Wings Over Scotland

Lamont – yet another Labour ‘politishun’ wholly unable to express intelligence, or capable of a fig leaf of insight.

Lamont wipes from her miniscule memory it was her party that returned £1.3 billion to the UK Treasury unallocated because Union Jack McConnell and his crew couldn’t think of anything to spend it on – not even poverty in Glasgow.

But his ‘gift’ got McConnell his earldom!

Labour proved their utter inability to take responsibility for their own demise right after the Scottish Election – Sawar and Dugdale both made comments to the effect that Labour had tried to move on from the independence issue but the people of Scotland (SNP and Tory voters) has “chosen” not to. In other words, Labour’s problems are due to the stupid pig-headed people of Scotland (Nationalist and Unionist)who are just too dumb to see the wisdom of Labour. That party are just NEVER going to “get it”. They are so blinded by hatred of the SNP that they are beyond reason. They’ve actually gone mad. Like, REALLY crazy. Psychotic. Deluded. In need to treatment – or in need of being put out of their own and everyone else’s misery like a sick dog.

Lamont is not programmed to accept reality; she is programmed to say and do anything which increases her chances of being rewarded by the britnat establishment. The bbc loves her of course.

I really don’t mind that they are not learning. They can become a dessicated corpse of a party, the quicker the better.

Just when Kezia Dugdale makes you think that maybe Johann Lamont wasn’t actually that bad a manager, good old Ms Lamont gets tweeting.

@Quamby

I’ve just opened my popcorn. Yeeha!
Hope you’ve got a tin hat.

Wee Ginger Dug excellent in todays National plus a good letter from Wings own Donald Anderson.

Jim Sillars joining a nice bowling club would be good news.

I doubt its JoLa anyway. More like some sparky SPAD the same way as Kez used to do Cumnock’s posts when he was too pished.

Slab should set up a commission to look into whether they consider that their social media engagement is helping or hindering the development of the Labour message in Scotland.

There you are Kez, just personalise that wording and you’ll be seen to be doing something and the BBC can trumpet your ‘fightback’

A symbolic peppercorn rent of £1 has been replaced by a rent of £4,000 a year.

It probably doesn’t feel like a meaningless percentage to the charity that had to give up the premises though.

@Paul D & Morag.
If you only read this to nitpick and whinge I seriously recommend you find a nice comic to read.
To clarify for you, the article is about the collapse of Scottish labour.
Complaining about the way the figures are presented means either
1/ you don’t get it
2/ you don’t care
3/ both.
If it’s 1/ there is a strong possibility you are a labour voter.
If so the comic might be an intilectual stretch.

But the Opposition have the media behind them; Lamont, Dugdale, Rennie, Davidson etc can say anything and it will be reported positively. Anything the SNP say is BAAD.

@ Wulls

Same comment to you as I made to Quarmby!!!

Stu has already answered Morag’s point in his own inimitable way. Fair do’s.

As for your conclusions, like Quarmby’s, either you don’t have a clue about Morag or you simply want to stir.

I hardly think Morag was “nitpicking”. She never suggested for a second that a jump in rent from £1 to £4000 was insignificant or devastating for a charity, just that it was a disingenuous use of numbers; which it clearly is. This very blog has been quick to point out such headline grabbing abuse of statistics many times, Morag’s point is perfectly valid and reasonable.

“Pretty silly use of percentages in that article”

If the message was aimed at SLAB, best to use the language they themselves would use.

@Turnip-Ghost
That wouldn’t make sense either – she DID.

To make any kind of sense to it you would need to add words like:

“If only the First Minister had got Glasgow more, think what state SLAB would be in then.”

Ah its the old virus hows your back jola got all them daggers out yet hen hmmmm?

Stupid is an understatement a walking talking disaster of a woman who could not see she was being played as a total chump by her better together blue tory pals.

And how ever you paint this charity thing its despicable,i dont have the info on them but i would guess they dont have any Lords sneaking about in the shadows.

And well said Betty Boop,Morag was a winger before i was so to accuse her of being a yoon is not only stupid its down right rude so an apology is in order imo.

Labour will never change, it needs scapegoats for it to avoid responsibility for anything bad that happens here in Scotland as a result of Westminster.

Kezia Dugdale had no problems campaigning for Scotland to remain as part of the UK and continue to be Governed from Westminster.

Now she and some union officials are demanding the Scottish Government stop passing on Westminster cuts and end austerity.

Either she doesn’t understand (which is highly unlikely)or is she hoping that people in Scotland don’t understand that level of the Scottish Government’s budget is decided by Westminster.

And as such she has yet to explain how the Scottish Government could possibly refuse to pass on the consequences of Westminster’s cuts.

It’s a perfectly accurate percentage. Accuracy is never meaningless.

Well a perfectly accurate percentage would be 399,999%. But rather than quibbling from either side, a more interesting approach might be looking at City Properties (Glasgow) LLP who are the instigators of these large increases which seem to have been given at very little notice to their tenants. How much control does the Council have over it? – something that might become important if Labour loses control next year and policy changes. And who are the people running it?

