The fight about to come
Posted on
October 14, 2026 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The obvious question is “Why haven’t you made a bigger one in all that time?”
Did it not seem important until now? Was there nothing significant going on? Or were they just a little short of cash for some unknowable reason?
Still, Keith’s going to make a “launch” speech. He makes it every year.
It’ll be ace. Always goes down a storm with the faithful. Everyone claps and goes home to their constituencies to prepare for the second indyref. Just like they will next year, the year after that, and the year after that. For the fight that’s always about to come.
Nowadays, there’s more chance of me believing it if Gordon Brown said it.
Boots and stamping and faces come to mind…
Will the SNP be fundraising for an indyref fund,? Surely they will need funds for it. If not, what was the purpose of the previous indyref fundraising?
Voting for “independence” (which would lead to us being being ruled by the globalist EU and IMF, the way things seem to be progressing) would be rewarding the SNP for their corrupt and totalitarian management.
Shall we ‘save the date’?
It’s like the series Seven Up, with him getting older, greyer and fatter with each passing year.
Aye,right.
It will be a cold day in hell before I would vote yes a second time while these morons are in charge.
The government forgets the way to independence is to prove that they are capable of managing it.
When Salmond was leader it was believable and i voted yes, now, not so much.
If a referendum one comes up, and I am not convinced at the moment there is a genuine call for one, and things don’t change beforehand in Holyrood then I would simply vote no this time.
@ Rob, these morons will probably stay in charge until we leave the Union. They will have no hold on us afterwards.
Oh yeah if Scotland achieved independence at the helm they’d definitely all just resign en-mass wouldn’t they, rather than say awarding themselves huge salary increases related to governing an independent state.
The delusion and wishful thinking on display . .
Sarah,
That is defeatism.
It is perfectly simple to remove these “morons” at any election. Vote for another party.
Otherwise, it is the “morons” who will be negotiating the terms of the dissolution of the Union, and therefore our future.
Does anybody think that is a good idea?
Who is looking for perfection?
Just basic competence and the feeling that they represent the majority of the country instead of a few “special” groups.
And, even it it is just a good impression, look as if they are trying to do the right thing/s.
I can’t see the present lot ever doing this so don’t currently want a referendum and if one appeared would vote no.
Like, I suspect, many, many others.
Sarah is right again. Anyone who thinks that independence must wait for a perfect Scottish Government to be achieved does not believe in independence. Indeed it is logically impossible to deliver a perfect Government while possessing only imperfect powers. I admit logic and unionists bear almost no acquaintance at all. But anyone who thinks we should wait for Scotland to prove itself capable of independence should really take a look at the UK Government…
A very naive view. The career politician is an established industry across the West now and it won’t go away. The current crop of Scottish careerists will hang on to the publicly-funded teat regardless of whether the arse of power is sat on the Thames or at the foot of Arthur’s Seat. They won’t magically disappear if Scotland went alone.
I do agree however that we are fully capable of independence, sadly our career politicians aren’t, just as the ones within the M25 aren’t (and hence why they are gagging to rejoin the EU so they can stick their feet up and hand everything to overseas).
They have also built up an army of dependent voters who, as long as their benefits or public sector employment is maintained, will happily keep voting for Same Auld Shite, to the suffering of the rest of us who will have to put up with the increased taxes, worsened public services, ever more restrictive liberties and socially corrosive ideologies.
There has never been a perfect government, anywhere.
But it is reasonably to expect competence.
And it is essential to have displayed competence before being trusted with the future of Scotland in negotiating the terms of the separation from the rUK. Does anybody really think our present Scottish Government (just think of the individuals concerned…) capable of taking on the Whitehall mandarins?
Exactly – a “perfect” government is impossible because people will evaluate a government against different sets of values, interests and priorities. What is needed as a minimum is a government which is cohesive, well-led, and formed of people with the experience and capability required to undertake the very challenging task of forming a new state. That should be blindingly obvious to any reasonable person with even a cursory understanding of public administration.
The history of new states in the 20th century is unfortunately not a happy one. Look at the former Yugoslavia, former African and Asian colonies, many of whom entered desperate economic crises and civil wars from which they’ve never properly recovered. Even members of the former USSR endured terrible economic conditions on gaining their independence in the 1990’s.
Scotland isn’t going to enter a civil war, but there is a real risk to the stability of the Scottish Government, it’s ability to provide public services, the Scottish financial system, imports of vital goods etc. if independence is not delivered in a properly planned and structured way. Simply ignoring those issues and pretending that they’ll all suddenly disappear after a declaration is a sure way to precipitate a completely avoidable crisis. But as CC once said, if you’re a penniless fanatic like Geri or “James” I suppose it doesn’t matter because the state won’t let you starve in any event – but for the rest of us it matters a lot!
Really ?
what could possibly go wrong ?
Utterly frustrating and damning in equal measure. *sigh
Of course Indyref2 is looming or ahead according to Keith Brown & that’s where it will always remain “ahead” as we’ll never get to it if SNP have anything to do with it.Whilst they sit twiddling their thumbs & bowing & scraping to Westminster the governments of England is laughing all the way to the bank.Shysters the lot of them-english & Scots alike. How many times have we listened to Brown- every conference its the same old song – not a truthful word is said.
High time there was a clear out of of all the seat-warmers- Scotland can’t afford to have them doing Westminsters bidding- they certainly can’t be trusted to save Scotland;they like their salaries & pensions too much to jeopardise their seats on the Gravy train.
