The Longest Lie
BBC Reporting Scotland last night:
Truly, this is the bullshit that just won’t die.
In five days’ time it’ll be 12 years since Wings Over Scotland indisputably destroyed this myth in one of our first ever comprehensive debunks, and yet the Scottish media has never stopped propagating it.
“In most UK elections, Scottish votes have been crucial to deciding who takes power. Will it be any different this time around?”
But of course, they haven’t been the tiniest bit crucial. Scottish votes haven’t changed who the occupant of 10 Downing Street was since, at best, NINETEEN SIXTY-FOUR. That’s before most of us were alive. This is the graphic we posted at the time:
And even then it’s pretty questionable. If you remove all the Scottish seats from that year’s election you get a net loss of 15 for Labour:
They’d have ended up with 274 seats, while the Tories would have had 280 and the Liberals 5. Without Scottish seats, a Labour majority of 4 would have been turned into a Tory majority of 1.
Neither of those, of course, is a remotely sustainable government. Even if either party had formed a coalition with the Liberals they would have had an extremely vulnerable single-figure majority, and the Parliament was duly dissolved less than a year and a half later. (In the new election Harold Wilson won a majority of 98.)
So in practice it wouldn’t have made any meaningful difference even in 1964. But since then, you could have stripped out every single Scottish vote from every single UK general election and still ended up with the same Prime Minister.
You can go all the way back to the days before women had the vote, all the way back to the Whigs if you want, and you will NEVER manage to find a time when Scottish votes meaningfully changed the winner of a UK general election.
The BBC must know this perfectly well, as must every newspaper in the land – it’s elementary arithmetic a six-year-old could perform – yet it seems nothing can stop them all from blaring the complete, demonstrable falsehood at the nation on a near-daily basis.
And still people wonder why there’s so little trust in the country’s mainstream media, and why a website written by an idiot with a simple policy of checking the facts and telling the truth got itself such a big audience.
Again, thanks for that one. Some old same old.
I guess the MSM’s pushing of that myth is their way of being subtly anti-independence and pro-union.
If it’s repeated often enough, it grows its own legs, in the consciousness of the great unwashed.
Aye, que the usual suspects. One at a time please.
It’s all they have. It’s all they’ve ever had. They’re stuck pre-2014,because pre-2014 was the last time any of their nonsense worked. They cannot adapt to the post-2014 world because it collapses in a heap around them.
Greatly regret being forced to disagree totally with our esteemed host on this thread.
Under no circumstances am I ever going to agree with his descriptor of himself as an, “idiot”.
His fact checking and truth telling on the other hand I 100% agree with.
Beggars belief they are still peddling this lie. I’ve decided that I’ll never vote in a Westminster election again, even if Alba stand in my constituency. It’s a complete waste of time. I’d love to see the Scottish turnout at something like 30%.
“You can go all the way back to the days before women had the vote, all the way back to the Whigs if you want, and you will NEVER manage to find a time when Scottish votes meaningfully changed the winner of a UK general election.”
So in reality there’s no point in Scots voting in a GE for they cannot influence who will become PM, which inturn appears to me that there’s no point in sending Scottish MPs to Westminster for like Scottish voters, they too are vastly outnumbered by their English counterparts, and can’t reality influence anything either.
I’m all for not sending any MPs to Westminster, sending them only gives Westminster some sort of credibility, and it maintains the false image that Westminster matters with Scotland in mind.
Of course centuries of Scottish MPs have headed South to line their pockets at the taxpayers expense in that sense nothing has changed. Abstention is the way forward for Scotland.
Down with the union.
The “Rev.” Stuart comes up with his latest puerile brainstorm:
Parties and regions that don’t have a lot of voters usually don’t decide elections!
Who knew?
I think the voters of Dundee could also say their votes haven’t decided any Holyrood elections.
