The how and the why
With selections ongoing and an election approaching, there’s an opportunity to reflect on how SNP M/SPs are elected and their role in those offices.
As the party’s grown the numbers in elected office have increased, but some aspects remain constant: it’s the party that puts you in and it’s independence that’s the cause.
There are individuals who carry a significant personal vote. The late Jimmy Reid was one of them but even his persona and an election in the aftermath of the UCS work-in was unable to see him win, with the Communist Party label attached to Jimmy being enough to see a comfortable victory for a Labour MP who few recall.
Margo McDonald and Jim Sillars’ personalities may have been the X-factor when it came to the SNP winning Govan by-elections, but even the former was unable to buck the trend in Hamilton when the party’s vote was falling.
So it’s not the individual but the party that matters. Many outstanding individuals have been unsuccesful SNP candidates. It wasn’t inability that saw them lose, but the party’s standing when they contested. When some arrogantly tell activists they’ve been once, twice or even six times elected they forget to add it was the party label that did it. From some a bit more humility would be appropriate.
That also explains the shenanigans ongoing in selection processes. Some now know that it’s the SNP ticket that gets you elected and have come on board. It’s the price of political success but it’s why internal democratic electoral processes become essential, and the party’s damaged by anything that detracts from that.
Zipping and allocated positions are perfectly acceptable but transparency in process and a democratic decision remain fundamental. It’s the absence of the latter that’s currently causing discord.
Likewise, whilst the party makes selections and is the core of activity, electoral success is founded on a far broader base. In every election support still extends far beyond activists, never mind the membership – nobody ever won a seat on party-member votes alone. So it’s not you but us, and not just the party but the whole movement, that puts you there. That should never be forgotten, by candidates or by the party.
But once you’re elected, what’s the role? There’s clearly a difference between being in opposition or in administration, as there is between Holyrood or Westminster. But in all situations the primary goal is to deliver independence.
In Holyrood an administration needs formed and governance performed. But political focus must still remain on somehow progressing the cause. In Westminster where an administration can never be formed circumstances can vary depending on numbers and leverage. In past years those elected were in many ways simply “flying the flag”. In more recent years electoral sway existed and SNP votes could have been crucial.
Since 2019, though, while numbers have increased the leverage and influence has gone as have the prospects of winning any votes in the Commons. So the SNP’s solely in opposition – but what should that be?
The SNP can never be the principal opposition party nor should it aspire to it. It’s not the job of the SNP to administer the British state. Yet that in some ways is what’s being done and there’s a danger of being sucked in and suckered by Westminster.
I can understand why grandiloquent titles such as Shadow Foreign Secretary or Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, which the SNP has recently started attaching to its spokespeople, may appeal to those individuals. But the SNP can never hold those positions nor does it aspire to even replicate the policies.
As for Wales and Northern Ireland, sending a fraternal delegate to the conference of a sister party is one thing, but announcing yourself the shadow minister for a British province is quite another. Should Scotland really have a Shadow Secretary of State for Wales? Is that any of our proper business?
It’s not just the positioning, but the involvement. An SNP MP sits on the Security and Intelligence Committee. Why? We already know through the BBC’s actions that the British state uses its resources against our cause. To think they won’t do so with the security services would be naïve. Actions in Northern Ireland give credence to it, as do events in our own country.
A senior police officer told me the security services who came north in 2014 for the Commonwealth Games remained in place during the referendum. Maybe they all went fishing or sightseeing, but I doubt it. As Justice Secretary I never got an explanation from Police Scotland about why they either had no intelligence of, or simply took no action against, the Loyalist thuggery in George Square on 19 September 2014.
Are SNP members on the Security Committtee told about actions in Scotland? If they are and cannot tell us, whose side are they on? If they aren’t told, then that itself is an issue that demands answers, not legitimisation by participation. But either way SNP members have no proper role in such Westminster institutions.
It’s the party that wins the election but it’s the cause that must prevail. Those fortunate to be elected must always remember that.
Thanks Kenny
That photo of the SNP MPs speaks volumes – you’re on the outside looking in
Was it Kenny McAskill who wrote this, or you Stuart?
Hear hear. A warning to all MSP’s we are watching and will soon be voting.
The SNP leadership have seriously taken the eye off the ball these last few years. It more and more looks like Nicola Sturgeon prefers the status quo.
Blimey.
And this after Chris McEleney revealed, in the post before last:
Who ARE these people?!
Are their identities protected too?
Excellent post Kenny. Keep sending them in to the hate fest.
An SNP Shadow Secretary of State for Wales! Fuckin’ hell.
@Anne it was Kenny as in the leader at the top of the article
Of course, the last image says it all really.
“To a left-wing outsider like Jim Sillars, who was still a Labour MP at the time, the SNP 11 “were amongst the most right-wing people in the House of Commons”.
“They didn’t understand the class factor at all. They just thought, ‘We’re all Jock Tamson’s Bairns – from the Duke of Buccleuch right down to your average plumber’,” he said.”
https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,interview-the-79-group-snp-young-rebels-who-became-the-party-mainstream_9348.htm
The trouble is when you reimagine yourself to take voters from your opposition – be it to the left or right – you become what they want and lose your original purpose.
Wise words Mr MacAskill when you say it is the cause and not the party that prevails.
On current form all too many of us now believe that the party is set absolutely to fail. The gerrymandering and decoupling of members from playing any meaningful part of the party may be one thing. The stuffing of key NEC positions with folks of dubious policy intentions another. The use of the police and prosecution to pursue political opponents who would advance independence is however another thing altogether, and it is in this that the final nail will come on the current SNP leadership and their gang.
The Titanic is sinking. No amount of rearrangement of the deck chairs will seal the hole. The truth of the attempt to jail innocent people, to destroy their lives, is now quite widely known. And when it becomes fully disclosed the good ship Sturgeon and her crew will be sunk. And sunk by their own torpedo, their very own iceberg that they created.
But as Kenneth MacAskill wisely opines, the cause is bigger than a crew of rotten SNP who have brought the entire mechanism of government and justice into utter disrepute. Of that there is no doubt. Sturgeon and her treachery will become a foot note in history as the woman who tried to sell Scotland short.
And out of their ashes will come a stronger reinvigorated movement. Thank you Mr MacAskill for your commitment, your support and I hope we may see you on the hustings in May.
Of course, the current party hierarchy would never stand for it, far less allow it, but, isn’t there something to be said for something akin to the American system, where you have to win the support of registered party supporters, at a primary election, to get the party nomination.
Such a system would certainly work on the List voting part of the Holyrood election process. Always of course insisting, if a politician was elected at three successive elections – on the List – he or she would then have to stand down and give someone else a chance.
I thought you weren’t allowed to play with the bad boys Kenny.
Sibiliance alert! 😉
“But in all situationss the primary goal is to deliver independence.”
‘… transparency in process and a democratic decision remain fundamental.’
Absolutely right, Kenny.
However, the leadership has eliminated transparency from both party and government.
Excellent points about what aspiring candidates and MSPs are meant to do in representing the people who elect them. And a necessary reminder, when it is fairly obvious that very few of them seem to have any idea what that involves. Absolutely right that carpet baggers who see a nice well paid job by taking the SNP rosette have no real commitment to its supposed core function. The SNP have become the administrators of Scotland, with no opposition, and very happy to take handouts which their power ensures continues. The bogus titles they give themselves is the mark of every benighted banana state as they seek the baubles and tokens of a Ruritarian fantasy. It is the self-delusion of a comfy existence and nice pensions, the only requirement is not to rock the boat. Given the appalling nature of some of our infrastructure and the problems in education, jobs and welfare you can only wonder what they think their job function is. They want the title, but seem to disdain the hard graft of tackling these kind of problems. Plenty time for issuing grand sounding statements and commitments to changing signage though. Basically, they let Westminster do what they always have done, and in return they get to play at dress up government.
A trans government alright, born one thing but crossed over and acting as something quite different. And you can’t criticise or question their choices or appearance.
Absolutely precisely bang on. It’s inevitable that once one is in the Westminster universe, it takes an almost superhuman effort of presence of mind not to become a part of it. It has been designed that way for more than 300 years. It’s one of the reasons Sinn Fein declined to send MPs. IMO the rot that has set in to the leadership started from the spores of privilege and entitlement brought into the party by their MPs.
If there was a muscular will to achieve the cause, sitting SNP MPs would be spending a lot less time there and engaging in nothing that was not directly or strategically connected to furthering Scottish independence.
Contrast that with the current Wishartian reality.
““But in all situationss the primary goal is to deliver independence.””
Sssorry, did you not know Judge Death filled in on Friday afternoonsssss?
It’s almost as if they feel they belong there Kenny. They have been absorbed by the system which has entangled them so much they cannot escape its clutches.
Settle up, not settle down.
Bravo Kenny – and in a previous guest post Chris McEleny.
I think it is past time that Nicola and the Wokaloonies read some sense such as this in a recent post by the great Chris Hedges:
“Too often the targets of the cancel culture are radicals, such as the feminists who run the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter and who do not admit trans people because most of the girls and women in the shelter have been physically assaulted and traumatized by those with male bodies.
None of the critics of these feminists spend ten or twelve hours a day in a shelter taking care of abused girls and women, many of whom were prostituted as children, but fire off screeds to attack them and cut their funding. The cancel culture, as the Canadian feminist Lee Lakeman says, is “the weaponization of ignorance.”
This is the reality ignored by the Twitter warriors and the oh, so Right-On mob.
I think many of us would agree that “SNP members have no proper role in such Westminster institutions” – indeed it will strike many of us that they have no proper role in Westminster full stop.
The SNP in Westminster isn’t going to get us one iota closer to independence. The problem is Kenny neither is the current SNP at Holyrood!
I understand that leaving the SNP and setting up a new party (or joining the ISP) is a huge ask for folk like you, Joanna Cherry, Angus MacNeil and some others who perhaps share your disquiet at the party’s current direction of travel.
The question has to be, what is the reasonable alternative?
The SNP isn’t going to change – certainly not by the Holyrood elections in May. Even if Sturgeon is ejected, can you and others in the party really put your hands on your hearts and say the party can be rendered fit for purpose?
Will it abandon its authoritarian position on the proposed Hate Crime Bill, on the reform of GRA, on moving towards imposing acceptance of the TWAW mantra? Will you and others be able to either eject or reason with the “no debate” entryists in the party? Forgive many of us if we think that’s unlikely. These ideological zealots aren’t interested in cooperation or even “live and let live”. They demand abject surrender and unconditional acceptance of their faith based position.
You and a handful of others have it in your power to change that, but time is short.
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly”
Well said Kenny. When I vote SNP in May, it’s not an endorsement of the never-ending Murrells’ quarrels. Quite the opposite.
I actually have an extremely low opinion of my SNP MSP but he still gets my vote.
To paraphrase a scene from ‘Braveheart’ when a foot-soldier states, ‘Ah’n no fightin’ fae these bastards’, ‘I’m no voting for these bastards’, like wannabe Speaker of the House of Commons, the vainglorious Pete Wishart, (whose seat was on a very shoogly peg at the time and the Speaker’s seat is uncontested at elections).
When I vote SNP now, I’m voting, not fur aw thae basterts but for my children and my grandchildren and my country’s beknighted folk.
I can see your point about charisma not being the key factor in being elected, but the downside of this is that we largely have a Parliament which consists (on all sides, not just the SNP) of soulless nonentities. In fact the last character at HR was IMHO Alex Salmond.
@Rev Stu 4.42pm
“Without order — without an underpinning morality — our actsss would not be jussstice, but mere atrocity. Without the rule of law we would jussst be… …monsssterssss.”
Word.
We have lost our way – we will find it again. And the wokeratti will get their just desserts.