It’s so obvious, isn’t it? Why don’t the members all see it?
Perhaps they do but they see no alternative [well, there was Alba..] and are powerless under the party rules. Didn’t Swinney do well to change the numbers needed to stand against the party leader?
No excuse in my opinion. Voting SNP and expecting independence is like voting Tory and expecting conservatism/tax cuts/small state.
If the party rules don’t empower the members or the politicians are detached from the membership, then the members need to act on that accordingly and a) hoof out the idiots and b) change the rules.
Like all other parties, the SNP has been captured by careerists, charlatans and grifters who ended up in politics because they were too useless and incompetent for the Local Cooncil, the Military, the Civil Service or, worst of all, the legal profession.
Looks like the SNP have dug out the Independence Carrot from under all those Stonewall Gender Manuals.
Now they’re looking for a longer stick to dangle it from.
Oh look! Andy Burnham! Maybe he’ll waggle it about for them…
Or maybe it’s time for we carrot munching donkeys to take a leaf out of the Icelanders’ book, and take charge.
Looks like (yet another) recycle of made-up front-page “headlines” as seen on the montage to the right of this page from this laughable agitprop fanfic.
The SNP literally represent everything wrong with current Britishwide politics and represent the biggest single stumbling block to Scottish independence. Indy would not see the likes of Cosy Feet Pete et al disappear, rather they’d be the default politicians of the nascent independent Scottish nation, with the current other limited options of the likes of ACH, Q Mannyinavanny and whatever other misanthropic career politician failure hopeless cases that pepper McUniPartyRed and McUniPartyBlue these days.
Some interesting developments of late though; firstly, ArAndeh *colossally* screwed the pooch by blaming Ru**ia for the Brexit vote, making a *total* cunt of himself in front of the intelligence services (who quickly denied the PM’s bizarre and unhinged rant), the majority of the population and internationally, completely rendering any shred of credibility the puppet PM had. Secondly, a budget is round the corner, and it’s going to be a bad one… The IMF are already warning No.11 that cutting the extravagant spending is absolutely vital, yet the Commies in charge are full-throttle on Big Tax, Big State, Big Spending, Big Borrowing, Net Zero, Impoverishment Authoritarian Interventionism, meaning that a severe reality correction is about to occur. Thirdly, PooTin is flexing his muscles and stepping up hybrid ops across Europe, war looking increasingly likely. Coupled with the ongoing escapades in the sandpit and the resulting shocks on oil prices, things aren’t looking too rosy for Albion.
We may very well see the collapse of the UK state soon.
Just as a clarification, my comment about “laughable agitprop fanfic” refers to The National and not Stu’s excellent blog. Sorry if it was worded badly 🙂
The good news is the SNP has a £600000 referendum fighting fund put aside. I remember them asking for donations.
🙂 🙂
Aye. Right.
What is it with people constantly parroting this £600,000 shite?
It’s as if they never heard of bank accounts paying interest.
Maybe your typical SNP voter doesn’t have a bank account, never saves a penny, and so is quite unable to fathom the concept of compound interest.
Just left in a deposit account for 9 years, that money would have likely grown by another £200,000 by now. Actively and smartly invested, it would probably have doubled.
Walk on with hope in your heart and growth in your postcode.
Aldi 3 YO blended whisky on your breath.
Do you have growth in your postcode? See a Doctor.
‘Groundhog Day’ anyone?
“Our money’s all been spent
I don’t know if all that’s true
‘Cause you got me and butthead I got you”
(I Got You Babe)
The national will feed you any story that makes you buy the paper, so your being lied to and your paying for it.
I’m listening to what people are saying and trust me public opinion isn’t on the SNP side with regards to Independence and more and more people are starting to look at the SNP as not the party for Independence but acting to stop it.
I don’t need someone to write an article for me to form an opinion I can do that all by myself, hence I been critical of Sturgeon since 2014 and certainly from 2015 on wards just read my comments on here.
We all know the people scrounging from the Independence movement and it isn’t just the SNP politicians its also their Councillors and these so called soft Indy supporters who always tell us how we can’t become Independent but never tell us how we can.
If our so called Indy party’s the Greens and the SNP where so dedicated to achieving Independence the UK would be on the brink and Burnham would be sitting outside Bute house but he isn’t simply because he doesn’t need to worry about either of these two party’s.
My advice to Indy supporters if you want to be conned and lied to that’s your choice but don’t pay for it because your stupidity is causing trouble for the rest of us including Scotland.
Scotland hold all the power we just don’t have the right people to weld it.
ISP should field candidates in England just watch the MSM go into the panic if some one start the idea in England about leaving the UK.
Too right. I read they have to even import welders these days.
Sorted it for ye Rev
Aye, right…
SNP announce new manifesto pledge… “Free Beer Tomorrow”.
Fool me once, and all that.
Get a grip, Bob.
Free beer would break their own alcohol Minimum Unit Pricing law.
Ain’t never gonna happen.
I’m nae ower bothered about the beer because I have been abstinent for the past twenty years, but I’d be sorely tempted if they were to dole out free teabags or proper Irn Bru. I would undoubtedly come to my senses before I reached the polling station though, so it’s OK 🙂
If we’re using fighting metaphors then the real, most obvious and most urgent, fight facing independence-seeking Scots is the one to remove the SNP from power and confine its influence over them to a historical footnote.
