The Great British Success Story
Posted on
August 12, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This isn’t a spoof. We checked.
It was posted on the “Better Together Aberdeenshire” Facebook page by Scottish Conservative activist Stewart Whyte, who teaches history at Aboyne Academy.
It’s an instructive insight into the No campaign’s mindset. Foodbanks aren’t a problem to be solved, a shameful blight on a rich society, but an acceptable, “enriching” norm to be pleased about. We don’t think any more needs to be said.
Madness.
Utterly despicable.Damn these bastards to hell.
It’s back to Victorian values! Lady Bountiful, noblesse oblige. Cold as charity.
I want to pay taxes so that people who need help can be given help in a digified manner. I don’t want to go to church on Sunday clutching a bag of UHT milk and breakfast cereal. (That’s this month’s requests.)
But Scotland isn’t a ‘normal’ European country. It’s ruled by another state…
School leaving age reduced to 13, and child labour derogations introduce.
Rejoice, it is God’s will and to be the norm for the Untermensch.
My worry for the Aboyne kids being taught by a History teacher with this attitude. Trying hard not to swear here.
You know, it’s true that you can’t type the name of Kellogs most popular brand of breakfast cereal into the comments on Wings. I had to take that out of the above post before I could get it to come up.
Baffled as to why.
Staggered to read that. That is not the kind of country i want to live in.
Vote Yes
Christ I went to Aboyne for a couple of years…both the History teachers were excellent.
This clown is nothing compared to Mr Rae and Mr Innes.
In fact, I recall doing the 1930’s with Mr Innes and he asked the class to imagine living in a country where concentration camps were considered normal.
Quarter of a century later, one of his successors believes food banks are a positive sign of a countries development…
At times you just despair you really do..
But, but I thought that being British meant we were better than all these foreigners?
Gobsmacked, jaw droppingly gobsmacked.
This man is teaching children history? What else might he be telling children is “good” by his warped standards?
This is what Better Together means, a return to Dickensian morals, the good old days where the poor went cap in hand to their betters.
Is poverty and food banks what Better Together class as normal ?. That says all we need to know.
I do a lot of family history and was saddened to discover my Granny was born in a poorhouse in Aberdeen, 100 years ago.
Turns out now it was a sign of how enlightened the times were!
If this man is teaching children I suspect his background and values require further scrutiny.
What is it about teachers? First Lamont and now this clown trumps her. I despair.
Food banks ARE a sign of FAILURE, failure of government in the way it treats it’s people. Not a sign of a successful, integrated society; but a broken one. It is good people are helping others, not so good that they have to.
Here’s a better idea….lets all vote Yes and actually become ” a normal European country”.
OK
“Scotland are”
Same class as Johanne?
What is it with the N E?
Great bloggers on here but an undercurrent of batshit crazy seems to abound. Maybe it is money going round? The act and feel like masters of the Universe whereas they just varnished turds bubbling up from the bottom of life’s cesspit.
I expect Stewart Whyte must think Nuclear War would be a great thing since it would give compassionate people a chance to look after the dying and the dead!!
Honestly the sooner we can rid ourselves of the ideals of these arrogant, pompous, selfish individuals and build a prosperous, fair and equal society the better!
Here’s to a Yes vote on the 18th of next month 🙂
This is outrageous. Just when you think Better Together reach rock bottom, the plummet to new depths. It is clearly official policy as Jackie Baillie was using the same language last night on Scotland Tonight. As usual John Mackay did not really challenge her.
O/T The Holyrood Welfare Committee is on BBC Parliament live at the moment. Coincidentally Baillie is on now, asking Nicola questions.
Good grief. What a despicable attitude and he’s a ‘teacher’
Good stats here….
https://twitter.com/KevinJPringle/status/499119014078316544/photo/1
It seems that Scotland has its own version of the problem of Islamic militants and academies
I’d be extremely worried if my child was being taught history by this cretin.
If this is “normal” I hate to think what his definition of economic failure is.
These people are simply unable to think long term. In terms of “social cohesion” it is simply unsustainable (it is already unacceptable) for more and more people to be disadvantaged and reliant on foodbanks.
I also struggle to understand why Scottish Labour seem to buy into all this.
History at Aboyne used to be superb. I learned there under Mr “Red Kev” Cooney, now sadly passed away. It’s awful to see a history teacher at Aboyne spouting this nonsense. Maybe his speciality is the Victorian era and he yearns to see the empire restored, complete with urchins doffing their caps as he throws them a bread crust.
Who wrote this rubbish? Name and shame, name and shame!
One of the most disgraceful pieces of moral relativism being used for political ends. Quite disgusted by this.
Some of the well-off do actually believe Food Banks are a good thing, because it gives them a chance to show how charitable they are.
It shows detachment and inability to see things from anyone else’s perspective.
Which, I suppose, is the main qualification for voting Tory these days.
Was the original author Scottish Conservative activist Stewart Whyte?
If foodbanks are such a fantastic thing, demonstrating how well society is working, why has Cameron’s government stopped collecting formal statistics on their existence and expansion?
Scotland, as usual, lags behind other more developed countries – it must be confessed that the introduction of foodbanks has not been quick enough, giving ammunition to those who contend we are too wee, too poor and too stupid.
Let’s hope the speed of foodbank introduction picks up pace. While we’re at it, let’s ensure that we can become more normal by introducing ebola and beri-beri to Scotland.
It all seems to point to a desperation to maintain the ‘differential’ between Haves and Have Nots.
As the former grow in expectation and in number, the latter must inevitably accept lower living standards across the board.
This is all our tomorrows if we do not vote YES.
This is the life that was forced onto the French prior to 1789, the ‘better classes’ expected, as their right, that they must get what they considered their due, quite regardless of the basic need of the ordinary peasant.
Seems to be heading that way here too.
YES is our only legal hope.
Hi I have a German friend who says that German foodbanks do exist. But the welfare system is completely different for example if you are unemployed you get 68% of your salary for 1 year to help you maintain living standards till you get another job. However our goal should be no to foodbanks and YES to independence.
I watched Tommy Sheridan at the Beldrum festival on you tube. Absolute passion about Scotland and social justice. We needed him against Darling he would have destroyed him.
@BtP
What is it with the N E?
Great bloggers on here but an undercurrent of batshit crazy seems to abound. Maybe it is money going round?
Pretty much sums it up I would say. This place is a bubble where there is plenty of employment and loads of money going around so clearly the UK is very OK. Except for the really poor people who can’t afford ‘oil capital’ prices and need food banks. But we can drive right past them without really noticing, so we don’t.
I recently completed an 1100 mile road trip around the Highlands and the NE is the ONLY place I have seen large numbers of No Thanks banners.
p.s. Thanks for the unintended compliment about my blogging 😉
Morag
You put it perfectly. It is ourageous that in this day and age, people are dependent FOR THEIR SURVIVAL on charity. If we are going to be a civilised country, we need to identify a minimum acceptable standard and then ensure that everyone achieves that. We should cover the cost of doing so out of our taxes.
Charity can be whimsical in nature – will I throw a pound in the collection tin or not? Compassionate people give more and selfish people do not give anything. Taxation on the other hand is enforced, it is fair and everyone has to pay their share – generous or not.
There is a place for charity when it comes to overseas aid. We cannot control what happens in other countries and we need to do what we can to help. But within our own borders, dependance on charity to keep people alive is just not acceptable. The fact that Better Together are trying to “normalise” foodbanks and to make us more accepting of them is disgusting.
Stay outraged. Vote Yes.
In Chatel Censoir on the River Yonne in France there is a plaque in memory of Edme Champion, born 1764 who founded the first soup kitchen for the poor in Paris. Maybe Mr Whyte only teaches British history.
When Champion was 25 the French Revolution erupted. The need for soup kitchens and the political disruption were not unconnected. I know a lot of people whose compassion is tempered by anger at the injustices they confront, but Mr Whyte may be content to dish out cake and expect nothing back but gratitude.
Better Together are the rightful inheritors of Orwellian speak
I believe Stewart Whyte was a history teacher at Bucksburn or Bankhead Academies in Aberdeen before gracing Aboyne with his presence.
I heard that one of his ex pupils is now the leader of the Aberdeen Yes group.
Funny how things turn out.
To summarise: Poverty is good for the poor, it is just that the poor don’t appreciate it.
Newspeak. Poverty is Plenty.
Absolutely no correlation between the continuing rise in the need for foodbanks, and the massive increase in those ‘sanctioned’ by the DWP, and the ever increasing disparity between the incomes of the rich and poor.
By this pretzel logic, foodbank numbers should be added by the B of E as an economic indicator.
A bit strange to say foodbanks were ‘invented’ in 1967. There were soup kitchens and ‘the parish’ long before foodbanks. The point is that the welfare state was supposed to have removed the need for them. But so glad they give Tories like Mr Whyte a cost-effective way of demonstrating compassion, without the tiresome need to pay tax.
If you believe that striving to create increased inequality (neo-liberalism) is desirable, then food banks would be a normal component in that type of society. BritNats of every persuasion appear to accept the Westmister agenda, and the inevitable foodbanks.
Scotland can do better.
BT’s counter to foodbanks is pathetic. Which makes it a good card to play.
I do hope that between now and the the 18th, the offical Yes campaign focus on points the NaeSayers find difficult to counter … inequality (foodbanks), NHS privatisation, Trident, whatever.
IKEA is the norm across Europe not food banks .
Food banks are a policy choice made by governments,not the people who use them.
This attempt to present regressive policies which are centuries old (I do not know who he thinks he is kidding with the ‘invented in 1967’ nonsense, even if the term ‘foodbank’ was) as progressive is one of the most offensive things I have ever heard in my life. While no-one would deny that such schemes would have a place in any just society (looking after the homeless, for example) the effort here is to try and get away with protraying that it is acceptable that ever larger numbers of people need this help. Even if it were true that all other European nations had millions of foodbanks, then the attitude should be that Scotland should be a beacon by making the need to use them as low as is possible! The fact that Labour share this man’s idiotic thoughts was well shown by Jackie Baillie’s ramblings last night. Let no one be in any doubt about that.
What next to enrich our lives? The return of the workhouses?
R-type Grunt says:12 August, 2014 at 10:17 am
What is it about teachers?
Teachers are just like any other group in our society.
Anyone who gets their news/information/opinion
from the mainstream media
and who is either too busy for, or is uninterested
in social and political affairs,
will be of a better together mindset.
‘I only know what I read in the papers’
is an old saying but is still true
if you add in TV.
I am not at all sure that teachers are any more ‘educated’
than the rest of us
-unless they read Wings of course.
I’m certain that many from the teaching profession will vote Yes on the 18th.Sept.
Should many teachers vote No
then I would suggest that Scotland has a serious problem that it is unaware of yet.
Education does not support a No vote.
“Foodbanks are Scotland becoming a normal European country”
That is one of the most disgusting things I have read in a long time.
It’s funny Morag should mention Victorian values. I was just thinking the other day that workhouses weren’t a sign of society’s failure to look after the most vulnerable and ensure everyone had at least a minimum standard of living – they were actually efficient, cost-effective dwelling and employment solutions for those who (through their own laziness, obviously) couldn’t afford a roof over their head.
At least, I assume that’s the spin a Tory would put on them.
Presumably foodbanks are a sign of success because it means our precious taxes aren’t being wasted on daft things like making sure people aren’t left to starve?
Many of these foodbanks are run by Churches,& many of those people have Political assosiations & practice Christianity with a small c ,as I’m finding out.( more on this later )having short stints helping out in a food bank, & listening to the problems of the people,the volunteer has to steel themselves not to react by crying ect, but to offer kind words tea, & just to listen & lets those people know there are people who care. People being sactioned,left with no money, embarrassed in excepting charity proud people fallen victim on hard times. I would make those mouthpeices of the NO camp work in a foodbank in the most deprived area’s day after day, & no counciling afterwards,live with the nightmares F bass.
Just another brick in the wall.
And independence would be a sign of Scotland becoming a normal European country. Oh, but that’s different though.
What an utter parasite he is. He should be saying over and over ‘but there for the grace of god go i’.
My stomach has been heaving of late with unionist crap like this. If theres any justice, Scotland will vote yes on sept 18th for a much better way of doing things.
How are the upper classes supposed to appear charitable, without the steady drip of desperate poor people, begging for food?
Beyond belief. Doesn’t anyone do vision anymore?
Hear me all when I say that I have been in good circumstances, and I have been without anything but the love of my family. The shame of receiving handouts . . . how can this man say that food banks are good!?
We need to create a country that has enough money to and resources and support to reduce unemployment to a level that this is is a scandal, not a norm. I believe people need to be offered an environment that they can retain their self respect, like being able to offer their skills in exchange for support in times of need – or to be able to reassure someone who has nothing to offer in return that we all support the person enough that we encourage our elected government to look after their needs. How does a first world country get into a state that it has hundreds of thousands of people below the breadline? Someone is making a mistake.
Allow me to expose this idiot’s claims for what they are, crass deflections of truth, a.k.a Bloody politically motivated lies.
The big difference between food banks in most other European nations is that other nations food banks are to mainly help their asylum seeking and refugee immigrants from foreign war torn areas and from cruel dictatorships.
In Scotland they are to feed Scotland’s own poor, sick, old, homeless and disabled. Many even employed on either zero hours contracts or minimum wages.
Why is this evil person allowed to be teaching our Scottish children? Some of who may be getting help from food-banks? Just what must any of this idiots pupils, whose parents are forced to use food-banks, going to feel like after hearing his evil opinions?
O/T Michael McMahon convener of Holyrood welfare committee live on the BBC Parliament channel has just asked Nicola if finance figures include the revenues from the secret oilfield!!
“Not a sign of the UK failure” I can’t think of a more hideous sign of failure. What a disgraceful mentality to put in front of children or a brilliant one in Gordon’s or Albyn.
Proud of our poor people …
Absolutely disgraceful.
Well it looks like we will have still more pandas than Tory MPs in Scotland.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-28755460
“I am not at all sure that teachers are any more ‘educated’
than the rest of us
-unless they read Wings of course.”
I’ll add myself into that category then!! That man is a disgrace to my profession!
You rue the Foodbanks, I say youre mental
You look at me blank, Tres Continental!
Holyrood Welfare committee live on the web:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/scotland-22995739
Nicola doing an excellent job.
Food banks are the sign that a society is so unequal that even the working class have to beg for food. The vermin behind this post are almost certainly university educated middle to upper class neoliberal twerps with no morals or ethical code
Grief, I’d hate to see what he calls failure of the system.
Foodbanks are most definitely a sign of the UK government’s failure.
Humanitarians having to step in to look after the needy, while the incompetent troughers at Westminster try to convince themselves that poverty on a massive scale (much of it caused by them) is some kind of normality.
Vote YES to help eradicate poverty in Scotland.
Scotland was and still is a compassionate country. For heavens sake the Church would not allow anyone to be buried as South of the Border, in a paupers grave. If you could not provide they did, even to the funeral meal. I would hope our compassion extends to not having people walk miles to collect a bit of groceries. I do not care what other countries do or do not do, I do not want their existence here. Labour, god I hate them with every fibre of my being. Time we created a true people’s party here in Scotland and not a pretendy one.
Actually, this mindset is not unique to the no campaign. This is why I hate the word charity, and much prefer solidarity. What we should be striving for is to get rid of the need for charities, except for things like amnesty international who need to be free from government ties. I always admire people who do extraordinary things to raise money for a scanner for a hospital, but it also makes me wonder what I pay taxes for.
Alastair Carmichael was spouting this nonsense on Scotland Tonight last night and then they went to, of all people, Jackie Baillie to give ‘another view’… in your face bias of the highest order.
We have Indian friends (Sikh) whose father, in his seventies, retired from a high-powered job in London and joined his son and his family in Scotland. The father now volunteers at a nearby foodbank. I was speaking to the son, and he told me that his father came home very upset recently – the reason, he was finding it difficult to cope with the number of people desperate for help in the foodbank. Note, many of the people needing help were already in jobs.
The growing number of foodbanks is not something to be proud of, unless of course you are a ProudScot British Imperialist. The next time someone tries this BritImperial line on you, do as I did the other day, and ask if they have ever visited a foodbank, or volunteered at one. Face-to-face it is easier to penetrate the bubble created by the vicious MSM and their demonising of the poor. Only the extremist Brit Imperials are impervious to an appeal to compassion.
Human compassion,faith and social cohesion are best expressed by a society which ensures that adequate housing, heating, food, clean water, sanitation and medical services are available for all. ‘Deserving’ and ‘Undeserving’ poor alike.
Provided by ‘pooling and sharing’, income tax paid according to one’s means.
This is self interest not charity. An underclass bereft of these services is where antibiotic resistant diseases, cholera etc. start.
Only by protecting all can we protect ourselves.
I had to read this three times (with my mouth open in disbelief)and still cannot believe that someone is really trying to defend foodbanks as something to be accepted and “defended” as normal. Can we now look forward to the proposed reintroduction (in manifestos in the event of a No vote) of the The Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845? “The Parish” This piece is one of the most disgusting things I have read and surely someone from the No campaign should apologise.
I am a former PT of History/Modern Studies, and produced materials in digital and hardcopy for teaching Politics. I took my Prof, the late Borders Labour MP, John Mackintosh’s line of seeing both sides of the argument [try that in Thatcher times!] This man brings shame to myself, committed teachers and Scotland. What kind of creature thinks [and teaches] like this? Why don’t parents complain about the propaganda he is preaching?
I cannot believe the mentality of unionists. I will genuinely be ashamed to be Scottish if Scotland votes No.
One of the most worrying things is that it appears the protective language barrier open to the French and Germans, for example, is no match for the relentless march of Anglo-American neoliberal inequity with gross riches at one end and foodbanks at the other.
I wonder if Stewart bidesabeenAbine ? !
Johnny says:
“The fact that Labour share this man’s idiotic thoughts was well shown by Jackie Baillie’s ramblings last night.”