Was it one of the alphabetties who said -‘we have lost the battle but we will win the war’.
P.S. Where is the ring-fenced money ? President Mike Russell – anything to say on the missing money ? Or kirsten oswald’s gerrymandering of the list selection ? Your cowardly silence is deafening.
Shame, shame.
Nicla in the redcoat. Haven’t seen that one before. In Dundee as well!!
Stand on your plinth hen whilst you can you rank piece of seaweed.
Now we all no the SNP in its current form is a sinking ship. 60,000 members left.
And with around half again hanging on by the skin of their teeth it comes as no surprise that the party is in utter disarray. But they tell us that Nicola Sturgeon is the most popular First Minister ever since Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany back in the 1930s.
Maybe that is an unkind analogy but if you could go back in time and ask those who were arrested and jailed about what they thought of Adolf Hitler and his methods you might find them somewhat similar to what Alex Salmond, Craig Murray, Mark Hirst, Manny Singh or even Margaret Ferrier think.
But aside, if Frau Sturgeon is so confident of her popularity, as is her deputy John Swinney, why are they on the list as regional candidates.
Kenny, thank you for this well written article and even more for writing now, as has Cbris McEleny. At a time when Rev Stu has been exposed to a torrent of hate mail, it’s good to see two well respected elected true indy supporters posting articles on Wings. God bless you both.
If you got rid of the Sturgeonites tomorrow, where are your new leaders going to come from? From the ranks of those that are too cravenly cowardly to speak up for fear of a handbagging? Hardly fills you with confidence does it?
I fear that the true believers need another 5 years of inaction to waken them up. For now the Yes movement is totally split.
Here’s the Glasgow list candidates. Who is it safe to vote for (other than Ivan, who’s top of the list for me)?
Abdul Bostani
Alex Kerr
Clare Haughey
Kaukab Stewart
Bill Kidd
Ivan McKee
Christina Cannon
Suzanne McLaughlin
Rozo Salih
Nicala Sturgeon
Katy Loudon
If ever a party has lost its way its this version of the SNP
They are just drifting along with one mission, Stay in power that’s it just keep the Independence supporting fools on side with the odd carrot , just round the corner , just over the horizon , just keep us in power and we together can work miracles and force real change ,
Aye ok ,
Problem being the idiots have started to notice a few wee flaws in the script mainly there isn’t a fkn Script a plan or all the other little things that have to happen and be in place in order for the stated aim of the party namely eh Independence you all remember that one eh , Seems without oversight the kids are doing what children do without supervision they get up to mischief and by fk has this lot strayed off course , it’s all and always is down to management this SNP has been without real purpose for some time a husband and wife team who apparently don’t communicate even living under the same roof is not only hard to believe it’s a bloody impossibility in the real world it can’t happen and anyone who says the division exists is taking the piss .
Socrates McSporran, Hopefully LumiLumi will be along to explain how they do it in Finland with Open Party Lists (is that what they call it?)
The primary system in the USA tends to favor well-funded candidates, although the Democratic Party has found out to its cost that doesn’t always work. States have different rules but, here in NC, when you register to vote, you must register as affiliated with one of the five recognized parties or as unaffiliated. If you are registered with one of the parties, you can only vote in that primary. If you are unaffiliated, like me, you can vote in any primary. I shift each election, depending on the races involved and how strongly I feel about a particular candidate or race.
In practice, primaries happen in the Democratic or Republican parties. Two parties choose candidates at their convention and in the Libertarian Party, a candidate usually “emerges” before a primary is held and is the only one to file for the Libertarian primary.
In any case, a primary in Scotland would mean asking people to go to the polls to put in order up to a dozen candidates. Turnout in this area for a primary is usually about 5% for the major parties.
I would be really interested to learn how the open list system works in practice and how likely it is to depress turnout.
Very true Mr MacAskill, you have the likes of Stewart McDonald and Alyn Smith doing England’s bidding for them by verbally attacking China, Iran and Russia, all countries that we in Scotland and indeed I’m sure the SNP party don’t want to make enemies of.
As pointed out we have Pete Wishart totally immersed in Westminster, so much so that he wants to be speaker of the House, the SNP have no power at Westminster, so co-opting a few of them into makeweight positions has seduced them, and the reason they went to Westminster in the first place has left them entirely.
The SNP party is in a right old state, its priorities appear to be fitting up a former FM, the Hate Crime bill, GRA and Self-Id are also at the forefront. verbally attacking and removing an MP from the front bench because she dares to speak out and firing warning shots to other party members across their bows to keep quiet also appears to be a greater priority than preparing for independence.
Many folk including SNP members now feel the party has abandoned independence in the coming years for gradualism. The likes of yourself and Chris McEleny and Angus B. MacNeil have made a stand, but we know there’s only so much you can say and do.
As for Police Scotland, what do you expect from a colonial police force loyal to the British Crown. Also what could you expect from an ex Met chief who became Scotland’s top police officer Stephen House, who left under a cloud, and we know fine well the lack of credibility the present and previous Lord Advocates have.
@Robert
Why would you want to vote SNP on the list at all….?
I think its long past the time when we should be sending any MPs down to Westminster and a foreign English parliament. I think the Sinn Fein? have got it right and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland would do well to do the same and leave them to it.
Thanks, Kenny, your occasional forays on this site confirms to me that there are some good people within the SNP. Now get yourself out of that viper’s nest and start something, with similar good people, something that’ll set the heather alight once more..
..Or, just stay where you are and continue to inform the world – from within, and as an elected member of the party – that the party has long ago ceased pursuing independence, is mostly corrupt, and that the Scottish Govt is being operated by crooks and criminals – a private and exclusive mob – and for their own benefit.
Whatever you decide to do, you’ll do with a clear and honest conscience, and an integrity that’ll make folk say; “He has nothing to gain by making that stance; I therefore believe him”..
We’re winning, they cannot get away with criminality.
The only thing that is making me even consider voting SNP in the constituency is the candidate. If it was a woke candidate I would be spoiling my ballot – mainly because I no longer trust the SNP to deliver independence and I’m worried about their other policies. So, no – I’m not voting for the party but for the person.
Cuilean @ +4.54 pm
“When I vote SNP now, I’m voting, not fur aw thae basterts but for my children and my grandchildren and my country’s beknighted folk.”
I feel your angst but if you want an independent future for your kids and grandkids then you have to vote to get rid of Surgeon’s SNP. You sure as hell will never see independence while that lot is in charge. If, by some miracle, there was a palace revolution and Sturgeon and her groupies were cleared out before May I would be the first in line to vote for SNP again. That will clearly not now happen and I am afraid the SNP have to be damaged to the point where they will finally dump Sturgeon, or utterly destroyed, in which case we start again with a new party whose main goal is independence. Sad really, that was the way the SNP was under Salmond.
I would love to know why there is no serious debate in the SNP about withdrawings its MP’s from Westminster. There is literally nothing to be gained there.
The notion that MP’s of any party can hold a Tory Government with a large majority to account or that they need to be there to deal with contituent’s matters doesn’t hold much scrutiny.
The Irish had the right idea. Don’t particpate in a parliament that you do not wish to be part of. By withdrawing from Westminster it would force more Scots to look to Holyrood and start to see that as the seat of power.
Ian Brotherhood at 4.23.
I would bet my house on Stewart Macdonald running round the Highlands in military fatigues shooting imaginary Russians.
Robert @ 5’07pm.
Not Alex Kerr anyway here he’s giving it to Chris McEleny and Kenny MacAskill for not condemning the Rev over the Neil MacKay piece.
https://twitter.com/AlexKerrSNP
‘An SNP MP sits on the Security and Intelligence Committee. We already know through the BBC’s actions that the British state uses its resources against our cause’
You don’t ‘know’ it at all. The BBC is biased against independence and I would not be surprised if the security services were active but to link the two? You have zero evidence.
Thanks Kenny.
I agree about the SSOS for Wales and NI.
It’s shameful
How arrogant are these people, it’s like they think they are superior to our compatriots in the rUK.
It would make more aense to be an SOS for England.
You also had the likes of that hard of thinking Stewart McD, insulting Wales, calling it a Pricipality, and Leanne Woods calling him out.
Perhaps we should ensure that each elected MP or MSP should have the equivalent of an Auriga accompany them after election or on electoral business whispering MEMENTO HOMO, MEMENTO MORI in their ears. Yhey must be reminded that you are here because we put you here.
Dave Beveridge
Indy isn’t split
We’ve been shafted but we are stronger than that.
Sturgeon needs to go and the rest of the scmurrell rats and I actually like rats, my weans had them. So it’s down to human decency, of which they have none.
Repeating everyone else’s knowledge and decency on this amazing Scottish blog.
Liking them to rodent’s doesn’t help natural rodents.
They are nasty human beings and I’m being generous. No morals, no scruples, no truth.
Just a disgusting pocket filching, thieving, false ……
Think I’ve ran out of words to describe what is blatantly going on here.
Disgust doesn’t cut it for me. Far Worse.
Southerbystander @5:28pm https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/august/mi5-vetting. Do you really think that no longer happens?
Aologies for non-archive link. Can’t do it from my work computer. I await incoming hammers.
@republicofscotland just went to check out that tweet from Alex Kerr, to find I’m blocked.
I don’t even know who he is
Thank you Kenny. I suspect the security services have been extremely active over the last few years. What once looked like tactical errors now resemble sabotage. I no longer trust anyone in the SNP hierarchy outwith my local branch, and not even all of them. Which is no doubt part of the objective.
That’s an excellent read for those not closely involved in the Party politics, Thanks a million Mr MacAskill
Jim Sillars lookin a bit ruff ruff.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/516083-galloway-scotland-sturgeon-uk/
‘Caesar has unexpetedly rised and is advancing across the floor towards Brutus.’
We should see some action next week.
‘Alex Salmond has confirmed to Holyrood’s harassment complaints committee that he will attend an evidence session on Wednesday, it is understood.’
From Conor Matchett, The Scotsman (he’s the Rev’s favorite, you know)
Remember the old days when the unionist parties were seen as the enemy ? The ones we had to either convince or argue against that a better Scotland existed if we were a independent country ,
Aye simple times when you thought the ones at your back were your friends and they were looking out for you all in it together a facing in the same general direction different ideas how to get there but the destination in mind .
.
Well I have had my eyes opened with the party I once trusted I don’t know what to think of them now are they on the same road or just taking the piss I really don’t know the leadership has went AWOL and I really don’t care about them anymore, I don’t recognise most of them now .
I left the SNP after the Dual mandate fiasco with a broken heart and have been in despair about everything that has unfolded since. I emailed my MP in Aberdeen South a few times to let him know how I felt. He had the decency to arrange a phone appointment with me today and spent 45 minutes listening to my concerns.
I don’t want to repeat all he said as it was a private conversation in trust but it did leave me with hope that not all is lost. There are still a good number of elected representatives who know that the vision of independence is the reason they get up in the morning. He is absolutely of the view that he does not want to fight another Westminster election because Scotland should be either independent by then or negotiating independence.
One thing I did stress to him was that independence voters should never need to check out the individual before we can vote for them. Standing for the SNP used to be enough to know “good guy”. This is the saddest part of all of this. He was genuinely concerned that I couldn’t knock on someone’s door now and ask them to vote SNP and I always enjoyed canvassing. Maybe one day again but a lot of trust needs to be rebuilt before that.
Jacqueline McMillan @5:32
“Indy isn’t split”
Couldn’t agree more.
It’s the SNP that’s split – between those who support Indy and those who have no desire for Indy but who look to hijack the SNP for their own narrow, Woke-driven agendas and personal political ambitions.