Plus Stu’s math is, to say the least, misleading. For example, in the 2017 general election, if all the Scottish seats had been won by non-Conservative parties, May’s Conservatives (who won 304 seats outside of Scotland) would have been in the minority of a 650-member parliament. And the alliance with the DU (10 seats) would not have given May’s Conservatives a majority.
Yes, Scotland’s vote mattered in 2017. And at other times.
@Sven with you there; Wings aint no idiot!
Reporting Brigadoon! What are they like?
Al Harron @ 2:53 pm
“They cannot adapt to the post-2014 world”
Yes, the UK ‘Union’ has lawfully been ended since 2015 when majorities of Scottish nationalists were elected at every election. The colonizer knows this and is in a constant state of panic, desperate to hold back the movement.
Faced with such a situation the national party leaders “first hesitate and then choose neutralism” (Fanon), which is the cause of “the rupture in the movement”.
And so we have a state of ‘petrifaction’.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/12/12/the-route-is-thereif-the-snp-use-it/
for the next 300 years only Scots should have the vote in UK elections; it is only fair
The establishment supporters in Scotland have to believe they are relevant, when functionally they matter not at all.
The reasons the Brits want to hang on to Scotland has nothing to do with Scotland per se but the view that reduced land and sea area as a result of the UKGBNI ceasing to be would be an enormous loss of face, internationally.
An eventually to be scotched by any means in the old imperial box of tricks.
It’s always great to have wings fact checking the BBC. The Wings Over Scotland.
The BBC has gone woke. With the new transgender mistress, and the black self identified ‘queer’ Doctor Who. Where they discuss what pronouns an Alien should have.
I hope the Daleks exterminate Russell T Davis. They got one thing right. Nicola Sturgeon on Queen of the year.
“Oi Pal. Don’t tell anyone ye seen this caravan!”
I remember well when you first posted this 12 years ago. You’d think the evidence would be enough to make those commentators who propagate these lies have a second thought. Apparently not, and so it will go on ad ifinitum.
Supporters of the establishment in Scotland have to believe they are relevant, when functionally they matter not at all.
The reasons the Brits want to hang on to Scotland has nothing to do with Scotland per se but the view that reduced land and sea area as a result of the UKGBNI ceasing to be would be an enormous loss of face, internationally.
An eventually to be scotched by any means in the old imperial box of tricks.
It’s as though they think only Scottish votes for Labour matter. If they were honest enough to talk about the the net outcome of Scottish votes the nonsense might be too obvious even for them to pursue.
All those journalists, all those reporters, ALL complicit in this big lie. Every time a general election comes around, off they go again, lying, lying and lying again.
THIS is why Scotland is still under the English jackboot after over three hundred years. Scotland and its people are fed demonstrable lies, in which ALL the so-called mainstream media is 100% complicit.
‘hey subscribe to our newspaper…just pennies daily for an annual subscription etc…‘ Nah, I’ll start supporting the media when they stop lying repeatedly and knowingly to Scots.
Who benefits from this lie?? the English parties, Labour, Tories and Libdems. It’s all about Engerland, folks, it has only EVER been all about England keeping its last and most valuable colony, Scotland.
Decades ago when I was a boy, I can still recall, it was seen as ‘common knowledge’ that scots needed to ‘vote Labour to keep the Tories out’. It was a lie then, it is a lie now, and every freaking pretendy so-called ‘journalist’ in Scotland knows it.
What about February 1974?
Alf Baird.
I belatedly replied to you on Stu’s previous thread.as medical issues still predominate in our household at the moment,
Hope you accept my apologies for the delay,
If the way Scots vote in WM elections makes exactly SFA of a difference, then it’s an obvious opportunity to make it a plebiscitary vote on Indy in 2024.
Cos then it will make a fecking difference, maybes for the first time ever!
As I pointed out above, the BBC was correct in saying that Scottish votes matter. 2017 is just one example.
My fellow Campbell clansman Stuart Campbell is simply wrong in what he writes.