Labour of the late 1940s never expected the Welfare State they set up to be dismantled by their Labour descendants, I’ll bet.
I googled ‘eurofoodbanks’ (part of the links at the foot of the BT Aberdeenshire page) and the first item which came up contained this phrase:
… denounced the scandal of poverty coexisting with food waste.
It seems that eurofoodbanks were born of the desire to eliminate wastage of food. Laudable in itself, but not, I think, the reason our foodbanks have become necessary in the last few years.
I wish that we did not need foodbanks, and I am horrified that anyone should find positives in their necessity.
If a primary reason for having them was to eliminate food waste, then there would be no suggestion that foodbank-users were scroungers or freeloaders. Just having the foods used instead of wasted would achieve that particular aim.
Morag says: 12 August, 2014 at 9:54 am:
“It’s back to Victorian values! Lady Bountiful, noblesse oblige. Cold as charity.”
Funny you should say that, Morag. I wrote this poem way back when the Iron, (hearted), Lady was still in power. It could have been written to cover the present mob too but with the diffenerce that now it applies to all main Westminster parties.
WHO CARES?
Mrs.Thatcher in her wisdom , with her supercilious way
Was advocating policies, which we still have to-day.
Saying, “We should have the values of Victorianic eras”,
In doing so the lady wrote “A Comedy of Errors”.
Saying “Let the people buy their homes, the ones which are now rented”,
She started up the homelessness, which should have been prevented.
By closing down the hospitals, for handicapped and halt,
She swelled the ranks upon the streets, compounding thus her fault.
She took away the benefit from those who were not wealthy.
She stole away the welfare rights from those who were not healthy.
She gave the sick, the old, the lame, and those who were not well,
Victorianic values, —- and Victorianic hell.
When author, Charles Dickens, wrote about those far off times
His contemporary poets wrote their parodies and rhymes.
Most wrote about The Workhouse and The Poorhouse and the Jail,
But the warning that they tried to give, they wrote to no avail.
So who cares now for those poor souls they’ve put out in the cold
And who cares now for sick and lame, and for the very old ?
“Why Charity”, I hear you say, “If you might be so bold”,
But charity’s selective and very — very cold.
So who cares for the orphans, now they’ve shut the institution,
And who cares for the widows, when there is no restitution,
And who cares for the chronic sick, throughout the night and day ?
“So who the hell cares anyway” it seems I hear them say.
They closed the steelworks and the Pits, the Shipyards and, alas,
They privatized the Dockyards, and the Water and the Gas.
They privatize Electric Power, they sold the T.S.B.
The Ordnance, The Telephones, now private jails we see.
A business sold would then “Trim Down” but what was meant, of course,
Was “Realizing Assets” and then “Cutting Down Workforce”
Their economic miracle could never reach it’s goal
For every little step they took threw people on the dole.
Each person on the dole would have less money then to spend,
Just one less customer on which some business could depend.
As business lost it’s customers the answer was, of course,
Another business “Trimming Down” upon it’s own workforce.
See how the spiral spreads and grows, see how it goes around
Accelerating all the time as going down and round.
I fear for Britain and her poor, I worry how she fares,
My voice cries in the wilderness, “Who Cares ? Who Cares? Who Cares ?
By Robert, (Auld Bob), Peffers.
What an outrageous piece, almost laughable if the message wasn’t so serious. Best not answer the door today as the men in white will be taking him away.
BtP. Congratulations 🙂
And up pops another unionist sneering and a jeering, it’s thick and fast now
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/12/edinburgh-festival-2014-review-andrew-maxwell-scottish-independence-referendum
“Maxwell is a master of measured pacing, and his gallery of Scottish characters – from genteel golfers to disenfranchised junkies – bring the arguments to flamboyant life. The referendum’s in the balance, but the show earns a decisive “yes”.
Never heard of this guy but if you wanna shite on Scotland for the amusement of wet farts in London or Aboyne, nows the time.
OMF(Tory)G.
Now that’s a lesson on how to spin a story..
Ingredients:
1 – Inequality
2 – Poverty
3 – Food Bank Provision
Method:
1 – Place the above items in the head of a Tory Brain with some Profits from Big Business – kerrching
2 – Mix liberally with a dose of “No Corporation Tax Required Here.”
3 – Throw in some Cash for Questions Peerages – my what lovely Ermine you have.
4 – (half)Bake the idea for two Milliseconds (and give the moron a keyboard) and hey presto, you now have the enlightening Tory view on Food Banks..
*N.B There was a cookbook donkeys years ago in the North East called “Tory Treats” – No, Honest.. True Story.. farmers wives and housewives in general would send in recipes. I don’t remember seeing the above recipe in the book though.. Pity, as I’d have realised the world was a Rosier Place than I’d ever imagined it to be given that Thatcher was decimating Industry across the country, introducing the Poll Tax Early in Scotland etc, etc, etc..
You can always count on your Local Tory to be the ray of much needed Sunshine in a story.. ahhh..
@ Robert Peffers, interesting poetry. Haiku from St Thatch, “there’s no such thing as society”
I’m a teacher and I’d like to dissociate myself from this pillock.
I look forward to seeing Labour campaigning in the 2015 GE on a platform of “foodbanks are normal”, “enriching” & promote “social cohesion”. That grotesque apology for a ‘socialist’, Jackie Baillie, did exactly that last night on TV.
I heard Jackie Baillie trying this line about Germany last night too, but given that I’ve been looking into the German model recently as part of my work, I have to point out the differences.
First of all, unemployed people in Germany have their energy bills paid as part of their benefits. There are some limits on housing benefit which can cause difficulties, but overall their cash benefit levels are similar to ours. However, with energy bills covered (and with many people getting their energy via local, state-managed suppliers), the overall standard of living for people on low incomes is a lot more secure.
Secondly, the Tafel network – the major “foodbank” network in Germany – operates very differently to our own. Trussell Trust foodbanks in the UK require a referral from the Jobcentre or a GP or another person who’s somehow fit to judge your need. The Tafel is a membership scheme, where anyone on an income below 1000 Euros per month can get access. They then have access to a wide range of food including fresh bread, fruit and veg at 10-30% of the supermarket price. Most of the produce is donated by the supermarkets as it’s coming towards the end of its shelf life. (The supermarkets like this because it gives them a sheen of social consciousness while also saving them on landfill taxes.)
The Tafel system is not providing emergency food relief to people with nothing. It provides a means for people on low incomes to have consistent access to food (as well as things like baby milk, tampons etc.) at well below market prices.
Tafel shops are usually in fairly prominent locations in each city and as such as usually required to look really nice. The ones I visited looked just like ordinary shops; indeed, one of them had a cafe attached which actually felt like a really nice place – lots of art on the walls, beautifully decorated, a really nice selection of freshly prepared food on offer – and was also linked to a project by AWO (workers’ charity organisation) and Caritas (the Catholic aid agency which runs many Tafeln in the Catholic areas of Germany while the protestant group, Diakonie, handles more in other areas) providing access to children’s services, groups for older people, mental health support, debt advice and so much more. That one is also linked to a garden which grows a fair amount of the food sold in the Tafel and also produces other food – jams, south German noodles and more – which adds value and provides extra training and experience for the unemployed people who work there.
Stigma is still an issue, but I would bet it’s far less of a problem than we have here. In the places I visited, most of the Tafel users were refugees and immigrants (mostly Bulgarian and Romanian) on very low pay. Some of that will be resolved when Germany introduces a minimum wage for the first time very soon. Even then, in a city of 250,000 people there were fewer than 1000 people registered as users.
It’s also worth noting that while much of the work of the Tafeln is done by volunteers, there are also people working there (and in the garden) on “Euro-jobs.” This is a kind of workfare scheme where people get paid E1.50 per hour to do some kind of community work. The money earned from these jobs is then deducted from the benefits the claimant was receiving. No-one in the system particularly likes this but as long as workfare is going to exist, they feel they should do the best they can with it, hence the high levels of training on offer and the very supportive environment. Indeed, we have similar organisations working here. To me, the garden project had an atmosphere a lot like GalGael in Glasgow, for those of you know much about that. If you don’t, look it up and support it. It’s a fantastic organisation.
Of course, emergency food relief is still provided by other organisations, just as it is here. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, for example, has had food cupboards in most Catholic parishes for decades, if not centuries. Here in Glasgow we’ve had the Wayside Club and the City Mission providing food and support to homeless people for decades. But foodbanks are a whole new ballgame. Also, there are still less than 1000 Tafeln across Germany, a country with a population of over 80 million. Combining the 400+ Trussell Trust foodbanks in the UK with all the many independently run ones almost certainly adds up to a lot more.
Bear in mind that there has been explosive growth in the numbers of Tafeln in Germany over the last few years too. Germany’s economy is in somewhat better shape than ours, but those at the bottom are still struggling a lot. It’s not that Germany has now suddenly become a “normal European nation.” It’s that food poverty is being gradually normalised across Europe. It’s despicable of Jackie Baillie and this Whyte character to use the failures of another country as the standard to which we should aspire.
We should be very wary of thinking that the need for foodbanks can be eliminated in Scotland after independence. The world is changing and it’s hard to fight against that rising tide. However, the independence movement is now a mass movement for radical political change in Scotland. The Better Together parties, in their desperate urge to thwart our struggle, now can’t even show shame at the existence of foodbanks because “that’s what the nationalists do.” Thus, the ONLY political movement that now wants to talk about poverty is the Yes campaign and thus our ONLY hope of making the changes to our politics and economics that we need is to vote Yes.
Itsagoinwrang: “Alastair Carmichael was spouting this nonsense on Scotland Tonight last night and then they went to, of all people, Jackie Baillie to give ‘another view’… in your face bias of the highest order.”
Yes, let’s just pretend Nicola Sturgeon’s brilliant interview didn’t exist so we can throw accusations of bias willy-nilly. Great plan.
I knew that the naw mob where low. Stating things like nukes where socialist took my breath away. Now they are openly supporting penuary and state sanctioned starvation. If my fellow scots vote to maintain this absolutley disgusting state of affairs then we truly will deserve all we get. There is no famine in this country, only greed. These people make me sick.
Yep.The Tories drift ever further right,losing some of their traditional support on the way.But strengthening their bonds with Labour and the Libdems.
Lord save us fromn idiots like him.
I find myself getting quite emotional about this item. I range from anger at the sheer lack of compassion from this BT idiot to despair at the thought that these people might win. Their indifference to the plight of their fellow human beings is unbelievable.
Lets not forget that there is plenty of wealth in this country – whether you take that to mean Scotland or the UK. The only problem is that the very rich, who also by and large seem to run the place whether in government or in charge of large corporates, demand that they get to keep their wealth so that they can afford country estates, yachts, big cars and all the other “must haves”.
My solution? First vote Yes. Then adopt redistributive policies. Introduce a wealth tax. Introduce progressive income tax rates so that by the time someone is earning above a certain threshold, they pay 80% tax. Do not let companies deduct salaries above a certain threshold for corporation tax purposes. (Remember that when Bob Diamond got paid £18 million by Barclays in 1 year that was funded by you and me to the extent of about £4.5 million)
OK – rant over – feeling better.
Because something is good enough for others, it doesn’t mean we have to accept it’s good enough for Scotland!
The whole point of this referendum is that we believe that something better can be achieved.
Just part of being a normal European nation, where the City of London has an employee specifically to keep parliament in check (The Remembrencer).
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/11/bank-bonus-city-of-london_n_4939570.html
The post has been removed but it is in the Replies section, top of page. Suggest we all get on and make a comment. One No is against it, btw. I am not on FB but a friend posted for me; she is a soft No, but I am wbb-ing her. Hope to get there soon.
Hell, why don’t we up it a bit and starve half the population in order to bring out the human compassion in the other half, and we can top the European League Table for “Compassion”?
@ CameronB Brodie, its likely that this state school teaching Conservative activist knows a lot of City spivs just like the ones in that Huffington post thing. Royal Deeside has thousands of Tory second home owners, weekenders, City commuters and its about to get rammed with them all up for the grouse shooting.
What kind of Scotland do we want to live in?
As Bergen in Norway is closer to me than Aberdeen so we sail over there quite often. Now on a recent visit we tried, without success, to find Bergen’s Food Bank. In fact when we asked we were looked at as if we were from another planet for the simple fact is that in the civilised country that Norway is they have no need for food banks. Now I’m sure that if ‘Bitter Together’ look hard enough they could well find some charitable help being given to refugees etc.
Auld Rock
O/T For some bizarre reason, the story announcing Saviles death is top of the ‘read’ section on the BBBC news.
This stood out..
“Prince Charles has also praised Sir Jimmy in a statement released by Clarence House: “The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are saddened to hear of Jimmy Savile’s death and their thoughts are with his family at this time,” it said.”
Was the person who wrote this at the wind up? After some expletives which I uttered after I read it – three words of which the last one was “sake”! – I was left with a feeling of incredulity.
Kev,
I think that is the plan, well the first half anyway.
Aboyne Academy – History
“History is a subject which stimulates the intellect and imagination. It helps pupils to improve communication skills through discussion and debate and develop the ability to think creatively and critically. Pupils are encouraged to learn about their past, form their own opinions based on evidence, listen to other points of view and be aware of bias.”
It is obvious Stewart Whyte that doesn’t practice what he is supposed to preach to school children.
Support for indy up 10% to 41% in the latest SSAS.
Indy + devo max now at 70%.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu06GREIgAA97md.jpg
Only 28% for Status quo (22%) or end of Holyrood (6%). That’ll be those saying they are definitely voting No and won’t change their mind / totally against indy (e.g. TNS and ICM).
You have to pity the kids at Aboyne Academy if that’s their history teacher. Will he teach history after a Yes vote, or will the history stick in his craw too much?
Better together are changing their name to F.I. it means Fucking Idiots.
Better Together No Thanks shows its true colours.
Is this something that Labour supporters are proud to be associated with?
Shameful, utterly shameful.
heedtracker says:12 August, 2014 at 11:10 am:
“interesting poetry. Haiku from St Thatch, “there’s no such thing as society”.
Indeed, heedtracker. When I wrote that poem I was doing volunteer work for several organizations fighting Thatcher’s government’s cuts.
Here’s another from around the same era.Remember this was back during Thatcher’s time. Did I perhaps have second sight?
There’s Something Wrong With The System
There’s something so wrong with a system, when children can die without care.
When people, who haven’t got homes of their own, live and die in the cold streets out there.
There’s something so wrong with a system that does not take care of it’s old.
Which leaves then to die, in a cold draughty flat, all alone in the dark and the cold.
There’s something so wrong with this system. I really don’t think that it’s funny.
That gives most to the arts and the rest to crafts when spending our lottery money.
The system then taxes the poor, sick and old by using the dread V. A. T.
It cuts down the income tax rate of the rich and the rate of the P. A. Y. E.
There’s something so wrong with Community Care when communities don’t care a jot.
They turn the psychopaths out on the streets and leave them alone with their lot.
There is something so wrong with the law of the land and the way that the country is run.
While the rich and the famous shoot creatures for fun the rest live in fear of the gun.
It cannot be right to make doctors concerned so much with the saving of cash.
When the saving of life is their secondary aim the thinking is terribly rash.
It’s wrong for the system to say to the old, who have Lived all their life with endurance,
“We’ve spent all the money you’ve paid in to us to provide for your National Insurance”.
There will come a day, and it’s not far away, when the system will face a rejection.
Then the poor, and the sick, and the old, and the ill will vote in the General Election.
There’s nobody stands for the sick or the poor. There’s nobody stands for the old.
There’s no one to fight for the right of the weak, neither Labour nor Tory so bold.
All history tells us the way of the World will follow a true evolution
where greed and corruption are fought by the poor with anarchy and revolution.
When a person is given a seat in the house the first thing they all seem to say
Is, “we’ve come aboard this old gravy train and we’re asking a rise in our pay”.
Then they all head away to the subsidised bars, where they eat and they drink very hearty
and they only come out, at the call of the whip, then they vote for the sake of the party.
Now as far as I see, and you may well agree, we all voted for MPs, et al,
to vote for the good of the country at large and not for the party at all.
There is no dafter sight than the left and the right as they sit on each side of the table.
They shout, “hey ya boo”, they reply, “yea and you”, just as hard and as loud as they’re able.
Then as for the rest they stay silent at best and talk rubbish the rest of the session.
The following rigidly of party lines has become a debating obsession.
I’m not worried at all when my back’s to the wall by mad cows or the scrapie in sheep
But the system of government that we must all endure has cost me a great deal of sleep.
by Robert Peffers
Did it hit the news? Was it in the BBC?
Good post Kenny about the Tafel system and I agree it’s not just the problem of being very poor.
One thing that needs to be highlighted is the difference in attitudes between the UK State and the German one.
In the UK the governing bodies/establishment are quite willing to allow the drop in income and social cohesion to take place. It means for many people and poor families a loss of social contact, exclusion from taking part in everyday life, e.g. no money – no kit, no sport.
Comparable with the mentality in Scotland (not the UK/WM), the tafel system is also promoted as a possibility to keep up to a minimum social standard, trying to prevent folk from dropping out of society and causing other problems later on.
Food banks are the sign that a society is so unequal that even the working class have to beg for food. The vermin behind this post are almost certainly university educated middle to upper class neoliberal twerps with no morals or ethical code
And also a sign that only those (working class) still in work and kind-hearted enough have to help them, because no-one else will.
@ Stewart Whyte
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/research/social-mobility
Quality of life in Europe: Social inequalities
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bHEjdrhfR0
Dear Labour supporters in Scotland, you are so much better than this. Don’t allow your party to be destroyed completely.
It’s time to let the neoliberals fester in this awful dung pile, leave BT and support your ain folk.
Vote YES in September.
Eck on Reporting Scotland tomorrow at half 6. Extended live interview. They are going to try to skewer him on the CU issue again, no doubt.
Flipper on on Thursday.
