scroungers from the Daily Fail comments.
The exact same reason those same ones cry about immigration. Money. Every country in the EU has their own individual policies on immigration. They can & do enforce it because they PAY for border staff. EU didn’t force all those foreigners on England. England chose not to fund checks.
How many times did Cameron stiff France for thier agreed share of the bill until France decided to ‘fuck it – Why are we wasting manpower & £millions maning Englands border. Close the jungle’ & now they’re on the hunt for another mug to process applicants for free.
Tories are asset strippers. They’ve stolen Scotlands oil boom years & spent it on nothing besides war & some London refurbishment instead of investing it in citizens quality of life.
& That’s what an independent Scotland woul do. It was well documented over the decades that maltreatment of workers, a hostile environment for someone to blame, a population desperate for change was how fascism got it’s boots on.
‘How to get off the hook, or how I played another blinder (for myself).’
Sturgeon’s stupid plan ended up with her promise to use the next GE as a de facto referendum. When she realised the pitfalls, she had to find a way out without losing face.
Cue the spin: now we have the word ‘option’ attached, which was never there to start with.
Then have a meeting of the NEC at which you get one of your mates to come up with an alternative proposal, or just go along with the mood which is in favour of another proposal. Tweak it to fit your agenda, and suggest (or get your mate to suggest) that both proposals are put forward to the ’emergency’ meeting in March.
Display magnanimity by saying that this is the democratic way to do things…open, full discussion, blah blah.
Pretend your proposal is the one you still favour. Keep using the word ‘option’ to make people think that’s what it was all along.
Ensure that the alternative proposal is passed in March and show mountains of magnanimity … ‘this was not my preferred option, but I accept the democratic decision of the party’ etc.
Result: Off the hook; can kicked down the road to 2026; all Westminster troughers happy; face saved; beatification from her supporters.
Who chaired the NEC meeting do you think? Do they ever decide anything without Nicola’s say-so?
With this amount of cunning it makes you think that achieving independence would be a walk in the park for her. If she really wanted it that is.
John Main @ 10:19 am
“As to your ideas on language and culture…..what’s the point in teaching this stuff in schools?”
Rather less my ideas, more established theory. Our culture and language is what gives us our national identity and national consciousness. And, as Frantz Fanon stated: “National consciousness is the only thing that will give us an international dimension”. Why do you think Scotland ‘is out of the game’ internationally, or why many other peoples think of us as English?
Take away a peoples language and culture you take away their national identity, which is the purpose of colonialism and cultural and linguistic imperialism. Once you take it away you substitute it with something else, another identity – e.g. Scots become Brits. What did you think makes for the diversity of peoples and nations internationally other than their culture and language?
Should Norway and Denmark and Holland and a hundred or more other nations likewise only teach their bairns English, and consign their own ancient naturally developed languages to the bin? That would merely make these peoples more English, giving them a ‘false persona’ and no more than an illusion of culture. It would elevate another alien language/culture and devalue their own natural culture and mother tongue, diminishing and replacing their national identity/consciousness.
Are you also asking these nations ‘what’s the point’ of teaching their ain langage, to give it up in preference to some supposedly superior language and culture? Have you never heard of socio-linguistic prejudice, or ‘the torture’ of colonial bilingualism, or inequality due to an imposed cultural division of labour, all of which are established features of colonial oppression, and all of which Scots remain subject to?
Between the UNCRC and now the GRR Bills, it’s very obvious that Devolution has fundamental flaws, and that those flaws are being gleefully exploited by a UK Government that will take any opportunity both to give the SG a kicking but, more importantly, block or roll back rights.
112.14 ( It’s long past time to move on. ) And move on past your dribblings / is Ellis still here .
@Wilson McBride says:15 January, 2023 at 12:20 pm
Got anything new to say?
Any original arguments?
Any sanity, realism or positivity?
Any hope to turn these No’s to Yes’s.
Any aspirations?
Any good news?
Anything at all?
“If we are going to eject cowards and betrayers from our seats, we may as well aim to eject them all.”
Definitely Mia, and along with the SNP we need to evict the Greens as well. They want to be able to issue GRC’s for children as young as six years old.
link to twitter.com
@Geri says:15 January, 2023 at 12:39 pm
Tories are asset strippers. They’ve stolen Scotlands oil boom years & spent it on nothing besides war & some London refurbishment
13 years and 3 terms of Labour coinciding with the height of the oil & gas boom. I remember it well, and obviously a lot better than you do. Maybes you are one of the ones who voted for it so now has no choice but to deny it ever happened.
As for all the other good old days stuff you list. We funded that by asset stripping and colonising the third world. Those days aren’t coming back.
These days, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction which is why our HR government has to spend so much of its time combatting witchcraft, modern day slavery, forced marriages, FGM, coercive rapes, etc. etc.
Feel free to again deploy the F word to discount my post, but none of these problems will ever be solved by people tippy-toeing around them. Soz.
@ John Main
“Who are the potential leaders in these groups?”
Do you actually live in Scotland, John Main? Salvo is not a “political group”
“Let’s hear something positive about these people and/or from these people”
Again, do you live in Scotland? Because they have been saying plenty, and I mean PLENTY. Do you have your fingers in your ears so you can pretend you did not hear, or were you too far away to be able to hear?
“Let’s get names, put faces to the names”
We have names and the names have faces. Again, where have you been all this time?
“and know what these names stand for”
We know what these names stand for. Where have you been that you don’t know yet?
“It’s long past time to move on”
the only thing in your post that makes sense from Scotland’s perspective. It is long past time to move on. Way too long. It is long past time we stopped seeing as the SNP the New labour-like political construct Nicola Sturgeon claims to lead. It is not the SNP. The SNP ceased to exist on the 14 November 2014. The SNP would have never tolerated a wannabe leader violating the first article of its constitution and rendering the party useless by claiming a vote for the party is not a vote for independence, nor even for a referendum.
It is time to move on and find out who the hell is abusing our democratic and judicial processes, who is transforming our government and parliament into a charade, who has completely destroyed the boundaries between the executive, legislative and the judicial powers so this union continue to survive.
It is time to find out who has been pulling Sturgeon’s strings to get her, and the “political construct” she has created, to stand on the breaks of Scotland’s independence for the last years instead of standing on the gas.
It is time to move on and grab the bull by the horns. The only way Scotland will ever recover its statehood is by repealing the treaty of union and act of Union with England. Anything else is just beating around the bush and an excuse to not deliver.
For that we need a majority of MPs committed to Scotland and to its independence. Labour, libdems, tories, greens and Sturgeon’s fake lot will never find the backbone to do that, hence the only option we have is to chuck all them lying cowards out of our seats.
Yes, it is time to move on and see reality. To end this union we need two things: we need a grassroots movement to reassert our sovereignty and we need a political party that effects the will of that grassroots movement in full and the will of that grassroots movement only.
The grassroots movement has already started and is leaded by Salvo. If Alba is not prepared to go that far, we may need to find ourselves another party. But we need both. We need a grassroots movement who understands and demands it is no the crown, which is meant to have limited powers and respect the Claim of Right instead of having its hands all over the three powers, who gets to decide what happens in Scotland, Scotland’s government, Scotland’s parliament, Scotland’s administrative and judicial structures, who the police investigates and what laws enter our body of law. It is the sovereign people of Scotland who does. We also need a political party who understands what the grassroots movement wants, respects it in full and puts it to effect.
Since 2015 the people of Scotland has been sending anti-union majorities to Westminster. That treaty of union and act of union with England should have been well and truly repealed and thrown in the dustbin of Scotland’s history by now. So why are those obsolete documents, overruled by the people of Scotland since 2015, still standing today and who/what has been stopping them going in the bin?