Only then can the independence movement rebuild, reengage with Scotland’s people, and – at last – make real progress towards its objective.
Because under the misleading and incompetent thumb of the SNP the independence movement – and even the very idea that an independent Scotland can be internationally successful – isn’t just stagnating… it’s being led up a path to the ‘breakers yard’ to be dismantled.
“Better to admit your faults than dress them in borrowed competence.” — attributed to Bea Lurt.
Bea Lurt is often described as a medieval English thinker associated with early reflections on human behaviour and competence.
Some sources place her birth in Canterbury in 1367 and her death in 1425.
Little is said about her life beyond a small collection of remarks attributed to her, usually centred on honesty, humility, and the dangers of feigned adequacy.
Her most repeated idea is that pretending to be competent leads to deeper forms of incompetence, and that acknowledging one’s limitations is the first step toward genuine skill.
Bea Lurt isn’t medieval England’s Dunning-Kruger. But the pattern she represents does rhyme with a very old human phenomenon that predates Dunning-Kruger by centuries.
Dunning-Kruger (modern)
Bea Lurt (pre-modern cognition)
The Bea Lurt pattern appears in:
– medieval peasants
– early modern pamphleteers
– 19th-century rural communities
– modern conspiracy forums
– contemporary political tribalism
The Dunning-Kruger and Bea Lurt mechanisms differ:
Dunning-Kruger: metacognitive failure.
Bea Lurt: epistemic dependency + cultural certainty
Full disclosure
Bea Lurt’s name is almost certainly a modern pun (“Be Alert”), signalling her status as a fictional archetype rather than a historical figure.
Her biography is a classic example of internet pseudo-history forming around a satirical construct – something to look out for when traversing the web.
That doesn’t mean ‘she’ is wrong – fictional figures can still reveal real truths, and often do.
I wonder if the SNP’s leaders fall into the Dunning-Kruger camp or the Bea Lurt – perhaps they inhabit both. And perhaps they consider incompetence to be a virtue, who knows?.
The one camp they appear not to inhabit is that of reality.
I don’t disagree per se. However, there is a school of argument that suggests the SNP and their ilk do not have to be any good – they automatically get a thumping election result every time regardless, along crass tribal lines, year in and year out anyway.
As a consequence, there is precisely zero Darwinian/evolutionary imperative to “force” anything different, along even remotely existential lines, so why would they? This lame status quo has been the case for so long and consequently the atrophy has become so deeply entrenched, in terms of ability, personnel and mindset, they wouldn’t even know how to do so even if the urgent need did eventually arise.
It was the same for generations prior for Labour in Scotland: the standing joke was that a corpse with a red rosette would get elected by default. The SNP has been riven with the worst scandals imaginable, has objectively performed woefully on whichever metric you care to use, but did anything really change much last election? Did it fuck.
To be fair, this isn’t just a Scottish issue – it’s fair to say the problem is arguably even more entrenched in Wales (perpetual Labour for multi-generations) and Northern Ireland too. Tribal politics whereby style is of vast higher import than substance. Ironically it seems it is only the English who seem prepared to roll the dice a little more often, though even this is very limited.
Given this depressing scenario, can we really be surprised that our Political Class is so talentless, vapid, self-servingly venal and above all, unfit for purpose? That external Darwinian pressure – a fire at people’s feet – is the thing that puts the fear of God into them and motivates them to perform, to be better, to not be the one for the chop. And it is conspicuous by its absence.
Well said CC.
Good post, CC.
Tribalism is a far more plausible explanation for Scotland’s current woes than colonialism will ever be.
But I won’t tell Professor Baird if you don’t.
My own view is that tribalism will eventually rip England apart. Scotland too, although at least up here we won’t have to import new tribes to make that happen. The ones we’ve had for hundreds of years will suffice for that.
There never was anything but force joining the disparate peoples of The Lowlands, The Highlands and the Northern and Western Isles together. Unless force is used in future, these tribes will wish to go their separate ways, given their differing political, religious and economic outlooks.
“…there is a school of argument that suggests the SNP and their ilk do not have to be any good…”
That’s a valid point.
The truth is that devolved government doesn’t have to be ‘good’ at anything beyond implementing the instructions handed down by the controlling state.
The intellectual entry bar, therefore, is very low in such devolved administrations as we can plainly see in the words and actions of the SNP leadership and wider Scottish ‘Parliament’.
The likes of Salmond are exceptions. Salmond, to his credit, did achieve many good things with the limited powers at his disposal. But he was an anomaly that was rectified when Sturgeon replaced him.
As Enoch Powell said “Power devolved is power retained,” and one of the ways for the controlling state to retain power is to limit the reach of their devolved administrations to tinkering with local rules and regulations that have little impact on the levers of real power held tight in the grip of the state.
But when such devolved tinkering threatens the state you can be sure it will swiftly intervene to ‘correct’ the devolved administration’s overreach.
You also make a valid point about the English, but then they are confronting the state directly and not through a proxy administration – the state cannot palm blame off to the Scottish, Welsh, and NI administrations when it, too, exposes its intellectual limitations and incompetence – incompetence that potentially has much more dire consequences for all the peoples of the United Kingdom than failed bottle-return schemes or higher alcohol prices.
We devolved Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish are therefore dependent on you English to put the UK state back in its box – so get to it, Captain, sort that UK government out for us.