Bear in mind folks that this is the charming individual who opined some time ago (I recall there was a piece on here about it in fact!) that virtually all Nationalists were anti-English racists, and was afterwards quite unrepentant about it and tried to pass it off as a bit of a joke.
Of course, one wonders what the parents of his pupils who happen to be Nationalists would think of being labelled in this way; but that episode and his more recent “contribution” to the debate are symptomatic of the kind of well-poisoning of the general indyref which has to be laid chiefly at the door of the No camp. There are no depths they will not plumb in order to discredit the SNP, the Yes campaign and where possible individual Yes supporters.
For convinced No campaigners like Stewart Whyte there is no scare story too ridiculous for them not to re-hash and publicise as fact, no mildly expressed disagreement from a Yes supporter which cannot be labelled as vile abuse. In the end it is not worth engaging with Stewart and his ilk. The initially reasonable facade soon disappears after even the mildest exchange of views to expose the red in tooth and claw unreasoning Tory lurking beneath.
None of this makes him ipso facto a bad teacher of course, but I know if my daughter had been at school in Aboyne I’d have wanted an explanation of his views before wanting him to teach her history!
Robert Peffers, well said sir and may I say yes there is definitely something wrong with the system and the only fix is a YES vote in September.
Was wondering why we don’t fully evolve our nation full circle, to the days of those “tightfisted Scots”, when men were paid in grain by the handful, and we got to keep what we didn’t drop.
I say keep, but obviously only till it was grown so they could take it off us again.
That would mean more money for those poor hard done too Westminster boys and their struggling cronies.
Bloody eedjits! How far removed from reality does the BT crowd have to be before the undecideds and the No’s finally see a Yes vote is they only way to secure a modicum of control over the future of this country
I note in passing that in France, Germany and USA the populus must pay compulsory healthcare insurance.
The Ian Duncan Smith school of right-wing religious nuttery.
Only the working class get a chance to see such Better Together morality in action, such as the woman found wandering the streets of Glasgow at night with a bloodclot in her head searching for food to eat, or the starving woman that turned up at the Maryhill Food Bank who scooped beans out of a tin with her hand in front of onlooking strangers.
the explosion of food banks is due to one thing, welfare “reforms” are driving people deeper and deeper into poverty…the above line is directly from, ester mcvie’s mouth ie it’s wonderful to see the compassion of the british people in these hard times.
totally disconnecting the fact that labour/torieslibdems have driven these savage policies, to keep interest rates low and asset prices high.
we have only seen 40% of the cuts. after 2015ge whoever is elected £25bn+ cuts will come.
last yr in scotland there were 900000 benefit sanctions and further to that over £1.5bn+ has been torn out of the scottish economy, from the sick and disabled peoples income’s. no if’s, no but’s, we must get indy.
Ummmm, sorry but, foodbanks ok. Fuck off
Up here in the real NE, highlands and islands I have never seen a no flag, sticker, badge, etc.
During questions from the audience on STV Salmond/darling “debate?” A man sitting rather agitatedly on the left hand side near the back asked “would my taxes be used to feed these people or would it be by donation”. After his question he turned round and looked at the wall, and appeared to be quite agitated. Don’t think he wanted his tax wasted in this way.
Aye mans inhumanity to man!
This is a despicable attempt to cover poor governance.
It is a question of priorities and this proves the priorities of the Westminster parties – greed is good, for us!
Them
Vote No and get the workhouse!
Carmichael was embarrassed when talking about this last night, it was all over his face, and rightly so!
He still did it though,all for his Westminster masters.
I remember him trying relentlessly to argue with Angus MacNeill MP on Twitter after an innocuous comment about enjoying Spurs vs. Man Utd on Super Sunday. It ended up with Mr. Whyte claiming that it’s hypocritical to enjoy English football while campaigning for Yes. When I interjected to point out that the Premier League is enjoyed by many people in Scotland, Ireland and further afield, he responded with a surreal rant about Sky pulling out of Scotland after a Yes, using the old “Salmond can’t guarantee” guff that they use about currency, EU etc. I noted that Sky operate in dozens of countries and seem to have coped reasonably well with “borders”, and he went silent.
He is, to put it very politely, a strange enigma.
are de DDOS back,have probs reloading site, the Wee Blue Book must be Incendery lol, we need to get orginzed my friend groups in each Region / Areas tying in with the Yes groups & other Indy groups, times short lets get up & running.
dmw42
Yup we do have compulsory Health Insurnace as well its called National Insurance contributions for a reason…
Speechless here.ffs.
Next UK celebration-
“Let the Hunger Games Commence”
O/T so apologies
Just put Wings into Google to get the page up. One of the entries that featured was this from STV so I had a wee look.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/285916-indyref-daily-stephen-daisley-on-independence-referendum-campaign/
And written at the bottom of the article was the following
Stuart Campbell — we refuse to address him as “Rev” until we see the dog collar — also has a book out today. We haven’t gone through it yet but it’s probably a Nationalist hate screed and so we condemn it in advance.
Get rid of these arseholes.
And very well done on the WBB – superb work
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/letters-labour-s-tory-policies-bad-news-for-scots-1-3506432
Sorry should have mentioned that ‘get rid of these arseholes’ is my own views on STV and their MSM counterparts.
Latest TNS Poll
Yes – 38%
No – 46%
UD – 16%
3% swing is all that is required.
Nigerian Pirate says:
What do you think of Murphy’s tweet further down the page?
@ Defo Alex has to be interview’d 1st so darling has time to write his script
He mentions France. As a history teacher he should be well aware of what happened to that country when its bourgeoisie articulated a ‘Let them eat cake!’ ethos.
The British ‘success’ story is about to take that concept to a new level.
‘Let them suck cess!’
‘We’re all in it together. We’ll keep producing it, you keep shovelling it.’
I have an interesting take on this. I was responsible for setting up a Foodbank in my church in Dingwall about 4 years ago. We did this because we already operated a Soup Kitchen which had a regular clientele of 6 people, mostly men who had done geographicals to get away from relationship problems in Manchester and points further south.
We had to close it through lack of take-up.
Recently the local Free Church has started up a Foodbank and this time there is no problem getting people to use it.
What does that tell me? It says that something has happened in the interim to make the difference and that can only be the welfare measures brought in by the UK government and supported in principle by the Labour Party.
Taking Kenny’s information on Germany on board, for Better Together to say that foodbanks are OK because they are common or garden in Germany is to twist the argument beyond reasonable. Germany has a much better social welfare system than UK. We are bottom of the league on pensions and unemployment benefits and the presence of foodbanks in this country is a scandal comparable with the scandal of the lack of safety net in ultra capitalist USA.
No persons uses a foodbank by choice.
Liquid Lenny, I think you’ll find that National Insurance was established to pay for pensions, not healthcare, and that both Brown and Osborne have attempted to consolidate NIC with income tax.
@ Les Wilson
Never read that far down Les. Just checked it out now tho. The comment about the hen night?
Murphy’s probably the biggest condom there.
Disgrace of a politician -what a shock.
He was up doing a BT campaign on the Isle of Lewis recently – himself and Sarwar. Poor turnout, same as everywhere else they peddle their wares.
this just shows the mentality of these C U Next Tuesday’s
we MUST end this by voting YES, it’s the ONLY solution, food banks are the norm??????
YES
@Nigerian Pirate
That site is tongue in cheek, the guys are funny on twitter and dont take themselves overly seriously so I think theres plenty of bigger targets before we get to them.
@Helena Brown says: 12 August, 2014 at 12:04 pm:
“well said sir and may I say yes there is definitely something wrong with the system and the only fix is a YES vote in September.”
Thank you, Helena, the point I’m attempting to make, though, is that those two poems were written way back when Thatcher was in power. I was just getting over the loss of my first wife and had met and married my second wife. We met while both doing volunteer work. I had starved and suffered great poverty trying to keep my two boys but being starved into submission by the system. There were no foodbanks back then and few people knew how the system was treating some people. Now they know. So the poems could apply equally well today. BTW: if anyone feels like using them, feel free, just credit me as author and use them anywhere that helps.
I like that at first glance the heading reads “No Better Together”
Norway missed a few oil memos, it seems.
BBC: “Norwegian oil services firm Aker Solutions has signed one of Scotland’s largest office leasing deals”
“Aker is leasing three interlinked buildings for an annual rent of £7.74m over 20 years.“
Nigerian Pirate – the “we refuse to call him Rev” comment is just a joke. The IndyRef Daily column is light-hearted. Stephen Daisley, who writes it, often banters with Stu and other pro-indy types on Twitter, and is so yes-friendly that it’s difficult to imagine him being a No voter. He even devoted a whole article about Wings a while back, saying what an excellent addition it had been to the debate and so on.
This article has a big bit on the Wings card game, and then goes on to give the WBB top billing afterwards. Seriously, what more could you ask for?
I know we are talking about foodbanks, but what about social mobility?
“Furthermore, while Scotland is in charge of its education system, it is unable to raise taxes or alter many other aspects of fiscal policy, which somewhat limits the level and distribution of spending on education. Perhaps with independence Scotland would be better able to tackle the inequalities in its education system.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/indy-scotland-could-tackle-educational-inequality-better-say-lse-academics.1375618690
Nigerian Pirate says:
Yup, a has been, desperately trying to hold on to his job.
FxxK the rest of us.
If anything makes my blood boil its idiots like Stewart Whyte and his likes. Must be Daily Mail followers.
Yes foodbanks are necessary and have always existed, but to feed the poor unfortunates who are down on their luck and dont trust the Council, police, etc. They turn to the likes of the Salvation Army, who do a great job.
Foodbanks in the modern era are used by ordinary people suffering because of Tory/Lib Dem policies. Welfare reform (cuts), low wages, zero hours contracts part time work – these are the problems to be sorted.
As fred blogger says , worse is to come.
@ desimond
Agreed there’s a couple of quite funny bits in the comments. The Ask Alex agony aunt bit and the Pandas on the bike photo.
It’s just that this had come up under the STV news banner.
At first read I
@ desimond & Doug Daniel
Agreed there’s a couple of quite funny bits in the comments. The Ask Alex agony aunt bit and the Pandas on the bike photo.
It’s just that this had come up under the STV news banner.
At first read I never realized it was a piss take.
Understand now so apologies if my first comment was misleading. It definitely misled me 🙂
my god i just read some of this mans followers on his twitter account its like a who`s who of all the evil that plagues Scotland ,vote yes Scotland so we can do something about this lot like make them use foodbanks after we hand them their p45`s these people have no place in a modern civil society an absolute disgrace to humanity.
@kenny
We should be very wary of thinking that the need for foodbanks can be eliminated in Scotland after independence. The world is changing and it’s hard to fight against that rising tide.
The change you are talking about is not an “Act of God”. It is man-made. There are alternatives. We can choose to get rid of the need for food banks. Yes, you are right that we will not be able to do this immediately on gaining independence in March 2016. As Dr Whitford said, we are going to have to roll up our sleeves and work very hard to repair Scotland.
I cannot put it any better than the following quote from Hawkeye on the Golem XIV blog
My genuine hope is that Scotland will follow the Northen European /Scandinavian model:
– High living standards
– Progressive taxation
– Equality of income
– Energy and food self-sufficiency
Essentially, a genuine social democratic state that fully rejects the Neo-liberal financialisation model, with a return to a respect for the land and energy & environmental resources.
@dmw42 says: 12 August, 2014 at 12:15 pm:
“I note in passing that in France, Germany and USA the populus must pay compulsory healthcare insurance.”
Err! Since when did the USA pay, “compulsory”, Healthcare?
Hold on a minute. According to unionists and Better Together supporters foodbanks also encourage fraud, drug-taking and immigration.
Here’s Kezia Dugdale’s mates at the Daily Mosley on the modern scourge of foodbanks that are blighting our society. Warning! Contains an image of Ian Duncan Smith –
Unpalatable truth about food banks the Left finds so hard to swallow: Political football and undeserving claimants distract from the many who are in genuine need
https://archive.today/irxej#selection-1033.0-1033.161
Poor nutrition and hunger affects the health, growth and development of children and by inference the future well-being of society – so this ‘history teacher’ thinks this circumstance is a positive indicator?
The US foodbank movement has evolved beyond its primary purpose of relieving hunger and one of it’s main successes has been the political pressure and education of those in power to act on this shameful state of human deprivation. Obviously our ‘history teacher’ has failed to appreciate and learn anything so far and demonstrates a strange degree of inhumanity.
As in reverse psychology I sincerely hope his witless and skewed statement turns out to have the effect of reverse politicking and gains Independence even more Yes votes.
It make me despair that anyone can believe that food banks are the norm. And food banks are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more cannot heat or have lighting in their homes. I have spoken to folk who buy gas/electricity one week and food the next. And this is summer.
This a scandal , that shows the system is broken and excepting that food banks are the norm shows the contempt these arses have for all of us.
I cannot believe that folk are so blind and deaf to whats happening around them. I am not a softy by any stretch of the imagination but seeing oor folk in these places really gets to me.
And don’t forget that many of these hungry folk are children or disabled. The people in our society that should be given support regardless of any reason.
Roll on 18th sept. We can at least tackle these problems and look for long term solutions and finally get rid of the Westminster policies that have caused them.
Out of curiosity I went looking to see if there were food bans in Norway. I did find one item about food banks in Norway but not in Scandinavia, it was in Maine USA (population 5,014 at the 2010 census).
I did find a Vote No site positively slavering with glee over the fact that there were (supposedly) food banks in Norway. In response to a request for exactly where they were there was a link to http://www.eurofoodbank.eu/portail/index.php… No info on actual food banks in Norway that I could find.
Later on the site there was a link to http://anewlifeinnorway.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-poverty-house-in-oslo-fattighuset/ . Funnily enough the volunteers mentioned were both immigrants (Russia, Syria).
Oh and child poverty in Norway is on the increase – because the government increased the salary level at which a household is deemed to be in poverty. A family of three living on household income of less than NOK 273,000 (£27.300) is considered below the poverty line in Norway.
Interesting comparison, isn’t it?
Interesting
willhillbet.tumblr.com/post/94438394233/79-of-scots-backing-yes
@Nigerian Pirate
To paraphrase the UKS greatest living mass debater “It was a Joke!”
🙂
ronnie anderson says:
“@ Defo Alex has to be interview’d 1st so darling has time to write his script”
Got it in one Ronnie. BTW Your right about the DDOS, I’ve had probs here all morning.
Or, maybe it’s the volume of people coming to get the Wee Blue Book.
I’m punting it hard, on the Hootsmon. The trolls who live there aren’t liking it up ’em. Attacking the messenger, as per.
Labour/Tory/Libdem representative opens mouth……expect drivel!!!
@Les Wilson says: 12 August, 2014 at 12:25 pm:
“Next UK celebration-“Let the Hunger Games Commence”
Well we have had all sorts of ‘Celebs for every kind of aid axcept Orangeade so far and fundraising from the, “PUBLIC”, TV Telethons.
Now we have “The Public”, having to feed the poor. Trouble is that those poor are now often families with at least one member in work. While there are individual multi-billionaires getting tax cuts while the poor are suffering tax hikes and more austerity.
What a self-satisfied, smug twunt. And they wonder why pandas outnumber Tory MPs?
ps the foodbank model he claims in germany, are actually social discount supermarkets, people become members of them and help out for free.
Dave McEwan Hill
As you are here, apologies for the delay. I just bought a gift token, which will be in the post tonight.
@Roddy Macdonald says:
What a self-satisfied, smug twunt. And they wonder why pandas outnumber Tory MPs?
The outnumbering is about to get worse:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-28755460
We do have a few angry BT loudmouths in the NE.
A few landowners have their chaps but large signs up and fly the union flag.
We also have a degree of apathy created by relative wealth resulting from the Oil industry. Many people have little idea of the conditions in other parts of Scotland.
We do have a legacy of Tory voters related to farming.
However I’m still confident we will deliver our quota of the YES vote. The behaviour of a few angry BT activists at local shows is helping to do the job for us. It is worth highlighting that the LibDems activists are strong supporters of BT. Probably comparable with Labour in the Central belt.
I hope the LibDems pay a heavy political price for years to come.
So it’s a good thing that some of our people have to humiliate themselves by going to a foodbank to feed themselves? Incredible. FFS, Scotland – break away from this utter insanity!
Bbc reporting on a Panda ( Tain Tain) pregnancy ah dont believe it. Where’s Morag we need a second opinion.
This man’s logic regarding food banks is incomprehensible, homelessness is also prevelant do we apply the same logic to that as well.
Which is its okay to tolerate these blights on society, because they happen elsewhere. It appears Better Together are happy to have some people in society, hungry and homeless.
@Clootie
I met a highly prominent SNP member the other day in airport and suffice to say, they dont envisage a bright future for the Lib Dems come next elections.
apologies if this has already been posted. but re people being used as a political f/ball, and being insulted nothing could be further from the truth from the yes camp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnmhCTXpqv0
Oil & Gas People (recruiters for the oil industry) announce backing for Yes after the negativity and lies Better Together have used about the oil industry (they specifically say that, in fact.)
https://www.facebook.com/oilgaspeople
Gillie @ 12.29
Are you (or this TNS outfit whoever they are) trying to promote a negative attitude or something?
How desperate they have become. To seek to rationalise the existence and rise of foodbanks as an entrepreneurial venture that is now gaining ground and by extension is to be regarded as a ‘normal’ means of provision for the ‘less fortunate’ is mendacity in action.
The perverse logic of this should be regarded as prove, if anymore was needed, of how far they are prepared to go in their attempts to produce a backlash of outrage so severe that they can attack at will anyone who has an ounce of decency decrying such blatant doublespeak, as a ‘nationalist cybernat’. They are revealing their battle plan, it’s dirty, it’s nasty, and that is what they want, they want us to rise to this bait.
We can trust ourselves to know that this is wrong and that deeply cynical manoeuvres are now at play. We must be well ahead by now for this to be employed. They are attempting to undermine a key element of the Yes side’s position on social justice and fairness.