NS running to the supreme court has confirmed Scotland is under the whip of old Empire Colonialism,
A free people and a free Country never has to beg some-one else for their freedom.
@Alf Baird says:15 January, 2023 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for your reply.
I question the relevance of your ideas.
Nothing whatsoever stops any Scottish adult from pursuing an interest in Scotland’s languages and culture, etc.
We are not having enough kids to maintain our population, so I see no point in trying to force feed our culture to the children of New Scots, just as I don’t expect these New Scots to be much interested. Hamstringing the education of our “own” kids by teaching them stuff of no value in the workplace will just ensure the best jobs go to the New Scots’ kids.
Other posters on here are wedded to the idea that Scotland needs all the New Scots it can get, as is our HR government. Flooding any country with immigrants irrevocably changes that country for ever, and it is ludicrous to deny otherwise.
Other posters on here are wedded to the idea that Scotland’s future is in the EU. Again, the idea that being able to converse in Scots will assist that objective is strictly for the birds. Far better if we learn French, German or Mandarin.
We have to clearly identify our primary objectives as an independent nation. If a primary objective is that we will be an outwards looking, international “soft” power, then we need to educate our kids to excel in the positions and roles we will need.
Otherwise, these positions and roles will be occupied by New Scots, and you will still be posting about Scotland’s colonised status 30 years from now.
Mia,
Well said, Your words hold so much reality.
England’s constitution isn’t Scotland’s constitution, we are not a nation state, yet our MPs at Westminster have kept the lie going.
These three minutes of Sara Salyer speaking will explain it to you.
link to twitter.com
@Mia says:15 January, 2023 at 1:27 pm
I get it. Anybody who doesn’t already know all the answers ain’t gonna get telt.
So I guess the several million politically unaware and/or apathetic sovereign Scots can just remain in their state of ideological impurity for the foreseeable.
Let’s reconvene in 10 years time to see how that is working out. Those of us that live that long. Natch.
Incidentally, having agreed that it is indeed time to move on, what purpose did the last 4 paras of your post serve?
Republicofscotland.
Thanks for providing that information for all of us, it clears the air on the treaty of the union, Scots law and constitution as defined as separate from English law in the union,
The problem ( here ) is not many people have educated themselves on the treaty of union Articles.
The other problem is equally as horrendous.
No one checks the legislation or statue history of the British parliament laws, being imposed on Scotland as Scots law.
For long enough we have been aware that Scots and Scotland has been treated like a “Colony” rather than the other half of a international equal treaty.
Yesterday I provide evidence that “Colonial laws” were passed by Westminster for Scotland, to take/steal Scottish small holdings property,
under the Legislation . Gov. UK. ( General Land settlement (Scotland) Act.
COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF LAND FOR THE PURPOSES OF SMALL HOLDING COLONIES ACTS 1916-1918.
I also provided the information to everyone on legislation passed with regards,
COLONIAL STOCK Act 1889-04 IN SCOTLAND.
Nobody took much notice of the evidence presented to Scots ( here) that has deeper legal connotations between Scotland as a Colonised Country and Scotland as one of two Countries entered into a treaty of union that created the Great British parliament
Basically ( and I make no bones about it for the reprimand ) they were to engrossed with the snp street gossip talk.
There are bigger fish in the ocean than Sturgeon small fry.
Makes me mad people standing complaining, but doing nothing towards physically advancing our political research and political ammo for a free Scotland and a free Country.
It sometimes reminds me of the old Les Dawson sit com, where he shuggle’s his bosom and continues the gossip under bated whispers, while gumming his mouth,
John main.
You don’t have to stay ignorant accepting and expecting being “spoon fed ” information like a child leech.
Go do some home work you’re self, for gods sake.
twathater says:
15 January, 2023 at 3:46 am
‘Alex Salmond is NOT the messiah’
I’m sure Alex would agree with that statement, twathater, but, as you acknowledge, the Indy campaign is stronger because of his presence.
Most reasonable folks would concede that Alex has made mistakes: he himself revealed at one meeting that his greatest mistake, and by implication not his only mistake, was to allow unfettered access to SNP by politically homeless ex Labourites.
But I think his greatest mistake, and this applies to every other person holding a position of sway, is in the delivery of education.
The current education shambles can be traced back to 2004, when labour was in power at WM and HR, and the introduction of CfE.
Because of CfE, every child born since 2000, every teenager, and every young adult in Scotland has been indoctrinated on their rights, without a fitting balance of their responsibilities, and on Woke principles, a legacy that may cause problems for decades.
For example, Ruby posted a link the other day showing how the gender rights of a four-year-old trump the rights of parents. It is just mind-boggling insanity. From an early age, children become aware of ‘rights’ and begin to question the guidance of parents and older family members, particularly if it undermines peer pressure. The reality is that those who drive Scottish education – currently the prodigy SAS – now own our children.
If instead, in 2007, CfE was abandoned and we began inculcating children – and parents – on the priceless benefits of a culture of learning, then this action alone would now be helping young people avoid the poverty trap.
And if we had simultaneously began teaching SCOTTISH history, culture, and language in 2007, and installed a sense of pride and belonging in our kids about how they spoke and who they are, then far more citizens would be 24/7 patriots rather than the 90-minute variety.
The importance of a culture of learning cannot be over-estimated. It is the route out of poverty, to self-esteem, and the route to independence.
“Makes me mad people standing complaining, but doing nothing towards physically advancing our political research and political ammo for a free Scotland and a free Country.”
James Che.
I think many Scots are still ignorant or unaware of the Scots constitution, or that Scotland even has a separate one from England’s. I also think people focus more on the machinations of the SNP because its highlighted more, and of course we are stuck between a rock and and a hard place until the SNP are removed from office.
There’s no doubt that several Westminster governments have impinged upon Scots sovereignty over the decades Brexit being a more notable one, and that anyone of those impingements gives Scots the right to dissolve this political union, and its crystal clear that the SNP wants the status quo to remain, for their MPs could’ve pointed out on many, many occasions of how Westminster has broken the ToU, but they chose not to for personal and party gain.
The British construct known as Holyrood is a bit of a farce, where else in the world do parties sitting in a government chamber represent the interests of a foreign country before that of their own people as they do in Scotland, in what other country does the judiciary, police force and army, along with civil servants answer first and foremost to and swear an oath as well, to what is in reality a foreign monarch, as our own politicians do
England’s politicians answer to the monarch, the monarchy in England is the pinnacle, in Scotland its completely different sovereignty lies with the people not the monarchy not the politicians, nor the clergy.
Again where else in the world would you find a foreign media spew out lie after lie about Scottish sovereignty, whilst replacing our own culture with that of a foreign countries on our tv, not to mention our own culture and literature being suppressed and replaced by that of a foreign country’s its little wonder then that many Scots are brainwashed into believing that the statis quo is the norm when for hundreds of years prior to the union it wasn’t.
The latest is the hidden census, that when its eventually revealed will show a huge upsurge in folk from South of the Border now living in Scotland.
John Main
Why the Spanish Inquisition to who Salvo are & who is funding them?
FFS. Info freely available everywhere.
Who is the Constitutional reform group currently rewriting a new Act of Union from England? Who is funding them?
Who in in the Tory Brexit group – who is funding them?
You don’t seem very interested in them eh?
Yer just a Unionist UKipper who sees no need for changes & whits the point of teaching weans thier native tongue. Just like the sleepless nights Gaelic road signs cause or the Welsh & Irish language has the ability to bring on a fecking uncontrollable rage.
What’s the point? You demonstrate it matters to you.