This is true, but where are you placing NE Scotland and Buchan? You cannae be lumping us in with the Highlands, surely?
@Northcode
When you have an electorate containing a majority that can’t or won’t stand for being told truths, the professional politicos have but 2 choices.
Lie to gain power knowingly. They often fail because voters detect their mendacity.
Lie to gain power unknowingly, I.e. actually believe their own lies.
The latter works best, but you have to be effectively thick to believe your own lies, e.g. that men are women, or that you can grow benefits indefinitely without having to grow anything else.
“Thus, we see that an electorate unacquainted with truth votes for ineffectual, lying politicians, and so Scotland does indeed get the government it deserves” (Hatey)
I can see where you’re coming from in a lot of what you say there, Northy, but surely you’d agree the Scots electorate cannot simply throw its collective hands up in the air and take no responsibility at all for the utter drongos it continues to heavily endorse and vote for.
You said it yourself: Salmond broke the impasse and was a genuinely talented, canny politician whom even Yoons like me could admire, most especially in his abilities to work with others pragmatically to get the job done (e.g. the Tories). So even with the constraints you mention (albeit we differ on the severity of said constraints), it is possible to have effective politics and politicians within Scotland’s current devolved framework. Their current and longstanding absence thereof cannot be exclusively laid at the door of the English, that’s just too easy (and wrong).
“so get to it, Captain, sort that UK government out for us.”
Man alive, I so wish I could.
@Hatey
Yes indeed, I’ll take Joseph de Maistre over our oft-mentioned friends Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire any day of the bloody week. 🙂
Also I’d suggest at least with the status quo there’s enough reasonable competent people in various places in the system who have a lot of experience doing what they are doing, and have an institutional infrastructure around them, which in turn protects against an immediate, severe crises from breaking out (at least not to frequently).
An independent Scotland would also establish that in time, but in the transition if the leaders at the helm are incompetent, malevolent and completely captured by irrelevant fringe issues, there aren’t those same guardrails. If politicians don’t actively make very good, informed decisions then very significant negative consequences can appear very quickly. E.g. pharmaceutical companies will not supply products in Scotland unless they are confident its legal to do so, airlines won’t land planes in Scotland unless they know they’re ensure, lenders and investors will be extremely cautious about making investments unless they know which currency that investment will be denominated in, businesses may withhold tax until they are clear who the lawful tax authority is etc. so the need for highly competent and effective politicians is much more pronounced compared to maintaining the status quo.
I completely agree with you Aidan. Let no one kid themselves that in the event of an independent Scotland tomorrow, it wouldn’t be anyone else but the utterly moribund, useless, venal present day political class in the driving seat – with all the abject horrors this would undoubtedly entail.
Somehow, Scotland needs to find a way of utterly displacing and binning off these grifters and replacing them all – en masse – with competent, practical, honest and effective leaders/teams. Not easy, but not impossible. But how? That’s surely the question.
Dinna fash, MH, I’m in no position to draw my lines on the map and then enforce my partition edicts.
If you Buchan Boys want to go your own way too, I’m sure you could make a success of it.
The fallacy where a future is anticipated on the assumption that present circumstances will remain unchanged — even when change is likely, as it would be with Scottish independence — is the Fallacy of Extrapolation.
It’s the formal error of projecting the present into the future without accounting for structural shifts, feedback loops, or evolving conditions.
And so it’s unlikely that the current leadership of the SNP – or even the SNP as a political organisation – will play any part in Scotland’s independent future. Nor will any English political party currently fielding candidates in Scotland.
New faces and new political organisations will inevitably come into play.
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said:
The future is not the present extended – it’s the present mutated. And I don’t believe there’s a place for the SNP in Scotland’s forthcoming transformation.
I don’t think that Mr Salmond was an anomaly, Northcode. He was exceptional, that is what he was. He was the man of the hour and he would have been the man of the hour again had he not been kept out of politics and his advice despised. He was not perfect, nobody is, but he understood what he was up against and what required to be done about it.
Extreme circumstances will always throw up the person best suited to deal with them, whether that is ‘good’ circumstances or ‘bad’. Almost always, even when these people succeed and bring about the change necessary, they will be undermined by the less talented, the deceivers and the jealous.Even the hugely talented and intelligent Nelson Mandela failed ultimately when the ANC became the corrupt mess it continues to be today and he could do nothing to stop the rot – because those who cause the rot are always willing to do what it takes to start and continue the rot, as we have seen at first hand in Scotland.
We never seem to understand that there exist people who will put themselves before anyone and anything else, people who actually get a kick out of destroying what is good and decent and people whose resentment is out of control. Unfortunately, they are far more numerous than those who appear to arrive just when we need them. They clothe everything they do in the robes of sainthood and people fall for it.
Scotland, even if it were independent tomorrow, has far too many of the former in the ranks of its government and institutions and they would destroy everything that is good and decent about Scotland. All of our cultural institutions are occupied by these people and their malign influence is utterly corrupting. I would be very afraid of independence unless these malign parasites are ousted first. They would, and will, given the chance, utterly ruin an independent Scotland – and not just through incompetence and sheer lack of ability, but very much through self-interest and malignancy posing and disguised as, a desire to change the country for “the better”.
“…surely you’d agree the Scots electorate cannot simply throw its collective hands up in the air and take no responsibility…”
Of course I agree. But in their defence indigenous Scots seeking independence now have little in the way of political choice.