Well said Kenny. The I word seems to have been erased from the SNP playbook though, and some grand titles bestowed on the shiny new wm front benchers. The dilemma is voting SNP will signal support for GRA & HCB and when successful they will forge ahead. I’m not sure I can hold my nose long enough. Would that we had a credible alternative Real Indy party to vote for.
Sturgeon is a fuckin Psychopath!!!
While its tempting to argue that the snp mps don’t take their seats i would prefer it if another independence party stood in Scotland when there is the next election to Westminster.
Sure, it would split the vote and let in a British unionist mp but that would be just dandy. Because then we can have the final decisive battle between the 2 parliaments.
Can we allow SNP to lose this election, what would then happen ? Holyrood run by a Union coalition would be a disaster. How about a radical proposal. We all vote SNP at least 1st vote and ensure they get a majority. Then, the good guys, McNeil,McAlpine etc resign from SNP and sit as Independents. If enough did this, SNP would lose majority and Indy MSPs could ensure Indy was progressed quickly . Just a thought.
Okay, so, if Sturgeon faces a VONC, what happens then? Do a handful of SNP MSPs have the guts to vote against her and bring her down?
In recent years, it has become more and more evident that an accommodation with Westminster and the UKG has been on the agenda. This is the ambition of a devolved administration, not of an independent Scotland. I have little doubt that this SNPG will not deliver, and has no intention of delivering, independence this side of 2021.
Exactly. Excellent article. Let’s hope Pete reads it (we know he will).
The point about the security and intelligence committe is a very important one. Just WHY are SNP MP’s in London so keen or getting so suckered into doing these things. It is classic Westminster, ‘let them do some things, play a wee part, make them ‘feel’ important, but NEVER let them have any REAL power’. And some in the SNP have swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.
And, as you say, if SNP on that committee are NOT being briefed on security activities in Scotland, the question must be, just who are they serving???
Too, too many getting comfy in London, too too many in Edinburgh overly keen to play the ‘british’ game, instead of ACTIVELY planning our independence.
As a potential voter and former SNP member, it is frankly nauseating.
TO MY GROUSE BEATER
YOU ARE LOVED MORE THAN YOU KNOW
WE’RE ALL GOING THE SAME WAY
WE WILL MEET ONCE AGAIN
AND WE’LL SPOOK THE BASTARDS XXXX
Now that, Mr MacAskill, has nailed it.
An absolute beaut of an article.
One of the most worrying things about the SNP as it stands is the lack of talent. In anything.
As an independence supporter, I respect none of them.
In fact, I find myself applauding Tomkins, Davidson, and others when I am not Tory inclined – which is very unnerving.
There is an absence of intellect and an absence of integrity.
After that, you have flag-waving.
I find Pete Wishart a silly person and know he is an MP only because the SNP were very accepting of celebrities. Just like the celebrities on game shows that few have heard of.
I honestly think that the SNP should have required all elected. MP/MSP’s to give at least hLf their salaries to a ring fenced indyref fighting fund.
Sweet irony?
This from the wannabe Speaker of the House Wishart.
“The contenders to take over the union unit. 1. Wings Over Scotland – Good with the press, consensual, knows how to get a message across.”
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/1362827172986179589
@Indy now 6.12pm
The yoons don’t have the numbers or the support to command a majority. If we want to avoid the “current” SNP ruling the roost for the next five years and essentially kicking indy into the long grass and enacting its woo-woo agenda, then we need to ensure they DON’T get a majority.
That would probably involve not only maxing the list vote for non-SNP indy parties, but probably even trying to ensure some of the biggest SNP roasters in the constituencies are defeated.
I for one don’t want an SNP majority. They don’t deserve it, nor can they be trusted to use it.
@Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
19 February, 2021 at 4:42 pm
“Sssorry, did you not know Judge Death filled in on Friday afternoonsssss?”
Judge Fear is the living (dead) embodiment of the Vow.
“Gaze into the face of fear…”
O/T.
So Oliver Lewis the head of the new Union Unit has resigned his position, the ally of Dominic Cummings appears to have been ousted by others at Number Ten.
The Union has never been in a more fragile state, and what does Sturgeon do, take advantage of that and push to dissolve the union? No she completely ignores our fantastic opportunity for independence in favour of lies, deception, skullduggery, corruption and persecution of a former FM, and puts odious and unsupported by the majority of the public policies to the fore.
The SNP had an NEC disproportionately full of unpopular members, and many of them were removed by a member’s vote at conference.
Those who were removed applied to stand in the next Holyrood election.
A proposal was put forward by some in the NEC which would give an advantage to some of those. This involved by-passing the members vote, by sending disabled or BAME candidates straight to the top of the candidates list.
Some of those who stood to benefit from this new rule didn’t declare an interest. They voted, and swung the vote in their own favour.
So a number of those who the members rejected at conference will be guaranteed getting into government in May.
One of them on the Highlands & Islands list, Rhiannon Spear, has declared herself disabled because she is dyslexic, so that she can get to the top of the list.
What is more, this new rule was hidden from members, and only became known because someone in the NEC leaked it.
Not even in the email to members containing the ballot, is anything mentioned about the new rule. So most members are unaware that their votes will be by-passed.
The leak was condemned by the Party, even though the NEC is supposed to be answerable to the members.
Independence bloggers who exposed it, were demonised, and members were warned not to listen to them.
What would you call the above? There is a name for it. It begins with a C and ends with an N.
There is an insidious movement within the SNP which seeks to subvert internal democracy, and promote a small group of people who are seeking to take power through the back door.
Unfortunately many in the Party are either pretending this isn’t happening, or are willing to cover it up.
They are part of the problem I’m afraid.
How would Marchett possibly get an exclusive on Alex Salmond’s intentions?
Kenny, it’s not just the usual right wing sock-puppets in the party we have to worry about for voicing attacks on China, Russia or Iran as virulently as any florid Home County Tory.
We also have a leadership happy to swallow the most implausible “intelligence” from M.I.5/6 about things like Salisbury/Novichok while Nicola Sturgeon follows SAGE advice pretty uncritically, advice which has been responsible for pushing UK deaths over the 100,000 mark.
Shockeroony memo to SNP: the intelligence community and the English Establishment are not your friend.
@Dave Llewellyn (5.27) –
If they’ve not been wearing camouflage gear and learning how to hide then they’d better fekkin start.
Roasters.
It occurs to me that people may wish to remember this incident from the past where AS protected NS but got thrown under a bus for his troubles. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/24/nicola-sturgeon-apologises-fraudster-letter
Alex Kerr
@AlexKerrSNP
@theSNP
NEC member for Glasgow. Previously one of six SNP candidates in European Election.
“If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”
Where have we saw similar words before???
Scottish Labour also thought the world would stop spinning if we didn’t vote for them.
John Jones disnae say,
It wisnae me
NEC are also meeting this weekend to finalise transphobia definition. It will be retrospective so you can kiss goodbye to Ms Cherry and those who signed woman’s pledge including Kate Forbes.
Excellent article Kenny and good man for showing solidarity with WoS by posting here in the face of the more-than-usually-hysterical ( in both senses of the word ) attacks on the site and Stuart personally we’ve witnessed of late .
The point about the person being the beneficiary of the Party rather than the converse is one that seems to have been forgotten – if it was ever acknowledged – by too many in the SNP : a problem exacerbated by the wider cultural obsession with personalities , a primrose path consciously taken by the Sturgeon ” Team ” from the moment she became SNP Leader/FM , the grotesque consequences of which are unfolding before our horrified eyes .
We must avoid at all costs making such a mistake again .
” “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” Lao Tzu
Bob Mack says:
19 February, 2021 at 7:08 pm
“NEC are also meeting this weekend to finalise transphobia definition. It will be retrospective so you can kiss goodbye to Ms Cherry and those who signed woman’s pledge including Kate Forbes.”
I think I’ll go on twatter under my own name and try to get thrown out.
Dave Llewellyn says:
@ 5:27 pm
“I would bet my house on Stewart Macdonald running round the Highlands in military fatigues shooting imaginary Russians.”
or maybe the newly appointed privy counsellor who can now be addressed as “The Right Honourable” Stewart Hosie MP, as from last week, with royal approval.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/privy-council-appointments-12-february-2021
Republicofscotland says:
19 February, 2021 at 6:45 pm
This from the wannabe Speaker of the House Wishart.
“The contenders to take over the union unit. 1. Wings Over Scotland – Good with the press, consensual, knows how to get a message across.”
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/1362827172986179589
——————
Think Boris needs to call a snap GE , then cosy feet wouldn’t be so brazen.
Pete Wishart. Do your fucking job that you were elected to do like representing the people of Perth & Kinross ya fanny.
Kenny MacAskill is someone you’d want to have your back.
Good on him.
Keep it up Kenny.
This is leadership material. Principled and pragmatic.
If ever we see an Independent Scotland, you, and the likes of AS could be pivotal in not fucking it up.
That picture of Margo was before my time but it makes me feel sad seeing it and seeing the state of the SNP now despite their relative ‘success’.
It has occurred to me that there might be a bit of an own goal looming for some. In some constituencies, for example Edinburgh central where I believe Robertson the Odious is standing, it might be problematic for them to win if an anti SNP corruption candidate stood e.g. Craig Murray, and they were high profile enough. Their back up plan to sneak in on the list will backfire though because they are only a BAM and not a BAME. I can see this happening elsewhere too, prime spot No.1 cant go the favoured candidate, but it has been promised to the Woko Haram. Some targeted constituencies could be quite damaging, Sturgeon, Swinney, Somerville,Yousaf etc.
Schadenfreude ist de beste freude…
(Craig, just a suggestion after hearing you and Tommy chatting…)
Well said, Kenny!
I remember a dozen, ten years ago, the SNP were still the rebels, striving to detach Scotland from the unwanted, unequal union. Independence was the whole point. Do things in a different, in a better way.
Now?
The SNP leadership and Holyrood administration seem to have lost their mojo. Copying Westminster/Whitehall culture, their ways of doing things, lest they be criticised in the pro-British MSM.
WTAF?!
They have been assimilated.
Made part of the British establishment. Independence isn’t urgent, just a carrot for election time. Those elected politicians, such as yourself, Mr MacAskill, and Angus B MacNeil, Joanna Cherry, Joan MacAlpine, who do not toe the line, who put independence (and women’s rights) first will be got rid of for some imagined “wrongthink”.
Not the kind of a party I’d want to be a member of, but I understand why old party stalwarts such as yourself, Kenny, persist, hoping the mess can still salvaged.
Sturgeon was once all in favour of openness. In 2002 she said: ‘The lack of information provided to the public once again raises serious questions about the culture of secrecy that pervades the NHS.’
Quoted in The Guardian 7 Dec 2002.
“It might be problematic for them to win if an anti SNP corruption candidate stood”
They might have already realised of that, hence the decision of “not counting overnight”…
Delivering For Scotland email just in from Blinky (not yet in the clinky)…
“The week started with the launch of the ‘game changing’ Scottish Child Payment. We’ve had 77,000 applications already for the £10-a-week payment.
Tackling the scourge of poverty has always been a central mission for this SNP government and we know this new benefit will lift families and children out of poverty. That is something we can all celebrate.”
Aye, listen to the sound of my one hand clapping celebration.
Just imagine how much more could’ve been done to address the scourge of poverty if your
GovernmentAdministration hadn’t spaffed millions of taxpapyers’ quids and fuck knows how much civil service and MSPs’ time over many years playing out your power games…Email also includes the somewhat dubious statement:
“Independence has never been closer””
Plus the old flat-earther classic:
“Both Votes SNP“
Well done yet again, Kenny.
Hi Andy Ellis 5:19 pm.
You asked Robert,
“Why would you want to vote SNP on the list at all….?”