New Scots will take all our jobs? They do anyway. They’re all English, it’s where the decent jobs are advertised.
Now we can look like a basket case & invite deviants into the pool.
The unionists clearly have dirt on Nicola, as I was told a few years ago, and have used it to lace her inner group with plants allowing the nonsense and waste of time the SNP policies have been (ferry, gender, offshore power, etc, etc).
Watching fmq most of her appointees are barely capable of speaking without reading.
The only solution is to out the dirt. One has to wonder why the unionists keep avoiding the open goal, but then it suits them for the now.
Don’t fester on their stupidity, find the dirt and reverse the blackmail
@James che says:15 January, 2023 at 2:40 pm
John main.
You don’t have to stay ignorant accepting and expecting being “spoon fed ” information like a child leech.
Go do some home work you’re self, for gods sake.
I see, so once I have done that homework, and worked out all the answers, I can then poke fun at and insult other questioners on here?
Maybes even call them leeches.
Sometimes I think the answer to the question why Indy support has been flatlined at 45-50% forever is just so bleedin obvious, it hurts.
But I am going to remain relentlessly upbeat and attempt to once more engage with Mia’s point at 1:27:
Labour, libdems, tories, greens and Sturgeon’s fake lot will never find the backbone to do that, hence the only option we have is to chuck all them lying cowards out of our seats.
Assuming Mia is talking about HR, 129 MSPs, lying cowards all, to chuck out.
129 names needed as replacements.
129 individuals, James.
Who are these people? Of the 129, who is the “big name” that the rest will acknowledge as leader? Who are the people who will communicate with us sovereign Scots, convince us that their plans and wisdom is sound, get us out en masse to vote for them.
I’ve said this before. but it bears repetition. Week after week after week, the same tired old posts appear about the perfidy, incompetence and criminality of our current leading elites. Endless screeds about how bad they are.
Yet not one serious suggestion for the next leader around whom a revitalised and renewed Indy movement can coalesce.
“Having agreed that it is indeed time to move on, what purpose did the last 4 paras of your post serve?”
I am following your demands for individual pro-activity by sharing with you the way I think we move on, so you can no longer claim I remain unaware or, in your pwn words, “in state of ‘ideological impurity'” (whatever that means for you).
In your response to Alf Baird you say:
“Thanks for your reply. I question the relevance of your ideas.
Nothing whatsoever stops any Scottish adult from pursuing an interest in Scotland’s languages and culture, etc”
This proactive response from you, who clearly puts the burden of learning on the individual, appears to completely contradict your lazy/passive position when it comes to politics. I wonder what drives that difference.
If you are going to be proactive/demand others to be proactive, then, for the sake of consistency on your position and to be taken seriously, you need to lead by example and show that pro-activity you demand from others, yourself. I don’t see why politics should be an exception to your own set rule.
Therefore, in the same way you question the relevance of Mr Baird’s “claims”, I question the relevance and consistency of yours, as nothing is stopping you, or any person with a legitimate interest in Scotland’s independence, doing a google search and finding out what SALVO and ALBA stand for, what they have to say and who their current leaders are. The only thing stopping you from doing that is yourself.
Now it has become apparent that, despite often reading and commenting on this blog where SALVO and ALBA have been mentioned hundreds of times, despite me pointing you towards them on my comment above, and despite you demanding pro-activity from others to learn, you still want to hide behind ignorance, what was the actual point of the first four “paras” of your comment?
By the way, I am sure a smart person like you has already worked out that there is a very significant difference in linguistic normalisation between learning a language when you are a child and learning it when you are an adult and you have already assimilated other foreign language as your “mother tongue”.
Apart from the obvious fact that children have a much better capability to learn languages than adults, the linguistic normalisation never happens if you leave it to the individual to learn on their own time/initiative and there are very scarce materials to find. That is the way to ensure it never happens, but it is of course rather convenient when you are forcefully trying to suppress nationhood and identity of a people.
Haven’t you heard of the difference between diglossia and bilingualism/multilingualism? I am sure you have, as you probably have worked out by now that children in Scotland should be bilingual/multilingual. Instead, we have a ridiculous diglossia situation where Scottish own languages are treated as the communication for the lower class, and because they are not taught as written languages in School as they should, they are treated merely as dialects and therefore condemned to disappear. If that is not an act of superlative ignorance and cultural vandalism what is.
It is outrageous and incredibly arrogant that the so called UK parliament forbids the use of any UK language that is not the language from England. I mean, this is the 21st century for goodness sake, and translators have been around for several decades now. So what can possibly be the excuse, other than artificially forcing English as the main language to undermine every person for whom English is not their mother tongue?
It is even more outrageous that our children in Scotland are taught French in School instead of any of the Scottish own languages. Seemingly, in the eyes of some, it is far more important for our children to learn to communicate with the French people, even if they hardly come in contact with any, than to communicate with their very own country folk in the islands or with any Scot for which English is not their mother tongue. Certainly an effective way of dividing the Scottish people, isn’t it?
Learning Scottish languages as an adult does nothing to preserve the culture. The only thing it does is to demote Scotland’s own languages to the status of a second class language.
It should be mandatory for any child in Scotland to learn Scots and Scottish Gaelic besides English. Scots and Scottish Gaelic should be declared official languages a la par with English. It is outrageous our children are taught French/German, etc instead of the languages of their very own country.
Sir Kier Starmer – pronouns his/majesty – is now backtracking on gender self ID. He said he wanted Self ID. Now he says he thinks 16 year olds are too young to transition without medical checks.
This puts him at direct odds with the branch office. And isolates Sturgeon and the Greens further. It’s all set up for the UK Government to step in and save the day.
@Geri says:15 January, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Yer just a Unionist UKipper
Good answer!
Addresses none of my questions, proposes nothing positive or plausible, but I bet it makes you feel better.
Oh and BTW: If you are blind to the folly of a big, fluorescent truck, siren blaring, blue lights flashing, pushing all other traffic to one side, yet with “ambaileans” written on it on the offchance there exists a Scot somewhere who can’t fathom out what the fuck it is, then I can only extend to you my sympathy on your total lack of a sense of the ridiculous.
@Mia says:15 January, 2023 at 4:00 pm
It should be mandatory for any child in Scotland to learn Scots and Scottish Gaelic besides English
Sez you.
There will be sound, practical reasons why even after 15 years hegemony at HR, that particular pointless folly is not even on the radar. And they won’t be anything to do with subversive infiltration of the SNP.
You need to be careful, Mia. If you venture too far into the realms of fantasy, you risk making the SNP look like a safe pair of hands.
I think it should be mandatory for every Scottish child to learn to pick up their litter and carry it home, or dispose of it responsibly.
Haha, I won’t be getting what I want either, despite the simple fact that what I want is probably two orders of magnitude easier to bring about.
But if you do ever want to post something pragmatically rooted in the real world about the provision of Scots and Gaelic lessons and qualifications for school pupils who actively wish to study these languages and their associated literature, please do so.
“Sir Kier Starmer – pronouns his/majesty – is now backtracking on gender self ID…This puts him at direct odds with the branch office”
Was this always the intention, I wonder
On the surface it seems like an opportunistic damage limitation exercise in preparation for the next GE. Labour supported this aberration and will be, deservedly, punished at the polls potentially trashing the engineered labour “revival” in the next GE. Starmer might be merely trying to reverse that damage by pretending the branch in Scotland is somewhat autonomous.
But what if distancing the main party from Scotland’s branch after ensuring the aberration was forced through was the plan all along to hoover up a chunk of the SNP vote in the next GE?