That’s probably why almost half of the voting population of Scotland didn’t bother to turnout for the last Scottish parliamentary election – they didn’t think that there was any point.
However, it’s safe to say that the majority of Scots who did vote in the election – the ones who don’t yet realise they’re being lied to – voted for the SNP. Next time they might just stay in bed like those of us who couldn’t be bothered voting last time.
Also, I should make it clear that I have nothing against the English – the UK structural, constitutional, and parliamentary arrangements are the issue, not the English as a people. I even like one or two of them.
You can stand down, Captain. It was in jest that I tasked you with ‘sorting out’ the UK Government. You are relieved of that onerous duty and are free to live out your likely well-earned retirement in peace and with my good wishes.
anomaly (noun)
I’d say the intelligent, well-read, erudite, honest and honourable Alex Salmond was an anomaly in a system designed to promote mediocrity – exceptional, in other words.
Which is the sentiment I thought I’d implied in my earlier comment.
Aye, I think that we’d manage nae bad up here if we twinned up with Aberdeenshire. What with the way things are heading, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the map of this island looks rather different come 2100…
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the map of this island looks rather different come 2100”
There’s defo gonna be a lot of Arabic place names.
The trick for Indy is to make damn sure they’re all on the “right” side of the border.
But as the Indy group currently in charge are far more interested in progressively virtue signalling how much further “ahead” we are than England, ah hae ma verra conseederable doots they’re up to the job.
Indeed, Northcode, I agree with you on your use of anomaly as it applied to Mr Salmond, the person, not as it applied to Mr Salmond as a participant in politics. My point was that people of the calibre of Mr Salmond do appear when things become possible or impossible – i.e. good or bad.
Mr Salmond appeared when things were starting to come good for Scottish politics, in general, and independence/devolution, in particular. He was age right person at the right time to advance independence precisely because he had the qualities of a first-rate leader, and I believe personally that he would still have been a good leader even if things were bad.
What I meant was that, even as such leaders arise, there are those who skirt on their coat-tails who actually lack the fundamental requirements to be ‘good’ leaders. They lack confidence or they lack genuine ability or they lack nous. They can also be vicious and malign, completely out for themselves at any cost to those around them and to the populace in general. These people can bring a country to its knees or wear away its sense of itself.
I think that when you look at what happened to Mr Salmond and who came after him up to today, it is not difficult to understand why pygmies always tear down that which reflects their lack of stature in the political sphere. He was the man of the moment and could not be allowed to succeed. However, someone else is out there and he or she will come along and advance the cause – only to be torn down by the pygmies.
In Ireland, Michael Collins died because he, too, would have proved to be more than able to stand up for Ireland. He wasn’t perfect either, but Ireland would have had a different post independence history had he lived and had he led his country. Of course, some will disagree with what I’ve said, but, hey ho, that’s life.
Interesting that the SNP conference in Aberdeen is the same weekend as the SSRG conference in Dunfermline, discussing ideas for an independent Scotland and the UN route there. I believe that some disillusioned SNP supporters will go to the SSRG though.
Was this clash engineered by the SNP?
Every year, and every time they trot out the same old shite and expect the proletariat to lap it up it reminds me of Zeno’s Paradox: the swift runner Achilles can never overtake a slow tortoise given a head start, because every time Achilles reaches the spot the tortoise just left, the tortoise has moved another infinitesimal distance ahead. And so on and so forth unto infinity itself.
For the hare read the SNP and for the tortoise read independence. ‘That’s how it goes, and everybody knows…’ By all means please wake me up whenever this is mooted again, i’ll make the exact same post.
The SNP circus and its exclusive troop of flying pigs.
Scotland on front line of «war economy», oh look everybody, here come the drones.
@Captain Caveman
Joseph de Maistre, a rather recondite reference.
Make your choice, on the left the gallows, on the right the the cross.
Oh joy!
I wonder if any below the line have actually heard of him.
Protofascist, arch conservative, ultramontane Catholic apologist etc and inspiration of décadentisme & a free mason (Scottish rite)……
They do not make that type any more.
Well, you evidently don’t like him, TURABDIN, so I’d say he’s off to a flying start on a proforma basis at least. I’m liking the cut of his jib already. 🙂
@Captain Caveman
«Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d’abord par de grands coupables, et dépensée ensuite par d’honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu’ils font»
actually, quite the opposite, even Isaiah Berlin, who proposed the protofascist notion, was an admirer of his native sagesse.
Pfft. These bloody kids today 😀
We were a bunch of penniless, roughneck council estate kids in Essex back in the 80s, not two coins to rub together between us, on our shitty little motorbikes. But we knew we wanted to be better, we knew we were going to work for it, go for it, fair means or foul. We never considered ourselves [pseudo] intellectuals (hah!) because we were most assuredly not. Most of us did get better. A LOT better.
I look at you and your ilk and despair, truly. What, you guys are taking the baton? Paying others’ pensions? Holding your own? You spend your days (and nights) blaming others for all your ills. People who, through accident of birth, fall foul of whatever arbitrary bullshit criterion you care to utilise in supposed justification for your own shortcomings and lack of results.
Gah. It’s all so depressing. I preferred teenagers when they thought they could defeat the world, as opposed to being too timid to leave their bedrooms and blame others for it.
I’m with the Captain on this one – Turabdin’s (I don’t do all-caps words or names unless I’m shouting at folk) French accent is terrible. It’s like listening to a scene from ‘Allo ‘Allo!