One can also look at 2005. Labour won 314 seats outside of Scotland. If Scotland’s 59 had gone to a non-Labour Party, Labour would not have had a majority and Blair wouldn’t have continued as PM. Since Scotland’s voters divided their votes among the parties (just like other regions do) they didn’t change the result, but that was their choice. They had the potential power to decide the PM.
You need 326 seats to form a majority. There are 591 non-Scotland seats. In 2005 and 2017 the “winning” party did not achieve that 326 in England/Wales/NI.
Yes, Scots votes matter.
Just logged the following official complaint with the BBC:
“The programme repeated a falsehood that BBC Scotland repeats constantly, specifically “In most UK elections, Scottish votes have been crucial to deciding who takes power.”
This is a completely baseless claim. The last time Scottish votes had any impact on who became Prime Minister was SIXTY years ago, in 1964, when the removal of the Scottish vote would have seen a Labour majority of four seats changed to a Conservative majority of one.
Even this is a trivial impact, because neither a majority of four nor a majority of one is a sustainable administration, and the government was duly dissolved less than 18 months later. But in any event it is the last time Scottish votes had any bearing – even a purely technical one – on which party’s leader became Prime Minister.
There is no opinion or interpretation involved in this matter. It is a simple matter of arithmetic to remove Scottish votes/seats from the Parliamentary figures and establish that the outcome of the election would not have changed. All of the relevant data can be found here:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP03-59/RP03-59.pdf
It is long overdue that the BBC stops propagating this flatly, observably untrue myth. I trust it will not happen again, that an on-air correction will be broadcast and that the Corporation’s political journalists will be appropriately briefed.”
“You need 326 seats to form a majority. There are 591 non-Scotland seats. In 2005 and 2017 the “winning” party did not achieve that 326 in England/Wales/NI.”
Half of 591 is not 326, you idiot.
Stuart, Half of 650 is 326 (actually 325).
Scots seats don’t disappear magically. They’re still counted among the 650. A majority in a 650-seat parliament is 325 +1.
This is math a 10-year-old can understand. Evidently, you can’t.
Stuart, Half of 650 is 325. A majority in a 650-seat parliament is 325 + 1 (326).
Scots seats don’t disappear magically. They’re still counted among the 650. A majority in a 650-seat parliament is 325 +1. For Scottish votes to not matter in PMs, a winning party would have to obtain that 326 outside of Scotland, among the 591 non-Scots seats.
As I pointed out, in 2005 and 2017 that didn’t happen.
A 10-year-old can understand this. Evidently, you can’t, or won’t, becasue you can’t admit your mistake.
Thanks for lodging that complete. Blatant and intentional falsehoods.
Dundee Scot 5 January, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Using your example, Labour would either form a formal or informal coalition with the party that Scots voted for. Given that the Libs and the SNP are broadly have the same political outlook as Labour on nearly all issues, that government would haven’t have been that much different from the one that was actually formed.
The only way that we would have made a difference in your example is if we elected Tories to the majority to Scottish seats. What is the likelihood of that happening?
Maybe the BBC article should be that Scottish votes theoretically could matter in certain scenarios that most likely won’t happen?
It’s the same as your other post about the 2017 election. Theoretically that could happen but what is the chance of us getting all 59 Labour MP’s especially given the state of Labour at the time?
If Labour win 25 seats from the SNP, as looks reasonably likely there is a high probability that this will give Labour an overall majority they might otherwise not have.
But for the seats won by the Scottish Conservatives in 2017 May would not have been PM after the election.
Of course, the proportion of seats that are Scottish continues to fall because our population does not grow at anything like the rate of the English and we have lost 2 more MPs in the latest boundary update. This makes it less likely that the Scottish seats will be decisive in future but that is a part of the price paid for having policies and taxation that does not encourage immigration.
I remember when you published that article during #indyref. The scales just fell from my eyes when I realised how I’d been fooled for years (although I was already a Yesser when I read it).
However, in our house, we’re a bit confused by the 2019 election result. Didn’t those 12 Tory seats in Scotland matter?