That is the great advantage of having a branch under a different name operating in Scotland, even when it is the exact same party and funded by the same membership funds. Having a branch with pretend autonomy gives the traditional colonial parties “fluidity” for GEs to renege on what has just been supported by the branch with their vote. This is a “fluidity” Sturgeon’s SNP know they do not have. So while each and every colonial party can now position themselves against the perverts’ charter for the next GE, the SNP cannot.
Was this the aim all along to ensure a majority of anti-union MPs was never sent to Westminster in the event the political fraud was forced by the public to hold a plebiscitary election?
Starmer rushing to comment on this might mean they are expecting a GE and soon. Again, is this GE and the need to trim down the number of anti-union MPs to get the political fraud off the hook the reason behind the rush to force the perverts’ charter through?
John Main @4pm
I seem to recall hearing Ian Blackford was a bit of a Hibby, albeit living up north, so he wont be too bothered about contemporary offside rules that allow poachers to hang around offside to confuse the defences by leaving the ball for some guy in onside position before slotting home the return courtesy of a free shot (although the thought of Scottish cup goals against by your own team’s heros might still hurt)
.. in which case I humbly suggest he takes sweet revenge on whoever made him resign by coming clean on covid and bringing 29* mates back to the front bench in name of the Margaret Ferrier party – whose founding principle could be to declare indy by Burns night (and negotiate terms thereafter)
*21 like minded mates should be enough (with himself and Margaret) to reclaim the font bench, 30 (in total) to declare indy 🙂
“Assuming Mia is talking about HR, 129 MSPs, lying cowards all, to chuck out. 129 names needed as replacements”
How about we start with the 56 occupying our seats in Westminster?
Looking at the way the political fraud and her praetorian guard rushed to call for an SNP1+2 vote in 2021 to stop any chance of a pro-indy supermajority, I think it is safe to say hell will freeze before that coward resigns as FM and triggers an election for the sake of independence. So it is safe to say the GE will take place before any HE.
If that fails, then absolutely, 129, 300 or whatever is needed. I don’t recall Farage having much problem finding candidates to stand, do you?
Not a member of SNP (resigned about a year ago) and seriously pissed with them (won’t vote for them). A long time supporter of Indy.
What am missing with the resolution? If we forget option two, does the resolution not state that next GE is de facto referendum and if won with overall majority of seats or votes, straight to negotiations for Indy?
I appreciate they are trying to control process, I.e., Indy parties must be in agreement with them, and I understand they aren’t going for a referendum this year as promised: what else am I missing or have misread; are there any further qualifications?
Would not trust her in any situation; just want to get my interpretation correct.
Mia @ 4:00 pm
“It is even more outrageous that our children in Scotland are taught French in School instead of any of the Scottish own languages.”
It is diabolical and I have written to the ScotGov asking why they provide summary translations of documents in 17 other languages, but never in oor ain Scots mither tongue. Sad to say no reply.
UK civil servants know fine well the significance of language and identity and the Council of Europe’s frequent reports on minority languages reminds them often enough about the violations of Scots rights tae oor ain langage. The British state’s longstanding policy has been to deprive native Scots of learning their own language, prioritising only ‘English Studies’, as was standard practice in most if not all former colonies.
John Main wrote – Flooding any country with immigrants irrevocably changes that country for ever, and it is ludicrous to deny otherwise.
I find the implications of this to be scary, speaking as someone born in the great City of Leicester and now living in London.
Down here that is the political currency of Nigel Farage et al
Does any of you know what Scots or Gaelic for do not feed the troll is. Asking for a friend.
“There will be sound, practical reasons why even after 15 years hegemony at HR, that particular pointless folly is not even on the radar”
First of all, it is not a folly. It is the reality. If you do not teach your children your own language, and by that I mean to speak it and to write it, and instead you adopt the language of your oppressor, your language dies a long death and your identity as a nation vanishes. Scots and Gaelic are almost relegated to the status of dialects when they are actual languages. That is cultural vandalism, not a folly. The folly is to claim it isn’t and expect others to believe you.
As per the “sound reasons” as to why after 8 years this political fraud has not made any moves to make the learning of these languages mandatory in Scotland’s schools, I think those reasons are obvious: she does not want Scotland to become autonomous, rather the opposite.
Every effing move this political fraud has made in the last 8 years has been to suppress Scotland’s nationhood and sovereignty and to bury Scotland even more within the union. Teaching Scotland’s languages would be a way to prop that nationhood and sense of identity which will only accelerate the independence she is desperately fighting against.
Do you seriously think an individual who has wasted 8 years of continuous majorities of anti-union MPs and MSPs in a perverts’ charter, baby boxes, eroding females’ rights and pardon for witches could ever possibly have an interest in promoting Scotland’s culture and languages? Please don’t make me laugh. She hasn’t even tried. How long has it taken her to infest schools and public services with the gender garbage?
“you risk making the SNP look like a safe pair of hands”
I think you are the one who is living in fantasy land. I am well aware the SNP ceased to exist on the 14 November 2014. I am convinced the coward claiming to “lead” the political construct operating under that name is a political fraud who has been tasked to destroy the party as a vehicle for Scotland’s independence and transform it into a version of labour, innocuous to the establishment and posing no threat to the Treaty of Union. Why would I ever claim that fake political construct is “a safe pair of hands” when I am convinced they are nothing but dirty and corrupt hands deceiving the Scottish voters?
Do you actually process what you read?
“despite the simple fact that what I want is probably two orders of magnitude easier to bring about”
Please do not insult my intellect. Take a look at Spain. Every Spanish region with another language other than castillian has been able to implement it in schools and has been doing it for decades. Civil servants have to speak both languages to apply for a position. They have done all that despite leaving a dictatorship less than 50 years ago. Now look at Wales. what is going on there? Don’t they have two languages there too?
In what parallel universe do you live, John Main, or in what parallel universe do you think I live?
You are fabricating barriers where there are none. The only limitation is that there might be not enough teachers. And whose fault is that? Who has let those languages negligently disappear to that point?
John main.
I am not seeking regime change of a political party leader,
I want our own parliament,
Keep putting alternative dog food in the same bowl will not Result in a different dog bowl, its the same vessel as beforehand, with the same control under the Scotland Acts legislation.
ie) not Scots Laws. Not our own Scottish constitution as signed up to in the treaty of the union,
Besides that scenario, how can you maintain there is a treaty of union at all, if Scotland is not in it.
As our parliament closed in 1707.
Then you have UK gov passing Colonial legislation into Scotland. See ref above.
And I am little surprised that you talk of independence flat lining, if only a few are seriously contributing to info and research and building a good solid case for Scotlands independence from all angles and outlets.
It does not matter wether you are english, polish, Scottish or Chinese nor does it matter your skin colour.
I was not born in Scotland, but judging by our politicians who were born here, I have more loyalties to Scotland, its Country, and the Scots whom welcomed me than they do,
Do your homework. And help for a change in you want a free independent Scotland
Here we go, some facts:
link to education.gov.scot
“Gaelic Medium Education is an option within Scottish education that gives children and young people an opportunity to become fluent in Gaelic. As children and young people move from stage to stage, they will continue to develop their fluency. In so doing, they also fulfil all the aims and goals of Curriculum for Excellence and accrue all the benefits of bilingualism.
Gaelic Medium Education is available in 14 out of 32 Scottish local authorities to all children and young people. Some local authorities use neighbouring local authority provision to meet the requests of parents.
Gaelic Medium Education is available in about 60 primary schools and their associated secondaries in Scotland, including dedicated Gaelic Medium schools. An increasing number of early learning and childcare centres, secondary schools and further education centres also provide learning through the medium of Gaelic.”