“protofascist”
I believe that to be a new word on Wings BTL.
I’m certain it’s just another of those words that means no more than “adjective describing an idea or opinion I disagree with”.
But intended to grant to its user a pseudo-intellectual gloss, to fastidiously distance him or herself from the knuckle dragging Neanderthals who scream “Fascist” through the mists of their flying spittle.
I had come across a phrase that is used by Hatey’s Middle East friends which is Freier and is a sort of national characteristic of that country to be not like that. It means a sucker, patsy or someone naive.
link to web.archive.org
It certainly sums up how we’ve been taken by the SNP and how some still are.
Aww, “Hatey’s Middle East friends”. I wonder who they might be.
Surely not the people who have done more for humanity than most of the rest put together. The people whose contributions to science, medicine, literature and the arts are unmatched.
The people who can make a desert bloom while others in similarly benighted circumstances are digging holes and looking around for a donkey to abuse. To pass the time until they can seize a teenage lassie.
It came as a surprise to me, Bilbo, that to be a true Indy supporter you also have to be an antisemitic cant. Still, I know now. I wonder how the 2014 Referendum would have gone if that had all been made a lot clearer at the time.
At least, if there is a second Indy Referendum, it will all be crystal clear next time around. Mind and ensure you have at least two tea towels – one to wear at all times and one in the wash.
We don’t want you cants marching up and down, waving your banners, under false pretenses.
Excellent piece on Alex Salmond’s contribution to Scottish political life. A perception of competent government from 2007 allowed him to defeat the purpose of the D’Hondt electoral system and form a majority government in 2011.
The writer is James Mitchell, Prof of Edinburgh Uni.
link to holyrood.com
One good reason why England will want to bind Scotland fast is this.
link to navylookout.com
If or when Scotland decides it really wants to be independent i doubt if the population will want or afford these bases.
Allowing rUK a reasonable time to relocate them might bring some rent to offset debt.
“Allowing rUK a reasonable time to relocate them might bring some rent to offset debt”
Of course it will, sam.
That’s exactly the sort of joined up, grown up thinking that’s needed to discuss and settle in a hard nosed fashion a quasi-amicable “divorce” settlement when the UK breaks up.
Which is why it’s so unlikely to happen, when the “cream” of Indy supporters much prefer to march about virtue signalling with their “Bairns Not Bombs” banners.
SALVO digital newsletter: ‘Territorial Alienation’
link to indd.adobe.com
Sigh. Do these so-called independence “leaders” not realise that their promises, their BS, their lack of action, lack of ambition, are set in stone, on record forever? Their names will end up in the trash can of history for what they did and what they didn’t do for the Scottish people.
I understand that power and the trappings of power corrupt, particularly with careerists who have done nothing else, but I naively thought that politicians were at least interested in creating a personal and collective legacy – something for their grandchildren and future generations to be proud of. Something that made a difference. Apparently not. Those WM and Holyrood seats are just too comfortable.
Wake up SNP, before it’s too late. Nature abhors a vacuum and you are creating an almighty one. It will end in tears – sooner than you think.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. The continued shambles that is the UK today could build support for Indy.
It scares me that this set of self regarding grifters could be the only people with half an idea. We’ll end up permanently served by this spawn of Nicola.
An interesting article about the crisis tearing the English Greens apart:
link to unherd.com
The author essentially claims that it’s the Corbynist nutters who were flushed from Labour by Starmer to make it electable who have now infested the Greens instead and are now turning them unelectable.
Here’s a great quote:
“So what should the heritage [original] Greens do now? The answer is simple: leave and found a new party truer to the original cause. In France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the main Green party and main party of the hard-Left are separate entities. It would, of course, be galling to leave behind an institution that one has nurtured over decades to a bunch of usurpers. But, then again, that is the cost of open borders”
As with political parties, so with countries too. Except that the original citizens have little choice but to stay in the country where they, and their ancestors, were born.
The country they nurtured down the generations.
describing zionism as “racism” is pretty mild – I mean if you “really want to go there”
tribalists, being tribal, and tedious – question and answer session
link to x.com
– it just goes on, just as well they own/control the media, coz then everyone would hate them … albanians too?
link to x.com
false flags are when you attack someone and pretend it was someone else, even up to hitting your own people, or allies – by deception thou shalt do war – the tribe like to dress up as arabs and blow shit up – king david hotel, lavon affair, uss liberty, many acts of terrorism
this “noticing” becomes addictive
zionism = jewish nationalism
bolshevism = jewish internationalism
capitalism aka state sponsored usury = jewish finance
are we seeing patterns here – now add pornography, abortion, trannyism, feminism, fractional reserve banking, multiculturalism, mass immigration, black rights (run by jewish lawyers), bad art, rotten culture (hollywood), and even shit like “rap music”; plus they helped to start the empire, financing cromwell, then coming over with the dutch invasion leading to “glorious revolution” (then they intermarried with the aristocracy, ran the slave trade, opium trade, in it and up to all kinds)
– could be it be everything shit on this world had one of them at the bottom of it and because of their maniacal desire to destroy christendom, the entire western civilisation, all because they missed the boat 2000 years ago and have too much pride to get back in?
Mind “sons of satan” (Jesus) and “enemies of all mankind” (St Paul) – can’t say fairer than that.
I bet you’ve suspected for years that yer Dad’s nae yer real Dad.
False flags, eh?