Given what they have gotten away with in the last 40 years they must regard this as some sort of ‘vote’ winner, it surely is an appeal to their core vote in some way. They are trying to steady the horses here. But if they get an all out attack from our side, they can play it as ‘look at those batshit crazy natz getting all bent out of shape over a perfectly reasonable point we are making’.
Are people stupid? They are betting the house that they are. I’m bettin my life that people are not stupid.
(I welcome all critiques on my own ‘batshit crazy’ take on this :-))
What next? Close the foodbanks and let people literally starve to death? Well, it happens in part of Africa so it’s acceptable then?
Robert, there is only (very) limited free Medicaid and CHIP available in the US http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Health/HealthInsurance.shtml
Clarinda – “I sincerely hope his witless and skewed statement turns out to have the effect of reverse politicking and gains Independence even more Yes votes.” It already has!
And also a delivery man (previously a Def No) who doesn’t know who to trust with his pension is getting a Wee Blue Book this afternoon.
Rev – Do you think it’s OK to stick a wee sticker with the WBB address on the leaflets I will be delivering tonight? I’ve got a sheet of them printed out?
Although this is a Tory who has written this it should not be forgotten, that in political terms, Labour and the LibDems in Scotland support this.
All three Better Together parties in Scotland are completley at ease with Foodbanks and Victorian values. Remember Thatcher’s love for Victorian values? Labour and the LibDems have embraced them.
The poor are of no consequence to Better Together, just as long as they don’t vote the wrong way or indeed have the effrontary to actually vote! Lord Foulkes, that Labour stalwart and defender of the rich and powerful, was once heard in conversation to refer to the poor as “underclass”!
Labour and their fellow Better Together’s are only a heart beat away from a very, very dark place.
Labour and Better Together are that very, very dark place. They are merely testing the waters to see who are with them.
@Doug Daniel
Appreciate the heads up, posted on twitter and liked on facebook.
We must advertise this to the max! just because some other country has them does not mean that we have to emulate them. This is the biggest insult the the Scottish electorate intelligence yet! I am getting their letter enlarged to use on the yes stall in fact I am going to get a number of them and display them at unemployment benefit offices foodbanks etc. No matter what way they want to spin it this is the most unbelievable patronising insult the better together campaign has stooped to. churchgoers and everyone else who contribute to them will make up their own mind who is using the people who are in need of them will make up their own mind who is using them as political football So this is their let them eat cake moment! can I please be the person to let go the rope on September 19th
Foodbanks are Scotland becoming a normal European country
Are we actually supposed to be glad that we’re reaching that level of normality?
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/12/financial-triage-offered-at-food-banks
Great news from wonga land. Teach the blighters how to be responsible with their hand outs, tut tut, rule britnatia.
@ Doug Daniel
Just shared that to my FB page, Doug. I hope everyone else does the same to get the message out – cos the MSM certainly wont report it.
We don’t think any more needs to be said. Ha, Ha, Ha, Stuart you fox you!
Thank you to everyone for their passionate response to this issue. There have been so many on the money with their replies it has given me comfort that we are still, despite the efforts vile oiks like Whyte and his ilk, able to empathise and help our brothers and sisters.
Child poverty, hunger, and deprivation is usually followed by disease and other problems, like lawlessness, for society. Time to end it.
Some powerfully good ideas in the comments above – let’s get started on them as soon as we can.
Slightly O/T
Just reading Stuarts tweets and complaining about writing out addresses
Stuart you do realise with Word document, there is a mail merge and labelling facility?..lol 😀
Given the Labour Party are also indignant about the spread of food banks and this is on official Better Together paper I think it would pertinent ask those in Labour for Indy to take this forward to Labour voters
@joe kane says:12 August, 2014 at 1:00 pm:“Hold on a minute. According to unionists and Better Together supporters foodbanks also encourage fraud, drug-taking and immigration.” Talking about IDS. Joe, check out his CV>This is the guy who made exaggerated claims about his educational achievements on more than one occasion. He is a proven cheat.http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/05/great-crapsy-why-iain-duncan-smith-isnt-all-he-seems
Labour and Better Together are that very, very dark place. They are merely testing the waters to see who are with them.
Aye, those food bank customers are bloody lucky they enjoy a
“Something for nothing culture”.
Isn’t that right, Johann?
What next? Close the foodbanks and let people literally starve to death? Well, it happens in part of Africa so it’s acceptable then?
Ronald, how about we fix the awful mess IDS has made of the benefit system? Food banks were not necessary until he was let loose.
More folk from Labour and Better Together, defecting to the yes camp, because they know it makes sense.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/no-thanks-its-yes-now-4036997
The ‘underclass theory’ is batshit crazy, cod-science. It is nothing more than Social Darwinism dressed up as a sociological reality.
How can you define such a disparate and divergent group as ‘the poor’, as a social class. All it does is provide cover for the politics that ultimately produced Auschwitz-Birkenau. Now that was real wage control in action.
Foodbanks is a sign of Britishness.
Doesn’t it make you proud to have so many in Scotland.
Just caught the end of Sky News, new poll or polls out, dire they say, for YES.
I guess it will get worse and worse via UK pollsters until we shock them by voting YES.
All part of the NO campaign to steal doubters votes. Otherwise known as propaganda.
Thanks Robert Peffers.
IDS, the University of Perugia’s greatest living alumni.
I think IDS still holds the record for the worst opinion poll approval rating for a British party leader. His own party wouldn’t let him anywhere near a general election.
Les
I have found Sky News every bit as biased as the BBC and ITN in their coverage of this debate. That said I always did think Sky News was reactionary bullshit, little better than the New of the World.
The bias bastards at STV News cut off John Swinney in mid sentence. He was saying the jobs on the Clyde came here because of the skills base here.
They didn’t let him explain how an Independent Scotland could create far more jobs outwith MOD work.
And they didn’t let him explain his plans for lower corporation tax, which would attract more companies and thus create more jobs.
STV are getting even more bias than BBC Scotland these days. (If that’s possible).
Oh foodbanks are just signs that Scotland is becoming a *ahem* normal country are they Mr Whyte?
Please be my guest and go visit some of these food banks and tell the people running them that they are doing the work that they do NOT because people are dying of starvation but because they are an enriching example of human compassion, faith and social cohesion. Oh and while you are at it please be my guest to go and tell everyone who uses a foodbank that they are the end user of something that is an enriching example of human compassion, faith and social cohesion. One question though. Can I come along when you do this and watch the reaction of everyone you tell about this social cohesion?
I do have just one itsy bitsy teeny weeny little point here Mr Whyte. All this human compassion, faith and social cohesion garbage you are spouting would NEVER need to happen if those in the most need were actually living in a country where the GOVERNMENT of the day actually gave a damn. Now I wonder if there is, anywhere in the world the possibility of such a country existing. Any ideas Mr Whyte?
So I suppose using your style of belief then wars are just a *cough* normal way for Westminster to give those nasty Johnny foreigners a wee slap on the wrist for being naughty then?
I’m just ever so glad we’ve got this cleared up then!
Ya MUPPET!
Oil and Gas People come out for Yes after accusing Better Together of outright lies regarding the oil and gas industry. They have nearly 90000 Facebook likes and a leading worldwide job site for over 2500 companies.
Not only that but in the post they link to the Wee Blue Book:
Oil and Gas People has been watching the Independence debate from the fence and like many businesses felt it wasn’t in our best interest to back one side or the other. That has all changed with the negative campaigning the Better Together campaign have directed towards our industry with false information and outright lies misleading the people of Scotland.
With this post we back the #yes campaign and get behind 74% of the industry who are voting YES to Independence. Without Oil and Gas Scotland can be a rich nation with it we can be one of the richest, no one knows the industry better than those who work in it and we all know that Oil and Gas will be around for a long time yet.
https://www.facebook.com/oilgaspeople/photos/a.271569239529038.77384.130903883595575/837300186289271/?type=1
Robert Peffers, the USA introduced a health insura
At that tweet, yikes.
Bloody keyboard!
Robert Peffers, the USA introduced a health insurance mandate this year. Everyone has to purchase health insurance if they do not already have it via their employment. Penalties will assessed on your tax return (which pretty much everyone must file) for failure to comply. At the moment, penalties are small – $95 per person per year or 1% of household income – a whole lot cheaper than paying $500 per month, at least, for the privilege of paying a doctor $40 for a six-minute consultation.
Google “Obamacare” or “Affordable Care Act” if you are interested in more detail.
Hello Gordon Anderson welcome to Wings
Did I imagine this it was in the Herald and then suddenly disappeared this afternoon. TNS I believe!
Latest poll: 38% Yes, 46% No, 16% undecided
Herald Scotland-2 hours ago
Support for Yes has risen to a high of 38% among 733 people who will vote … position it held as far back as November in a previous TNS poll.
Look out for more ‘research’ re foodbanks, oil, debt, the works from new (July I think) ‘think tank’ “Fiscal Affairs Scotland”. It is staffed by the CPPR usual suspects Armstrong & McLaren plus others. Baillie (last night) and Flipper (last week) quoted numbers from one of their reports.
“Fiscal Affairs Scotland” has no website and the report (i.e. source of Baillie’s and Flipper’s numbers also quoted in numerous MSM articles) has not been published online.
I reckon this is No’s tactic to get dodgy OBR etc data into the MSM pre 18/9 narrative without scrutiny and noise from here and other Yes blogs etc.
If so, a compliment re how effective you’ve been Stuart. But a bit of a problem/challenge for us if Fiscal Affairs Scotland keep sending their reports (presumably by email) directly to MSM and No blogs (e.g. http://www.scotlandsaysnaw.com/new-analysis-shows-scotlands-schools-and-hospitals-more-secure-within-uk/)without online publication/access.
Wonder if they get govt/public money funding so then obliged to publish?
I’m so glad to see this on here, friends and myself have shared it on various Yes Pages after getting a snap shot before it was deleted. It was still on their page earlier today but only because a Yes voter posted it after someone asked what happened to it. It’s gone viral but somehow doubt it will get much attention from the media
So..
Germany 918 foodbanks vs population of 82 Million
Scotland > 1000 foodbanks vs population of 5 Million.
That seems to indicate that foodbanks are approximately 18 times more prevalent in Scotland than in Germany.
Better Together ? …. NOT A CHANCE !
dmw42 says:12 August, 2014 at 1:39 pm:
“Robert, there is only (very) limited free Medicaid and CHIP available in the US.”
I know what is, and what is not, available in the USA.
Here you go : –
Medicare – a U.S. government program of hospitalization insurance and voluntary medical insurance for persons aged 65 and over and for certain disabled persons under 65.
Medicaid – a U.S. government program, financed by federal, state, and local funds, of hospitalization and medical insurance for persons of all ages within certain income limits.
In neither case are these compulsory. The first is voluntary and the second non-contributory taxpayer funded.
For the rest it is medical insurance and in all cases is the most expensive to provide World Wide.
O/T.
The BBC will not cover, any of Orange Order march
In Edinburgh on the 13th September, as its not in the interests of the no camp, to see their violent bigotted foot soldiers, run amok on the tv.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/08/orange-blackout/#comments
According to a local Better Together punter who frequently boasts of being a regular churchgoer and (cough)Ibrox season ticket holder.
“Foodbanks are corrupt. Most of the food is sold on at The Barras to get money for drugs”
Nice christian attitude there!
So Scotland is almost 20 times more normal than Germany? Isn’t that nice? Better Together. Best of Both Worlds.
“Perfectly normal to have foodbanks” said fat B**stard Carmichael while chewing on another bridie. Yeh looks like he could be donating some of his larder to the foodbanks.
Why has the ‘left’ failed so miserably in resisting the public acceptance of ‘underclass theory’?
Marx makes a clear distinction between proletariat as salaried workers, which he sees as a progressive class, and Lumpenproletariat, “rag-proletariat”, the poorest and outcasts of the society, such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes, which he considers a retrograde class.[11][12] Socialist parties have often struggled over the question of whether they should seek to organize and represent all the lower classes, or just the wage-earning proletariat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat
Polls and the meeja. They so love them and their pet pundits don’t they?
Those people whom Mr Whyte seems happy to see being fed through food banks, I wonder how they would poll?
I’m fairly certain they’ll have an opinion about how they’ve been treated by Westminster government. They’ve been disenfranchised, marginalised, forgotten and criminalised by government and media alike. They also have a vote and a voice. Right now they have a voice that can break a parliament stranglehold and change the direction of travel for politics in possibly the whole UK.
Were I Mr Whyte or his ilk, I’d be sweating about what they’d be thinking right about now.
We are all Gods people Cameron. I think all working and non working people should form a collective against the landed gentry in our society.Most of the London Scottish Mp’s are Landed but certainaly not gentry!
@dramfineday says: 12 August, 2014 at 1:48 pm:
“Child poverty, hunger, and deprivation is usually followed by disease and other problems, like lawlessness, for society. Time to end it.”
Now you come to mention it, dramfineday, I see a news item that, Sheep Rustling and tool theft are on the increase in rural areas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28704686
Strange Eh? Numbers using food banks increasing and sheep stealing on the rise. Wonder if the tool theft is of things for killing, skinning and butchering mutton?
Don’t worry about the sheep rustling and tool thefts in the rural areas Robert. You obviously haven’t quite seen the link between these activities and food banks. Remember, according the Mr Whyte food banks are the new *ahem* normal which by extension means that sheep rustling and tool thefts are also just a part of the new *ahem* normal! 😛
@ The man in the Jar. I think we all know the sort of unionist what’s-in-it-for-me person you’re talking about. Robert Burns knew the sort too, as in
“Holly Willie’s Prayer”
Within the “Orange Booker” wing of the Liberal Democrats that dominates it’s leadership, particularly at Westminster, foodbanks are seen as a way of privatising welfare that fits with their libertarian ideology of shrinking the size of the state and making contributions to the common good optional and a choice to be made by individuals. They will see the rising number and size of foodbanks as a sign that they are having a positive impact on coalition policy.
No wonder they have lost so many deposits here since 2010!
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/starving-children-asked-school-holiday-4039159
I’d find it hard to be in the same classroom as that ……er
up there, basically.
Holy Willie’s Prayer – sorry.
Hmm. I’ve just seen this tweet which I’m presuming is from the English version of the Sun, and refers to the You Gov poll. A ‘surely unassailable’ lead for No.
https://twitter.com/Sun_Politics/status/498715454979178496/photo/1
The rigging of the ballot using MSM polls as the justification looks more likely by the day. Some might say anyway..
Sorry for going O/T here but it appears that someone has left the cage door open again and Danny Alexander has escaped once again. 😛
This is from an article over on Newsnet. 😉
In a letter to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has confirmed that the policy of the UK Government was to prevent parts of the UK from setting independent tax rates in each band to prevent one part of the UK benefitting “at the expense of the UK as a whole”.
http://tinyurl.com/qh248po
DR boosts Jaky Baillie and fellow unionist of the Tory boy up there, who is certainly not going without ever sez
“But Labour’s Jackie Baillie said Sturgeon had “ruled out taking effective measures to tackle the causes of food banks such as increased tax rises for the rich”.
She added: “The Nationalists do not have a credible or costed plan for welfare in a separate Scotland”
70+ years at the trough Labour in Scotland, your time is up no matter how hard you cling on with your Tory besties.
Manandboy says –
“Education does not support a No vote”. Too right!
@Robert Peffers
Lesley Anne, I will defend Maryhill foodbank to the hilt,there is no Mutton nor Lamb(fresh meat there) ave never hud any, I,ll hiv tae huv a word wie Julie lol.
Aye ronnie, you, me and everyone on here will do as you say about defending Maryhill foodbank and all the other foodbanks. I’m not quite sure what sort of answer you’d get from Julie though about the fresh meat thingy though. 😉 😛
@Dan Huil
at 2:50pm
As my Dad used to say “Beware those who sing the loudest in the kirk!”
Its no good having fresh meat at foodbanks, users can’t afford the elctric to cook it.
I cannot believe what I have just read.If not a spoof then a more apt religious quotation would have to be,’Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do’.If the so called socialist element of BT do not denounce this leaflet immediately then they are truly beyond all hope.
Teachers for Yes was launched at Scotland St School last Friday. They are hopefully taking the arguments into the staff rooms of Scotland as teachers return to work. More power to them.
I wonder if Mr. Whyte will take in his classroom after that classic….
I can’t believe this is being portrayed as something worthwhile having. Foodbanks have no place in a developed country and even one should sound a warning that things are not working.
After WWII a charity was set up to eliminate poverty and its causes.
http://www.waronwant.org/
Make Poverty History?
George Galloway was General Secretary of WoW during a period of ‘less accurate financial behaviour’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Want#History
It would be interesting to see his comments.
Looking forward to the next BBC website HYS on the referendum. Can now point the No’s and Don’t Knows in the direction of the Wee Blue Book.
This worries me slightly, not sure if its possible, anyone care to enlighten me?
“Training Day says:
12 August, 2014 at 2:52 pm
Hmm. I’ve just seen this tweet which I’m presuming is from the English version of the Sun, and refers to the You Gov poll. A ‘surely unassailable’ lead for No.
https://twitter.com/Sun_Politics/status/498715454979178496/photo/1
The rigging of the ballot using MSM polls as the justification looks more likely by the day. Some might say anyway..”
I’m a volunteer at a local food bank and I’m appalled at the sheer impudence of Better Together’s statement.
Since the so-called welfare ‘reforms’ (they don’t do irony) the amount of food parcels issued has risen dramatically.
The sooner Scotland is independent the better as the troughers at Westminster are only concerned about looking after number one.
It would be very interesting to find out exactly WHO is donating to foodbanks. I am pretty certain that it won’t be the rich, but the less-well-off: those with compassion and empathy for their fellow human beings. The woman in a foodbank in Glasgow, who was famously eating beans out of a tin with her fingers, arrived there the following week (when she’d finally got her benefits), left three carrier bags of food on the counter & walked back out again! So much for all the innuendo that people will only go to foodbanks because it’s “free” and the food will be sold on the black market!