Peter mculloch i agree, they vote tory or liebor in scotland, then demand that the snp do more to protect them from austerity cuts???. You couldnt make this s***e up.

Man, you really do love to nitpick. It’s a perfectly accurate percentage. Accuracy is never meaningless.

I’m not nitpicking you, I’m criticising the original article, and in a more general sense this ridiculous newspaper thing where they say “has increased by 200%” instead of “has trebled” (or whatever). Once you’re significantly over a doubling (that is, over an increase of 100%), expressing the increase as a percentage rather than as doubling, trebling, gone up tenfold or whatever, is much harder to comprehend. But it sounds gee-whiz and I suppose that’s why they do it. It’s about sounding sensational rather than being easily comprehended.

Yes, accuracy can be meaningless if it’s expressed in such a way that the meaning is opaque to the normal reader. You know that.

To clarify for you, the article is about the collapse of Scottish labour.
Complaining about the way the figures are presented means either
1/ you don’t get it
2/ you don’t care
3/ both.

I’m complaining about the way the newspaper article presented the figures, because it’s a common journalistic ploy either to big up figures or obscure them completely from normal understanding.

Stuart has merely repeated the presentational method chosen by the newspaper, which is perfectly reasonable.

@ Mike DIAMOND
In the 2015 election Labour got 9m (30.4%) votes and Tories got 11m (36.9%). That’s not such an enormous difference in a 66% turnout and could easily be reversed. Look at the amazing popularity of Bernie Sanders in ultra right wing USA. The majority of ordinary people do not support neo-liberal policies.

Labour lost 48 seats, almost all of them in Scotland where the SNP gained 50. Kezia Dugdale has dropped Neil Findlay, a Corbyn supporter, from her team. Labour have abandoned the left of centre with their scathing comments about the poor living in a “something for nothing” culture.

What Slab fail to learn is that ordinary people just want a fair and caring society and are prepared to pay a fair share to sustain it. The SNP now occupy the left of centre and aren’t in a hurry to move out!

I just noticed that Humza Yousaf has himself been bamboozled by that ludicrous “percentage” presentation.

link to twitter.com

He has tweeted it as a 4000% increase, when in fact a 4000% increase on a £1 rent would only see the charity paying £40 a year which I think they might have coped with.

It may be accurate to say it’s a 400,000% increase, but it’s anything but clear or understandable.

Ian Murray abstained positively on the question of deciding anything until a commission has been formally established and then a study of those conclusions should be examined and debated before they’re abstained on again, And he’s absolutely positive on the issue

However there is no doubt the SNP are talking left and looking good while they’re leaning right and being disingenuous over the whole matter and the people of Scotland are coming to realise that more and more by voting for them in ever greater numbers

But this hides the greater truth about the SNPs real aims and people in his constituency of Morningside Torylandburgh have placed their faith in Scottish Labour to deliver them from evil, for mine is the kingdom and the glory, Mr Murray said in a statement today from College Green in Westminster

Has Johann Lamont spat Ian Murrays dummy, will it ever be returned to the Abstainer in chief, will Magrit Curran ever find her way out of the vote counting room without assistance, do we care?

It’s now the turn of Ruthless Davidson to come under fire from the evil Cybernat Hordes led and driven blindly and obediently on by the Commander in Chief of Sarcasm, the Master of Disaster of one the liners, the great seeker of Sweeties Rev Stuart Campbell or the Rev as his followers call him in whispered respectful tones

The destruction of La (El) Ruthie is imminent

Does any of this make sense in Scotlands new politics, NO but in a way YES

MrMac1040 @ 28 May, 2016 at 11:14 am

“Labour proved their utter inability to take responsibility for their own demise right after the Scottish Election – Sawar and Dugdale both made comments to the effect that Labour had tried to move on from the independence issue but the people of Scotland (SNP and Tory voters) has “chosen” not to. In other words, Labour’s problems are due to the stupid pig-headed people of Scotland (Nationalist and Unionist)who are just too dumb to see the wisdom of Labour. “

There is unfinished business for all Yes voters. Labour needs to be wiped out in next years council elections.

Hello and thank you, Ruby at 11.59 a.m.

I haven’t got time to explore the link you give us, but wonderful to read five of the daftest ideas ever produced for saving the Union. Every one of them guaranteed to stick in the craw of any self-respecting Scot.

If the UK Defence League Lordies who wasted tax-payers’ money on the consultation do any of the things above, as listed on Ruby’s post, they are absolutely certain to turn many who voted ‘No’ in 2014 into independence-supporters overnight. And not just the waverers – even many a hitherto convinced ‘No’ voter will not be able to stomach that kind of thing.

I suppose they will want to celebrate all the phoney ‘events’ proposed in their list by having the OO march down all our streets, just to make sure that everyone gets the unmissable message. That is, to ensure that true Unionism gets up every self-respecting person’s nose once and for all.

Will Adam Tomkins and Lord Sainsbury be leading the charge on white horses? And will they still be doing so when Britannia finally sinks under the waves?