The situation with respect to Scots is much worse. All I can find online is some wooly “policy documents”, all of which look to be out-of-date.
And some opinions (mine):
Given the provision of Gaelic teaching via HR policy making, it is hard to credit that the absence of similar support for Scots is a colonial imposition by the malign British state. Looks more like simple lack of focus at HR.
Maybes in the competition for resources, the Gaelic speakers have the sharper elbows.
Mia
The barrier I am “fabricating” arises from my understanding of one of our defining national characteristics: thrawnness.
Make learning of anything mandatory in our schools, particularly something of little practical utility in the real world, and watch it blow up in your hands.
That’s not a parallel universe BTW, that’s the universe.
David H, will French do?
Ne nourrissez pas le troll.
David Holden @ 5:14 pm
“Does any of you know what Scots or Gaelic for do not feed the troll is”
Dinnae meat thon harl.
Anybody ever wondered what a Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy baby would look like? Well, anything’s possible under Queen Skank Sturgeon. Ladies & gentlemen i give you:
Stan Oliver Sturgeon (Please Sir, May I Have Some More):
link to img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net
🙂
@ Ebok 3.04pm I prefaced my comments above by stating my thanks to Alex Salmond returning to the fold, but TBQH I revile all politicians because there are very few of them with honesty and or integrity , also the party system is grossly corrupt when you can have a narcissistic perverted deviant literally dictate and dominate the direction of a NATION
THAT is why I wholeheartedly support SALVO , SSRG , and LIBERATION.SCOT and the whole concept of a PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY ,at 72 yoa I know I won’t see independence but I dream that real Scots will stop being so fckn stupid and hold these politicians to account
Our nation has contributed greatly to the world by dint of our people , yet we are conned by morons with fancy words and titles, as others have commented we should be on the streets in our hundreds of thousands and holding general strikes to show these LYING PARASITES of ALL parties that we have had enough,
I totally sympathise with young families not having the time or energy to rise up and protest due to their commitments BUT the reality is it is THEIR FUTURES that is at risk , they are the ones who will be risking jail when they advise their children that science and biology doesn’t operate on feels, they are the ones who will face jail when they refuse to let drag queens with their perverted ideas of what constitutes a WOMAN teach their children that Amber who identifies as a woman is proud to believe in MAP because being attracted to children is natural
Ebok I am sick to the back teeth accommodating these weirdos perverts and deviants just because people don’t want to be cruel, but this political correctness is now being used to silence people by calling them names to alienate them from society
Ebok 3.04: “If instead, in 2007, CfE was abandoned and we began inculcating children – and parents – on the priceless benefits of a culture of learning, then this action alone would now be helping young people avoid the poverty trap.
And if we had simultaneously began teaching SCOTTISH history, culture, and language in 2007, and installed a sense of pride and belonging in our kids about how they spoke and who they are, then far more citizens would be 24/7 patriots rather than the 90-minute variety.
The importance of a culture of learning cannot be over-estimated. It is the route out of poverty, to self-esteem, and the route to independence.”
Quite so: the SNP persisted with Labour’s crock of crapola Curriculum for Excellence, a content-light colouring-in across the curriculum “programme” which only managed to remove what excellence still remained in Scottish education.
You’d have thought the SNP might have been a bit suspicious of a dumbed-down system which failed to teach coherently Scotland’s culture, history and languages.
Of course, given what we now know about the SG and its lack of enthusiasm for independence, it’s perhaps not so surprising.
@Alf Baird 6:10
Cannae gie ye fu merks.
‘Thon’ in Scots is ‘that’ in English. Sae 10% aff fa being tae smert fer yer oan guid. ‘The’ is ‘the’ in both languages.
DD
The French exam is doon the ha. The morn’s morn.
John Main @ 5:33 pm
“Given the provision of Gaelic teaching via HR policy making, it is hard to credit that the absence of similar support for Scots is a colonial imposition by the malign British state. Looks more like simple lack of focus at HR.”
You do realise that it is the UK civil service that ‘manages’ Holyrood and ScotGov departments? The Gaelic Language Act was passed in 2005 by the Lab-Lib coalition; Scots language was ignored, one assumes that was intentional. The Gaelic language lobby was/is fairly strong among unionist elites in politics, media, education and judiciary.
Divide and rule is nothing new to Westminster and its agencies. As Billy Kay noted, the Gaelic lobby once given its Act and funding haes pou the ledder up ahint thaim, and happily parrot the myth that Scotland only has the twa languages – i.e. English and Gaelic.
Politically there was little risk to britstate in giving the c.50,000 Gaelic speakers the right to learn their language as opposed to the closer to 2 million Scots speakers getting their language rights. Britstate clearly remains conscious of the positive language-identity connection and does not want to further fuel the independence movement.
It remains that the British Establishment and educationalists (i.e. those running ScotGov) still consider the Scots language as a subordinate and invalid language, which is racism. If our elites respected the Scots language they would teach it and give it statutory authority and equality, as with English and Gaelic.
Scots is today the language mainly of the working and rural class, which also happens to comprise the bulk of the independence movement. Who in the elites is fighting for it? Naebody, because in a colonial environment the native bourgeoisie rush to discard their mither tongue in favour of the colonisers, mainly for socio-economic reasons as without it they cannot progress in a country where the native language remains marginalised and subordinate, and its speakers subject to socio-linguistic prejudice.
It often takes independence before an oppressed people ‘demand the return of their language’, according to Albert Memmi, when they come to realise that ‘the colonizer’s tongue burns their lips’.
Crisiscult says:
14 January, 2023 at 5:20 pm
Holyrood election campaign of 2021 was very explicit from SNP that there would be a vote on independence in first half of the parliament. All the talk of mandates and democracy these days will sound a bit hollow if that promise isn’t upheld.
————————-
I’km sure its been pointed out by many that it was completely hollow at the time. Nothing new to see here.
@“Gaelic Medium Education”
First of all, an option? It should be mandatory. When has learning English in Scottish Schools ever been optional for the last 300 years? Why should in Scotland English be any more important than any of the actual Scottish languages which are part of Scotland’s national identity and heritage?
Why aren’t those languages already part of the mandatory curriculum in EVERY single area of Scotland and they are only available in a very few?
“In so doing, they also fulfil all the aims and goals of Curriculum for Excellence and accrue all the benefits of bilingualism”
Neither my children nor any of their schools peers could become bilingual by learning any of the languages of their country because their country’s native languages were not even offered at any of the schools they attended.
“Make learning of anything mandatory in our schools, particularly something of little practical utility in the real world, and watch it blow up in your hands”
Learning English is mandatory. For the children in my family, learning French is mandatory. Even Religious education is mandatory despite being non-denominational schools. We follow no religion at home, so I cannot think in anything of less practical utility in the real world than Religious Education. We don’t travel to France either, so I miss the practicality in the real world of having my kids learning French. We do however travel around Scotland quite a bit, so learning Scotland’s own languages would have been rather practical in the real world.
In a country that has its very own languages, it is never practical in the real world to impose the language of your oppressor on all children by teaching them 99% of their curriculum in the oppressor’s language while deliberately leaving the country’s natural languages, some of them the kids’ mother tongue, out of the curriculum. It is only practical when the intention is to forcefully subjugate the nationhood and identity of that country by making its own languages disappear or appear as mere dialects.
Are we to understand this to be the reason why Scotland’s own languages have been left to die and instead England’s language has become the language of mandatory learning in Scotland?