Every SNP member can rank the candidates for the regional list. That doesn’t mean that ranking equates to voting SNP in the regional vote.
In my own region, I ranked all but two, after reading their pitches.
The two I didn’t rank were two, who feel the need to have “he/him” and “she/her” in their Twitter profiles.
I KNOW what a “he/him” and “she/her” look like – I don’t feel the need to be lectured!
It’s all academic onnyhoo. My regional vote will be going to the best-placed pro-indy party, which isn’t SNP.
MacAskill has a natural political feel and most certainly is by far, the most impressive Cabinet Secretary for Justice since the inception of the Scottish parliament. If he, Cherry and MacNeil were to break ranks, then it would be game on. Because their character shows they have bottle, gravitas and are in no one’s pocket. Having met all three on numerous occasions can confidently say that they have sincerity and tower above the speak your weight machine , virtual signalling light weights who are wrecking the SNP. It’s the only answer for the political health of this nation because the SNP has become a political Ponzi scheme and the opposition is brain dead. It’s a frightening scenario. We need a vision of an Independent Scotland rooted in the land and people in contrast with her superficial vanity projects. They would take swathes of SNP members and donations would pour in and be properly utilised. There is no going back now. She has nailed her colours to the mast and made it categorically clear where her loyalties are. They are not mine nor are they shared by thousands of SNP members.
Willie Hogg says:
19 February, 2021 at 6:58 pm
It occurs to me that people may wish to remember this incident from the past where AS protected NS but got thrown under a bus for his troubles. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/24/nicola-sturgeon-apologises-fraudster-letter
Cheers, that is fascinating.
Have a read of that article from 2010 above that Willie quotes.
Apart from the article itself and the information it contains…
… it is very obvious even then they are grooming Sturgeon and us to see her as the future leader (and cure to the evil Alex Salmond).
Even though it was about a huge Sturgeon fuck up they make it sound like it is really about “Salmond bad” and “Sturgeon good’.
That was February 2010.
“Independence has never been closer”
If you’re still optimistic about Scotland getting Independence, even if it’s in some far off intangible future, then, of course, you could say every single day that “independence has never been closer”.
Not really the point though, when you are being asked to re-elect a party which has absolutely no strategy to achieve it.
Craig Murray is so not guilty it is a toothache for these folks.
Leave the man alone.
If you jail him do you think it will end well for you.
As a Scot, proud of our, previously, progessive Legal, Financial and Innovative Heritage, I am f’ing outraged at the shitfest that is going on just now.
This whole fiasco shows to investors that Scotland is on a same level as Zimbabwe, Legally, Financially, Economically and Politically.
There needs to be a push, from all parties, that the upcoming electon will need to be delayed until 6 months after lockdown ends to allow proper canvasing of the electorate for the following reason:
Depressed people stuck at home+worry over financial future+worried about the mortgauge+worry over families future+worry over Covid 19+when will the release from incarceration happen+will I still have a job+ can I afford a holiday+when will my captor give me news of my release (NS daily Breifing)= Stockholm syndrome
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/stockholm-syndrome
I, disappointingly. have seen this on family members and friends-” isn’t Nicola doing such a good job”- low level brainwashing at work due to prolonged exposure to falsehoods and lack of political awareness.
The damage caused, not just due to the Financial/Legal cock ups, AS affair, CMAL, BIFAB, COVID19, Schools, Hospitals etc, etc the list goes on, but the loss of reputation for Scotland must run into the 100’s of millions. Damage which will take decades to repair.
Would you invest or even visit a country with such a poor Government reputation and laws for fear of being arrested for freedom of speech?
No need for conspiratory theories, we have been left with NS &Co to hang us all, this is what happens when pre pubescent career politicans who know the square root of FA are given power. ( A global problem). It is like listening to 13 year olds in a play ground ( couldn’t be bothered listening when I was 13)
Twitter and Facebook are the conduits for the pished and uneducated to express their uneducated opinions now the pubs are shut, any politician that resorts to either medium is clearly an eejit of low calibre intellect and pre pubescent.
To move forward we need to rebuild Scotland by overhauling our Legal, Civil service, Government and Pubilc Services to provide targetted value for money. No more snowflake wishey washey pish babbling niceties. Target the social/financial, infrastructure and legal problems using experts, gain trust and reputation globally, seek investment, international friends and develope trade.
And there we have it again folks. A media complicit in all of this, as well as destroying Scotland’s future prosperity etc, and 2 so-called indy supporters put up direct links on this thread to help one of those rags pull in clicks etc etc. No wonder Scotland’s fucked.
__________
On another note, here’s an Italian MEP thinking he can talk for Spain & Belgium by telling folk that they would say no to an indy Scotland wanting to join the EU. https://archive.is/FRA9B
And here’s a choice of contact details if any of the more intellectual WOS readers would like to challenge his statements. I’ve asked him how much he was paid to say these things? Doubt i’ll get a reply never mind an answer. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/35016/MARCO_CAMPOMENOSI/home
If you scroll down that link a wee bit you get 4 options to contact him: Facebook, Twitter, E-Mail & his Website.
Craig Murray points out exactly what we knew.
“The SNP’s Stewart Hosie MP signed up to the crazed Russophobia of Westminster’s Intelligence and Security Committee. https://craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/08/the-russian-interference-report-without-laughing/
Oh look, he’s now the “rt hon” Stewart Hosie MP
https://gov.uk/government/news/privy-council-appointments-12-february-2021
A stinking sell-out, typical of them.”
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1362855634488721411
Make no mistake alternative candidates, high profile trusted independence candidates, can, and most probably will, emerge to de-seat people like Sturgeon, Swinney, Yousaf and Somerville.
Nothing whatsoever to stop a Kenny MacAskill standing against Humza Yousaf. Or a Joanna Cherry against Angus Robertson, Or a Stewart Hosie against John Swinney. Existing high profile respected MPs could certainly do that.
And of course that’s only postulating on existing MPs. And then of course there is the issue of high profile candidates breathing life into a list party. And an influx of maybe 25 to 30 Indy List members would most certainly rack up a super majority.
Not difficult to see how the partisan SNP don’t want an increased Indy majority but would rather have a plethora of unionist MSPs instead. Betting the house on a narrow majority of constituency MSPs at the expense of a super majority through Indy list seats is sectarian party lunacy.
But there is every reason to believe that this will not be the case. Sturgeon could be out in weeks and in May there could be a new slew of well known and respected Indy candidates
Who will be the first SHP member to accept a “Gong”of some description
“Sssorry, did you not know Judge Death filled in on Friday afternoonsssss?”
Ssplendid… although I ssuspect that the ssentence for the crime of levity may be… onerousss…
The odds must have narrowed on Cosy Feet Pete Wishart being the first SNP to take ermine if offered by some of his Tory pals when he retires – because Cosy Feet doesn’t envisage independence getting in the way of him seeing out his time at WM.
@ Mac at 8.08
And isn’t the Osama Saeed described in the final sentence of that Guardian article (archived here : https://archive.fo/wip/1ube3) as a “controversial candidate” the same person who stood recently in Cunninghame North?
I believe he is. Yet more tangles.
Apologies if I’ve missed this commented already, but is the push by Nicola for postal voting designed to get votes secured prior to her inevitable apocalypse? Once they’re posted there’s no taking them back…
Every passing day that this farce runs is an ineradicable blemish not just on our politicians, but also on the integrity of the Scottish Legal system.
Bob Mack says:
19 February, 2021 at 8:35 pm
Who will be the first SHP member to accept a “Gong”of some description
Peter the great(er), of course. 20 years of fighting independence should not go unrecognised.
Plus being the parliamentary thumb twiddler of the year (uncontested).
Andy Ellis says:
19 February, 2021 at 6:48 pm
….That would probably involve not only maxing the list vote for non-SNP indy parties, but probably even trying to ensure some of the biggest SNP roasters in the constituencies are defeated.
I for one don’t want an SNP majority. They don’t deserve it, nor can they be trusted to use it.
If Sturgeon does get booted out, and I hope she does, then a lot can change very quickly depending on where the ‘power’ shifts.
It needn’t be a ‘new’ Leader who steps in. Rather than a personality, given the May election is so near, there could be an ‘interim’ caretaker leadership which can postpone acrimonious and inflammatory Leadership elections, and focus instead on getting to grips with a Plebiscite Election in May.
Frankly, it’s been left so late (again), I don’t know whether that’s possible now, or just wishful thinking on my part. There is so much needing done to mobilise a stagnant YES vote to anything like a 2014 intensity, and the utterly inept and useless Sturgeon hanging on to the bitter end isn’t doing anybody any favours. Sturgeon burning the house down isn’t going to help the cause either. I honestly just wish she’d fk off altogether. Take a round-the-world cruise in a rowing boat or something. Just go FFS.
But the biggest problem might not be Sturgeon getting the chop and facing criminal prosecution, but a Wokeratti ‘B’ team under Angus Robertson or similar, stepping into the power vacuum left when Sturgeon’s Kremlin collapses and Independence is booted into obscurity yet again.
That’s why I think people should be preparing now for a caretaker administration, rather than Sturgeon’s deputy of named successor inheriting the post. DON’T allow the Gender-Woo-Woo bodysnatchers or the compromised NEC to dictate the line of succession, or we’ll end up with the worst of all worlds… a new regime just as twisted and demented as the one just deposed.
I think Alex Salmond’s roll might be pivotal. Pivotal in getting rid of Sturgeon certainly, but if anybody can pull off a plebiscite election and elevate the issue Scottish Independence to the International stage, then that might be Alex Salmond. But that depends on whether Alex feels damaged by this smear conspiracy and just wants out. Who could blame him? For my part, I’d be doing cartwheels if the Boss was back, but you can’t ignore the toxic legacy of Sturgeons smear campaign either.
Again, I repeat, if it was a caretaker ‘committee’ set up to steer the SNP in the direction of a plebiscite, then a whole salvo of new options opens up. There could be a coalition YES committee with the ‘revitalised’ SNP, ISP, Now Scotland and AUOB all having input, and I reckon Alex Salmond would have the place buzzing if he had a seat on that Assembly too…
It ‘could’ be that SNP / ISP / NowScotland / AUOB assembly evolves into the nucleus of a ‘rebel’ Scottish Government in waiting, no longer chained and hobbled by the Scotland Act, but adopting the pre 1707 Constitution of Scottish Government as it’s rule book, and formally recognising the sovereignty of the Scottish people…
I don’t know. It feels like I’m clutching at straws. The only thing that seems certain is nothing is going to happen until Sturgeon is gone. – Oh happy day!
By not seeking independence the SNP have no raison d’être, except their own self-aggrandisement. Independence to them has become nothing more than a vote winning tactic taking advantage of the voting public’s desire for independence. They have lost their soul, and their mojo. With some honourable exceptions of course Kenny!
“Sturgeon could be out in weeks and in May there could be a new slew of well known and respected Indy candidates”
Where are those candidates? I see and hear none in the SNP.
Bar Joanna Cherry, Mr Macaskill, Angus McNeil, Chris McEnely, Alex Neil and a couple of others, I do not remember hearing a single peep from any SNP MSP or MP that makes me think they are trustworthy as pro independence representatives.
How many of those had the balls to criticise the fraud standing as leader for the treatment of Ms Cherry and other women within the party at the hands of the genderwoowoo?
How many of those had the balls to criticise the fraud for wasting so many opportunities to deliver indyref or for infesting the SNP democratic structures with wokes and genderwoowoos?
How many of them opened their mouths to criticise the actions of Oswald and the disregard of the NEC for the legal advice?
How many of them opened their mouths to express their disgust to the political conspiracy against Mr Salmond that could have seen him in prison for the rest of his life?