Slightly O/T, I have just came up against an XL bully in real life for the first time. Holy shit… I’m a dog owner and have no fear of dogs whatsoever but this dog gave me some serious chills. Whilst they might not be banned in Scotland there needs to be some safeguarding around them (neutered muzzles etc) this thing was like a fucking lion on a lead. Why anyone would have these as pets defies logic, but we know the SG will fuck this up as well. As their numbers increase there is bound to be deaths of innocents.
Dundee Scot, the word is “maths” – not “math”. And even that is wrong. Because counting seats or votes is a matter of arithmetic. It doesn’t involve mathematics.
If you needed proof that “The News” is a hoax, then this is it.
So glad you clarified this Stu.
For a number of years I believed this Bellshit until SNP started winning seats.So why don’t these so called independenistas stay in Edinburgh? Guess it’s for the rich life style.
We truly need AlBA and ISP MPs who like Sinn Fein will stay in at home and not take up the space in clownsvile English Parliament.
Pac Man, glad to see you acknowledge what “Rev.” Stu won’t–that Scots votes can matter, depending on how they vote.
That refutes his complaint ab initio.
As to practice, if the SNP had swept all 59 Scots seats in 2017, they could have formed a coalition with Labour/Lib Dem/Plaid Cymru and May wouldn’t have carried on as PM. If in 2017 they had gotten the 56 seats they won in 2015, this could have happened. I’m not saying this outcome was desirable, just that it was a real world as well as a theoretical possibility.
“A 10-year-old can understand this. Evidently, you can’t, or won’t, becasue you can’t admit your mistake.”
The entire point of the hypothetical, you fucking imbecile, is to determine whether Scottish seats influence the result. To do that, you compare the result WITH and WITHOUT Scottish seats. And without Scottish seats there are 591 and a majority is 296, not 326.
BBC Shortbread=His(London)masters voice.
Reporting Shortbread
Radio Shortbread
harry mcaye @3:12pm
At the last GE spoilt votes for Scottish constituencies ranged between 217 for John McNally’s seat down to 61 for Jamie Stone’s seat.
Alba won’t win any seats at the GE, but if the 2.5% Alba votes are ALL spoilt, with a turn out of 3 million that’s 75,000 spoilt ballots.
At the 2017 GE there were 74,289 spoilt votes across the whole of the UK.
Scotland doing that on its own would be international news.
“But for the seats won by the Scottish Conservatives in 2017 May would not have been PM after the election.”
Is it the fucking remedial-class day out today or something?
May won 317 seats, 8 short of a majority. She needed the DUP to get over the line.
If you remove all the Scottish votes (and therefore all the Scottish seats), she’d have had 13 fewer. BUT the opposition would have also had had 46 fewer.
So she’d have had 304, but in a Parliament of only 591 MPs. And that’s more than half. So instead of being 8 short, she’d have had a majority of 17 WITHOUT the DUP. (304 Tory, 287 opposition = 591)
Hardly surprising when you consider the population of the rUK outnumbers the Scots 10 to 1. That’s why people here who bleat that the union is not fair because it’s not equal must be a bit thick.
It’s all about strength of numbers … evidently.
WTAF difference does a name make Labour or Tories or Scottish Nonce Party or Liberal “we did it for pervs like beth”Party or the Fraudulent Green tranadian party
Every last one of them are blood sucking scum liars who don’t give a shit about normal people, if you look at the makeup of the front line of liebour not one of them KNOWS what a working class person is, and if you look at the Scottish (not) branch office it is clear that lobotomy’s were cheaper by the dozen
#End the union. repurpose your vote
“As to practice, if the SNP had swept all 59 Scots seats in 2017, they could have formed a coalition with Labour/Lib Dem/Plaid Cymru and May wouldn’t have carried on as PM. If in 2017 they had gotten the 56 seats they won in 2015, this could have happened. I’m not saying this outcome was desirable, just that it was a real world as well as a theoretical possibility.”