Even the pretence that it was ever a Union, and not a colonisation, seems to have been wiped clean from the empty slate that their dismal minds have become. Empty because without historical or even common sense, without a modicum of statesmanship, without common cause or commonweal, or the slightest reasonable ideal with which to make appeal to the common man or woman of Scotland … without everything.

The modern Emperors – whether egghead ex-Professors or egg-seller grocers clad in ermine – stand there before us … Empty, naked, and unadorned, in all their vain glory.

You can’t run a country – or even an artifice like the UK -on empty, for ever.

Yeah Chic, totally subconscious on ma part.

If the Daily Record or the Herald had talked about a 400,000% increase to describe a £1 to £4,000 change in rent imposed by an SNP Council, (no doubt as part of the usual SNP BAD narrative), would we be howling in protest at the headline? I don’t think so, because in this (hypothetical) case, the report would be accurate and not misleading. We might be embarrassed at the action of the SNP Council, but we could not really complain about the reporting,

A headline can be true, but misleading. Think of the Herald and their recent story about Nicola Sturgeon being dragged into the Hosie/Robson private grief – it was true only because the Herald had asked Sturgeon about it. But the reference to a 400,000% increase in this article is not misleading in any way. It is accurate and intended to illustrate the scale of the problem for the charity – they are having to quit the premises. Why should expressing it in percentage terms be unreasonable or misleading?

What this is really all about is SLab’s unwillingness to die is a peaceful dignified manner.

SLab have contributed nothing positive to Scottish politics for a decade. They have whinged and moaned in response to their voters abandoning them. And worst of all they campaigned for London Tory rule while those who should have been their natural followers voted to reject this.

Their niche on the political spectrum has been filled. They have nothing left to offer, no role to fulfil.

They just refuse to RIP as they are kept on life support by the likes of the Daily Record and BBC SLab.

Those who are still involved with SLab need to let it go, let it pass and enter the history books.

Just remembered Niclas Reddish used go sweary UKOK mental, on rancid The Graun’s vote NO or else 2014 stuff. He wasn’t exactly a WoS fan but he certainly got WoS out there with his bad WoS rage.

Niclas kept telling the btl Graun crowd he’d go back to Wales, if we voted YES, which was quite funny. Wonder what his SLab activist title is? John Ruddy SLabour Montrose from Plymouth’s another regular Graun CiFer but focused much more on Plymouth and south coast trains to London btl. He’d pop into to Graun’s scotland region section to slap down uppity vile seps like me but much of his brilliant mind’s all about the south of England and its trains, or is it

link to johnruddy.org.uk
From

John Ruddy ?@jruddy99 May 26
“The problem is when voters twig that an SNP MP equals a Tory government.”

to

John Ruddy ?@jruddy99 May 23
And what do you call year on year cuts to Glasgow’s budget? SNP have already “let Glasgow down

Then there’s Dr NO, unionist of the year

Scott Arthur ?@DrScottThinks May 25 Edinburgh, Scotland
Nicola Sturgeon is still pushing the myth that SNP MPs are better than the rest.

It begs the question as to how individuals with such impenetrable skulls managed to get University Degrees at all. Clearly a University education is wasted on a great many Yoons though. It might be that they aren’t genetically programmed to take the hint? Oh well here is hoping they never take the hint!

O/T

What muppets like Tomkins just don’t get is that there is no such thing as a ‘British’ nationality. Sure there will be the OO zoomers who will dispute this but it’s a fact. Indeed, most English people, in my experience, do not consider themselves as ‘British’. They are English first and last. ‘Britishness’ is just an imperialist fob, a smokescreen to mask the dominance of England over the smaller countries of the UKOGB&NI. England IS Britain and Britain IS England. Just ask most Americans.

I used to work in London. Spent many a night in London pubs along with Welsh, Irish and English pub goers. When the Celtic fringers explained to our English cousins that “We’re all British” they would just laugh at us because the simple truth is that it is the wee countries that are ‘British’ and England is English. This supposed ‘shared’ identity only works one way. “We’re ALL British” is a total lie. And idiots like Tomkins have been taken in by that lie.

But I am Scottish. And my Scottish culture is distinctly different to any other in these islands. I will NOT be labelled with a manufactured cultural identity such as ‘British’. Not even if England agrees to being British too.

As R.L. Stevenson said:

“There is nothing perhaps more puzzling (if one thing in sociology can ever really be more unaccountable than another) than the great gulf that is set between England and Scotland – a gulf so easy in appearance, in reality so difficult to traverse. Here are two people almost identical in blood: pent up together on one small island, so that their intercourse (one would have thought) must be as close as that of prisoners who shared one cell of the Bastille [. . .] and yet a few years of quarrelsome isolation [. . .] has so separated their thoughts and ways that not unions, nor mutual dangers, nor steamers, nor railways, nor all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, seem able to obliterate the broad distinction.”

Over 300 years of this defunct Union and they still try to force it upon us. Never going to happen, Tomkins, old chap. Not in a quad-zillion years. I’m NOT bRitish and won’t be forced into being so.

Labour don’t get Scotland.