Great, will we “enrich” Scotland with workhouses and slums too?
@Stewart_Whyte – One of the most disgusting, inhumane, and morally bankrupt things I’ve ever heard even a Tory spew forth… ” Foodbanks are not a sign of the UK’s failure but of Scotland becoming a normal European country, of religious faith and human compassion”. May your black heart roast in hell Mr Whyte! While the money we pay in taxes to support the poor is, instead, filtered into the pockets of corrupt millionaires YOU have the damned cheek to cite religious faith (factually many are secular!) and human compassion?
big jock @ 2.24
I don’t get it. What’s supposed to be so good about that with only 5 weeks to go? If one chooses to give it any credence that is, of course.
@Lesley Anne, ah know the answer Julie would give me you get the Meat I,LL GET THE FRYING PAN ON she,s still sanctioned herself, so meats a luxury.
Re D Alexander’s claim to be saving Scottish shipbuilding (EBC lunchtime propaganda bulletin).
I would like all these establishment (liars &charlatans) wonders to come down river to Greenock and show us how they saved shipbuilding, heavy engineering, sugar refining in Wee Greenock. Greenock was gutted, cleaned out as a reward for their hard work and suffering.
Come on Danny, Alistair, IDS, Jola, Jaba, Ed, maybe the Tory millionaire from Greenock (the BT guy from bank st) could arrange a guided tour for you, and EBCs Dundee dumplin could report how industrious Greenock looks now that the vultures have done their work, led by “The SCOTTISH Labour Party” and they are proud of what they have achieved. How about it “BETTER TOGETHER UNIONISTS” Lets hear it for the union. Aye BETTER THE GITHER, F OFF.
Plus the fact that Greenock has most of my lifetime been one of the safest parliament. Seats in UK for the Labour Party. We’ve got our reward Ed thanks!
Training Day 2.52pm
The Scotsman ran with that Sun poll yesterday.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/independence-round-up-eu-pound-new-poll-1-3505912
All the polling agencies seem determined to keep the YES vote below 40%, by any means possible.
Their poll results are starting to become an insult to our intelligence. They really do think they are dealing with a classroom full of six year old infants.
I don’t know if I can feel any lower, the fact that even 20% of our population would vote No regardless of the benefits to an Independents Scotland people makes me sick.
When you talk of a people you have to think of ALL the people, those like Stewart Whyte make me despair. For them, as long as their own standard of living is maintained then he must oppose Independence.
It may be that I am wrong and he simply supports remaining in the UK due to his own ideology that corresponds with Westminster and the coalition currently in power.
These people truly believe that “privatisation is good” even if talking of the NHS, Post Office or Utility Companies.
In the case of the Utility Companies, I think it has been show beyond all doubt that privatisation has failed. There is no real competition and prices are raised across the board in agreement with each other.
The thing that really sickens me is that governments allow this while watching these private companies profits increase. When bills become unaffordable for OAP’s they give a “winter allowance”.
Why? I don’t get it, the winter allowance comes straight from the taxpayer into the pockets off the privatised utilities. It’s called lining your pockets.
The majority of the Scottish and British electorate fail to grasp these simple facts. Acceptance of foodbanks is just another ideology that is pushed by the ruling class as acceptable. I know that the majority reading here will not accept this but how to get this to everyone else?
That’s why I despair, we live in a society where the MSM totally serve their masters, the government of the day and absolutely refuse to raise such issues. I hope, and it is a spark of hope that the WBB will have an effect that is enough to carry us over the line.
No matter what happens, this neo-liberal agenda’s time is limited. Foodbanks in the most wealthy countries cannot continue for too long without a backlash.
Scotland and her people voting YES will be the start of the demise of the neo-liberals. There days are numbered, I will do all I can to ensure it starts on the 18th September.
Let’s do it together, don’t waste one more minute to persuade or convince those you may that are undecided. Their is only one path out of this mess.
Just a wee mix of ON topic and OFF topic stuff here folks. 😉
I see Stu has heard about the MASS audience our wee Jimmy had at Eskirne today. In fact there were so many folks there to listen to him he needed a body guard.
http://tinyurl.com/nxkdnut
Following on from the discussions yesterday about how to distribute the WBB I have been thinking about the possibility of putting it, the WBB, onto a flash drive for distribution. Amazon do 512Mb drives for £0.40 each unfortunately they only do orders of up to 24. Oops! I think a wee chat about the WBB will be happening at YES South Annandale tomorrow night with a view to possibly trying to get around 500 of these flash drives out of Amazon. Could be fun. 😛
http://tinyurl.com/n6do5y2
Finally back on topic here. I heard about this poor wee soul yesterday and was wondering if he lives anywhere near a food bank. Apparently he is in a job where he is having serious financial problems making ends meet. This is from the Telegraph.
http://tinyurl.com/lcg88ct
@Robin Ross
Thanks for that information and I agree with your assessment. There are after all reasons why the libel against Marie Antoinette that she said ‘let them eat cake’ was made precisely because it had traction in the mass of people because of conditions that required soup kitchens. You cannot untie the two.
People who are in serious want of food often don’t have the energy to get angry so it behoves the rest of us to get angry for them. Fortunately we don’t need to make and man the barricades anymore. We can simply put a cross next to Yes next month. Then the likes of Stewart Whyte will be free to put their odious viewpoint and be soundly outvoted and hopefully roundly shamed.
Foodbank is just the modern name for Milady’s Bounty. Thankee kindly Ma’am, tugs forelock.
We’ll soon be back to the grand old days when the state pension was paid at 80 and only to persons of good repute! Think of the power sitting on the “reputation” committee /* wets himself in excitement */
( /* refused pension : wets himself in public */ Oh the power! )
Or even further back to the poorhouse; shuffle all those single pensioners in and that’s free personal care and the housing shortage solved. Taxes down, hooray.
Carry on “progressing” like this and we’ll be back to 1706 and in a independent Scotland before you know it
Papadox
I feel your pain matey. Thousands of shipbuilding and engineering jobs, all gone, under Better Together.
Do you know anything about this up and coming debate?
“A REFERENDUM debate between two Greenock-based MSPs is ON — after Labour’s Duncan McNeil said ‘yes’ to the challenge laid down by SNP man Stuart McMillan.”
http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/greenock/articles/2014/08/05/505977-msp-mcneil-agrees-to-referendum-debate-challenge/
handclapping says:
Its no good having fresh meat at foodbanks, users can’t afford the elctric to cook it.
Aye you’re right hc. I wanted to put a wee emoticon here but can’t decide whether I should use :p for a sarcastic laugh or 🙁 because of the whole sadness of the ridiculous situation. Think I’ll stick with this. 🙁
ronnie anderson says:
@Lesley Anne, ah know the answer Julie would give me you get the Meat I,LL GET THE FRYING PAN ON she,s still sanctioned herself, so meats a luxury.
I remember reading recently that she had to use her own foodbank recently ronnie. This is just an utterly intolerable situation. NO ONE should be pushed into a situation where they are so desperate that they need to go to a food bank. My heart goes out to Julie and everyone else who a) works in a food bank because the fear and upset they see day in day out must really be heartbreaking and b) everyone who finds themselves pushed into the intolerable situation of having to rely on food banks to survive!
It would be very interesting to find out exactly WHO is donating to foodbanks.
Ordinary folk, Ann.
Some of the supermarkets have an arrangement where they allow FB volunteers to pass out leaflets to shoppers, asking them to buy and donate a few (listed) items during their shop. The supermarkets usually match what is raised and/or donate more to the cause. Sure there are also big donations, but the fact that volunteers are willing to spend hours of their time, and ordinary people, probably with tight budgets to balance themselves, are willing to help out by buying and donating a few items, is quite a humbling experience.
And another unbelievable stat out of the Social Attitudes Study was that we are actually feeling MORE British than the last time they asked us.
http://www.research-live.com/news/scottish-referendum-campaign-divides-opinion/4012100.article
Must have been the hijacking of the Commonwealth Games by Gary Lineker and the English Broadcasting Corporation that swung it.
@ Leslie-Anne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00J86DH9I/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&psc=1&s=computers
You can select different colour too.
Been over to see a housebound neighbour, Vote Naw stickers on his door. I said who put them there, he denied any knowledge but he admitted he was a no, he had always told me he was undecided before, I think it was the debate that done it, saturation propaganda appears to be working. Good news is that it didn’t take much to get him back to undecided, I will leave the Wee Blue book to do the rest.
BTW when I was talking about Oil (He is an ex merchant marine skipper)he told me that back in the seventies he had drilled in Kilchattan Bay, Off Hunterson and Lamlash on Arran looking for oil, other ships were drilling in some of the sea lochs. He said Oil deposits were found.
I doubt he was drilling for oil/gas, the type of ships he worked on could not do that, so I presume that it was some sort of survey work to find out types of rock etc , maybe taking up some core samples. Anyway I had not heard of that before. Before people start jumping in about oil off Arran, no wells have been drilled in the block due south of
Kildonan and East of Sanda. There were seismic studies in the area but as far as I am aware no actual drilling rigs of ships have been operating in the area.
Suppose we can take that as a sort of Union Bonus, because if they had not blocked oil exploration in the Clyde , it would have all been sold off at about $20 per barrel now its worth more than 5 times that!!!
@ caz-m, that’s where vote Nob orders.com grassroots founder’s from, Malcolm Orford, good highers, Law at Embro, City of London bank, bish bosh millionaire, advising other millionaires neat ways to dodge teamGB tax.
this may have been mentioned. small joys, but @ least he admits scotland is a COUNTRY and not a region.
a country that needs to leave the WM “union”, and be free to join any other unions it chooses to, as will be soon our sovereign right to do.
The UK as a whole is falling apart! Independence is coming folks… bet on it!
@ Annie Lawrie – your tale about the lady eating beans out of a tin with her fingers made me gasp with the pain of her humiliation – it is appalling for Scots today.
On topic
Have you noticed that, even the BT Trolls refuse to defend this abomination.
What level of Lunacy in the Education Boards,Head Teachers,NUT etc allows this Muppet to teach children anything.?
If anyone should be an ancestor – it`s Stewart Whyte – ex-school teacher.
@joe kane says: 12 August, 2014 at 2:00 pm:
IDS, the University of Perugia’s greatest living alumni.
Thing is, Joe, IDS actually didn’t go to the University of Perugia. Here is the stone cold truth. Found out by a BBC investigation
Here’s the truth : – he attended St. Peter’s RC Secondary School, Solihull, until age of 14. Then HMS Conway, (a Royal Navy training school on the Isle of Anglesey), until age 18. He lied about The Uni of Perugia but attended the language school, “Italian Università per Stranieri”, for only a year but obtain no qualifications nor finish any exams. He then went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and got a commissioned into the Scots Guards. His biography, on the Conservative Party website, wrongly claimed he was “educated at Dunchurch College of Management” but a BBC investigation showed he did not get any qualifications there. He only did six different courses lasting a few days each, (about a month in total. Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom Duncan Smith worked in the 1980s. His only real qualification was that Sandhurst commission in the Scots Guards.
I kid you not.
Lesley-Anne
At times you feel like telling Jim Murphy to give up on his Grand Tour because he is making a complete arse of himself, but then you realise that you would be robbing yourself of thirty minutes of comedy gold every night.
@Thepnr says:
I know those feelings well all i can do is pick myself up dust myself down and get on with it.
Remember reading something from Ian Hamilton QC about how down he could get about other peoples apathy. I am the same. However the one thing I am certain of is Scotland will be free, I hope we get to enjoy it. But it is coming of that I have no doubt.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in his class room. ‘The poor are poor because they are wicked’ and ‘put them in the prison hulks-that’ll sort them.’ It’s only a matter of time before they bring back deportation to the Colonies. Oh sorry, I forgot, this is the Colonies!
Where’s his Christianity?
@ Liquid Lenny, even if the west coast has oil, most of the North Sea platforms are past their use by date and need replacing. The first rig I ever threw tongs on was the Fulmar 150 miles out from fcuking Dundee! Anyway that jacket was built by Macdermott up at Ardersier, an area now surrounded by foodbanks.
Meanwhile Keverna in Norway are hard at werk building new jackets for BP, Claire deep water production, each platform is about £4 billion each. It’s Scotland’s oil, so why can’t they build the platforms in the Highlands and the Clyde. Oh sorry, we’re BetterTogether for that broad shouldered, pooling and sharing, punching above our weight etc
If we vote No, we’re never going to make it back.
Everyone in Scotland should “like” kvearna and watch as our country swills down the drain and thick, greedy old teachers tell our kids soup kitchens are normal
https://www.facebook.com/kvaernerasa
p s there is a petition re david clapson change.org who died of ketoacidosis. his benefits were sanctioned, and he could not afford to keep his insulin cold, so it stopped working.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/killed-benefits-cuts-starving-soldier-3923771
http://www.nrk.no/rogaland/oljefelt-_nesten_-uten-utslipp-1.11818954
And we shall build a new Jerusalem on England’s green and pleasant laaaaaaaaand,
With Sottish taxes and of course, it’s not their oil, because we need it and they are finished…
Skip_NC says: 12 August, 2014 at 2:13 pm:
“The USA introduced a health insurance”
Yes, I know, but it is NOT a compulsory Health Insurance and people must sign up to it. Thus it is just the same old scheme as it still means if you have no funds, (and the USA has a rather large poor class), you cannot pay health insurance and you are back to the poor quality Federal tax funded scheme.
Wanton, if you want to hear the story from the horse’s mouth so to speak, sorry Julie 😉 , watch this video. Julie recounts what happened at around 5 Minutes 15 seconds.
http://tinyurl.com/opmsrtf
caz-m says:
Lesley-Anne
At times you feel like telling Jim Murphy to give up on his Grand Tour because he is making a complete arse of himself, but then you realise that you would be robbing yourself of thirty minutes of comedy gold every night.
I have to admit caz that no matter how bad a day I’ve been having I always know that at some point my heart is going to be lifted courtesy of one Jim Murphy and his gang of dumbledorks! 😛
heedtracker
see this vid BP must have made it for fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZlMLmbgQ4&feature=youtu.be
commencing 2016, full flow est 100000 BOE/day 2020 on.
http://www.kvaerner.com Scotland, Gizza job! We can do that! One £4 billion fabrication contract and teamGB can stick their pissy little boats where the sun don’t shine. Portsmouth:D
The deputy first minister announced £518,000 in funding aimed at tackling food poverty for 26 projects across Scotland.
So what was Nicola Sturgeon thinking when gifting £518,000 to such social enterprises.
That money would have better spent in the Scottish Welfare Fund where allocation is accountable and not squandered in the arbitrary pockets of some self advancing social entrepreneurs.
Lesley-Anne
“I see Stu has heard about the MASS audience our wee Jimmy had at Eskirne today. In fact there were so many folks there to listen to him he needed a body guard.”
http://tinyurl.com/nxkdnut
Sometimes you feel like telling Jim Murphy to give up on his Grand Tour of Scotland because he is making a complete arse of himself.
But then you realise you would be robbing yourself of thirty minutes of Comedy Gold every night.
@caz-m says:
Thanks for the heads up re McNeil debate will be watching out for that. Had dealings with Mr McNeil before? He did very well out of the demise of the yards, never looked back you could say.
Aye Dunky as one door shuts another opens.
Or for most of the guys in the yards one door shuts and another one closes. If your a punter.
Gonna gie us one o’ they grand tour thingy’s doon here Jimmy. I could dae wi’ a guid laugh! Better still gonna dae one richt ootside one o’ they *ahem* necessary food bank thingys cause I’m sure abdy inside would love yer patter an’ jokes as weel! 😛
Anyone remember the New Labour Govt – “Ethical Foreign Policy”?
When today Lamontable and Jaggy celebrate Foodbanks at HOME in Scotland and elsewhere as the inevitable “Progress” of a Cating, Sharing Society.?
With every word,with every inane statement they make, they denigrate and abuse the work of real Socialists like Clement Attlee and Crawford Beverage who instigated the Welfare State and the NHS.
Lamontable and Jaggy despicably insult the Memories of all our parents and grandparents who fought a World War – then Paid for those Mythical “Homes Fit for Heroes”.
SLAB SCABS – a fitting insult for the dying Party that promotes Starvation – in Summer. Winter waits.
Lest we forget, it was Darkling and Krash Gordon who worked to put US where we are. Lizard Lickers.
@ fred blogger, stunning eh? The lying bastards have got away with it If Prof Currtice/BBC goonshow works.
We got told North Sea oil would run out by 1999 and it was as a worry for obvious reasons and a massive fraud for even more obvious reasons.
Cameron was up in Shetland to see first hand just how big NOT Scots, UKOK oil is now and how big it’s going to be, for his Tory boy CEO’s and Norway too. Fcuk the Scottish region. To be honest if the BBC, the cringers and the loyalists pull it off, we deserve everything we will never get, if you catch my drift.
Biggest swindle by TeamGB since the last one, oh but AlicSamin lost to Alistair Darling so I’ll be voting No, please may I have my handout England?
Food banks are the new welfare state whereby the Government still collects your taxes but instead of some of that going towards the welfare state as was, they keep it all relying on peoples generosity, no, not generosity, rather sense of humanity in helping to feed those that are not well enough off to support themselves.
This seems to be part of a bigger plan to rewind things to where they were before the welfare state came into existence.
P R D
the scottish welfare fund is for entirely different purposes, and one can get it inspite of getting food from food banks.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/welfarereform/scottishwelfarefund
Check out the staggering scale of oil expro investment alone in Norway
http://www.kvaerner.com/Products/Jackets-new/
And here we sit and watch whole families going hungry because it’s school summer holidays and Labour in Scotland after 70 years of right to reign over runs have an ugly ranting trougher on his 100 towns world tour demanding we never change or if we take him at his word, they might go easy on us with the freebies. This is not the Scotland I grew up in.