If your granny had baws she’d be your grandad. The reporter didn’t say Scottish votes COULD HAVE decided things in the past, he said they ACTUALLY DID.
Stu, there were 650 seats no matter what you say. Half of 650 is still 325, and the majority of seats for governing is still 325+1.
You can’t just make Scottish seats disappear from the total count of 650. Unless, of course, you’re Merlin the Magician.
I can sympathize with someone caught in an obvious mistake who nonetheless doesn’t want to admit that mistake. That’s very Humza Yousaf of you.
Correct – no point at all.
And because the Scots are such a partisan lot they would vote for a Scottish PM but after Blair and Brown that can and must not ever happen again.
The will of 50 million will always crush the will of 5 million. It says so in our national anthem. LOL.
“You can’t just make Scottish seats disappear from the total count of 650. Unless, of course, you’re Merlin the Magician.”
This is too much stupid for 2024.
Dundee Scot 5 January, 2024 at 5:53 pm
So you’re changing your story from Scots votes matter to Scots vote can matter?
It doesn’t matter though that the scenario’s you present will never bear any semblance to reality.
Keep digging…
I suspect that Dundee Scot is a NuMaths teacher. I.e. you get full marks for a wrong answer as long as you can explain how you botched it.
Probably in the same school where John Main teaches Physics and Modern Studies.
There’s people in the North of England who feel the exact same way. They get dragged down along with us thanks to the actions of a bunch of feck-tards in the south.
‘We are waiting for the last constituency in the UK GE 2028 to declare, the Western Isles. The Western Isles who have never before returned a Tory MP and have been utterly routed north of the border are yet to win a single Scottish seat this time round. Remarkably the Tories are neck and neck in the polling to take this one from incumbent Angus B. MacNeil, Scotland United Candidate.
The Conservative party need this seat for a 2 seat majority in the house of commons and avoid a hung parliament. This is particularly controversial given that the rules on where a person can claim their main place of residence to be were changed by the HOC in 2026 in part due to the WFH culture engendered by Covid half a decade ago. And the result is coming in now… and the tories have taken it, their only seat in Scotland.
Well if that proves one thing. It is that Scottish votes indeed count. That kills that particular argument stone dead’
The British mindset.
Thanks Stuart for challenging the English Union Broadcasters in Scotland.
Some would expect a Scottish Independence Party to take on the BBC,
You would expect this blatant propaganda to be challenged in Holyrood and Westminster.
You would expect the so called newspapers to highlight the lies delivered by the BBC
but they have no need for the truth in their war against us.
I suppose Bonnie Dundee had to have one brain dead unionist in it.
Amen to that.
How do you work that one out when the BBC stated years ago that England does not, in effect, exist and that ‘England’ will only be referenced in terms of sport and the weather? The BBC does not represent the English. Far from it.
WTF
Is that weirdo Flynn been having oral sex with the native species of small furry animals.
“What about February 1974?”
It would have been a hung Parliament. Theoretically the Tories COULD have formed a coalition with the smaller parties to displace Labour, but it would have been highly improbable and just as weak as the Labour government there actually was, and would almost certainly also have collapsed in six months.
Thanks, Rev. You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time (or is it the other way round; can never remember?) but you can’t fool all the people all of the time. Except you can, in Scotland, where great care is taken by the movers and shakers to prevent reality from entering through a chink in the armour. That, literally, is the job of the MSM, the handmaids of the elites, with the BBC the chief handmaid.
Owen Jones. of Guardian notoriety, has just been employed by The National just in case we might actually have some ideas of our own and vote accordingly. The truth-tellers are all bloggers and even they are under threat from interference. We are living in a perennial social engineering experiment that changes from day to day depending on the next big thing for which the elite want us to budge up, move over, join in like a population of Morphs or Pinocchios, always malleable, always awaiting the next pull of the strings.
“he Electoral Commission said the SNP reported to it in October that Mr Murrell – who resigned as chief executive in April last year following a row about membership figures – had made two loan payments to the party in early 2018.