John Curtice’s contribution to the ‘New Act of Union’ committee seems reasonable no mad ideas about more Last Night at the Proms, more Rule Britannia, more BBC, more Union Jacks, more Royal Family.

There’s a lot of reading in this ‘New Act of Union’ report. It would be good if everyone could read & review a separate section. It’s a lot of fun honest there are a good few laughs to be had!

Professor Curtice: Support in Scotland for the maintenance of the Union has probably never been lower. To date, there has never been a period when polls and surveys have consistently pointed to majority support north of the border for leaving the UK. Yet polls conducted since the referendum have on average found that Scotland is now almost evenly divided on the question of its constitutional status. On average four polls conducted in September and October have found that 48% would now vote in favour of independence, while 52% would vote against. These figures are in line with most polling that has been conducted since last year’s referendum.

The Chairman: One rather senses from your answers that those who wanted independence voted on philosophical reasons, the big question, whereas those who voted to stay in the union were not motivated by the union itself, but by either fear or other small points that accumulated. Is that correct? We are trying to identify the union, what its pulling power is and what needs to be done to clarify its advantages.

Professor Curtice: My answer to you, Chairman, is that ultimately the debate, and for most people the consideration in their minds, is what course of action is in Scotland’s best interests and best represents their feelings. One needs to understand that politics in Scotland now is primarily about Scotland, and not about the interests of the UK as a whole. The truth is that the Prime Minister is rather good at being able to articulate the view as to why the United Kingdom as a whole should stay together, but I am not sure that it cuts a great deal of mustard with voters north of the border, because that is not the question that most voters in Scotland are asking themselves. The question most voters in Scotland are asking themselves is what is in Scotland’s interest, not necessarily what is in the interests of the UK as a whole.

Sorry I’m totally off topic but TBH I find anything Johann Lamont says to be totally boring. Anytime I watched FMQ when she was Branch Office leader I always had my finger on the fast forward button as soon as she opened her mouth.

Proud Cybernat says:

” the simple truth is that it is the wee countries that are ‘British’ and England is English. This supposed ‘shared’ identity only works one way. “We’re ALL British” is a total lie.”

Exactly!

Anglicised Scots were North British, the English were never South British.

Unionism is an Scottish (and NI) creation. From a London perspective, there is no Union. There is no partnership. There was a series of take overs long long ago.

We Scots get pissed off when foreigners call the UK England and think everyone from this isle is English. Truth is, that’s the way most English think too, when they bother to think on such trivial matters.

They have a Queen of England, ask anyone outside the Celtic fringes!

English sports teams are the ‘real’ national teams, just look at the arrogance displayed at the Commonwealth Games.

Like it or not, it is the reality of a Greater England we are up against.

The sad thing in all of this is that the pathetic Scots who aspire to be pseudo English are never completely accepted by the ‘real thing’.

England is a great place. I have many fond memories of visits and friends there. However I am not English and have no wish to be English, Polish or Kurd. I have my own nation and culture.

I have now got round to a preliminary scan of the mickey mouse lords committee to put Scotland back in its box.
In my quick scan I looked at pages 113-130 evidence (both oral and written) from the Campaign For An English Parliament.
In short, the misguided nationalistic, little Englander arrogance is enough to boil your pish to such an extent that I am going to stop for the moment to regain my fucking composure before I need another triple bypass.

Tomorrow I shall print the whole document and in a calm and restrained manner study it in fine detail and will further post my views here.

As someone mentions in an earlier post it would be good if we could have a number of us looking at the detail of this even if only to be ready to pull it to bits if they try to spring any of its moronic suggestions upon us.

From a London perspective, there is no Union. There is no partnership. There was a series of take overs long long ago.

From my perspective as well , there is no “union” and I dislike the term “yoon”,

Scotland and England got merged into Britain in 1707, in much the same way as every country in Europe and world History came to be , by bloodshed,machinations,threats .

That’s how all countries get formed , the new country meant a large market and increased prosperity.

Any Scot with ambition welcomed it, save a few hundred rioters or so , (they soon buckled down as well.)

All those wars we fought with other nations as we jostled for power, the Wars with France,Holland and Spain. more recently enforcing the pax Britannica, and preventing German hegemony over Europe.

Finally giving up the Empire after the great Wars.
I can’t understand anyone not thrilling to such wonderful history.

Aye, the ‘butcher’s apron’ is certainly an appropriate nickname.

Finally giving up the Empire after the great Wars.
I can’t understand anyone not thrilling to such wonderful history.”

Empire’s are never given up. The UK was stripped of its empire. Also, you’re living through British history right the noo. Look at how hard BBC led yoon Britannia destroyed Scottish independence 2014, they hope:D

Welcome to WoS papko

Ealasaid says:
28 May, 2016 at 3:55 pm

@Ruby
You are doing a great job there Ruby and thank you for bringing it to our attention. I have not had time to read much of it yet but wondered as you have read more than most of us, have you found any point where they have even suggested doing anything that would actually help Scotland and Scots?

Ruby replies

Not so far unless you think more Union Jacks, more Last Night at the Proms, more Rule Britiania, more BBC & more Royal Family would help Scotland & Scots.