How many of them have demanded from the fraud and Swinney to release the evidence for once and for all to stop sinking the party?
How many of them have demanded the fraud to deliver the mandate her party was elected under in 2016?
Unless those candidates you talk about are standing for another party, I do not think at this moment in time any of the SNP cowards standing for MSP seats can be considered “respectable” or trustworthy as pro indy candidates.
As a matter of fact, due to the anonymity, how do we know the SNP candidates to MSP seats in our constituencies are not one of the perjurers?
In her carefully-worded apology on the Rauf affair today, Sturgeon appeared to distance herself from Salmond’s combative and often aggressive debating style by urging MSPs of all parties to change a “political culture” which, particularly before an election, made it difficult to say sorry.
Or even admit wrongdoing
paid tribute to Salmond but said her reflections on the Rauf affair “have made me wonder whether a more general willingness to allow each other space to reflect on honest mistakes, admit where we’ve got things wrong and learn lessons would be much better for our politics than the instant rush to judgment that all of us, me included, so often rush to.”
Cute as a fox, that one.
Kenny MacAskill stands head & shoulders above the “ political pygmies” currently in ministerial positions at Holyrood . He handled the worlds media so competently during the “ Lockerbie disaster” and deftly handled “ sniping” and “undermining “efforts from the UK government and state controlled broadcast media. Could you imagine a Holyrood front bench team of Salmond, Cherry, MacAskill MacNeil and possibly Craig Murray spearheading and actually negotiating our Independence as opposed to what we have at present?
It’s time that our top politicians deserted Westminster and prosecuted/spearheaded our Independence from Edinburgh Scotland .
O/T. This Colony had a Women’s European Championship Game today Vs Cyprus.
Sky Sports has a web site where it give a comprehensive list of games played today.
It has a plethora of Diddy teams with less than a hundred fans in England and foreign
match results from very small countries.
It lists Women’s scores from friendly games in the USA, Brazil, Austria etc
Absolutely no mention of the European Tournament game Scotland won 10-0?
One day this country will have its own media where we exist!
@crazycat (8.48) –
Nice one, cheers.
😉
As to candidate selection…
This is a really interesting issue, from a purely political science perspective.
Simplified, different political systems encourage different political culture, in the minds of voters.
The old FPTP, one MP constituency system encourages: i) the belief that the MP represents you personally; and ii) a two-party system; and iii) one-party governments.
Having grown up in a proportional representation (PR) system, in which ALL governments are coalitions, ONE party governments seem… undemocratic. Even authoritarian.
Now, after Labour’s win in 1997 and the subsequent setting up of Scotland’s “devolved” parliament, was it any wonder that the main two UK parties, with some help from the UK third party set up Holyrood the way it is.
Holyrood is partly FPTP, so keeping the British (undemocratic) tradition because people want their “own” or “local” MSP, as in the British system.
The “additional member”, or “list” vote is supposed to make Holyrood nearly proportional, to counteract the democratic deficit of the FPTP system.
The problem is that the parties got their grubby hands on it when designing how the PR list vote should be organised.
Right now Scotland has an undemocratic system where parties rank the candidates on their lists. This is called “closed list system”. Your list vote goes to the party and the party has decided who gets the votes first, second, etc.
In my country, we got rid of that problem fifty or more years ago. We now have what is called an “open list system”. Each party fields a number of candidates, they’re listed in alphabetical order, each with their own number. Voting is writing the number of your preferred candidate on the ballot card.
Afterwards, votes are counted and the ranking on each party list is according to who the people voted for – not always the parties’ preferred way, nah nah! Then seats are allocated according to the d’Hondt system.
It’s fairly democratic, and stops parties from being too hegemonic or controlling. They can’t decide the ranking of candidates on party lists, like they can in Scotland.
There are weaknesses in our system. Aatos Aalto has an unfair advantage over Zachris Zetterberg. A voter wants to vote for party A, doesn’t mind who, picks the first number, it’s Aatos Aalto. Poor Zachris Zetterberg needs dedicated voters who actually know him and vote for him.
Another problem is parties getting “celebrities” – usually retired successful sportspeople or popular but uncontroversial musicians or actors etc. – to stand on the list. They might “harvest” votes and help the party politician(s) get through due to the d’Hondt system. Sometimes the “celebrity” or sportsperson does better than the party politician, and they become MPs and sometimes even decent, diligent MPs.
The point is. In my country, no political party decides the list ranking. Voters decide.
If I was a voter in Scotland, I’m not sure I could vote for the SNP on the list because the SNP might’ve put up someone I might not be comfortable with voting for.
If I was a voter in Scotland, I’d feel scunnered. Who, what can I vote for?
Independence? Yeah, but no party is offering it – the SNP has the prettiest carrot.
Just watched the AUOB live debate on youtube and I’ve come to the conclusion Gareth Wardell (Grousebeater) is a star and the words to a Genesis song called Timetable “though names may change each face retains the mask it wore” and how these words relates to the same parcel of rogues we have in Holyrood today we had in Edinburgh in 1707
“Frankly, it’s been left so late (again), I don’t know whether that’s possible now, or just wishful thinking on my part”
It seems to me that it is too late for the SNP, Breeks. It is clear as day the SNP has been hijacked by the British state and dismantled as a pro indy party.
The British state will never allow the SNP to declare a plebiscite and the present struggle we see in front of us is precisely to stop that to happen. It is obvious that this is the reason why they are keeping the knowingly corrupt Sturgeon in power until the election.
It is too late for the SNP, but not too late for the list parties. The only chance we have to take control and a plebiscite is in the list vote. Our problem is that the so called pro-indy parties seeking the list vote appear to be more concerned about propping up the SNP than to deliver independence.
For as long as we continue to look to the SNP in hope, we are wasting time, precious time. What we should do now is to forget about the SNP and concentrate in the other parties by putting pressure on them to declare a plebiscite. Then vote for those parties and either vote in the constituency for the SNP if you can stomach it or spoil the ballot if you cannot.
@ Breeks who said “It ‘could’ be that SNP / ISP / NowScotland / AUOB assembly evolves into the nucleus of a ‘rebel’ Scottish Government in waiting,”
Here’s someone else thinking along the same lines.
https://randompublicjournal.com/2021/02/19/assembly/
Remember: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come!” (Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885)
Anyone in the Greenock area seen the lovely poster by that ‘non political’ Scotland matters group ?
‘Vaccination not Separation’ – and there was me thinking Scotland was forging ahead on vaccination and slumping on separation.
Skip_NC @ 5:35
Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. I bet the security services are involved in doing that in many different areas. Bit different to actually getting / forcing the BBC to spread anti-independence propaganda though (I mean they do that anyway – the clue is in their name!).
The bigger question is, if an SNP MP is actually party to security discussion which reveals this would it really not come out? It would be a massive boost for the cause! What seems much more likely is that they would never discuss it in front of such a person. Not that I believe it anyway, sorry. I like this site for its forensic evidence so let’s have some of that for this type of allegation.
@Mac (8.08) –
Sorry, I didn’t see you’d posted that link before crazycat.
It’s fascinating. If that was from 2010, and she was in soapy bubble over stuff that happened 15 yrs earlier (is that right?) then it really highlights just how cocooned Sturgeon has been.
Can anyone here honestly remember what they were doing and preoccupied with 10 years ago let alone 25?
25 years ago? I’d seriously have to sit for a while and have a think about it – it’s like remembering someone else’s life.
But NS was doing, way back then, pretty much the same as she’s doing right now?
There’s something not right about that. It would surely drive anyone bonkers who wasn’t to begin with.
@Breeks 8.50pm
That’s a whole lot of “if” statements bud!
While not impossible I have my doubts it’s plausible or, in the case of trusting we can render the SNP fit for power, even desirable. I think it will come down to two alternatives:
1) A split in the SNP before May, with a new party standing on a specifically plebiscitary mandate as a price for tolerating an SNP government @ Holyrood; or
2) Stasis for five years after an SNP victory.
Sadly I have to say I think 2 is much more likely. What we do with the 5 years is the $64,000 question.
North chiel says:
19 February, 2021 at 9:01 pm
Kenny MacAskill stands head & shoulders above the “ political pygmies” currently in ministerial positions at Holyrood . He handled the worlds media so competently during the “ Lockerbie disaster” and deftly handled “ sniping” and “undermining “efforts from the UK government and state controlled broadcast media.
That is good politics,he made the right decision, he only fudged the explanation.
Could you imagine a Holyrood front bench team of Salmond, Cherry, MacAskill MacNeil and possibly Craig Murray spearheading and actually negotiating our Independence as opposed to what we have at present?
It’s time that our top politicians deserted Westminster and prosecuted/spearheaded our Independence from Edinburgh Scotland .
I can, as does the union.
Ever feel you’ve been had? (courtesy J Lydon)
Lindy @6:56
Over on Twitter Andy Wightman is fighting Rhiannon Spear’s corner.
https://twitter.com/andywightman/status/1362864744479264768
Fishy Wullie says:
19 February, 2021 at 9:06 pm
Just watched the AUOB live debate on youtube and I’ve come to the conclusion Gareth Wardell (Grousebeater) is a star and the words to a Genesis song called Timetable “though names may change each face retains the mask it wore” and how these words relates to the same parcel of rogues we have in Holyrood today we had in Edinburgh in 1707
Link, please?
There has never been a more auspicious time to force Independence with chaos reigning down south in Government, and where are we?
Well as have a FM who wants the election to be about her handling of Covid.
We have an NEC spending important time defining the definition of women.
We have an 11 point plan hastily scribed to detract from bad news. I think it offers discussions on a proposal to create a Draft Bill at some unspecified time and date but not much else.
At the most advantageous set if circumstances we have probably ever had, we are found wanting. Maybe they lack the will, or maybe they just lack the ability to maximise these positives.
I am aware that there is an NEC meet this weekend.
I would not risk putting the full revised timeline on here with the Rev OKing it.
The following is extracted, and very safe, also a lot shorter.
Complainer H had 2 complaints of sexual assault in May and June 2014.
She first disclosed it on 5th November 2017 to Ian McCann of the SNP – response, ‘we’ll sit on that in case we ever need to deploy it’.
8 – 10 November 2017 Complainers of the Civil Harassment procedures A1 and B1 – make first contact with staff of Scot Gov. At this time the disclosures are ‘concerns’.
Following much liaison between them, on 29th November 2017
A1 and B1 make formal report of the ‘concerns’ to Human Resources.
New ‘retrospective’ Procedures are drawn up and signed by NS on 20th December 2017.
16th and 23rd January 2018 A1 and B1 register formal complaints under the new Procedures.
29th March – 18th July 2018 Liaison between NS and AS regarding the matter.
20th – 23rd August 2018 Leslie Evans finalises her report and hands it over to Crown Agent, from where it goes to Police.
AS declares he is starting Judicial Review process.
Matter leaked to press before AS can obtain Interdict.
At some point in 2018 Complainer H makes a formal complaint to Police Scotland.
January 2019 AS wins Judicial Review
1 Week later he is arrested on multiple allegations of sexual offences.
March 2019 AS learns for the first time from Police that complainer A (criminal procedings) has also made a formal complaint against him.
I’m a fairly moderate member, I think, and don’t agree with this site all the time but well said Kenny MacAskill.
The movement should not be happy at Westminster. Far, far too many getting comfy from my perspective. The objective is for us to be independent of this state, not a mitigator.
@ LizG and Fishy Willie – if you would like to check your emails, I’ve sent you both the full timeline, for your info only at this time.
Lizg, if you have Ronnie Andersons e-mail, happy for you to let him have a copy.
I don’t know why that Scotland’s present situation brought to my mind Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. Mao unleashed his youthful Red Guards on a population which he felt had lost revolutionary rigour. He felt that China needed the white-heat of revolutionary fervour to reinvigorate Communism in China.