The commission said these loans should have been reported the year they were made.
Both loans were for £7,500. One was paid back within two days, while the other was paid back within two weeks.”
————————————————–
More shady dealings.
Great to see Stuart back at doing what he does best, exposing BritNat lies. Thanks for submitting the complaint. Let’s see how far it gets.
__________
James says on 5 January 2024 at 2:31 pm:
“Aye, que the usual suspects. One at a time please.”
And as if by magic someone shouts ((( BRING ON THE CLOWNS ))) and up pops ‘Dundee Scot’ with its usual garbage and trying to discredit Stuart with some reference to Stuart’s arithmetic being “misleading”. The chief clown, Dippy Dundee, then goes on to demonstrate it knows nothing about simple division. Talk about making a right fool of yourself. LOL!
By the way, you remind me of a few so-called Scottish Unionist reporters with your style of guff. There’s quite a few to choose from, mind you, who work for the print media and/or the BBC in Scotland and were born in Dundee. So fess up, what one are you? LOL!
__________
O/T for those interested:
“NASA to unveil new X-59 ‘quiet’ supersonic jet on Jan. 12”
“That nose also means pilots flying the X-59 can’t see out of the forward windscreen ?— because it doesn’t have one. Instead, pilots use what NASA calls the External Vision System, or XVS, to see in front of the aircraft. This system uses a forward-facing camera, a cockpit-mounted display screen and custom image processing software to “create an augmented reality view of the X-59 pilot’s forward line-of-sight along with graphical flight data overlays,” according to a 2019 statement from the agency.”
FFS! First they give Americans easy access to all sorts of firearms. Then they build nuclear weapons. Now they’re building supersonic jets with no windows? LMAO! Maybe this is where the missing budget “Trillions” went. Wouldn’t surprise me.
But seriously, for those among us who believe in UFO’s, you’ve probably heard certain elements of America’s UFO community stating that some of their “sightings” cannot be dismissed as “government test-flights” etc because their Gov would not test weaponry over heavily populated areas. Well, sorry to burst their bubble but do they think they build stuff like this without testing it? LOL! All governments run weaponry tests in a variety of arenas, including heavily populated areas.
FFS! During the ‘Cold War’ America held countless trial sorties with *live* weapons of mass destruction being carried in a huge fleet of bombers over very heavily populated areas of America. It was kept quiet at the time for obvious reasons. America’s military wanted to make sure they could get airborne and bombs delivered before Russian missiles hit the USA. Oh yes, all armed forces do exercises in very populated areas but they’re not exactly going to advertise that, are they?
Have a safe and good weekend, Troops.
Sorry, Troops, would have been helpful if i included the link with my previous comment. DOH! Here it is:
NASA to unveil new X-59 ‘quiet’ supersonic jet on Jan. 12
https://archive.is/lE6TI#selection-1285.8-1298.0
Dasblimp
Where it all falls down is where to typed the BBC said.
What they don’t have a track record of lying, distortion and manipulation.
The world’s leading authority on propaganda, Prof John Robertson, as files as tall as you on how they worked their asses off discredited the case for independence.
There is a reason the Westminster Tories put their own in to pull things in their direction.
Ayr Right.
The BBC is nothing but a propaganda mouthpiece. An establishment tool whose function is preservation of the false facade that this union is.
The BBC cannot give the game away by openly admitting that participation of Scotland in a UK GE (the same as participation of Wales and NI) is, and has always been, absolutely pointless. A completely futile exercise. Even if the entire electorate in Scotland did not cast a vote in the next GE, nothing would change. We would still get the result England chose.
The BBC cannot admitting this openly because doing so would be admitting, openly, that, for as long as Scotland remains in this political union, it will be subjected to continuous absolute rule. We know forcing absolute rule on Scotland is in direct violation of the Claim of Right and the treaty of union of which respecting the Claim of Right is a fundamental condition.