I think they are more interested in England aka the United Kingdom than Scotland.

‘Lord Norton of Louth: You are saying that it would be the unit itself, England, that would determine the distribution of powers.

Lord Salisbury: That is our feeling, but we recognise that if England is unhappy, the union as a whole will be unhappy. The two are intimately connected.‘

Lamont reminds me of nasty Mags Curran attacking the people of Shettleston a few years ago when they voted SNP.

She told them that they should never forget what Labour had
done for them!

I agree with that sentiment as at that point Shettleston had The worst health record in Europe with the shortest life expectancy, and the highest City Unemployment rate in the UK.

Yep where would you be without Labour? Somewhere Better!
But at least Mags has a big house and plenty in the bank.

Morag,

Do you agree with me that the outgoing Lord Advocate is deliberately lying?

call me dave,

“Second trial over Lockerbie a ‘realistic possibility’ says outgoing Lord Advocate”

A knowingly deliberate lie by the “Lord Advocate”, in my view.

The Scottish justice system is rotten to the core.

A second trial will never be allowed, not before independence anyway.

I am sure Lockerbie expert Dr Morag Kerr agrees with me.

Ruby

I finally got round to reading the Scotland in Traction’s head antiscot Alastair Cameron’s submission.

link to data.parliament.uk

I will summarise his 15 recommendations “To Stabilise and Reinforce Unity in the United Kingdom” (which sounds like something Darth Vader would write before annexing a solar system:

1. Westminster should be able to overrule and interfere with the actions of the SNP led Scottish Government

2. If a devolved funtion is not used it should revert to Westminster (NOT the other way round of course!)

3. Lets make everyone use the term United Kingdom at every opportunity.

4. Make students study in different parts of the UK to make YooKay more of a melting pot and reduce that awkwardly high demographic of native “Scots” in “Scotland”.

5. Gradually abolish Scots law

6. Merge national arts bodies, charities, sporting bodies, public bodies so that in 50 years there will barely be anything distinctive (except the Scottish parliament which we really want to abolish but we’ll keep quiet about that aim for the moment). As for further devolution of the BBC- over my dead body.

7. End distinctive Scottish banknotes (I say end Bank of England notes but see what I did there…) Basically the “S” word is verboten.

8. Team GB all the way- end all Scottish sporting teams and organisations.

9. Promote the armed forces at every given opportunity

10. The SNP’s stranglehold on education has to end. Westminster should prescribe a set curriculum including lessons to reinforce their status as UK subjects.

11. The Union Jack should be everywhere. The saltire should be erased from public life.

12. Westminster should have a far more visible presence in Scotland.

13. The nationalist administration is deceiving everyone in areas where they appear to be succeeding. This must end- statistics should be controlled by Westminster and performance judged by Westminster alone.

14. Civil servants in Scotland must be subservient to Westminster and not the Scottish administration.

15. Newborn UK subjects should receive a token of unionism such as a set of British coins from the Royal Mint.

And that, my friends is it- Scotland in Traction’s proposal to erase Scotland from the map and ensure the Yoonited Kingdom survives for thousands of years.

If a fraction of his proposals comes to pass I’ll see youse at the GPO

@Tam Jardine

I would say, a number of those actions have been underway for a few years now…

3, 8, 9, 11, & 12 with others just beginning to surface.

Like the Unionist Jack on our licences. That serves no other purpose than to promote UKOK where it isn’t considered OK.

Tam Jardine

Brilliant summary! 🙂 Who would have thought that reading a Government document could be so entertaining!

4. Make students study in different parts of the UK to make YooKay more of a melting pot and reduce that awkwardly high demographic of native “Scots” in “Scotland”.

‘The trouble with Scotland is that it is full of Scots.’

It’d make ye weep if is wisnae so utterly blatant in it’s re strengthening of our colonisation. They really are crapping themselves.

Which means, we’re winning. (or we’re gonnae die trying)

@ Morag hivnae heard from you for months then you popup & bring your fan club wie you. Please Morag dont tangle wie our resident Troll ma heid couldnae stand it.

Nice tae see you back xx.

Shouldn’t we all just enjoy the Morris dancing and cricket on the village green as the vicar greets us to evensong?

Now, there’s a few possibilities for a new British curriculum. The “youngsters” (as ever so humble Michael Gove would call them) would love it.

Greannach

16. “Youngsters” are now to be referred to as “Yoonsters” to reinforce their unionist heritage and all benefits therein and thereof

John from Fife

“Surely all these suggestions to the HOL on Yoonism are racist against us Scots. How on earth can they get away with this.”

They are beyond simple racism- it is imperialism, colonialism from a section of society who have at every turn dishonestly portrayed their position. I don’t recall Better Togetherists telling us that voting no would result in a concerted attempt to erase Scotland’s cultural and political identity.

Gordon Brown (I am laughing while I type this) had a vision that Scotland could lead the UK, not leave it. And now he thinks the UK can lead the EU instead of leave it. Thats one of they towering intellects right there. What the beeb call a big beast.

His hombres now want to dip us and strip us like they do with doors. Get rid of all those layers of that awful Scottishness.