Indeed you are quite confused, confused.
Jesus was a Jew, orthodox by today’s standards.
Perhaps you are a Marcionist and deny his Hebrew ethnicity?
Take the Jew out of Jesus and Christianity deflates with a rather rude noise.
I surmise that The Protocols are your favoured bedside readinh, though i gtrust i am wrong.
Jesus spoke a dialect of my own people’s language, so i may be biased.
Shlama nevertheless.
« The Nazis were only too anxious to secure the lustre of Thomas Mann’s presence and the prestige that mere presence would have given to the cultural life of the Reich. But Mann would not stay. And the reason was that he knew exactly what was being done to the German language and that he felt that only in exile might that language be kept from final ruin.
« […] In his famous open letter to the dean, Mann explained how a man using German to communicate truth or humane values could not remain in Hitler’s Reich: “The mystery of language is a great one; the responsibility for a language and for its purity is of a symbolic and spiritual kind; this responsibility does not have merely an aesthetic sense. The responsibility for language is, in essence, human responsibility. Should a German writer, made responsible through his habitual use of language, remain silent, quite silent, in the face of all the irreparable evil which has been committed daily, and is being committed in my country, against body, soul and spirit, against justice and truth, against men and man?” Mann was right, of course.
« […] Stefan Zweig, safely arrived in Latin America, tried to resume his craft. But despair overcame him. He was convinced that the Nazis would turn German into inhuman gibberish. He saw no future for a man dedicated to the integrity of German letters and killed himself. »
(George Steiner, ‘LANGUAGE AND SILENCE: Essays 1958–1966’)
——-
Related:
‘TRÍ SCÉAL’ le Stefan Zweig
(Leaganacha Gaeilge le Risteárd Mac Annraoi 2017)
link to litriocht.com
Review:
“Measaim gur éirigh thar barr le Risteárd Mac Annraoi an cinéal atmaisféar atá le sonrú ar Ghearmáinis Zweig a thabhairt slán ina aistriúchán Gaeilge; agus bhain mé sult as an trí scéal beag beann ar iad a bheith léite agam cheana nó gan a bheith. Tabharfaidh an saothar seo blaiseadh de shaothar Zweig do léitheoirí, agus blaiseadh de shaol atá imithe ar fad.” (Le Aonghus Ó hAlmhain)
link to aonghus.blogspot.com
——
“turn German into inhuman gibberish”
In our own time, we see the same (quite successful) attempts to turn English into inhuman gibberish by the fantasists and nihilists seeking to burn everything to the ground.
Among many others, such relatively simple words such as “colony”, “nazi”, “racist”, “fascist”, “man”, “woman”, “rape”, “violence”, “crime”, “justice” and “oppression” have been twisted out of shape and devalued away to nothing through inappropriate use by society’s hysterics.
Not forgetting the favourite deployed every time the virtue signalers crowd together on a pimple of moral high ground:
“Genocide”.
“Prick”?
@James says: 17 October, 2026 at 10:21 am
“Prick”?
Naw, James, that ane hasnae been devalued. Its meaning remains clear, as in a juvenile insult used by those of stunted intellectual development, hurled at those whose ability to construct a coherent, cogent, written statement engenders only an overwhelming sense of pathetic, impotent inadequacy in the user.
Ask yer maw when she comes hame.
“….hurled at those whose ability to construct a coherent, cogent, written statement…”
Site Prick.
When’s that happening then, wee man?
Dolt.
Crivens, James.
Is it usual for yer maw tae stay oot sae long? Hope she’s nae been lifted!
Wha’s pitting oot yer denner?
I see stinking fat shit is back posting again.
@Capt Caveman, Hatey, Northcode,
On the basis of observation you do seem a cohort of embittered personages eyes reddened by a surfeit of prejudice.
No wonder the world is in such a mess.
Enjoy cultivating your gardens, one day you may see that they contain nothing but choking weeds.
The quote by the way is from De Maistre’s «Les Soirées de Saint Petersbourg», which Capt C will of course be acquainted with ?
Anyway Good Weekend to all.
Meh.
Well, your garden’s looking a tad shite from where I’m standing TURABDIN. Glass houses and all that. 😀
“you do seem a cohort of embittered personages eyes reddened by a surfeit of prejudice”
Seriously?
Yet you have nothing to say in response to Confused at 1:14 pm.
Ah! But of course, wilfully blind, crass hypocrisy comes as standard with these permanently affronted “types”. Expecting moral consistency is akin to expecting a coherent argument.
Bless ‘em.
What glass house pray am i supposed to inhabit? A purely rhetorical matter forsooth.
& All depends on the provenance of the merde, monsieur.
Ciao.
” What glass house pray am i supposed to inhabit”
Well, son, “if you have to ask” and all of that. Doubtless you are blissfully unaware, as painfully obvious as it may well be to the casual, disinterested external observer. Two a’penny, just one more of your endlessly pissed off and embittered generation.
Mind, your “glass house” has that many holes in it already from countless thrown stones, perhaps it truly is quite difficult to know from your warped perspective and understanding where you’re standing. Maybe some fresh air and a brisk walk away from your keyboard would do you some good.
Happily the SSRG Conference is on youtube so we can listen to some very sensible, intelligent, informed people speaking.
The SSRG conference began today with Richard Murphy describing his experience of trying to get the answer to the currency question through the heads of the SNP leadership. So far, after several years, his efforts are fruitless. One has to ask why the SNP are dead against accepting advice from people who are qualified to give it.