The motivation of Mao might have been a hankering after those heady days of his own youth, the clarity of purpose of initiating a revolution but probably also to destabilise any gathering opposition to his concept of China. His Great Leaps Forward often meant equally great steps backward. The ageing Emperor wanted this major distraction to reset China and also to bury any political threat to his legacy in chaos.
During that time China was virtually closed off to the West and only tantalising glimpses of what was going on in China emerged. I can remember watching footage of young people, Mao’s Red Guards, people of my age, often still in school or formerly students and their fanatical attacks on their elders which sometimes ended in the deaths of those who had earned their enmity for their ‘lack of purity’, usually those elders who were invariably their teachers and professors. To this day no one knows quite how many people died at the hands of zealous young people in that time of violence and unreason.
We might wonder why the young people were so easy to mobilise and to become those truly frightening hordes who were not open to debate or reason and instead seemed fired up to overturn and destroy what did not meet their fanatical ideals. They were driven by absolute certainty of their purpose and buoyed up by the chants of their fellows, recognised no authority but their own and the unchallenged teachings of The Little Red Book. In fact, screaming out pronouncements from The Little Read Book was their way of silencing their terrified victims, subjected to torrents of abuse as they were forced to stand mute & defenceless before their youthful accusers.
The aim of the Cultural Revolution was supposedly to remove what was held to be decadent revisionism and so the main targets were to be educational establishments which were guilty of wrongthink. Expertise in any disciplines deemed to be tainted by Western decadent ideas were to be driven out and outlawed, especially science. China was to be driven back to peasant agriculture in this new regime of intolerance. Policing all of this re-making of Chinese society were the implacable Red Guards.
Neuroscience has discovered that the human brain goes through another period of growth after puberty, almost a restructuring of parts of the brain during which there are alterations in control of emotions and new connections are made at the expense of established ones. The evolutionary purpose of this would seem to be to create the would-be autonomous adult. Unfortunately, the downside of that is that during teenage years, this new re-framing of the individual creates rather recalcitrant, risk-taking individuals who are more likely to identify with their contemporaries than elders.
So, in a way, we should blame evolution for phenomena such as the Red Guards and dare I say, our own local phenomenon of self-righteous young people who reject reason and science? There is a kind of delirious joy in joining a mob and abandoning personal responsibility.
But who was responsible for setting loose the Red Guards and giving them their direction? Youth might be prey to fanaticism but there are those, like Mao, who can choose to use this for their own ends, to stifle opposition and destroy enemies.
Actually it was Mrs Mao whose idea it was to release the Red Guard youth. And of course a total coincidence that the Dear Leader’s book of taxpayer funded speeches is titled from a quote by Chairman Mao. Just fancy that!
@Sylvia (9.31) –
Just had a swatch at Wightman’s timeline.
Some memorable Twitteration going on there.
Ian Mac says:
19 February, 2021 at 9:29 pm
Ever feel you’ve been had? (courtesy J Lydon)
Better to realise sooner than later*.
Sooner=now.
Now is always the best time.
The cranky,spotty faced storm-troopers of the hastily assemmbled union unit will be remunerated unwisely and retire without a single repentant.
That’s the way it works in westminster.
If our best hope is ‘louis de berniers’* very public resentment towards us lazy scots.
Let us take it.
I’m just looking forward to the (previously inaudible) rebuttal unit of the murrell pension party excoriating such racist talk.
But that won’t happen, because all they have in common is they both don’t do politics.
Where they differ is one writes something and the other reads something.
They commune in ignorance,and rather patently, in arrogance.
*Martin Luther King said:
“Later means never”
Well said Kenny. It’s time to leave Westminster as it serves no purpose and the Party get neither credit or publicity for anything they try to do. The SNP MP’s are ignored and laughed at. We can influence nothing in there and we missed our opportunity when it was better numbers but did nothing.
For Party MP’s to babble ‘that any SNP member who reads WoS should be expelled’ beggars belief!
Independence has been closer actually – anyone mind that day in 2014 when we actually had a referendum?
re that Guardian article. In 2010 NS is in trouble for trying to influence a court over the fraudulent behaviour of a constituent. She apologises, observing that she should have worded her letter more carefully (should not have referred to fraudulent claims as “mistakes”) and avoids having to resign.
She learns from this. By 2020/21 she has become a Macavity-like FM who was never there, and never involved, when a weird, retrospective procedure is engineered by those around her. Now it’s ScotGov’s very generously funded RCS that issues press releases and statements which venture into contempt territory by continuing to imply that a jury and a court finding were wrong, long after that verdict has been delivered. Wicked contributors to a notorious, hate-fest, hell blog might speculate about the actual authorship of RCS statements, but the FM’s fingerprints are nowhere to be seen.
Neil in Glasgow @ 10:03 pm
“Independence has been closer actually”
The election of a majority of Nationalist MP’s is de facto independence in any colony and would usually be followed by a declaration to that effect. Even former UK Prime Ministers such as Margaret Thatcher and John Major acknowledged as such.
By this measure Scotland has been de facto independent since 2015, and has voted for independence at two further general elections since.
As Kenny implies, his daeless SNP colleagues at Westminster have yet to find the courage to do what they were elected to do – to return Scottish sovereignty.
Neil in Glasgow says:
19 February, 2021 at 10:03 pm
Independence has been closer actually – anyone mind that day in 2014 when we actually had a referendum?
Without exit polls, proper independent electoral scrutiny, I don’t know.
Tiny ruth knew before I did.
One thing you cannot dispute is that our current FM has done more than zero* towards independence.
*a well puffed 80’s nihilist distraction (but the mathematics of my position remain).
@Ian Mac 9.48pm
Well, Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four got the blame. The Gang of Four was actually probably more than four but it was convenient to settle on them and Lin Biao was conveniently already out of the way, having mysteriously died in a plane crash while supposedly defecting.
China has still avoided blaming Mao for the dreadful effects of the Cultural Revolution and it didn’t actually end completely with his demise. It took a generation before those who had risen to prominence during that time were finally out of the leadership.
(Of course it was just a coincidence! The Thoughts of Chairman Nic.)
Alf Baird
Reiterating our “de facto” independence would irritate a lot of people – probably all of the non-wings alliances I can think of right now.
Take a page out the woke handbook of absurdities – if you believe it then it must be true.
See the latest Adam Curtis for some more elucidation.
So as a loyalty to indy test all candidates must vow to pay half their salaries to a ring fenced indy crusade!
That will separate thee indipendistas from the wokerati.
Bob Mac @9:32
“At the most advantageous set if circumstances we have probably ever had, we are found wanting. Maybe they lack the will, or maybe they just lack the ability to maximise these positives.”
They do not “lack the will”. Far from it – they have all the will required to achieve their goals.
Problem is… that their goals are not the same as the goals of the majority posting here.
Furthermore, their “positives” comprise an NEC stuffed with Wokerati. List candidates of the “right kind” and Sturgeon returned for another 5 years and able to legally silence the haters and let anatomical males go into all the places/spaces formally reserved for women.
Not a Scotland I want to live in.
#NoVotesSNP
Some posters on here gong on about Chairman Mao, The Gang of Four etc, and trying to equate what went on in China to today’s battle for the soul of the SNP.
The Chinese Communist Party was formed in 1921. Chairman Mao led them into the civil war agains the Nationalists in 1945, and by 1949, just four years later, they had won and formed Communist China.
So, it took the Chinese Communists a mere 28 years to go from a new party to the party of government.
The SNP was formed in 1934 – 28 years later, in 1962, the SNP was still a fringe party.
The Cultural Revolution began in 1966 – 17 years after the actual revolution.
Mao and his followers got the important job done first – they ousted the Nationalists and took full control.
There’s a l;esson there for the SNP – do the most-important thing first, get rid of the enemy, which in our case means WIN INDEPENDENCE.
Once that’s done, we can start arguing over minor details such as all this woke pish, but, crucially: FIRST THINGS FIRST – INDEPENDENCE.
Stuart MacKay @ 10:33
“if you believe it then it must be true.”
Margaret Thatcher and John Major also believed it and said so. As a matter of law a referendum is not a requirement for independence, and is not being permitted anyway.
If Scotland’s MP’s believed in their holding our sovereignty and ‘did it’ then it would no longer be hypothetical. Then someone or other might seek to test this in a Scottish court, if need be, the latter established and with its privileges protected by the very same treaty signed off by Scotland’s sovereign representatives. It would seem an unrealistic proposition for any Scottish court to deem the treaty void, given its own existence depends on it.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 Referendum the 45 were disappointed but not entirely disillusioned. Many decided to join the SNP, the principle party of Scottish independence, to continue the campaign for Scotland’s freedom. Towards the end of that year I issued a personal statement which called on the whole independence movement to learn the lesson of unity from the Bitter Together campaign and unite behind the SNP at the forthcoming general election scheduled for May 2015. I was applauded by some but barracked by others. How could a declared republican socialist justify urging voters to endorse an openly capitalist nationalist party? My refrain was simple and straightforward. Breaking the British union was essential to progressive politics and policies which would benefit the working class of Scotland. Send a battalion of SNP MPs to Westminster with an unequivocal mandate to build the independence cause. We were sending them to London to settle up not settle down. That was the mantra I promoted at Lend Your Vote to the SNP rally in Glasgow organised by Hope Over Fear. Thousands attended and I toured the country speaking in at least ten venues encouraging former Labour voters in particular to break with unionism and embrace voting SNP for the independence cause. At my Solidarity party conference in Motherwell in March 2015 a fierce debate ensued around standing socialist candidates and raising the banner of an independent socialist Scotland. Fine points were made by good comrades whom I had marched with, stood on picket lines with, stopped sheriff officers from carrying out warrant sales with, and been arrested protesting outside the Faslane nuclear submarine base with in opposition to immoral and illegal nuclear missiles. I carried the majority but we lost over 100 good socialists from membership on te back of the unity behind the SNP strategy. It was the right thing to do. With only one vote all independence supporters had to be encouraged to drop previous party loyalties and unite behind the SNP. Sure it was politically costly but the cause was bigger than party interests. To this day I curse the Greens for refusing to accept this strategy and competing in the Dumfries, Clydesdale and Tweedale seat where their derisory 839 votes, 1.6%, was greater than the Muppet Mundell’s majority of 798. If the Greens had put the cause before party in 2015 we could have eradicated all Tory representatives from Scotland and that would have been not only satisfying but symbolically massive. In 2016, with a weakened Solidarity party, we competed in the 2016 election with a warning that the 2015 election had transformed the political landscape in Scotland forever and that 2nd votes for the SNP would be wasted as the extra constituency seats won would inevitable lead to lost List seats. Our voice was minor and largely ignored. We encouraged Indy supporters to vote for Solidarity or another progressive independence supporting alternative but not SNP on the 2nd vote but to give all 1st votes to SNP. We may have been ignored but were not wrong. 953,000 2nd list votes for SNP produced only 4 list MSPs from only two regions, South (3) and Highlands and Islands (1). Tragically in the six other regions an incredible 750,000 2nd votes for SNP were not only wasted but ensured the election of scores of useless unionists. In 2017 and 2019 the ‘send them down there to settle up not settle down’ mantra was dusted down and deployed again. The truth is many are now disillusioned with the tactic and felt betrayed that the Scottish independence party they voted for had metamorphized into the Stop Brexit party instead as not a single preparatory measure was taken to advance the cause of IndyRef2. I’m not a member of the SNP and never have been. I believe there are thousands of good decent folk committed to Scottish independence still within that party and a fair collection of republican socialists amongst them. However I am growing weary of promoting the idea of cause before party when the main beneficiary of that principled approach is abusing the support they receive and failing to carry forward our common banner of freedom. I believe it is right to support the SNP in every constituency in May but if the movement is conned yet again into the folly of Both Votes SNP I despair at the prospects for independence being advanced with the current batch of leadership gradualists who have become mere administrators, managers of Scotland, comfortable in their well paid jobs and various trinkets of office while child poverty, homelessness, low pay, inequality and obscene land ownership misuse grows worse and more shameful. Those who urge delay really mean never. Whether it is Action For Independence (AFI) under Dave Thompson’s leadership or another vehicle, preferably led by AS, we need to elect a group of fundamentalists who refuse to take no or wait for an answer. Kenny is spot on. The Cause is bigger, broader and more important than any party or individual but the SNP are incapable and/or unwilling to recognise that fact and the Both Votes SNP pish illustrates clearly that party not cause is what matters most to them.