If the total numbers of mature Uni students are added in the number of student figures would be higher. Mature students are over 25. 20% of students are mature student. If 25 to 30 years added to the number is 5%? There is still 15% to be added on. 55% going into FE. Another 15% of mature students = 70%+ in Scotland accessing FE. With higher numbers from more recent figures? Plus 100,000 aprenticeships. 92% of pupils in Scotland go into FE or an apprenticeship. A high number. More is spent per pupil (pro rata) in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. Buildings need refurbishment,

20% of students in Scotland are wealthy students from elsewhere, getting a subsidised education. A clique. More (part-time) colleges places are needed to support the vulnerable. Money should be invested in the early years. Keep class sizes down. Additional needs training for teachers. It helps all pupils achieve and develop.

Willy Young -Labour intends to illegally try to shut the bases in schools. To cut the education budget and try to get money from the Health budget. After getting the City into £Millions of debt building unwanted, obscene carbuncles. Ruining the city centre and wasting £Million of taxpayers money. May 2017.

The Scottish Gov should introduce minimum pricing urgently. As soon as possible,

Keeping the people healthy and well educated is a priority for any Gov.

Scotland would be better off, without the illegal wars, banking fraud, tax evasion and mismanagement of the economy from Westminster. £10Billion+ a year could be better spent.

Cut Trident/illegal wars £1Billion, a tax on ‘loss leading’ drink £1Billion. £3Billion? lost on tax evasion, £4Billion lost on Oil & Gas mismanagement by Westminster. £4Billion on debt repayments not borrowed or spent in Scotland. = £10Billion+ People are being sanctioned by Westminster and starved.

Westminster are cutting Education (£6Billion a year ), cutting Health budget (£4Billion a year) cutting Welfare Budget (£4Billion year). Spending £20Billion a year on Hinkley Point and HS2. A disaster waiting to happen with absolutely no business case. The business case is flawed. The Tory fund to transfer £Billions of public money into their associates pockets. A disgraceful waste of public money. There are credible alternatives. They should get their priorities right.

Why not just say they increased the rent by 4000 times which Is the correct way of describing the increase or so I was taught.

The maximum percentage you can ever get is 100 % which is the whole lot.

Will this start a debate on percentages I wonder?

A wee bitty hyperbole never did any harm to highlight a valid point Morag. Especially if its accurate.

Many thanks, Ruby especially, as well as others who are taking the time to read this report. The information you are providing, and your illuminating comment, is much appreciated. Especially by all of us who can’t find the time or energy to study the document.

I did, all the same, grab a moment to read a few lines of the contribution of Professor Tomkins, that Tory Republican Constituionalist. Only a few lines, mind – so the comment that follows is out of context, and may be miles off the mark.

Tomkins seemed to say that the so-called ‘Union’ we are all supposed to be so involved in is, basically, like no other. So it doesn’t fit most of the standard definitions of what a Union might be. In the end, it isn’t really anything definite (or definable) at all. I think he admitted that.

This means that the Union is pretty much whatever anyone wants it to be (Prof. Tomkins included). And, obviously, different people want it to be different things. So you can basically define the UK Union any old way you like.

That sounds to me like Alice in Wonderland. Especially when one of the characters in Alice (is it the Mad Hatter?) declares that ‘words mean what I say they mean!’

Maybe that’s what happened when the UK came into existence in the first place. Maybe it was declared to the world that there was now this new thing called the UK, and the world had better believe it – but don’t ask us to define it!

What does this UK thing mean? It means whatever we – the UK establishment – say it means.

And that meaning can change according to needs and circumstances.

No wonder there is no written UK constitution for a UK Professor of Constitutional Law to study. The UK means whatever ‘we’ want it to mean; it means whatever suits ‘us’ at any particular given moment in time.

Who ‘we’ and ‘us’ are in the above statement cannot be defined either. But, be sure of this: it’s not ‘youze’!

I suppose, in the context we are presently discussing, ‘we and ‘us’ are the Lordies and their Commisssion-to-Save-the-Union, and the advisers they are consulting.

God save our gracious Union …

So there we have it: a (self-appointed?) committee of the Lordies in Wonderland (how else to describe the fantasy-world, fairy-tale existence of the HoL?) discussing an undefinable entity, in order to save it from dissolving into its own inherent Non-Existence.

Or … a bunch of over-paid nonentities discussing – well – a Non-Entity! The UK!

Now, in my extremely brief reading of the wisdom of our Mr. Tomkinss (which I have to admit was not unintelligent) I noticed his declared need of a ‘benchmark’ (his word) on which to base his contribution.

Why does he need such a thing? I suppose as a substitute for that elusive ‘definition’ of what the UK actually is (elusive because, in fact, it isn’t really anything).

And, if I remember rightly, the ‘benchmark’ had to be something that had been at the heart of the Union from its inception, and had remained of its essence ever since. Not a definition, therefore (for there isn’t one), but a defining characteristic.

And so, what did Professor Tomkins’ benchmark turn out to be? Well, if I read him rightly (though maybe I did not) he summed up his benchmark in two simple words: ‘trade’ and ‘security’.