Tian Tian the Panda is pregnant, that’s got to be a lucky omen.
Our very own Prince/Princess,
“We’d rather have a Panda than a Prince”. (Tartan Army Song).
I think it should be called “Independence”
Heedtracker is right. Like him I was in the offshore oil industry for twenty-five years and spent time on massive concrete platforms at Ardyne point for Shell, floating platforms at Hunterston for Britoil, massive steel jackets at Methil, Ardersier and Nigg, and the Daddy of them all- the Ninian Central platform at Loch Kishorn, whch at the time was the largest structure ever moved on the face of the earth. All built by skilled Scottish engineers.
All this skill was abandoned when it was found cheaper to build in Korea and China, but in Norway the skills were nurtured and the yards kept open with steady orders, although they used overseas yards to cope with peaks in demand.
This is an exact parallel with our shrivelled shipyards -Scotland lives on MOD scraps and Norway has a healthy competitive shipbuilding industry.
Well to be fair to Westminster Jim they do need every penny they can get hold of you know. I mean what with their two, cheap at half the price, aircraftless aircraft carriers still in production, Cross Rail and everything else they need to find the money from somewhere don’t they? Who better to step up to the plate and *ahem* offer to fill the financial gap but the poor, ill, infirm, disabled, elderly, jobless, low paid. I mean they get money and what on earth do they do but squander it needlessly on irrational things like light, heating and food. Who on earth do these people think they are for gawd’s sake? 😛
@Greannach says: 12 August, 2014 at 2:29 pm:
“So Scotland is almost 20 times more normal than Germany?
It is worse than that as the German schemes are nothing like the Scottish Food-banks. They are more a sort of community co-operative. They run them as a sort of community bulk purchas scheme of signed up members. A bit like the community store in Staffin on Skye.
We used to have friends in Staffin and went on holidays there in our caravan or camper-van. We would load the van up with things like cartons of corned beef and just charge the community store what we paid for them. That was before they built the bridge, though.
Radical Independence 2nd National Mass Canvass results, 6/8/14:-
Total Number of Respondents: 5089
Areas Canvassed : 42
Canvassers : 587
Yes 42%
No 28%
DK 30%
Excluding Undecideds:-
Yes 59.8%
No 40.2%
Alternatively, you could just think about yourself and hang society, as it doesn’t really exist. The Wicked Witch of the South abolished it in the 1980s, apparently.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2095909/How-pay-21-tax-100-000-income-child-benefit–IR35-rules-explained.html
First they came for the Disabled and I did not speak out because I was not Disabled.
Then they came for the Poor and I did not speak out because I was not Poor.
Then they came for the Old and I did not speak out because I was not Old.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
heedtracker
‘kin better than that, this is part 1 link, in part 2 link, it explains that, said before clair usurped it, the biggest oil field in the world is west of lewis and west coast of scotland in general.
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/06/11/the-real-state-of-scotlands-oil-and-gas-reserves/
btw we can do all the manufacturing in scotland, absolutely we can.
@caz-m
The Panda should be named something Chinese & Scottish
Free-Dohm
That is excellent Desimond! 😉
O/T anyone understand this, or where it comes from, just noticed someone link to it on YES Scotland page.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu2XM9MIAAAG_mK.png
MacDermott at Ardersier was and is perfect expro fab and Nigg too but its closed in a bit with Cromarty Gap.
One great fraud they tried to pull off via far right Press and Journal, no doubt that scrote up there’s an avid reader, was a highland spaceport was coming to the old MacDermott site, well wasteland now.
So now ConDem’s reneged on their “we pledge we won’t shut down RAF bases in Scotland” then they shut Kinloss, so it must be murder trying to make a living up there, thus foodbanks.
Fine if you’re loaded or a job for life History teacher insulated like a champ in Aboyne and love Scotland as a proud Scots but.
Anyone believe this…
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/blair-mcdougall-bt-received-so-many-small-donations-after-tv-debate-weve-as.1407859832
Latest from BT is that they are claiming that they had so many donations they are asking people to stop sending them money !
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/blair-mcdougall-bt-received-so-many-small-donations-after-tv-debate-weve-as.1407859832
Another publicity stunt, but if they think it”s all over they have a shock coming their way on 18th Sep.
It’s the Bain principle gone mainstream.
I think Mr Whyte needs to look at ‘his’ history of foodbanks.
Think someone posted this on another link but worth it again.
Denis Curran hard-hitting and speaking the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ZMwp1elXw
I work p/t in an Edinburgh Foodbank, so many myths, the reality Mr Whyte is oh so different. I think Denis Curran sums it up better than I ever could.
“It would be very interesting to find out exactly WHO is donating to foodbanks.”
Anyone can make donations can be made thru churches, supermarket collections, other collect as individuals, sports groups, schools, company collections can be dropped off directly at Foodbanks.
That piece of media guff is obviously from a very bitter Better Together person Jim doing their *ahem* to spread the lies about c.u.
Well that news is in the Herald Nana so it must be true. Aye right. Is the Herald really try to tell us that Better Together would ask folks to STOP making donations, pull the other one guys it’s got bells on! 😛
@heedtracker says: 12 August, 2014 at 2:54 pm:
“DR boosts Jaky Baillie and fellow unionist of the Tory boy up there, who is certainly not going without ever sez”,
I imagine that if Jackie Baillie and and Carmichael both went on the same diet as Alex Salmond there would be enough food left over to end the need of at least half the Scottish food banks.
@Jim McIntosh
That look like a threat.
@Lesley-Anne
It seems they are going to press ahead re debt.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/scottish-government-advisers-pressed-on-snp-debt-stance.1407858314
@ fred blogger, its all there in black and white but never reported by teamGB media for again, obvious reasons
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/06/11/the-real-state-of-scotlands-oil-and-gas-reserves/
Another mind blowing fraud is oil field decommissioning costs and how Scotland needs the broad shoulders of England to help pay for it all, which is one of the biggest most unsubstantiated political frauds Westminster/BBC are trying to get away with, since the last one, a half hour ago.
jim McIntosh not true as the uk govt via danny alexendria have already accepted responsibility for uk’s debt post indy.
can’t find the link or i’d post it.
I wonder how long it will be before food collected at a foodbank will be treated as “income” and the value of it deducted from benefits. I heard recently of a person who was quizzed about the number of rabbits he had trapped as he should have been declaring the value as “earned” when he was only trying to supplement his family’s diet with some meat which they could not afford to buy. Victorian values are coming back into vogue.
I’m not the most intelligent person on here Nana but I think even I know that if Westminster continue down their “No to a currency union” theme then it is patently obvious that we are going to use £ without a currency union. This quite clearly means we take NOTHING from WM in terms of our *ahem* share of THEIR debt! Now call me stupid, you’re STUPID 😛 , but as far as I can see that is pretty much as clear as a glass of pure Scottish water. 😉
@fred blogger.
WoW! Fred that’s one hell of big oilfield that’s coming online in 2016, no wonder Westminster is desperate to keep Scotland in the UK. Watch out for the next McCrone Report, saying the massive oilfield doesn’t exist.
Where’s Denis Healy, when you need him, I can hear Margaret Curran saying Denis, who?.
I was happy that I enjoyed a nice lunch with my family earlier but now I come to think of it, had I been unemployed or on a zero hours contract struggling to make ends meet, up to my eyeballs in debt and with absolutely zero prospects for the future; struggling to the extent of being unable to provide for my wife and kids – what paradise it would be to enjoy the charity of others and, in meekly accepting their generous offerings I would be doing them a turn by making them feel better about themselves!
WE’D BE BETTER TOGETHER!
UP is down, black is white, oil & gas reserves are bad and food banks are good in this deranged moral swamp the No campaign is trying to drown us all in. An educated man, an educator should be ashamed to make such offensive views public to further his cause.
He’s wrong – vote Yes.
heedtracker
the decommissioning by National Coal Board the UK had to pay for. but as the oilfeilds are NOT nationalized (as yet), the exploiter will pay it is that simple.
I got this wrong, this Stewart Whyte stuff is open to all on Better Together Aberdeenshire Facebook page, where anyone can access it. I thought Teachers were not allowed to engage in this kind of thing. Or have I got that wrong?
The Workhouse is up the road to the right.
@Nana Smith
they print these lies in order to rile us. I will not fall for it. I will be and am angry but will channel that towrds gaining more votes for Yes.
Their desperation stinks as much as their rotten lies.
Concentration or Labour Camps where invented by the British does that make them a good thing.
Racism is quite common in the UK and on the continent but not something that should be celebrated. Just because it has become the norm does not make it right, highly moral or justifiable. Food banks in the UK are a necessity because people cannot afford food. It is fantastic that there are people so generous of heart that they provide for the needy. They certainly don’t do it so they can get a pat on the back from the useless Westminster government.
So @fred blogger like Nicola Sturgeon’s £518,000 funding for food banks does that mean in principle you support food banks.
Which is it to be the privilege of stale bread and a out of date tin of beans or an equitable Scottish Welfare Fund?
the art of sanctioning by the dwp, or how to get a M&S vocher without really trying http://dwpunspun.org.uk/sanctions
@Jim McIntosh. The UK have to cover the debt they are legally responsible for it. Scotland wont pay any of this debt directly in any scenario. Scotland can have an agreement to pay a share of this to the UK and the UK pays the lenders.
The situation is clear. Scotland must get a fair pro rata share of the Assets to agree to take on debt on the same basis. Not everyhing can be really split exactly this way so there has to be some horse trading.
However if there is No agreement and the independence date arrives then we don’t take on the debt and we don’t get asset shares either OR it could be done partially for aspects that can be agreed upon.
The UK or Scotland can go to ICJ but it won’t be about debt dumping it would be as a third party arbitrator looking at all sides of the disagreements. Nothing they can decide would be binding in any case. However I don’t think this would be good for either side.
This linked story is a bit of a deflection because the fact is that Sterling is in any case a shared asset as is the BoE. While a currency Union cannot indeed be forced the UK can’t just take all either. A compromise needs to be found.
I think they will come up with something that is very like a full currency union without calling it a currency union (to save face). Eg. Certain decisions will remain under Anglo control and Governance.
P R N
no! i don’t support poverty enabling, but if you can come up with a plan before the next meal is due, i’d like to hear it.
the 2 issues are completely separate. unless you want global food aid to carry accountability, which i don’t. but i know that it already is btw.
Another person in England, a woman, commits suicide thinking she’d have to move because she couldn’t afford the Bedroom tax. Thank you Duncan Smith
Vote No for assisted suicide.
@fred blogger
These disgraceful examples of the sanctioning of benefits resulting in the huge rise in food banks is why we need to govern ourselves.
This will continue and more likely increase no matter who forms the government in 2015 for the UK.
Labour have admitted themselves that “they will be harder on welfare than the Tories”. No one wishes to take care of the most vulnerable in our society under aa westmister Parliament.
Our only option is to vote YES and make these decisions for ourselves. The irony is that USA and UK are dropping food and water in Iraq to take of the crisis that is totally of their own creation in the name of humanitarian aid.
How more hypocritical can you get. Get shot of these bastards leading this country down the long road to hell.
@Nana smith
Nope, I don’t believe it for a second, although The Herald accepts the claim without demur. Still some people on our side buy the odious rag.
Although the point needs reiterating that BT don’t need small donations, as they have unlimited funding via the UK government.
@Thepnr
Agree 100%
Thepnr
yes and it’s unbelievable that iraq was not bombed with food, by bush et al.
the rest is history, well not quite here we are again firing up the jets. “where have all the flowers gone”.
heedtracker
I worked for Occidental and the Piper Alpha was having corrosion issues long before its sad demise.
But your right, most in the North Sea will be well by there sell by date.
Anyone
What’s that sentence that was used in the past to refresh the page when the DDOS attacks were ongoing and didn’t disrupt the thread?
@Scottish_Skier
Welcome back
You have no idea how uplifting your posts are and how much, at certain times, I need them.
Food banks are no more of a sign of ‘religious faith’ than waste recycling banks are. The Christian thing to do is deal with the root causes of poverty, do the difficult things rather than propagate this nonsense.
Cant be long now before Glasgow Council and their UK pals announce rent discounts for Foodbanks…better together and all that, mind your votes wae your own brand beans now
@ manandboy at 10.42
My partner is a manager at Dundee’s most successful state school.
She says your post was a nail on the head job. But there are still many teachers who haven’t got it yet.
How they square voting No with teaching the CfE I do not know.
Thepnr – I think it was pa*ge refr*esh, but replacing the* with letters.
Signs of NO desperation.I just heard Danny Alexander call John Swinney’s proposals for more jobs..”A steaming pile of nonsense” Such intellectual poverty and offensiveness in a supposed senior member of the British Government is beyond belief.
I used to get annoyed at people calling him Beaker,well call him what you like now. The Liberal Democrats are beyond redemption and their support for Tories like the BT teacher is awful.
The Labour party supporters must see that a YES vote is the only good vote.
@Scottish_Skier
Welcome back
Thanks. Been on hols and catching up with work now.
I post more detailed polling thoughts on Scotgoespop as this place is getting busy and my longer spiels will just get lost / not make any sense when they’re mixed in with other discussions.
There’s good poll related discussion on SGP. Well worth people visiting for more detailed polling discussions.
David Doherty
food banks are caused by crushing humanity. imo scotland could, should be @ the forefront of perma-culture, green technologies. but 1st people need land rights. there is an amazing world waiting for us out there, post indy. i like the work of the jimmy reid foundation.
Stand by your beds folks, this month’s referendum *ahem* debate is on BBC 2 at half past eight from Inverness! I wonder if our wee *cough* friend from the last Question Time will be there and if he is will he be given any prominence. 😛
Think you need to pick a number these days and then wait to be called to the desk to post on here these days SS. 😛
Fat pig.
Are there still people in Scotland who will read this Better Together ‘history lesson’ and say, yes that makes sense, food banks are a sign of progress in Scotland under the union?
It would be a good idea to print and distribute these leaflets to students of Aboyne Academy, together with the Yes opinion on food banks.
Have a heart folks, times are hard even for Tory MPs. Mark Simmonds MP is calling it quits because he can’t survive on £89000 plus £27000 expenses. Oh! And his wife claims a £25000 salary working for him! That’s a total of£141000 folks!
@Lesley-Anne 7:01pm
Latest referendum debate- watched Reporting Scotland and according to Lady Bird the panel includes Angus Robertson, Ken Stott, Blair McDougall, Danny Alexander and Nicky Marr. Host is James Cook.
I hope they have all read the Wee Blue Book!
The end of the welfare state in Scotland under Tory (choose whatever colour you like) rule is very near, in the event of a No vote.
And there are so many people who are refusing to abandon a sinking ship. They ARE too stupid.
And another unbelievable stat out of the Social Attitudes Study was that we are actually feeling MORE British than the last time they asked us.
Be careful with that. People don’t change their natID on such short timescales. They do however change what they say based on perceived acceptability; you see that in the long term patterns, notably since 2007.
The SSAS Moreno Question actively pits Scottishness against Britishness. You can’t say you are Scottish without actively rejecting Britishness. If you do the latter, you open yourself up to ‘what’s wrong with British people? Are you anti-English?’
What’s happening is people who are Scottish only are saying erm ‘equally Scottish and British’ whilst looking shifty right now because you are a xenophobic nazi if you are Scottish only and thinking about indy.
This has happened before, e.g. after 2007. Of course in 2011 when it was ok to be Yes, numbers returned to normal.
Last years (that or the one before) SSAS also looked more British. However, when you analysed the sliding scale question they asked (1-10 Britishness and 1-10 Scottishness or similar), it showed that natID hadn’t changed; people were just responding more cautiously / white lies when asked the more direct Moreno question.
the trussel trust was warned off linking “reforms” to food banks we’ll shut you down. it is also my recollection oxfam were also warned off.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trussel-trust-row-foodbank-vouchers-altered-after-closure-threat-was-made-9536238.html
Looks like we could be in for some fun and games tonight NoNoNo particularly if Angus picks wee Danny up on his wee letter to Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru. 😛
In a letter to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has confirmed that the policy of the UK Government was to prevent parts of the UK from setting independent tax rates in each band to prevent one part of the UK benefitting “at the expense of the UK as a whole”.
You can read the whole article over on Newsnet NoNoNo here.
http://tinyurl.com/qh248po
NO campainers delivering leaflets in my street just now,ah never goat wan, ah wuner hows no
Haven’t gone through all the comments but BT/UKOK/NO Thanks have been given ” gloat ” space in an ill advised Herald article.
It appears soooo many small donations came in after the debate that Blair McD has asked folk to stop sending them in – and the band played believe it if you like!
Quite what the editor says to the owners about diminishing sales of the once wonderful Glasgow Herald is of considerable interest to me.
Perhaps the American public is less discerning than Scots and the American owners will be mollified by the old excuse of ,” it’s the internet you know”.
Personally , I’d pull the plug and cut my losses.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/12/better-together-campaign-asks-people-stop-sending-small-donations
More pathetic cynical propaganda from bettertogther Graun. How close is the nearest new normal foodbank to blythswood square HQ?
There is something TERRIBLY WRONG if, in a modern European country, so many people have to turn to charity for the most basic human need.
Alarm bells should be ringing and the SNP (and others) are absolutely right in pointing out this disgraceful situation.
These Better Together activists and leaders are the most disgraceful people on earth.
Evenings worth of ferocious Jim Murphyesque savagery here, if you’re a masochist, some larfs though if you’re not hungry tonight and voted Labour in Scotlandshire.
https://id.theguardian.com/profile/tellen1/public
eg, Murphyesque CiF Guardian rage when little old lady asks you a question and you don’t want to answer her
Have at it Jim:D CiF for the practicing of new soapbox material, well not new, tweeking.