This futile exercise worked very well as a deception tool when England’s ping-pong politics (the bipartite con vs labour) was also applicable to Scotland. Because Scotland was voting in the same political parties as England, the illusion of democracy could be maintained.
But the facade of this faux democracy fell apart in May 2015 and was demolished down to its footprint on 2016 the day after the EU referendum.
If there is one thing (the ONLY thing) we could thank the political fraud Sturgeon and her continuity candidate for, is to have demonstrated, loudly and clearly, two things:
1. Scotland’s vote in a UK GE and the rosette of the MPs sent by Scotland counts for nothing in the ruling of the UK. Nothing. Scotland is being subjected to absolute rule with the blessing of our Con, lab, libdem and SNP MPs.
2. Unless Scotland’s MPs are prepared to get off their self-serving arses, vacate the green seats (or even better, do not take them in the first place) and actually actively terminate the union, Scotland will continue to be subjected to absolute rule.
That the establishment is desperate to resurrect England’s ping-pong politics in Scotland to unroll the illusion of democracy lost on 8 May 2015, has been obvious for quite some time. The industrious and elaborate strategy of destruction of the SNP from within since that day is evidence of this.
It is beyond obvious now that democracy in this union only applies to England. It is the only country of the four which gets the government it votes for every.single.time. For Scotland, NI and Wales, democracy in this union is non-existent and, since 8 May 2015, there is not even an illusion of democracy any longer.
That there is no democracy was made obvious in the last by-election in Rutherglen. Over 60% of the electorate refused to cast a vote, effectively rejecting every candidate, if not the GE altogether. Yet, we had to endure the establishment ping’s leader Starmer, waffling about a “seismic” result for Labour when the number of votes cast for that party, despite the strategic vote from libdems and tory voters, was even less than in the previous election. These establishment types must really think we are all zipped at the back and we do not see what is going on. Over 60% of the electorate refusing to cast their vote is not an endorsement of labour. It is a frontal rejection of UK politics.
The first minister has been courting Sir Brian Souter as donations to the party plummeted following a police investigation into its finances
“Mr Yousaf, Neil Gray, the secretary for wellbeing economy, Ellis Watson, the former chief executive of the media group DC Thomson, and Sir Brian were listed as attending. The names of nine other figures were redacted.
According to Scottish government minutes, Mr Yousaf told those present that “engagement with business has already highlighted the need to involve business more effectively in policy”.
A Scottish government spokesman said: “Ministers routinely engage with a wide range of business leaders as a normal part of government.
“Calling upon their expertise is vital to development of policy, understanding business needs and how to effectively grow our economy.”
——————————————
why would the names of people attending a simple business meeting have to be redacted from a FOI answer?
When did this myth first emerge? Was it in the Thatcher-era or the Blair-era? Either way it seems a complete lie to Scotland to vote for the Big Labour Party via the branch party 😉
I don’t know if that is a serious question or not.
I think the answer to that question would be so that nobody would feel unsafe or have hurt feelings.
Apart from Brian Souter I don’t know much about business people but I would imagine there will be quite a few gender critical terfs amongst Scotland’s rich businessmen/women.
Imagine what it would be like if the following attended the ‘business’ meeting:
Graham Linehan
Joanna Cherry
Helen Joyce
JK Rowling
Posie Parker
Rosie Duffield
Kemi Badenoch
Wings Over Scotland
These name would definitely have to be redacted otherwise the
the SNP would have no members left and the Greens would resign from their government jobs. 🙂
Even if it were true that Scotland could save the UK from the Tories I can’t imagine the RUK would be that grateful in view of the fact that the Tories would only be replaced by another lot of Tories.
If you promote the idea that Scotland’s vote doesn’t count you might have to then confront the ‘Scotland as colony’ issue.
It’s the BBC.
The state funded propaganda channel.
The misinformation corporation that is thankfully dying as everyone is ditching paying for that shite in our living rooms.