According to Professor Tomkins, that is what the Union is all about: trade and security. That is what it consists of. And what it exists for.

Now, if I understand Robert Peffers aright (though maybe I don’t) that is precisely what it is, and always has been. Prof. Tomkins is right: the Union, ultimately, is merely a Treaty between two entities concerning trade and security.

Prof. Tomkins may not be the flavour of the month (or of the year, or the century, or indeed the entire millenium) for many of us, but he is not necessarily always wrong.

The constitutional reality is that there is a treaty (or treaties) about trade and security between Scotland and England (into which entity was incorporated Wales long beforehand and Ireland some time afterwards). And that treaty / these treaties constitute ‘the Union’.

These two concerns, trade and security, are the only ‘benchmark’ the Professor of Constitutional Law can find to ‘quasi-define’ the Union, and he is the expert.

The basic slogan, the underlying reality, the cement that holds us ‘together’, making life ‘better’ for all of us, is this: the UK Union is good for trade and security.

I find that very interesting.

To be honest, I even find it an extremely helpful contribution to the cause of Scottish independence.

If the Union was / is basically a ‘trade and security agreement’, why can’t there still be a modern-day ‘trade and security’ agreement between the two entities after they become independent from each other?

It would obviously be in the best interests of both parties for such an agreement to exist. It is not beyond the wit of man, surely, to maintain or expand trade and security agreements that have proved beneficial to both, and can continue to be so after independence. Neighbouring nations frequently have all kinds of friendly agreements with each other.

And this is precisely what the SNP’s White Paper set out during the independence campaign. It was the intention that if Scotland had voted ‘Yes’, her trade and security arrangements with her southern neighbour would have remained pretty much as before. Nothing much would have changed, especially ‘in conventional terms’. Trident was the only major ‘security’ issue on which there was real disagreement, and trade would have continued freely as before!

This is undoubtedly what the Yes campaign aimed at. It was only lunatics on the No side – unfortunately not a lunatic fringe, but mainline loonies comprising prominent UK-supporting politicians and some of their fellow campaigners – who refused such a clear and common-sensical vision of the future.

These were the scare-mongerers who went about screaming things like: ‘If you horrible Scots become independent, we won’t trade with you any more (we’ll stick up tarrifs to keep your goods out of our England, and prevent ours from reaching you); and there won’t be any mutually helpful security agreements (we’ll erect a military frontier with checkpoints all along the border, and we won’t help you – or allow you to help us – in any way).

Such petulance would quiackly have died the death if we Scots had been brave enough in sufficient numbers to call the bluff of thee hysterical screamers. England would have had too much to lose by acting in such a moronic fashion after a ‘Yes’ vote, in terms of its own trade and security. So common sense – that old Scots’ virtue – would have prevailed in the end.

Unfortunately, the hysterical loonies had just enough voice to influence enough waverers to scrape home the result they wanted. So they (some of them, anyway) lived to fight – or gush forth – again in the current EU referendum, transforming themselves into the European-hating BritNat UK Unionists of 2016.

As if to prove Prof. Tomkins right, thee Unionist Anti-European-Union-ists are still onsessed with ‘trade and security’. They want to be ‘secure’ from Europe, which they see as a menace to their England (‘their’ UK); yet, laughably, they still hope to be able to trade with it.

Let’s come back to Tomkins – who may not be entirely loony, and may well be pro-European, and to his ‘trade and security’ ‘benchmark’ for what the Union actually is.

What happens if we join that Tomkins view of the Union to some of the things another politically well-known Glasgow (but hardly Glaswegian) Professor has been confiding to the Lordies and their consultattion? Professor Curtice says the Scots, even most of the No voters among them, are no longer centred on the UK but on what is best for Scotland. Surprise, surprise!

So, vis-a-vis independence, the basic question for most Scots – according to our two Professors – is simply this: whether the Union is or is not good for Scotland. Is it more advantageous to Scottish ‘trade and security’ for Scotland to be in the Union, or out of it? That, according to them, is the main question most Scots are continuing to ponder.

Funny – isn’t it? – that they actually begin to sound, in a roundabout kind of way, like Alex Salmond. Who has been arguing for years that Scotland would be better-off outside the UK Union, while remaining inside the EU Union.
I agree with both these points. Yet neither of them is the main reason why I want Scotland to be independent.

For me, the crix of the matter is the colonial, imperial mentality, and everything that goes with it, none of which I can abide. I regard that mentality as having no place whatsoever in the modern world, and no future. It is a mind-set which puts ‘my security’ above everyone else’s, and my ‘trading’ or economic advantage likewise.

This justifies me treating other people – and other nations – in an appalling fashion, without regard for their peace and security,and rights, in order to guarantee my supposed safety. The same with trade: my own material well-being is what counts, and it more important than anyone else’s. Portrait of the nation as a collective egotist.

Oh the number of wars that have been fought to gain trading advantage … and the number of further wars that are then required, and multiplied, to guarantee ‘our security’ … That is, wars waged to keep the (unfair) advantages I have managed to acquire, by fair means or foul. As in love, and above all war, of which they are an extension, all’s fair in ‘trade and security’.