Serious question –
Can the SNP sue Rev Stu and all contributors to this place if it turns out (see Twitter) that we have actually driven Pete Wishart insane?
Royal fury at Harry and Meghan’s ‘horribly disrespectful’ parting shot: Palace shock at couple’s churlish insult after losing patronages – as it’s revealed how Queen told her grandson ‘you work for the monarchy, the monarchy doesn’t work for you’
Translation into scotch:
Murrels fury at Salmond and any who support his ‘horribly disrespectful’ parting shot:
Murrels shock at former FM’s churlish insult after losing patronages – as it’s revealed how Murells told the voters ‘you work for the party, the party will never work for you’
Socrates MacSporran @ 11pm
Currently the main enemy of Independence is Sturgeon’s SNP. The unionists would not be in a position to block it but for them. Ideally we need the SNP cleaned out now or, failing that, they need to die and be replaced by a true party of independence. We will never achieve our goal while the Sturgeon clan controls Holyrood.
If there is no significant change before May it has to be vote for whoever is best placed to beat Sturgeon on the constituency ballot and vote ISP on the list. Voting to perpetuate the current situation is the new definition of madness.
Tommy Sheridan. Spot on and nails it. I remember being told we are a political party and our reason for existing is to win elections at all cost. This was not my understanding. Our gain in winning seats was always and foremost to progress the Independence cause, never to participate in a very poor second best settlement wether that be at Westminster or a devolved compromise.
The SNP want both votes SNP. Simply to prevent a fellow Indy party having influence.
They tolerate the Greens for Budgets etc. But the Greens are not an independence party. They are a bunch of student hobby politicians, who happen to support independence.
What we need is 20 list Independence Msps wielding power over the SNP. We are in this mess because the SNP have softened with power. They have run the show for too long.
We need to put a rocket up them.
On a lighter note I am glad I watched tonight’s AUOB livstream that was normal people disgusing the main aim it was a breath of fresh air. This SNP have poisoned the well turned it into some squalid dirty messy poisonous thing I don’t recognise
Mao zedong used his then marginalised wife as a figurehead to rally the youth & purge the “old ways”, then cut her off when she became too powerful.
Hmmm!
Wee Deng was the man responsible for the China we see today.
Seriously,
Why doesn’t Sturgeon take her diehards with her and join forces with Harvie and Rennie and form a new political Party at Holyrood.
Every one’s a winner.
We get shot of Sturgeon and the Trans mob get their dream team.
What would you call this new Party?
God knows.
Reverend,
Sorry, me again.
I am sure that Levy and McCrae have recognized that when Alex Salmond goes into the Fabiani quagmire and raises his hand he puts himself in the same position as the Anglia Television Directors following the takeover by MAI in 1994.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/to-the-national-union-of-journalists/#comment-2614929
Do not underestimate the malevolence of the opposition. If Alex leaves ANY opening they will take it. Look at poor Julian.
If they get Alex he won-t come out.
I know he has been provoked.
I know he wants his @day in court@
I know he always leads from the front.
But if he goes in on anything less than 100% of the protections demanded by Levy and McCrae AT LEAST, he will live to regret it. Or rather, he will not live to regret it.
@ Tommy Sheridan at 11.10: sad to say but you are right that the SNP has been hollowed out and distorted by the leadership and its acolytes.
The bulk of normal members believe in independence as our primary aim and many are thoroughly miserable at having no quick way to restore the standards and policies we had.
Just having another look at this Lady.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Smith,_Baroness_Smith_of_Gilmorehill
I think this is significant:
Baroness Smith is president of Scottish Opera
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Opera
Nothing wrong with that of course, but I don’t know much of the lower classes you will encounter. And I do wonder how many of the Judging classes she might run into in her guise as president of Scottish Opera.
@Lawrence
That’s easy. The Lib Dems.
Sturgeon and Harvie are Lib Dems in the wrong party.
Just received an email from Nicola Sturgeon attaching a short video promoting SNP 1 and 2 and truly it is pap for the masses.
And so it says that in 2011 the SNP got a majority because we elected 53 constituency and got 16 regional – thereby giving a total of 69 seats – and a majority SNP government.
And then in 2016 the SNP increased it constituency seats to 59 ( or + 6 ) but that our list MSPs fell to 4 giving a total of 63 seats – and no SNP majority.
And so as constituency seats go up list seats go down since that is what D’Honte is designed to do. And do it it did in 2016 when over 953,000 SNP votes secured 4 seats whilst 956,000 votes got the unionists 45 seats.- with the Greens getting 7 List seats.
So recognising how D’Honte works are we arguing that we want to REDUCE our constituency seats so that we can GAIN list seats. Of course not Nicola is confident that the polls are going to give her a majority through the constituency seats with maybe a majority of a couple of seats in a take of around 66 or 67 seats out of the available 73. But that would be at the expense of gaining NO list seats!!
But what if there was an Indy Party like the ISP that took all or most of the SNP second vote and all the votes of those wanting independence. If such a party took around 45% to 50% of the second vote that would give us another 25 to 28 independence seats – giving a super majority of well over 90 seats.
So why is Nicola betting the house on going for a slender constituency majority and no top up list seats. This is certainly not the actions of a Party seeking to maximise Independence. Quite the reverse.
Anyway, the analysis wonks can do the regional analysis in more detail but something tells me the SNP is not now interested in independence. The second vote has been given to be for an independence list party not the SNP.
So really great comments btl tonight.
Well, I suppose we can still pretend. Keep a light oan n aw that, Nic!
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/nicola-sturgeon-orders-eu-flag-201755833.html
‘The truth is going to come out. They won’t all stay silent and once a trickle comes then it’ll turn into a flood and the whole shoddy administration will fall. Won’t be long now.
The first to spill the beans might avoid the fall out
How many civil servants broke the CS code?’
Over in The Herald, Peter Wishart is calling this site ‘an anti-SNP hate-fest’. He’s one of these ‘shoot the messenger’ folk. Is he actually aware of what’s going-on at the moment?….Sturgeon/Murrell/Watergate – does this all just go over the top of Pete’s head?
.
Dear Kenny,
The How & The Why
Thank you for once again putting your head above the parapet.
You sir, are a brave man and one of principle.
The Where & The When
Whereas political pygmies such as the on-message drones and wannabe gravy train conductor Alex Hayes aged 26 and 3/4 are attacking you and Chris…
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexKerrSNP/status/1361768009422012418
All the while Alex Hayes is being willfully blind to the horrendous Sturgeonite SNP Machiavellian abuse of Joanna Cherry QC, MP., and the inexcusable traducing of Alex Salmond’s reputation.
The Office of The Scottish Charity Regulator is soon to be brought into disrepute as they watch, impotently permitting Rape Crisis Scotland’s current trustees to place political lies in the public domain, thereby risking that charity’s registration at OSCR.
I refer to the contempt of court by the feckless Sturgeon puppets at Rape Crisis Scotland who state the court were wrong and the unqualified “officers” at Rape Crisis Scotland are legally correct in dismissing The Court finding Alex Salmond innocent. But Rape Crisis and the Alex Hayes of this putrid group are allowed to libel Alex Salmond and paint him as guilty because the McWokeist cult hearsay the evidence is wrong and the thereby cite the court as wrong. Kenny as a former defense lawyer you would put this far better than I.
The point?
I left Labour in 2007 and lent my vote to the SNP. Many people left Labour. In Scotland, the downfall of Labour was shocking and absolute.
It is very likely the Unionist Establishment will unleash a carefully managed choreographed effort to do serious harm to the SNP in March and April 2021 to bugger up the May vote for Holyrood so the SNP is neutered. Akin to a period ipdefined by that much quoted mantras “once in a generation”.
The problem thereafter is calibration. The Establishment will find it difficult to control granular shifts in political demographics. So the SNP may be accidentally obliterated if the MSM press push the: “STURGEON CAUGHT RED HANDED TRYING TO JAIL AN INNOCENT MAN” card.
The Union want to keep Sturgeon in post, but a weak Sturgeon only and one they can control. By doing ALL of this unholy SNP implosion over the past three years, the Establishment get people like me to STOP lending their vote to the SNP. Alex Hayes stinks of that old New Labour entitlement that you must vote Labour. Hayes is so stupid he puts that mantra on his Twitter bio. Ergo…
I and many like me who left Labour and LENT our vote to the SNP now…
Refuse to vote in an SNP government whose policies represent the 0.4% and ignore the rest of we 99.6%.
I will NOT vote for gerrymandered McWoke extremists who have dishonesty slithered their way into the NEC.
I will NOT vote for a party of Sturgeon, Murrell or anyone else who tried to jail an innocent man.
I will NOT vote for a party that cancels women who make a simple statement: “A woman is an adult female.
I will NOT vote for a party that has Humza Yosef bringing in his despised ORWELLIAN Hate Reform Bill which will close down Wings Over Scoland, Craig Murray, Barhead Boy etc.
The worst though is contemptible Sturgeon has me considering VOTING TORY in a constituency where it will take very few to unseat the sitting SNP MSP. Alex Thicko Hayes take note when you arrogantly chide me about who else can I vote for and assume I am left only with the McWoke SNP.
I disgust myself as I loathe the Tories with all my soul. They killed by brother’s friend. He is listed as being killed by MR Iain Duncan Smith here… http://www.calumslist.org
YET WHAT CHOICE DO WE HAVE? It is fast becoming the ONLY way to get rid of Sturgeon and the McWokeist cancer… to have them and the FAME SNP voted out of office for a few years and get the REAL SNP to rebuild itself and come back STRONG AND HONEST in 2025.
Sadly it is now ALMOST too late for good men and women to turn around the fledgling other new YES to IndyRef2 parties as they lack the charismatic leader needed to raise 15 to 30 list MSPs to keep the SNP honest and honourable.
Kenny forgive me asking but will you, or Alex or Joanna Cherry stand as leader of one of the independent pro-INDY parties that have sprung up and need to coalesce around a charismatic and able leader?
If not, we are all in the…
💩
💩
“\uD83D\uDCA9”
???????
f09f92a9
Its so easy to use simple plain english so why not do so, and why use 10 words when one will do.
If I want to read a book I can go to a library and get one, I ain’t reading one on here, long winded posts never get read by me, and probably many others, so why bother trying to bore us with your ego trip
And why do people on here say that trump is a sore loser and that the election result was correct, he did lose
Our Referendum was the same undemocratic sham, and anyone that denies it has my deapest sympathy as do the flat earth proclaimers and the moon landing did not happen numpties
Trump was a sore loser and he lost bigly.
9 words
@ David Caledonia at 6.20am: I don’t think you’re going to find many people who have sympathy for Trump either on this site or amongst Scots generally. Scots have particular reason to detest that vile man. Did you never see the disgusting, contemptuous way he treated those whose land he demanded for his golf course in Aberdeenshire? Or do you just think bullying, insulting and threatening ordinary people and expecting them to be as motivated by money and greed as Trump is, is acceptable? Trump is a loathsome, despicable creep, an utterly selfish little Hitler, a liar and an absolute reprobate. If the American election was rigged against him, the world has been done a favour.