“Yet another SNP follower doing down Scotland and the people of Scotland by suggesting that we’re too ‘scared’ or too ‘stupid’ to realise what’s ‘behind the curtain’, or that we ‘lack confidence’ or don’t have any ‘self esteem’.
I’m sick of their continual negativity and constant claims that the people of Scotland are too poor, too wee, too stupid and too scared to go for independence – its nothing to do with any of those things and everything to do with the SNP’s utter failure to answer the questions or show that independence will be any better than what we have.
Indeed the only people who are too scared, lack self esteem and have no confidence are the SNP followers, who are so weak-minded and insecure and incapable of looking after themselves that they have a constant victim mentality where they always blame others for their failures and they rely on the comfort blanket of believing that a yes vote will magically transform their lives, so that don’t have to actually get up and work hard to transform their lives themselves.”
@Heedtracker,Its the Tallen 1 show on the Guanard lol
@heedtracker
Tellen used to claim that he/she was an independence supporter. I see he/she has given up being a troll and is now openly calling for a No vote!
By the way the Guardian Cif is attracting rabid anti independence posters, they have all come out of the woodwork from somewhere. Any article about Salmond becomes like a lynch mob. These people are literally foaming at the mouth. It is like a Brit nat hate mob ascending from the sewers….As an example I received this as a reply to one of my posts:
SNP have the divine right, I suppose?!
They represent a majority of people who support the Union, as opposed to the nationalists who maybe have 20-30%
And lets not forget where every nationalist leads a country…
Yes I do hate nationalists, I hate every single bigotted, backwards, knuckle-dragging one of them.
If the no vote is so far ahead why do they have to bus in people from England to hand out leaflets and to fill up their tv audiences someone should should ask pro., curtice that ,, by the way papadox I am also from Greenock I was a stager in the glen yard but had to move to England to get work in 1988 Vote yes
Rats in a sack….
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/9578-more-tensions-emerge-within-unionist-ranks-as-senior-tory-calls-for-english-only-parliament
@Rock says: 12 August, 2014 at 7:43 pm:
“There is something TERRIBLY WRONG if, in a modern European country, so many people have to turn to charity for the most basic human need.”
There really seems to be a disconnect between what is really going on and the people in, not just Scotland but, right across the whole United Kingdom. Today an English coroner has ruled that 53 year old Solhull woman Stephanie Bottrill took her own life after climbing over a safety barrier on the M6 Motorway and walking in front of a lorry.
Stephanie left a note blaming government benefit changes. Her family said she was worried after losing £20 per week Housing Benefit to the Bedroom Tax. Apparently she had already attempted to kill herself before.
What’s really gone wrong here is not just the Wesminster system it is the entire country and the people. Why are the people accepting this from those they elected to run the United Kingdom for them?
For Scotland’s sake let we Scots cut ourselves free of this United Kingdom madhouse. “Welfare reforms driving the jobs miracle must continue”, says Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. How do these people live with themselves?
So foodbanks are not a sign of failure? Hmm, I’m not so sure.
Anyone with a modicum of common sense, would agree that the increasing rate of foodbanks cannot, in any way, be deemed a success story.
More foodbanks equates to less money being spent in shops and stores, leading to losses in revenue.
These losses will dictate that cost-cutting measures must be applied, and if the losses are prolonged, this will eventually lead to employment losses.
More unemployment means less money being spent in shops, and with the current UK government’s never-ending attacks on the welfare system and its sanction-imposing obsession, results in even less money to be moved around.
Which means more and more people have to visit foodbanks to feed themselves and/or their families.
And the circle repeats itself.
What a vision for the future!
Vote Yes.
WOW!
Love the first question there.
“Is there any need for alternative to Plan B?”
Methinks someone does buy into BT’s scaremongering. 😛
Keep going Beaker. We all know you always WERE a Twat, currently ARE a Twat and always WILL be a Twat! 😛
Gawn yersel Ken.
We’ll get the pound and messers Alexander, Osborne, Darling and Balls will be picking up their P45! 😛
so is Blair Mc Blabber adding to Darlings statement on the pound has anybody got a copy of the original statement
Robert Peffers
“According to separate research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), around half of the UK’s 13 million people in poverty are in a household where someone works. Between 2008 and 2014 the cost of essentials such as childcare, rent, food and energy have driven up the amount needed by almost a third, it said.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/deprivation-britain-major-new-survey-reveals-that-poverty-is-getting-worse–even-among-working-families-9547039.html doesn’t quite square with ids’s claims.
OPoh James Cook picking up on Alexander keeping going on Panama using the pound. Oops Alexander ya NUMPTY! 😛
just read this article – sorry to lower the tone – gut reaction- what a complete tosser…. the sooner we end the disgraceful treatment of our poorest and neediest the better — vote yes
Gawn yersel Angus straight into the heart of the Libdems with that response!
I’m thinking that the audience in Inverness is definitely MORE in agreement with Angus and Ken than with dunderheid Alexander and McDougall!
What are you watching LA? I’m not keeping up with the speed of the thread…
Typical dork EU imposes the Euro so discussions about pound are null and void, I’m guessing he has never heard about what has happened to Sweden then!
Great answer from Ken regarding NHS
Lesley-Anne dear, could you put the running commentary on Off-topic? Then I’ll be able to follow it properly.
Robert Peffers,
“For Scotland’s sake let we Scots cut ourselves free of this United Kingdom madhouse.”
Precisely.
We have full sympathy for those suffering in the same way in rUK.
But under Westminster’s totally undemocratic system, we will NEVER get a chance to change things for the better.
Labour cannot win without prostituting themselves to the Daily Mail readers of middle England.
Absolutely no chance of creating a more just and equal society within the UK. The Labour part of Better Together knows this perfectly well but they have shown their true colours by protecting their own and party interests rather than protecting the rights of the people of Scotland.
Scotland’s ONLY hope is to break free from this rotten to the core system.
I wonder if Sincerity Jim is on expenses for his touring holiday.
@Lesley-Anne says: 12 August, 2014 at 8:43 pm
@“OPoh James Cook picking up on Alexander keeping going on Panama using the pound. Oops Alexander ya NUMPTY!”
The laughable thing is that Panama’s ecomony is one of the most stable economys in the entire World.
Would that the UK’s was even nearly so stable.
Good grief, Danny Alexander is coming across as even a bigger numptie than usual.
The woman from the courier on referendum debate stated “I am an undecided” I doth think she tells lies. She is a joke she is a NO’er sure as god made little fishes!
When you listen to the no’ers in the audience they would appear to be middle class, snobs and all have very polished accents.
WAS THIS AUDIENCE HAND PICKED AND BY WHOM?
Well, Beaker got a doing there, eh?
Next EBC program: Scotland votes: what’s at stake for the UK.
WHO GIVES A F*** THATS THEIR BUSINESS.
I just wish for once the yes people on the panels would condemn the media bias.
Fairly sure the woman from the courier is a tory.
Rock said:
And there are so many people who are refusing to abandon a sinking ship. They ARE too stupid.
I have met four No voters in the last couple of days, and all they could come up with as justification was “best of both worlds” and “stronger together”. I asked them all to kindly explain what they meant, but none were able to expand on their thoughts. It will be sadder than a Greek tragedy if Scotland is condemned through ignorance. Then again, is that not why our education system is so efficient?
Papadox at9:23
I thought the audience were well briefed and pro-yes.
Alexander trounced by Angus Robertson.
I agree the female panellist is a No voter.
Papadox, I’ve noticed that for a while. Of course, it’s not all one way, but I’ve no doubt that most posh folks and English will vote no. We do have our cousins in Ireland though, although their number isn’t enough, my Irish pal in Glasgow says that all the Celtic forums and Irish expats are 95% if not more,for a yes vote!
Just checked out Radical Indy’s results. This is a class vote. I’ve said it since the turn of the year.
Yes and Radical Indy, we need to get the working class vote out. They are traditionally low turnout voters. We need to continue to chap their doors and and encourage, help them get out.
Yes, I’ve read Marr’s column a few times. Not enough to know if she’s an undecided or not, but it’s not exactly interesting reading.
Didn’t the BBC try to paint Alex Massie (Chortle) as a Don’t Know/Undecided in the Greenock version of this?
I don’t know if this is jut me, but I’d say judging by the snipets and comments from the crowd it was certainly 60-40 towards a Yes vote (be it soft undecided yes, or a strong yes voice).
Workers need to be just smrt enough to opperate the machinery, but any smarter and they become a problem to management.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorism
Looks like Andrew Neil’s programme is a Project Doom for the rUK.
Peter Hennessey bricking it about where they’re going to put Trident and how it won’t be safe. Best to leave it 25 miles from Glasgow then, eh? Beat it…
@CameronB Brodie
“Workers need to be just smrt enough to opperate the machinery, but any smarter and they become a problem to management.”
Wash your keyboard out. 😀
O/T – Anyone asked Alastair Darling what plan B is on Trident?
P.S O/T (Forgot to add that to my text above)
Angus Robertson was excellent. I’m still uneasy about Plan B – part me just wants them to say it’ll Sterlingisation to get out of the way, but I know why Yes/SNP are not coming out with this.
Just worried that we’re going to end up hearing about this the whole time.
There’s no doubt Marr is a No voter. Rubbishing our politicians, ”Who’ll run Scotland?” ”There’s not enough info out there”. What planet is she on? If it’s a yes vote, and we vote Labour in 2016- we’ll probably have some unhappy Westminister Politicians running a country they don’t actually want to be a part of. And as for her other point, christ! She’s a journalist.
Cook – I thought did a decent job. I liked how he stood up to Alexander’s sniding tone towards Panama and asked him what’s so wrong about them, are we bettr than them? Well done to him on that.
Alexander – Major booboo and hopefully we’ll have Vines/quotes/graphics of it up soon. No doubt, some of our hardworking Cybernats will be hard it, but although he mixed his words up – it did make me laugh.
Don’t you love the Libs though? Him going on a speel at the end about it’s great Scotland is having this conversation about it’s future and so on, yet his party in 2007 refused to enter, never mind a coalition, but talks with the SNP due to them wanting an independence referendum.
We should be drilling this home more too to the supporters of us having this ”Conversation”. This is only viable thanks to an SNP majority ( or if we had a SNP/Green/SSP/Indy coalition).
On yerself Scotland!
I think if I hear another berk saying this is like a divorce I will spit.
If it isn’t that its the other insulting analogy of the truculent teenager.
It is NEITHER.
It is my country making its own decisions for better or worse.
It is about my country attempting to right some of the errors and deliberate asset stripping by Westminster.
It is about joining all the other independent countries of the world – not extraordinary, but a state of normality .
And I am truly disgusted by the ” proud Scot but..”
That wummin’ was never an undecided!
“O/T – Anyone asked Alastair Darling what plan B is on Trident?”
“Parp! +blinks furiously+ *points finger* stutters.”
Much like Westminster’s Plan B for Iraq then.
As far as I can see here in Scotland we have hundreds, if not thousands of unemployed University Graduates in EngLit,History, Geog,Journalism, etc who are currently stacking shelves and doing work on Minimum Wage, when they could be doing something special for this wee country that educated them for FREE.
Only this AM I saw a report from the US of where ARTS Students were paying 50 Grand in dollars PER ANNUM for their Education.
Where they RELY on Foodbanks to keep them sustained in the midst of their learning curve.
In the Richest country on the planet.?
Absurdly, the Poorest country, if you are dumb enough to believe BT, CAN/DOES Supply our kids with a CHANCE in life.
FOR FREE.
With all these young people who have a discipined scholarly mind-set in Scotland, I ask myself, where are you in this Historic Debate.?
I want you to Oppose BT and the “DARK SIDE”.
Be different from the rigged concensus of MSM.
Run towards the Light.
Jump into the star spangled manor where WINGS use “vanish” to polish our tarnished feathers.
macart763m
That’s not my opinion and I took to covering my keyboard in clingfilm, long ago. You get some cracking gags here and coffee kills keyboards. 🙂
I will continue to support the SNP after this referendum whatever the result. Could I seriously consider voting labour after this, not a snowball’s chance in hell.
Here’s a question I never imagined asking myself a year ago..
WTF is Poultice doing on Brillo’s programme? 🙂
@Dorothy Devine
Yep, getting fairly sick of those analogies myself. Its simply becoming irritating and fairly condescending now. We don’t need to have either the subject or the process simplified, and we sure as hell don’t need to be treated like children.
Well said.
Further to WantonWampum.
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/research/social-mobility
Re the woman on tonight’s panel – remember the same programme presented Alex Massie as an undecided in a previous edition. She was a No to ensure the BBC’s customary No majority on these panels.
Andrew Neil’s show is fascinating and will no doubt fuel the Guardian CIF for the next six weeks.
Now we have Andrew Neil with the usual myths. When is the truth going to be told? He just said in the same sentence the two quite different terms, “The UK”, and, “British”, while speaking about exactly the same thing and he used both wrongly. First of all the United Kingdom forces are not The British Armed forces because the United Kingdom is not all of Britain. Second of all the United Kingdom is not a country. It is exactly what it says it is – A Kingdom – A Royal Realm and thus the Armed Forces he speaks of belong to Her Majesty. Legally the United Kingdom has only two signatory kingdoms and her majesty is monarch of both. There is thus ne legal reason that the armed forces of that united Kingdom cannot remain Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, The Queen’s Soldiers and the Royal Air Force.
This also applies to the idiotic claim that the bipartite United Kingdom will legally disunite but the three country English Kingdom will remain a United Kingdom while united to no other Kingdom. It won’t for the Treaty of Union is composed of Articles of Union and the first one unites only the two realms and we are both keeping the monarch. It is Article III that is to disunite and that only united the two independent Parliaments.
Go figure.
CameronB , brilliant , I’m off to cling film mine. It has enjoyed too many splutters and some of the keys are sticking due to a very bad habit of eating and drinking while reading
BRILO:
Scotland votes:WHAT’s AT STAKE FOR THE UK?
BETWEEN THE LAST PROGRAM AND THIS PISH. THEY ARE CRAPPING THEMSELVES!
BRILO AN ABSOLUTE CHANCER A MAN LOOKING FOR A PURPOSE IN LIFE. HE IS USELESS.
@CameronB Brodie
That clingfilm is a bugger foooorr sttticking keeeys tgthr. 😀
Dorothy Devine
I’m almost ashamed to say I was only kidding. Oops. It is something I have though of though, so I’d be interested to hear how you get on. 🙂
Does Farage have that pint glass welded to his hand?
@Croompenstein says:
Here’s a question I never imagined asking myself a year ago..
WTF is Poultice doing on Brillo’s programme? 🙂
He has to earn a crust.
I think the answer has just been provided. Sorry again.
Aha! Good old Andrew Neil just let the cat out of the bag as to why Westminster wants to keep its claws in Scotland. Any one want to have a guess what it is? 😛
O/T OMG you must watch Andrew Neil’s program (Scotland Votes: What’s at stake for the rest of the UK), there are some jaw dropping comments.
Brillo’s programme is manna from heaven for the Yes campaign. Nice one Brillo 😀
@Croomp
Poultice is establishment, dont’cha know ?
I wonder if Brillo’s programme was made with some of BT’s millions Croomp but he never told them that the programme would do MORE for the YES side than the NO side. 😛
Oops. What does Cameron do if we vote YES?
Does Cameron resign?
Who would take his place in such an occurrence … Clegg? 😛
@Lesley-Anne
No, no, let me guess.
Its the butter shortbread. 😀
Ha Ha Ha.
Close Macart … Close 😛
So far I find myself enjoying Brillo’s documentary, bar the dimwitted Farage’s contribution.
“It would break my heart to see our United Kingdom separate.” David Cameron.
When an Etonian talks of our United Kingdom he is using the Royal ‘Our.’
@Croompenstein
Yeah! Has Curtice got a good job at the BBBC or what! Bloody Hell he’s on every political programme now! Nearly!
The next few weeks are going to be very hard! Sleepless nights and worry, worry about Sept 18th! Not giving up though! Even after a NO I will still fight for Independence. I’m half English, and always loved them to bits, BUT some of them are really getting me seriously mad! Of coarse I blaming the MSM, but can’t some people just read Wings or another site and get another perspective! Sorry! A rant! That’s what D Alexander on TV does for me!
@Lesley-Anne
I’ve been out for a chunk of the evening so I’ve missed tonight’s debate and didn’t know about oor Andra’s wee prog. I take it from the general tone of comment things went well?
Is anyone else watching BBC2, even in a programme about the effects of independence on the rUK they still can’t help themselves lie.
But the best quote so far is from one lady sitting on the beach, she says “they are not like us anyway, let them have their independence”.
Nice to know what they think of us.
If I’m not mistaken I think quite a few of Neil’s interviewees seem to think Scottish independence will be GOOD for the people in the rest of the UK! 😀
o/t – Really like Andrew Neil’s programme so far. I haven’t heard anything so far that would make an undecided vote No. Shows the UK for what is it – a State with delusions of grandeur in terminal decline.
His interview on Trident must have got a few people thinking. Vote Yes and the UK has no nukes! What a lot of us having being saying for quite some time.He even covered the myth of Scottish Votes meaning perpetual Tory Governments.
Whats got into the BBC tonight?
Oh think you could say that Macart. 😉
To be fair I thought James Cook was far better at chairing the debate tonight than he was last time. Danny Alexander got his earse well and truly skelped by Angus Robertson. Blair whatshisface was his usual bluff and bluster.
There are a further three televised debates to come, first one in two weeks time in Edinburgh then one in Aberdeen two weeks after that finally one in Stirling before the referendum day.
We are to wee, too stupid & too poor, we are a basket case, paupers cadging off mighty England and according to Farrage and a host of other little ENGLANDERS on BRILO’s show they want independence for Engerland. I support them 100%.
So why all the west minster propaganda and dirty tricks to hold onto us. Is it just vindictiveness.
They want rid of us we want to go so why all the hassle. These two program’s on EBC has revamped me ready for the run to the wire. Then some if need be.