Scottish independence. for me, is about opposing and overthrowing these old mentalities. I can understand those with a nostalgia for a time when they genuinely believed the UK Union was a force for good in the world … Maybe, in some regards, it was, at least sometimes … But, in my view, it isn’t any longer.

And it’s up to us Scots to put it to bed once and for all, by taking responsibility for ourselves. And ceasing to be complicit in our own decline, and final demise. For that, it seems to me, is the alternative. A stark choice, indeed.

From what Ruby and the others have posted it is crystal clear that the Wonderland Lordies and their UK-supporting advisers are aiming at only one thing: the ultimate and total extinction of Scotland.

Despite all our modern sophistication, and quite incredibly,it is as if we are back in the 14th Century. As if nothing has changed since then. For those who are aware of them, the similarities are astounding.

As the French say, ‘the more a thing changes, the more it stays the same’.

And isn’t it strange how some of the Scottish-based people whom the Lordies have been consulting actually seem to regard ‘the Scots’, among whom they live and about whom they are talking, as ‘them’? Maybe they feel as if they are living amongst aliens. Because these peope – the Scots – are not ‘us’; they do not belong to that ‘we’ to which we belong … .

Some things have happened since the 14th Century; one of them is that Machiavelli wrote ‘the Prince’. In which he says some astoundingly awful things about the means ‘the Prince’ should employ in order to establish or maintain colonies.

Instead of simply lampooning them, we should give the Lordies and their advisers some credit: at least some of them have read Machiavelli. So should we. Having bragged so long about never having been conquered, it’s about time we Scots woke up to just how hugely colonised we have been, and for how long … And still are, maybe now more than ever before.

We could have been and should have been – and were at one time (think again of the 14th Century) – the ‘anti-imperial nation’ par excellence. We defined ourselves, and in some ways came to be, against England’s First Empire. We were not just its nemesis, but – spiritually speaking (if you will allow me such a term) – its antithesis.

We then failed miserably in our anti-imperial vocation for centuries. We even became the antithesis not of England but of ourselves; instead of being its opponents, we became colonial imperialism’s greatest facilitators and, on English coat-tails, perpetrators.

Now’s surely the time to make amends, freeing ourselves from our own aberrations. Could Scotland become ‘the anti-imperial nation’ once again? To me, despite loads of evidence to the contrary, that is her defining spirit. Even her raison d’etre.

And if we don’t stand up and become what we were meant to be? The alternative – alas! – is for Scotland and the Scottish nation to disappear altogether. The forces ranged against us – and make no mistake, they are imperial forces – will make sure of that. The essence of Scottish independence has always been to refuse the spirit and forces of imperialism that surround, attack, and seek to obliterate us.

Have we got the guts to do it again?

We had better have.

Small, weak and insignificant though we may seem to be, and actually are, the world has very much need of us. This is the anti-imperial age, and Scotland is the anti-imperial nation.

hivnae heard from you for months then you popup & bring your fan club wie you. Please Morag dont tangle wie our resident Troll ma heid couldnae stand it.

Nice tae see you back xx.

Och, I happened to see the original article in the Evening Times with that ludicrous “400,000%” thing, and thought it was the most ridiculous example of the misuse of percentage presentions I’d yet seen – in a very strong field. So I commented on it here and now everyone seems to be down on me for it, including Stu.

I should probably go away again.

Ken500,

“The Scottish justice system did not organise the Lockerbie Trial. It was Blair and Labour/Unionists. A kangaroo Court in The Hague.”

It was a SCOTTISH kangaroo court in The Hague.

The Scottish justice system is rotten to the core and the vast majority of lawyers, especially judges, are the lowest of the low.

Look, I have no more idea than anyone else what’s going to happen now over Lockerbie.

Kenny MacAskill went spectacularly off piste in his book and stated something that fatally undermines the conviction. In fact he agreed with something we’ve been saying for years, but while he was in office he gave us the brush-off. And Alex Salmond is agreeing with him. Why they are doing this is anybody’s guess.

It may make it more likely that some sort of inquiry could be set up, but the Crown Office is still issuing its boilerplate stone-wall denials. The bizarre thing is that while MacAskill has fatally undermined the conviction, at the same time he says, “but I know he did it anyway because I have special knowledge of other evidence that only came out after the trial.”

Two points about that. First, the law doesn’t work like that. You can’t just admit that the most basic fact underpinning a conviction wasn’t so, but declare that it’s all OK because of other stuff the court didn’t know about. Second, they’re all basing this “he did it anyway” on the assumption that “it” was placing the bomb on board flight KM180 at Malta. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the bomb was never on flight KM180 s the first place. They’re still in denial about that, but when they finally have to face up to it, the whole thing goes up in smoke.

Of course, if there’s any evidence that Megrahi was involved in the actual plot to put the bomb suitcase on board the transatlantic flight at Heathrow itself, that’s a different matter. But since the authorities haven’t yet caught up with the fact that that’s how the crime was committed, I seriously doubt they have anything like that.