@ Skip_NC @ Socrates McSporran
If you live in the USA as a foreigner you are impressed by 2 things: firstly how efficient the private sector is and secondly how inefficient and even corrupt the government sector is at all levels – local, State and Federal.
The private sector is efficient because of the robust competition in the US domestic market. That competition is enforced by laws with teeth – company executives have been jailed for anti-competitive acts. When was the last time anyone in the UK went to jail for competition law offences?
The government sector is inefficient because of the political system and the primary system of choosing party candidates is a major factor in that. Having to fight two election campaigns means as a candidate you have to raise funds twice and pay for two advertising campaigns. Since municipal, County, State and Federal elections are all held on the same day they are all trying to buy advertising space at the same time so the advertising rates are sky-high. These factors explain why the overall sums spent in US elections are in the billions and why every politician elected to office owes favours to wealthy campaign contributors. This is why US ambassadors are usually campaign donors not professional diplomats, to give one example.
But even more insidious is the necessity for each candidate to create from scratch his own campaign organisation. For the primary election the candidate has to recruit campaign workers, strategists, rent office space, hire furniture, computers and office equipment. This all requires money, particularly to pay high-salaried campaign strategists and PR specialists in campaigns for Senator, Governor or President. But above all every campaign requires manpower and that is provided by activists who travel around the country working for one campaign after another. And in the USA there’s always an election going on somewhere. The activists get paid starvation wages during the campaign but the quid pro quo is that the successful candidate has to put them on the public payroll.
The result is that the political appointees go multiple levels deep in government whether municipal, State or Federal. Consequently the senior levels of any public sector department are composed of people who have no talent or experience for the job and who are not only inefficient at their jobs but spent a lot of their time engaging in endless turf wars. The experience of having incompetent political appointees constantly slotted in above them demoralises the civil service and ensures that people with talent leave government service. There is also constant churning of staff with changes in political office – when Nixon took over from Johnson it’s estimated that 1 million Federal jobs changed hands. But even when the successor is from the same Party there is turnover since the new occupant has his own “tail” of supporters he needs to reward.
US citizens are so inured to this level of corruption that they don’t even recognise it for what it is, instead they call it “patronage”. They also regard the inefficiency of their governments as somehow inevitable as illustrated by common sayings like “good enough for government work” ie slipshod.
Want to introduce a US-style primary system in Scotland? Be careful what you wish for.
@Tommy Sheridan
Inspirational stuff, but for the love of God man, learn to use paragraph breaks!!
@Alf Baird 10.14pm
You said:
1) “The election of a majority of Nationalist MP’s is de facto independence in any colony and would usually be followed by a declaration to that effect. Even former UK Prime Ministers such as Margaret Thatcher and John Major acknowledged as such.”
That was the case before the re-establishment of the Scottish parliament. The situation now is different, because the Scottish political establishment accepted the referendum route to independence, not the plebiscitary election route. That can be changed of course, but it has to be explicit. The international community won’t accept it otherwise, particularly if the UK government doesn’t accept it. The international community, and the organs of international law (such as they are) do not accept that entities like Scotland, Quebec and Catalonia are in the same category as former colonies. However hard you try to big up the “Scotland as colony” narrative, few people are buying it – least of all those whose opinions will actually matter if it ever came to gaining international recognition in the face of British nationalist opposition or refusal to negotiate.
2) “By this measure Scotland has been de facto independent since 2015, and has voted for independence at two further general elections since.”
Scotland can be independent de facto but not de jure if that’s what the majority of Scots put in place, but as the inhabitants of other such entities find out, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Being the norther equivalent of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, or Somaliland or Transdniestria is hardly an attractive prospect.It’s simply fallacious to say Scotland is de facto independence. For that to be true it would have to have been declared, supported by the majority and have been followed by some other actions in state formation. De facto independent states don’t continue to send MPs to the “imperial” parliament.
Perhaps you just don’t understand what ” de facto” actually means?
3) “As Kenny implies, his daeless SNP colleagues at Westminster have yet to find the courage to do what they were elected to do – to return Scottish sovereignty.”
For that to work, they’d have to have been elected on a platform that if they supported independence, and had the explicit backing of >50% of Scottish voters, they were empowered to declare independence. They have no such mandate, and thus no such authority, nor would any such action be recognised internationally.
I think there’s now a strong argument for pro-indy MPs to “do a Sinn Fein”, but the only things guaranteed to deliver independence with any certainty are a Yes vote in a referendum, or a majority in plebiscitary elections fought on an explicitly “victory = independence” platform. None of this is rocket science, despite the determined efforts of some to make it more complicated or advance facile plans to conjure independence out of this air. They simply won’t work.
StuartM says:
20 February, 2021 at 7:43 am
@ Skip_NC @ Socrates McSporran
If you live in the USA
By and large, we do not
as a foreigner you are impressed by 2 things: firstly how efficient the private sector is and secondly how inefficient and even corrupt the government sector is at all levels – local, State and Federal.
Where do you draw the line between private and public sectors?
The eye watering sums spent on war and drug development are completely government funded.
Private and public bureaucracies face the same challenges.
I am always impressed by the medically induced bankruptcy figures, induced by the private sector.
Show me one from medicare/aid or our flawed but effective SNHS.
The private sector is efficient because of the robust competition in the US domestic market. That competition is enforced by laws with teeth – company executives have been jailed for anti-competitive acts. When was the last time anyone in the UK went to jail for competition law offences?
That’s what is said, since the S&L scandal last century, there has been no significant prosecutions
The government sector is inefficient because of the political system and the primary system of choosing party candidates is a major factor in that. Having to fight two election campaigns means as a candidate you have to raise funds twice and pay for two advertising campaigns. Since municipal, County, State and Federal elections are all held on the same day they are all trying to buy advertising space at the same time so the advertising rates are sky-high. These factors explain why the overall sums spent in US elections are in the billions and why every politician elected to office owes favours to wealthy campaign contributors. This is why US ambassadors are usually campaign donors not professional diplomats, to give one example.
You are talking accurately about your problems, what has it it got to do with scottish independence?
But even more insidious is the necessity for each candidate to create from scratch his own campaign organisation. For the primary election the candidate has to recruit campaign workers, strategists, rent office space, hire furniture, computers and office equipment. This all requires money, particularly to pay high-salaried campaign strategists and PR specialists in campaigns for Senator, Governor or President. But above all every campaign requires manpower and that is provided by activists who travel around the country working for one campaign after another. And in the USA there’s always an election going on somewhere. The activists get paid starvation wages during the campaign but the quid pro quo is that the successful candidate has to put them on the public payroll.
I don’t know many activists being paid starvation wages here, there are minimum wage laws which amount to the same.
But why should ‘activists’ be paid at all?
The hirsute,dissolute MP for stirling finds young friends who will do it for nothing.
(Maybe not nothing, a little nudge toward the emerald(OZ gets better in my memory) city?)
The result is that the political appointees go multiple levels deep in government whether municipal, State or Federal. Consequently the senior levels of any public sector department are composed of people who have no talent or experience for the job and who are not only inefficient at their jobs but spent a lot of their time engaging in endless turf wars. The experience of having incompetent political appointees constantly slotted in above them demoralises the civil service and ensures that people with talent leave government service. There is also constant churning of staff with changes in political office – when Nixon took over from Johnson it’s estimated that 1 million Federal jobs changed hands. But even when the successor is from the same Party there is turnover since the new occupant has his own “tail” of supporters he needs to reward.
You keep pointing out your problems, you’ve had 70 years since you left vietnam and the moon, and you’re telling us what to do?
US citizens are so inured to this level of corruption that they don’t even recognise it for what it is, instead they call it “patronage”.
Do something about it then.
Print out your screed and hire a junk mailer.
They also regard the inefficiency of their governments as somehow inevitable as illustrated by common sayings like “good enough for government work” ie slipshod.
Again, your problem, we have a lot of our own.
Want to introduce a US-style primary system in Scotland? Be careful what you wish for.
Ok:
I wish for honest government, honest legislation and honest structures to maintain the first two.
I have answered you well, but I will always regret not ignoring you.
Well said Kenny but I fear it will fall on deaf SNP ears – we need a REGIONAL LIST PARTY called the Independence For Scotland party to open those ears up.
Nicola’s transpleasing stance is an unnecessary distraction that the London Brits have avoided – makes us look like naive political imbeciles. The SNP exists for indy and nothing else – but that isn’t its priority as far as the messaging is perceived.
Andy Ellis
A national majority of Nationalist MP’s elected for a National Party whose first and fundamental aim is national independence is a FACT, ergo DE FACTO.
The existence of a colonial (i.e. ‘devolved’) layer of government seems irrelevant – the purpose of independence is to remove it.
robertknight says:
19 February, 2021 at 6:04 pm
Jacqueline McMillan @5:32
“Indy isn’t split”
Couldn’t agree more.
It’s the SNP that’s split – between those who support Indy and those who have no desire for Indy but who look to hijack the SNP for their own narrow, Woke-driven agendas and personal political ambitions.
So what can we do about it?
Up against the weirdo woke faction.
WTF. How the bloody hell did that come about? Actually my Son warned me about 4 years ago. He hates politic and politicians, but he has a decent mind. We fell out at the time because I said that wouldn’t happen and if it did we could change it back. Fucking naive me 🙁
Well, here we are JESUS H CHRIST
https://www.witchesofscotland.com/
Think you all need to have a look at this too!
@Alf Baird
Nope. Your faulty analysis becomes no more convincing for constant repetition. A majority of Westminster MP’s is easy to attain with far less than 50% of the popular vote. The international community are not going to accept what they would regard as UDI on the part of Scotland on the basis of a majority of Westminster MPs unless it specifically backed up by a majority of voters and a mandate.
Any Scottish government which tried to declare independence without those things simply won’t be recognised. The SNP got 94% of Westminster seats in 2015 with 49.97% of the popular vote.
Andy Ellis
You might just as well say that Scotland could vote in 59 nationalist MP’s (100%) at every UK general election forever and a day and still never be independent if this did not also secure a point of a percentage point over 50% of the vote.
The real matter here is whether or not it would be lawful for a majority of Scotland’s MP’s to withdraw Scotland from the UK alliance arrangement. If it were deemed to be lawful then it would surely be recognised internationally.
A confirmatory referendum might then be held, if required by the international community. That referendum might then be organised solely by Scots without the usual external interference by rest-UK actors.
We should remember also that the international community tend not to be aware of the nature of the UK treaty-based alliance or of Scotland’s long established sovereign nation status; constitutionally Scotland is clearly not a subordinate people and territory or colony, despite being treated as such politically by Westminster and, due to the latter, considered internationally much like a powerless ‘region’ seeking secession to a large extent. This is a constitutional deception, to the international community as well as to many Scots, as well as people in rest-UK.
Huh. I always though that shadow cabinet guff was some kind of Westminster requirement. I had no idea the SNP was so intrinsically in lockstep with the British establishment that they invented it off their own bats. Hah, and to think a year ago I’d have laughed at the concept of SNP MPs taking the ermine, so sure they’d never ever do such a thing. Now? That’s where they really want to go isn’t it? The real gravy train of a seat in the HoL for retirement.
Thanks Kenny, very enlightening.
I read that SNP MPs/MSPs should be investigated/sanctioned for their contributions to or support for WoS; is democracy dead?
Can I post a tw@tter link? On conspiracy theorists and Scotland … https://twitter.com/FaceLikeTheSun/status/1363314406956826627?s=20