“Looks more like simple lack of focus at HR”
The lack of focus on the needs of the people of Scotland by the clowns sitting in HOlyrood; their complete disinterest in protecting Scotland’s heritage, culture and resources, despite welcoming translations into every language under the sun, except the Scottish own ones; their interest in rushing through disgusting legislation opposed by the majority of the Scottish people; and their falling over themselves at every opportunity to unite with the UK civil service and COPFS to protect the interests of the crown and the British state against the interests of the people of Scotland, are a direct consequence of this malignant union and their colonial mentality.
For as long as the clowns sitting in Holyrood choose to abide by the restrictions of the Scotland Act rather than implementing the Scottish people’s democratic will, Holyrood will never represent the Scottish people, but the crown and the British state against the people of Scotland. Just as the old parliament of Scotland did in 1706.
Since Sturgeon took over, Holyrood has become just a buffer to “mitigate” the devastation on the union and the crown that applying raw over Scotland the toxic policies from Westminster would cause. Holyrood under Sturgeon is nothing more than a control tool the establishment uses to keep Scotland in the union. To pretend it is otherwise is a delusion.
Don’t you find strange that Sturgeon’s and Forbes’ ultimate objective appears to be only to mitigate the damage from tory policies when the SNP has had the power since 2015 to actually get rid of all those policies and the tory threat by ending the union?
I do.
Don’t you find strange that Forbes asked for more powers and even FFA for Scotland when since 2015 the SNP has had the power to repeal the Treaty of union and hand back to HOlyrood EVERY single Scottish power held in Westminster?
I most certainly do.
“Maybes in the competition for resources, the Gaelic speakers have the sharper elbows”
These are Scottish languages. They are still live languages. The idea of a competition between the languages of a country is absolutely ridiculous and can only be understood from the eyes of someone who does not understand how important to a country’s own identity is to preserve a nation’s own languages. All of them are important and all of them have to be preserved in equal measure. EVERY child in Scotland should learn those languages at the same time they learn English and should be taught the same amount of time in those languages than in English.
Our children here are forced to learn England’s main language. How many children in England are forced to learn Scotland or Wales’ own languages?
Do you see the disparity?
How much taxpayers’ funds has this political fraud wasted in the gender nonsense, fighting women’s rights and the intrusion of this crap into schools and every public service/institution in Scotland? How many schools could be teaching Scottish Gaelic and Scots to our children with the funds this political fraud has wasted on that crap?
It would be quite a few, I bet.
Does trolling include Stewart MacDonald’s portrayal of an upper (rather than under) handed Westminster, 6 points to underpin (undermine ?) the indy debate, and stated desire to embrace some sort of rules based new order ? because if he’s not trolling I’d retort that this business of proud Scotsmen becoming frightful women has to stop.. :
link to youtube.com
Similar words in more concerning context, from someone with reason to be far more serious :
link to twitter.com
SNP Whitehall puppet lays out six point plan on indy, usually its a five point plan, its all BS anyway.
Vote Alba, Join Alba, get the SNP out including McDonald.
link to 12ft.io
The sad truth is that the intelligent people who realise what Murrell & Co are doing to the social fabric of this country are a tiny minority. Most people I meet are either too frightened or too stupid to raise their voices against their oppressors. They still see M&Co as their only chance of getting an Independent Scotland, but never ask themselves if they could actually live in such a place.
Alba and poor Alex are a busted flush, all the shit stuck fast and most women see Alex as a sexual sleazbag at best, and a rapist at worst. Identity politics rule, didn’t you know that?
We simply don’t have the numbers to vote M & Co out of power in Scotland and our only chance of resetting our political system is by legal means People like Cherry have been mentioned as provisional leader, but open your eyes Mss Cherry is primarily motivated by the need to change the social structure in the image of all the alphabet people. No? well why is she still a representative of the corrupt SNP?
They should all be cleared out and there must be many in HR and WM who know where the bodies are buried. Start sniffing.
One thing that is crystal clear in reading the comments is the sense of grievance that many of the BPHB hold.
They embrace their victimhood with all the enthusiasm and fanaticism you would expect from an American TV evangelist touting for dollars.
Good to see that Mia, once again, writes 5000 words when 200 would suffice. Mind you, you can write more mince if you drone on endlessly. I wonder if anyone reads any of her posts to the bitter end?
If people want to learn the Gaelic, let them. I am certain that this will be of an enormous advantage when attempting to converse with people from other countries!
What a greetin faced bunch the majority on here are. Thankfully they account for about 0.0001 of the population of Scotland.
Spring is just around the corner.
On Education, Scottish history is is a record of greed and cowardice. The Clan system is still in existence the progeny of those who sold Scotland and abused the people are still in place.
We as a Nation have no right to look down our noses at others.
What we need to do is build a modern society where contribution means something and a life on benefits should only be available for those really unable to fend for themselves. The rights and social systems require a complete overhaul, the sexual and gender madness removed and family life encouraged.
Gaelic is for the museums to compete in the modern world we need a modern language and using a traditional template, create a new and forward looking country.
@Alf Baird 6:56
That’s an interesting post – thanks.
I never knew that Gaelic education was foisted on us as a BritState divide and rule ploy.
I am almost thinking that my entrenched hostility to the whole dual-language roadsigns farrago was right all along, even if Geri and her ilk give me pelters for it.
Got to hand you victory on this argument though, Alf. By claiming both views as your own, I.e. not teaching indigenous languages = Bad; plus, teaching indigenous languages = Bad, you clearly have a win-win situation.
Mia
If you want to campaign on a platform calling for mandatory Scots education for Scottish school kids, fill your boots.
I won’t vote for it, just as I won’t vote for many things. However, I believe in the concept of democracy, and if a majority wishes for it, then so be it.
Just make sure the costs are clear up front. As you write, the gender shite has absorbed lots of dosh that could have been better spent elsewhere. I would favour trained nurses, dentists or anaesthetists myself over fluent writers in Scots, but perhaps I misread the spirit of the age.
This 20 minute city tyranny is the 21 st century version of the Berlin Wall.
One useless SNP MP turd replaces another, Blackford then Flynn, get these SNP MPs out at the next GE, they’re not interested in independence.
There’s a perfectly viable way out of this onesided prison of a union using Holyrood and the leader of the SNP’s MP’s like his boss at Bute House has shot it down.
Vote Alba, Join Alba, get these SNP charlatans out ASAP.
link to 12ft.io
“STEPHEN Flynn has backed the next Westminster General Election as a de facto referendum on independence – batting away the suggestion of dissolving Holyrood as unreasonable.”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with learning another language.
As someone who spent many years in Germany, it never ceased to amaze me how many of the Germans could speak and understand English as a second language better than the Brits who could barely string a sentence together in their own one language.
Learning your own country’s language might seem a daunting task for some but how many people have spent years learning French in school with no practical application in the real world.
I spent years learning French in school and never got an opportunity to use it.
Perhaps Gaelic would have been more use to me in that time.
John Main @ 8:20 pm
“I never knew that Gaelic education was foisted on us as a BritState divide and rule ploy.”
Favouring one tribe over another has aye been a colonial ploy. I would advocate the teaching of both indigenous languages in Scotland for the respective groups.
John Main
What’s the Unions excuse?
They have the dominant language.
They’re in charge of the treasury.
They’re in charge of Westminster & Holyrood.
Everything is always in thier favour in parliament.
So what’s their excuse at being absolutely shite at everything?
Why is thier NHS shite?
Why do they churn out weans that are illiterate?
Why do the elderly have to sell thier family home?
You make the status quo some sort of fking Utopia to cling to.
100 plus members to fill Holyrood is an easy task. That’s why there’s a selection process. Where did the 56 come from?
Alex Salmond isn’t the Messiah but he does know process.
If you’d any interest in Independence you’d know that the YES movement should be no where near a politician. It needs an external approach outside of the colonisers franchise & free of WM appointed saboteurs.