@Lesley-Anne
Bugger. Its always when you take the eye off the ball for two seconds. 😛
Hope its on iplayer.
Lesley-Anne
will that be pound sterling?
Alexander looks like a broken man.No matter what way Scotland votes he will be oot.However he will have to live with the lies that he told his fellow Scots for the rest of his life.The general tone I picked up from the audience was that the currency issue was a side show and is losing its momentum.The currency issue will ultimately bury the no vote.
Now we have Neil claiming the myth that Scotland gets a higher per capita funding than the other three countries. We have higher per capita funding because we have more devolved powers from Westminster and that means the funding for those powers has to come with the powers.
Not only that but Westminster funds England as, “The United Kingdom”, not as England and such as the Cross-Rail are funded from Government reserves. As are the London Rail Terminal upgrades, HS rail links, Chunnel – et al.
I was posting on Guardian’s Cif, and a raging British nationalist replied to me saying this:
Gandhi lead India until he got killed by Hindu nationalists.
Mandela was fighting Boer nationalists.
Well done on comparing Alex Salmond to Mandela and Gandhi. Well done.
And I dare you to look at the history of European nationalism.
I would say I am rather proud of being British (and of being of Scottish and Irish descent) but unlike SNP I don’t hate any countries.
I hope to see the destruction of nationalism, the total humiliation of a loathsome, bigoted party that entire raison d’être is the hatred of their compatriots the English for no good reason other than some deranged understanding of history and politics.
p.s. Hows Plan B working out? Is it good? you know having BoE having control over Scottish currency? Paying with grey rUK (not Scottish) money? Unable to join the EU because there’s no central bank? How’s that working out?
I never compared Salmond to Gandhi and Mandela, merely that they were all nationalists of a different variety (size of nations, different contexts etc). Brit nats are obsessed with the Nazis, and linking them with the SNP. Is it better not to engage with them? I am thinking there is not.
So why all the west minster propaganda and dirty tricks to hold onto us. Is it just vindictiveness.
Whitehall might not be 100% open and honest about what they know about the value Scotland’s oil. I might just be paranoid though, as a UK government would never do that sort of thing.
I want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it ?
I was brought up in a poor working class family and I remember what it was like to go to bed hungry but i would have died before I would have gone to a food bank (had they existed). Presumably Mr Whyte will be happy, when the time comes, to have his family depend on food banks to sustain them. His comments go down as one of the most pompous patronising things I have heard said in my life. He has to be kidding. No self-respecting developed country would ever allow its citizens to be dependent on food banks. No child, no child should ever in this country be dependent on a food bank. Damn these people to Hell.
Good start to the week, WBB on Monday, Brillo’s programme tonight let’s hope the FM is on top form on Disreporting Scotland tomorrow night. Wonder if it’s the Big Burd asking him the questions?
Muttley: never compared Salmond to…
I read your exchanges earlier today, Muttley.
You’re dealing with a person of deep-seated prejudices expressed in half-baked baseless history.
Debate and Andrew Neil’s programme both good for Yes.
Feeling more relaxed tonight.
Back to leafletting tomorrow. Goodnight all.
Blimey Milcolm Riffkin and Ian Davidson on the telly talking up devolution.
@kendo – I want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it ?
Stick a feather duster up your arse! 🙂
kendomacaroonbar
several boxes of dates and cork should do the trick.
In the unthinkable event that the nation votes No on 18th September, do the establishment seriously believe that those of us who voted Yes will roll over and forget about independence. Aye right!
Kendomacaroonbar: want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it?
Easy.
You shorten all vowels except ‘o’ which you glide – a dipthong – elongate with a slur in the middle.
Instead of say ‘What one wants to do is…’ you say instead, ‘Wat one wants to-doooo…’
@grousebeater
I prefer your advice 🙂
Re Tellen, I have always felt it was the same chap that used to come here arguing as a Yes as a Green under different guises (all of which names I have forgotten) :/
@ muttley79, tellen Murphy is a cracker but they want it all ways, vote Yes and who the hell do you arrogant bastards think you are or Murphyesque fury vote yes and you’re “the only people who are too scared, lack self esteem and have no confidence are the SNP followers, who are so weak-minded and insecure and incapable of looking after themselves that they have a constant victim mentality where they always blame others for their failures and they rely on the comfort blanket of believing that a yes vote will magically transform their lives, so that don’t have to actually get up and work hard to transform their lives themselves.”
Only a Westminster MP who can see his gravy train coming to the end of the line can get this bonkers.
These are the good times.
I have spent this evening canvassing for RIC for the first time here in Dundee. Had a whale of a time, much easier and more fun than I thought it would be. Didn’t tot up our responses but from memory more Yesses than Noes in a middle class area of detached houses.
Those who have been doing this much longer say the schemes here in Dundee are solid Yes by a big %, well on my small sample the other areas are not far behind.
On the way back noticed a Yes flag has been raised on a house here above the Ferry just this evening while I was out. Well done to whoever that is, good to see.
@Sandra Wilson
He has to be kidding.
Whyte is a Tory. The ones involved in politics, whether it be political representatives or activists, must be mostly social Darwinists if they are coming out with things like this. There is zero empathy or basic humanity in these sentiments. They are appalling. They have no social conscience whatsoever, all they care about is money and power.
@Grouse Beater
This individual has being getting more and more irrational and abusive. I cannot really being arsed with the Guardian Cif Scottish politics coverage if they are going to have these bampots on all the time. They are like a lynch mob, and they are full of hatred and bile. The MSM have no shame, they have built up the cybernat thing to ludicrous proportions. It is the Brit nats who are the extreme ones imo. They are not interested in debating at all.
@kendomacaroonbar
Interesting question. Fraser Nelson is the only person I know who has “achieved” it and he went to Nairn (Nern) Academy
I thought Yes did well tonight in Inverness both in terms of the panel responses but also the audience. But why o why don’t the YEs folk say in answer to the currency question that No always raise is ‘DONT BE SCARED – WE WILL HOLD ALL THE CARDS COME THE NEGOTIATIONS’ – balance of payments (jack), trident (Queen), national debt (King), and transaction costs (Ace)
Mike small on BBC 2 now.
Muttley: They are not interested in debating at all.
They are there to spout only the latest Unionist slogans not to think for themselves, but to do all they can to stop you from articulating your political views clearly.
They hope to derail your train of thought.
Just watched Andrew Neil’s documentary on the Scottish referendum , from a ‘rest of the UK’ perspective
Frankly my jaw was mostly on the floor for most of the programme.
The sheer arrogance from the unionist politicians , academics and military types was breath taking.
Example which jumped out was they were more concerned about the UK, meaning England’s standing in the world would be diminished. The classic was the concern that as an Independent Scotland would take away about 10% of military spending, they would have to increase the budget in England by the same amount in order to keep the same worldly military presence.
In late and didn’t see the debate but looked through the running commentary on the BBC website.
A comment from a viewer caught my attention:
Dougie Harrison: Charities like Cancer Research are not Government run! They can surely operate irrespective of any notional ‘border’?
Can I ask anyone who watched if Cancer Research UK was mentioned by name as being likely to pull out of Scotland in the event of a Yes vote?
This was previously stated by Gordon Brown (via the pages of the Daily Excess) and is (surprise, surprise) a complete lie. I would be grateful if someone who watched could clarify.
In relation to other UK-wide research charities, to the best of my knowledge, only the Wellcome Trust (which is not reliant on the public for its income) has said it would review funding of projects in Scotland.
Thanks.
Early Ball: Fraser Nelson is the only person I know who has “achieved” it and he went to Nairn (Nern) Academy
They are as nothing compared to art critic Brian Sewell. To quote, ‘His accent makes the Queen’s sound common.’
Aye Heedtracker that’s been their narrative and they have not shifted from it one iota. The thing is no ordinary thinking person thinks in these terms.
It’s got nothing to do with their projected view of ‘nationlism’. They have underestimated and been completely outclassed in terms of the issues, issues that are deeply resonant within the souls of people; fairness, justice, kindness.
They have no counter narrative for that, so they stick to their cynical attempts to brow beat the electorate into submission to their ‘superior’ understanding of their one point of view issue. That’s why it’s Alicsammin all the way, meanwhile under their superior radar they have missed the extraordinary capacity of human beings to connect on an authentic level and in effect self organise into what has become one of the most profound peaceful movements this country, nay planet has ever encountered.
The proof of that will be revealed on the 19th September.
Muscleguy
Which area were you in?
K1
that’s spot on! humanity.
@Grouse Beater
He is on to the old Arthur Donaldson/SNP backing Hitler smear now!
Achnababan:
I suggest you discard your Queen. If Trident becomes “negotiable”, there will be a very big fall-off in Yes support.
Andrew Neil produced one of the most balanced programmes of this debate to date – I never thought I would say that!
David Stevenson – Cancer research UK was mentioned by the undecided panellist from the local paper, who was obviously genuinely undecided as she made good points for both sides of the argument. She wondered what would happen to it but I can’t recall an answer.
They have no counter narrative for that, so they stick to their cynical attempts to brow beat the electorate into submission to their ‘superior’ understanding of their one point of view issue
Better Together No Thanks are an nihilist occult terrorist cult. 🙂
I’ll get ma coat.
Also noticed the following comments on the BBC Debate coverage:
At 21.07:
Margaret, Glasgow: It’s worth noting that we’ve only had food banks since Alex Salmond came into power 7 years ago.
At 21.24:
Margaret, Glasgow: SNP are backing away from the oil question (which they used to parade) because its running down.
No prizes for guessing what Mags Curran was doing tonight…..
Since the Big Debate was treated by the media as some kind of wrestling contest (two falls or a submission?), I’d like to suggest, having been very impressed by Angus Robertson tonight, that the rematch could be done in the style of a tag fight with Alex and Angus (The Plan A Team) versus Flipper the Dipper and McDougall the Poodle?
Just a thought.
@David Stevenson
Charities that operate nationally are actually registered in both Scotland and England as Scotland has different charity laws to England.
If they want to pull out of Scotland then they would need to close their operations north of the border, a highly unlikely scenario.
Or an occult, nihilist terrorist cult.
I think you’re getting a wee bit warmer than Macart with your pound sterling suggestion there fred. 😉
I think the whole tone of the debate tonight Big Jock was set with that first question. The guy who asked it pretty well answered the Project Feart “What’s Plan B” boring repetitive question when he said we’ll be using the pound everyone knows we’ll be using the pound. Wind well and truly taken out of Project Feart. 😛
You forgot to add the debate in Inverness there Croomp. WBB, Inverness debate AND Andrew Neil’s “what have they ever done for us” wee programme. Just for once I wish the FM would come out and answer the what currency will an independent Scotland use and say we use the POUND FFS are you all deaf or what? 😛
Achnababan says:
I thought Yes did well tonight in Inverness both in terms of the panel responses but also the audience. But why o why don’t the YEs folk say in answer to the currency question that No always raise is ‘DONT BE SCARED – WE WILL HOLD ALL THE CARDS COME THE NEGOTIATIONS’ – balance of payments (jack), trident (Queen), national debt (King), and transaction costs (Ace)
I think you are close with your suggestions there Achnababan except your suggestion will be missing. Trident will NOT be negotiable, it WILL be gone by 2020 provided there is an SNP government returned to Holyrood in 2016. If we do NOT return an SNP government in 2016 then I do fear what the outcome will be.
I can confirm that Cancer Research UK was mentioned in the debate tonight David, it was actually during the question about the NHS. I admit though I didn’t hear anyone say they would pull out of Scotland if there was a YES vote. I was probably still shouting abuse at Alexander at that point. 😛
O/T – I know it’s not scientific but I notice the straw poll at http://strawpoll.me/2320935 has polled over 14,000 votes now and is remaining at three YES votes for every NO vote.
Clootie says:
Andrew Neil produced one of the most balanced programmes of this debate to date – I never thought I would say that!
Careful there Clootie, I think you’ve been overstretching yourself there. I think a wee visit to the “Darkened Room” is called for here! 😛
Cam…there’s nowt secret about their nihilism.
K1
A positive case for the union is though. 🙂
Genuine…laugh out loud…very good 🙂
The debate in Inverness had a balanced audience and a fair chairman.Angus Rbertson was allowed his share of reply ( mostly) and he shone. The lady pretending to be d/k was a solicitor before becoming a journalist and VoiceOver so should have had the capacity to weigh up arguments .I now question those who say they do not have answers when the UK Government hold the key to truth on Europe and currency but refuse to inform us truthfully because they rely on it to secure a NO result by fear. This and other such sites are overcoming that problem for YES
One argument that I think could have a bit of traction for the wavering and soft No Labour supporters, is to ask them who they think the South of England would vote to be their Prime Minister? Boris Johnston or Ed Milliband.
The expected response is that Boris Johnston is an idiot, which it should be easy to agree with, however point out that the question was which one do you think the South of England will vote for?
The next question is, how well do you think Boris Johnston will look after Scotland once he is Prime Minister?
To be fair Famous I did think that there was one point during the debate when she seemed to be definitely swaying to the YES side. I’m sure she started out as Don’t Know but for me as the debate went on and Alexander got extremely more and more flustered and McDougall joined him in the court of flusterings, she seemed to be giving off an air of being more YES inclined. 😉
When do we go O/T?
By strange coincidence, first mention of Murphy in this thread followed posts on how IDS had no further education quals.
Jim Murphy spent about 11 years as a student, admittedly most of them as student presidents of one form or other, but eventually left the university system san degree.
Unfortunately for him I think it shows Chic. 😛
Inverness did Scotland and Yes Proud Tonight. Thank You. Vote Yes.
One of the more interesting comments tonight was made by Ken Stott (a little too much green room hosp?) when he mentioned that if there’s a no vote the struggle will go on …
Imagine: a post-No scenario with no Scottish Tory MPs, and a landslide UK Tory win, or Tory/UKIP coalition.
Not a very nice thought experiment …
sans even
And there’s a piece on Newsnight just now about the rise in pauper funerals.
So more people living in poverty, then dying in poverty. Jings, this union is fantastic!
Vote Yes.
Paula, we’re coming up to 400 comments. I think you could go for it. 😉
Just finished watching Andrew Neil’s programme and on reflection better than I thought 🙂 but what really annoyed me is referring to Independence as losing Scotland as they lost Ireland.
Neither country will or has been lost, they are not possessions to be misplaced but it does reinforce the fact that the British establishment see both as colonies not countries. 🙁
Andrew Neil is a sleekit git. He knows fine well the economic effect on the rUK would be very significant, especially without a CU.
He knows fine well that Scottish education and health has always been completely independent.
He knows fine well that the effect of independence in Scotland would ultimately be a move to the left in England although temporary triuphalism for Farage, Osbourne and May et al is a likely and amusing interlude.
P45 for Danny Alexander.
On the televised Inverness debate tonight he says that the “NO Campaign are losing the argument”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV20_nrv62Y
@kendomacaroonbar
“I want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it?”
Anally?
FINALLY Calgacus, Danny Alexander tells the TRUTH! 😛
@X_Sticks says:
@kendomacaroonbar
“I want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it?”
Get to be a Scottish Westminster MP, then get promotion from the back benches.
At this stage, something starts to happen to the vocal chords …
O/T in case anybody didn’t see it.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=755976374441579
amazing thought, 2 strokes of a pen in a box, is all it takes, and bye bye WM.
oooops Calgacus MacAndrews got there before me, sorry 🙂
One thing I did notice is that they never got round to mention that there were originally two version of the Union Jack. You could blink and miss it but the second version was flown in Scotland and by the remaining ships in our navy. It’s on the flag blokes tablet and has the Saltire in front rather than behind the St Georges cross. It’s a bit like there being two royal standards each giving the country the Queen is in precedence. The introduction of the St Partick Cross allowed a bit of re-ordering to put us in our place.
Mike Russell is a fair old firebrand, watching the end of the economic opportunities of independence debate, he did not miss and hit the wall.
Jenny Marra is a very bitter woman..wow, just wow !
Q. How do you chat up Jenny Marra ?
A. Bloody carefully…..!!!!!
I got the impression from Neil’s program that he is trying to wake the English up to what Yes really means to the UK.
Whether that is to stir things up or to seek support for the dirty ops to come or both I’m not sure.
Just watched Scotland 2014. Was Sarah Smith cueing Mike Small up to mention the WBB? She asked him where folk could get the facts then followed it with the “37 newspapers…” line. I can’t believe he didn’t take the chance to mention it.
@kendomacaroonbar
“I want to have an accent like Rifkind…how do I go about it?”
You can’t. Not unless you want to risk your sphyncter, trying to get your head in.
===================================
When the opposition try and claim our humanitarian mission in Northern Iraq as a positive for the union, they’ll be ripe for skewering on who the armed forces ‘belong’ to.
Allegiance is sworn to Liz, but they take direction from Westmidden, where we are supposed to be represented, and into who’s exchequer we pay.
And surely,wouldn’t a combined rUK/Scottish effort be able to do at least as much, post Yes ?
=======================================
Imagine the awkward silences at Aboyne Academy, first day back. Karma should see to this charmer. 😉
“Black is white, because I say so.” Better Toogether
If there’s just one thing I’ve learned these last two years it is just how shallow Westminster and our elected politicians are.
They have been exposed, just as Stewart Whyte has as self serving, ignorant and greedy bastards.
I want nothing to do with their type, they don’t represent me.
That it! I was undecided, but now I am definitely voting YES!
P.S.
Just thought I’d try that tactic out to see what it felt like.
I feel dirty.
We keep saying whatever next, but this one is appalling in its sheer arrogance…..trying to ‘normalise’IDS’s foodbank kultur takes the proverbial.
Workhouses and kids up chimneys next. Cretinous buffoon.
All that matters. To some, mainly UKOK’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEu7fcjgWK0
So if foodbanks are merely normalisation with Europe, at what point do the Israelis start shelling us for some normalisation with Gaza?