On Sunday the Rev will be on the panel. That will be worth listening to.
A good question, Sarah.
Possibly one factor is because John Swinney remembers this Holyrood committee meeting where he was sitting beside Richard Murphy who was repeatedly unable to answer questions he was asked. Just watch the (understandable, I think) embarrassment on John Swinney’s face.
Youtube: Prof Richard Murphy flounders in front of a Holyrood Committee
Wasn’t he that bloke who was considerably to the left of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell?
Who knows Mr Swinney’s feelings?
Margaret Cuthbert was on the panel responding to that Committee inquiry into GERS. Here is part of what she and her husband wrote about the inadequacies of GERS. It is one of several criticisms that the Cuthberts wrote in their Critique of GERS.
“1 The results are inherently inaccurate and subject to potential bias. This arises because, in many cases, the required data is not available to enable apportionment of revenue terms to Scotland to be carried out with reasonable accuracy. The type of uncertainty which results is different from that which can be quantified in statistical confidence limits. This is particularly the case for income tax, VAT and corporation tax, among the major revenue items.The GERS report indeed notes in its Executive Summary that the “calculations required to derive a GGBR for Scotland are subject to imprecision due to the need to estimate a number of elements of both expenditure and revenue”. On the basis of the above analysis, the extent of the imprecision is considerable.
2. While the detail published in the GERS is reasonably full, the same cannot be said for some of the key input figures, in particular those taken from the Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis. It is unsatisfactory not to know in more detail what is included in some of the key PESA figures, why the figures change from year to year, and what estimation techniques have been used.
3. In some key areas, (e.g., the handling of North Sea Oil, European receipts, defence expenditure, and central government debt interest), the choice of different assumptions would materially affect the outcome: the focus of debate about what the most appropriate assumptions should be is not primarily statistical but inherently involves value judgements. For example: how should the “who benefits” principle apply to items such as non-identifiable expenditure, where there is more than one type of benefit? What is a fair apportionment to Scotland of central government debt interest, etc.? These areas need to be exposed in the analysis, so that they can be the focus of meaningful debate.
4. Given the above identified data deficiencies, there is a need for considerably improved data collection, if this kind of exercise is to be repeated….”
Since it is the Scottish government that publishes GERS perhaps Swinney is embarrassed by his government’s inadequacies not by Richard Murphy.
I should have added that GERS is produced independently of Scottish ministers.
Small diversion on a Saturday evening.
Now we know budgets are tight and we know that transport for some children can be needed and that no one should be denied but this article in the Herald gives insight into where council money goes
Who would have thought that Glasgow City Council would have spent over £42 million on taxis over the past five years.
And without doubt it would not be unreasonable to suspect there will be other big burners like this. But yes, folks dont I think realise the amount of public costs.
link to archive.ph
Many Scots who are related to the descendants of the thieving, genociding Scottish colonisers of the Canadian province of Alberta will be following Monday’s events with interest.
On Monday the Albertans are holding a referendum on Independence from Canada.
The Yes side have done some sums divvying up the wealth from the world’s fourth largest proven oil reserves and calculated that if kept just to Alberta, they’re all gonna be filthy rich.
It all sounds so very familiar!
I guess, taken to its logical conclusion, far away in Siberian Orcland, there must be some reindeer herders musing that the vast gas reserves beneath their feet and hooves rightly belongs to them.
I guess they’ll be sufficiently keen on keeping body and soul together to avoid ever saying that out loud.
Your perseverance with the moribund SNP is praiseworthy, but I’m sure we are all way past the point where we should respect the corpse and the pallbearers.
If the SNP continues to fool the voters (and I think that day is fading fast) then replacing it with an Alba-type party is going to take too long unless the media suddenly becomes honest and objective.
I suspect those who want independence will have to take over local SNP constituency committees in the first place. It shouldn’t be difficult to mobilise local Scots to re-join the SNP and work from within. Deselect the layabouts and get some talent and real-life experience in as candidates.
Honest John wouldn’t know what to do to resist, and Nicola is gone (she better be gone).
The second last thing we need in Scotland at the moment is a victory in Referendum II to hand the nation to the current SNP Executive.
The very last thing we need in Scotland is an attempt to join the EU and lose all power granted by independence. Scotland should join the world, not the politburo of Brussels as it collapses. I didn’t vote for Ursula von der Leyen or Christine Lagarde, did you? Can your MEP write any EU laws? Nope.
Can we just get rid of the morons in government, in parliament, in the civil service, in local government, in education, in the banking sector, in the NHS, in the judiciary and we might finally lose the shackles and spot our national potential.
The talent is there, these clowns have tried to crush it.
“The talent is there”
Where?
Serious question. Where are they hiding?
Help me out here. Name 20 talented Scots capable of forming a competent government cabinet (and willing to serve in one).
20 names, each name with an associated area of expertise achieved during years or decades of competent, successful management in complex, important, high-profile endeavours.
And yes, I will allow one (but no more than one) top flight football manager. For the Minister of Sport portfolio, natch.
SSRG 2026 Saturday 17th October on youtube is working well today. Please watch. Sensible, principled people talking constructively.
They are interesting as well!
My word, some horrendous imagery coming out of France right now, the place seems to be on fire.
Tsk, all those naughty “school children”, huh. Got to be in line for a Conduct Point or two.