Meanwhile, in Westminsters branch office known as Holyrood, a pro indy political party would be installed to run day to day affairs regarding devolution. That’s thier only job & to listen to pro-indy policy advisors.
A Back to basics approach like it was before the Sturgeon era.
The next pro-indy FM needs to change the rules to allow Sovereign Scots to sack the government at any time of thier choosing. This should also apply to WM MPs.
John Main.
The English love a wee remote scenic hoose in the Highlands.
Whit they can’t stand is the Scots who live there. Lowering the tone & speaking weird.
So they do what they always do. They decide they know better & start annoying the fk out of the locals, starting with pressure in nursery & primary schools to ‘speak the Queen’s English’
Scots aren’t singled out. The Welsh & Irish get it too. Ask yourself why thier rage & obsession over other ppls languages?
They did the same in Spain. They created English only ghettos & schools.
Yet these same arseholes complain about *foreigners*
I’d make Gaelic mandatory just to fking annoy them. It’d be worth the lolz! Someone on twitter did that to an English MP representing Wales. They only answered him in Welsh & 1 had turned into a 100 within the hour. He was apoplectic. 😀
Actor, Brian Cox says Nicola’s been “canny in her approach” to Independence and that her “cannyness will get us there in the end.”
“We shouldn’t approach Independence like a bull in a China shop.”
Why not Brian, we’ve waited 8 years?
There’s nothing canny about Nicola. She certainly canny do anything right. Crazy talk from the ivory tower elite. They’re in it for themselves.
Goodnight!
“Geri says:
15 January, 2023 at 11:27 pm
Someone on twitter did that to an English MP representing Wales. They only answered him in Welsh & 1 had turned into a 100 within the hour. He was apoplectic.”
Sounds like Andrew RT Davies, or the likes at least.
David Hannah 11.28pm
Re. Brian Cox,,,I seem to remember him from IndyRef1 being more in favour of “DevoMax” rather than full independence. I’m sure he was wanting the slower approach to independence, the gradualist approach.
Which ties in perfectly with what Sturgeon is all about.
He’s not what you would describe as an Indy fanatic, by any stretch of the imagination.
A bit plastic.
“Edinburgh researchers find Scotland’s lower voting age has boosted election turnout” link to archive.is
And then Sturgeon instantly eliminates them from having any say in their own future by opting to go via Westminster in her top priority (sarcasm, btw) bid to win back Scotland’s right of self-determination. Aye, Mr Brian Cox, she’s canny right enough. Canny fuckin’ be trusted.
When it comes to education, how much of your schooling do you actually remember? How much of the learning was abstract and not relevant later in life?
OK, that’s not a fair question and impossible to quantify, but even though I don’t use language in my career, the older I get, the more I come to believe that learning more foreign languages would not have been a waste of time or abstract learning just for learning’s sake, but actually very enriching.
Speak Spanish or Portuguese, and it isn’t just Spain opened up to you, it’s the whole of South America. If I spoke German, I could have followed much more what was happening in Europe without having it all “filtered” by the BBC. That gives your life perspective.
If I spoke Ruskian, I would have the key to understanding what the actual people were saying when away from the Press or a translator. The people on both sides by the way. Then take that ability and apply it to understanding Arabic, and not being spoon fed Western propaganda.
The whole attitude towards language in the UK is pretty embarrassing and I find it disgusting, given the obnoxious airs of superiority attached to speaking English.
It isn’t just your capacity to better understand what’s going on that’s enhanced, it is also your capacity to express support, compassion, solidarity and rectify misguided beliefs or understanding. When you can communicate between two groups of people who cannot communicate themselves, you become a bridge that connects them. You become important to them, and your life is enhanced again.
Learning a language should not be considered a chore, but a productive opportunity.
It’s a force multiplier… If you’re a nurse, you become a nurse in four or five different languages. If you’re a science teacher, you can teach science in multiple languages and can look for jobs in four or five times the number of schools. If you’re a journalist, you’ve multiplied your sources by a factor of 4 or 5. Your investigations keep going when other journalists are stumped. Whatever skills you have or career you choose, multilingualism gives it a wee turbocharge.
Language doesn’t fill up your head. It’s not a physical commodity. Once you learn it, it stays in your head but doesn’t squeeze out anything else.. Your brain can handle it. Maybe you’re not naturally artistic, or mathematical, or musical, but your brain CAN handle language.
“Not” speaking these languages, is like going to the library without having the capacity to read. You will go through life just looking at the pictures.
If I had my time at school again, I would put so much more investment into speaking different languages. Gaelic? Yes of course. It’s Scotland ffs. French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Ruskian, Norwegian,.. the more you learn, the easier the learning becomes. Many languages share common roots, so learning one language lets you pick up a pigeon grasp of another. You can get the gist even if you don’t get it all.
A lot of early education at primary school isn’t really educational, it’s developmental, letting kids grow up. But that’s a golden opportunity to be firing four or five languages into these young kids so that they are multilingual forevermore. It is likely too that introduction to languages and foreign cultures could nip racism and prejudices in the bud, sectarianism included. Young kids and toddlers learn languages fast. They could be truly multilingual by the time they are 7. Then it’s done, their language skills will take care of themselves.
Multilingualism is a gift that keeps on giving, and equips you for lifelong ongoing development. Name me another branch of education which does that.
Would it perhaps be an idea to hold a NON PARTY pro independence rally on the Saturday of this years ‘Emergency’ SNP conference. Outlining the various alternative routes to independence that are being discussed.
Salvo- Claim of Right.
Explanations of the mechanics of dissolving Holyrood to force an early plebiscite GE on the more favourable franchise?
Thus gaining some interaction with the remaining good activists in the SNP and simultaneously exposing those who scorn at anything not sent down from the infiltrated leadership.
Stoker,
I always find it interesting that people have myriad of different opinions on the same subject.
With Independence, many people here believe we’re not going fast enough or even just static, then there are people who think that we’re going at just the right speed and then there are people who believe we’re hurtling towards Indy at an alarming rate.
I’m guessing Brian Cox is somewhere between 2 and 3.
Breeks @ 5:02 am
“If I had my time at school again, I would put so much more investment into speaking different languages. Gaelic? Yes of course. It’s Scotland ffs. French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Ruskian, Norwegian,.. ”
Hoo nae Scots langage tho? Yer verra ain braw Scots langage nae guid eneuch tae lairn in schuil? Scottis cultural creenge mebbe?
As the novelist Thiong’o said, simply in attending school in colonial Kenya, “the language of my education was no longer the language of my culture”, resulting in ‘cultural conditioning’ and ‘colonial alienation’. This is what becomes of a people deprived of their mither tongue an wi anely anither fowk’s langage garred doon thair thrapples.
If we’re being honest, there’s now no party at Holyrood that supports Scottish independence, even though the public has given a certain party countless mandates to achieve this.
This surely equates to the majority of Scots now being politically homeless.
Vote Alba, Join Alba.
Breeks @5.24
I heartily endorse your statement about language learning and in particular multilingual language learning. With a degree of fluency in several languages, one can communicate in one’s speciality field to more than one audience. I have been working away in multilingual language projects in one specific field (marine biology) for well over 20 years and I can vouch for it as at the very least, a valuable outreach method, and at its best, opening a whole new discipline to the eager learner. Mind you, that is the most important aspect; the need and/or the eagerness of the learner.
For @robert Hughes
Whilst I could only sigh in agreement at your post regards Sturgeon Road…It then prompted this classic Crowded House lyric in my head…
There’s a battle ahead
Many battles are lost
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re travelling with me
… Hey now, hey now
Don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won’t win
OT
I have a question, the answer of which might have bearing on the Freeports issue, among wider national interests.
Back in the ’70’s and ’80’s they changed the regional boundaries, to no-one’s great satisfaction.
All the Fifers got chirpie, ‘ha ha’ they said, ‘they tried that wi us, but they couldnae, cause Fife’s a Kingdom’.
When you asked them why that should make any difference, they hummed and hawed, then changed the subject and started talking about fitba.
So my question is, what legal status do Kingdoms’ (and their boundaries) have internationally?
Had I the skill sets, I’d be digging just now to find the Royal Family’s stake in these Freeports… it’s not like them to give up their cut when it comes to mineral rights and trade access/bottlenecks – that’s not how they rumble.
Incidentally I’m aware that Salvo have uncovered the info that Scotland’s territorial rights were never dissolved and committed to the Union – the above question I’m asking is different.
The image of Charlie chewing wasps when he had to swear to uphold the Scottish part of the Treaty of Union has not gone away. If they could have changed it, they would have, long ago.
I’m thinking also of the map of the Royal Family prior to the Russian Revolution – all of Russia, all of Europe…
Tartanpigsy…
“Thus gaining some interaction with the remaining good activists in the SNP”
Thanks for bringing a smile to my face.
If you want to find “good activists in the SNP” I’m afraid that horse has already bolted. I should know, I was one of those riding ‘said horse.
Anybody left in the SNP is there because they consider the Party to be of greater importance than country and/or have quietly given up on Independence and regard politics as a means of making a living or a vehicle for driving forward minority issues.
Sturgeon & Co. in cooperation with the British State have quietly and deliberately led us to a new realpolitik, whereby the status quo is considered by both governments to be mutually sustainable and desirable. Neither will admit to it publicly however.
As we’re talking of languages, please indulge the Francophile in me …
Le Royaume ou la République d’Écosse pour nous? Non. Bienvenue à Québec-sur-Mer!
“Why has it taken one of your readers to spot this law change? Don’t the SNP/SNP govt employ numerous advisers to explore options like this? Or are they too busy with transgender agenda or doing down Alex Salmond/Alba?”
Also, shouldn’t Alex Salmond or anyone else in ALBA have known about this law change?
“Also, shouldn’t Alex Salmond or anyone else in ALBA have known about this law change?”
(1) We already had a viable route to triggering a new Holyrood election, this one’s just better.
(2) Have you ever TRIED actually reading the Scotland Act?
Alf Baird says:
16 January, 2023 at 10:38 am
Hoo nae Scots langage tho?
Ah aw ready speak yon Alf. 😉
When I came to Scotland as a youngster, I was young enough to pick up local words and dialects, as were the rest of my brothers and sisters,
However the school education system did not agree with speaking Scots or Gaelic, it was a punishable offence with the cane or strap, even for children born and bought up in Scotland.
I could not understand why people were not allowed to speak there own mother tongue in Scotland the same way as I could where I had come from,
It was not until years later I understood how a country and its people Colonised were treated, thus my interest grew as to why Scots?were under Suppression and yet supposed to be in a treaty of equal countries.
So did my interest in how there were different Scots spoken in different parts of Scotland and some had no common words phonetically or otherwise with another part of Scotland nor yet with Old English.
TartanPigsy, I like your idea of a non-party rally to highlight all the different approaches to indy that can be taken. It would be great also if the rally was held right outside Sturgeons conference centre – that would fly right up her nose, but it could also get people thinking about why Nicola has alwast ignored the alternative [aths to indy. And if the snp ‘special’ conference was being covered by the MSM, even better as the rally might make it into the news, showing there are alternative knowledgeable views on paths to indy,shaped by experience, and not just Sturgeons way or the highway.
Breastplate says on 16 January 2023 at 9:14 am: “I always find it interesting that people have myriad of different opinions on the same subject.”
Aye! Just exactly as it should be, B. Just like on every topic in every other normal country around the globe. 😉
I get seriously disappointed when folk i like, such as Brian Cox, speak out in support of Sturgeon and approve of her seriously questionable approach to taking back our right of self-determination.
Especially if those speaking out for her have extremely comfortable lifestyles, unlike us peasants. Brian Cox, throughout the indy debate, has slowly but surely gone down in my estimation. Still love him in Manhunter though. LOL!
It angers me further when we don’t see anything, on the issue of indy, from all those pro-Union “celebrities”, especially so-called “Scottish” ones, who were falling over themselves in 2014 to convince us all how better off we would be by staying in the Union.
I’d just like to thank them all, personally, for helping to inflict Brexit & the current cost-of-living crisis on us all. I hope they’re enjoying their wealth and comfortable lifestyles, wherever they live around the globe.
That’s me being a sarcastic b@st@rd, btw! 😉
Breeks, and Margaret, I agree re learning multiple languages. I studied gaelic and latin at school, way back in late 60s, early 70s, as well as english – at the time I dismissed french, as I ‘would never need or use it’. I had a mexican penpal for a short time though and bought myself a little Spanish dictionary with the intention of learning spanish, just because it seemed quite an exciting and colourful language. I never got very far.
However, some years ago, I ended up living in a rural area of central France where few people spoke or admitted being able to speak English. I really lost out on that great opportunity to immerse myself in the language and culture, and the opportunity to find work there, to my great regret. So I did start teaching myself French, then once I returned to Scotland, I started a european languages degree (French and Spanish) with OU which I finish this year, and as my love of languages and culture grew, I also started teaching myself a little Russian with the intention of travelling to St Petersburg to do an intensive course in Russian, once my degree was complete – looks like I have left it too late now to travel to Russia, but will continue self-learning and I also hope to go to Sabhal Mhor Ostaig for an intensive refresher course in gaelic as well, CoL crisis permitting.
And for Alf Baird, I married into a strongly Doric-speaking family, and learned a puckle spoken doric/Scots, to add to the Scots terms and words I already knew from childhood. I have occasionally enjoyed conversations in Doric/Scots with others from here in the NE, in the company of bemused non-Scots. It is a good fun way to highlight Scottish identity as separate and completely distinct from rUK british/english identity.
What I have experienced in my studies is a far greater understanding of the importance of language and culture to identity and to that connection to ones country and people that is being so badly eroded in Scotland with the pervasive and forced ‘britishness’ we are all being subjected to, which has become far more blatant and pressured in the past couple of decades as the indy movement has taken off.
Furthermore, the enhanced understanding (and enjoyment) of other people and their cultures leads to an enhanced understanding of colonisation of peoples, of the development of aggressive or indeed cooperative geopolitical forces and their histories, and of the how and why the world is in its current state, slipping towards catastrophe on numerous fronts. Above all, though, language learning is fun, interesting and apparently protects against the old-age dementias, which is good for we late baby-boomers to know.
The SNP are the Rip Van Winkles of Independence.
carjamtic says:
14 January, 2023 at 12:12 pm
” Freedom comes first but Freedom can only be effective when Most of the people know what’s going on,Most of the time. ”
Nobody in the entire separatist movement has ever offered the slightest notion of what separatism has to do with freedom.
Just conflates the two morally and practically disparate concepts of:
– “Freedom” of a Scottish state to act as a free agent on a diplomatic and military level. AKA sovereignty, which is not an axiomatic virtue in the same sense as the next “freedom”, namely:
– “Freedom” as in liberty, as in “statue of”, the rights of man, limited government, separation of powers and so forth.
Are there any independence-supporting Scots who don’t vote in WM elections as a matter of principle? A coordinated campaign to not vote in a WM election would be the quickest way to shake up the SNP WM gravy train. Once they are out of Westminster, vote them back in at Holyrood.
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