The UK will always be cursed with a perpetual English government. Doesn’t matter if it’s red, blue or yellow or a mix of all three – Scotland is getting hee-haw, hee- haw & some more hee-haw.
Scotlands fate is already sealed before the polls are even open.
English government.
English interests.
English priorities.
The Scots will pay for it out of the North sea.
House jocks are happy with that as Scotland is thrown some peanuts that’s then spelt mitigating all the shite emulating out of WM.
No wonder people stop voting. It’s one massive waste of time for the same regurgitated dross. The UK is stuck in an archaic time warp where nothing ever changes regardless of the occupant in Dowdy Street.
BBC Reporting Scotland…
a.k.a
Brit-Nat Brainwashing Channel Misreporting North Britain.
Standby for the latest from Lord Naw-Naw…
“Pacific Quay calling,
Pacific Quay calling,
This is the Glasgow station
broadcasting on the one meter
band…”
DasBlimp
**And because the Scots are such a partisan lot they would vote for a Scottish PM but after Blair and Brown that can and must not ever happen again.**
Another fucking dunce to add to Dundee.
Blair & Brown were UNIONISTS OF A ***LONDON*** POLITICAL PARTY.
London, ENGLAND.
They may have had Scottish ancestors FFS ..but that means fuck all. Scots weren’t in charge. Two London serfs served their London master.
GM 7:17
‘We are waiting for the last constituency in the UK GE 2028 to declare, the Western Isles. The Western Isles who have never before returned a Tory MP and have been utterly routed north of the border are yet to win a single Scottish seat this time round. Remarkably the Tories are neck and neck in the polling to take this one from incumbent Angus B. MacNeil, Scotland United Candidate.’
Proof it will be rigged.
The Western Isles voting for the Brexit party?
Oh, that’s right, I nearly forgot – they’ve been bought by the Tories prosperity fund that’s to be paid direct to them & to make them special & different to the rest of Scotland.
It was always their plan. Only level up the regions that vote for English political parties & bypass Holyrood completely.
Gutted from the inside out as it was warned it would be in 2014 & a No vote.
As for Dundee Scot. I’d doubt they’re from Dundee or even from Scotland. I’ve caught a few English eejits on twitter with Scottish locations in their bio but their tweet says London, England LOL
Dumb yoons tweeting from a device that gives the real ISP location. There’s a whole wave of them out there. It’s not long until the mask slips tho. Usually ending in Scots are all dumb & England is great.
One way to police the internet would be mandatory ISP on social media. It would stop election & referendum interference. Holyrood also needs to change the elections to only have political parties registered in Scotland. It’s a nonsense we have foreign politicians, from another country, stand in Scottish elections.
Get yourself a chipped firestick down the Barras. And don’t pay the licence fee.
HMRC are going to tax ebay earnings as well. Here’s another thought. Re open Paddy’s Market in Glasgow. Which has been gated and closed for 10 years or more. That allowed poor people to buy and sell items only of which they could afford.
“Woman reunited with washed up handbag after 30 years” has been a top BBC Scotland “news” story for the last 3 days. Says it all.
Ever heard of the ‘no true Scotsman fallacy”?. Google it!
Ebay used to be good but not anymore.
I gave up selling on Ebay when they started charging interest on postage.
I wonder what they will do about carboot sales which I love.
I predict we will all eventually be tagged and our every move monitored.
When I say all I mean all us plebs. The big time tax evaders will carry on as normal.
Saw the front page of the print edition National this morning and thought
‘I think I’ve seen that story already a couple of times’.
I’ll check to see if it’s available online.
http://tinyurl.com/yjzjkxjh
Front page of National
BBC urged to correct ‘fake news’ Scots vote claim.
https://archive.is/9bGNQ
Here’s the article.
No mention of Wings?
Scots vote don’t count conclusion ‘Scotland is a colony’
Geri @ 12:47 am
“serfs served their London master.”
Aye, plenty of ‘colonial functionaries’ (Fanon) wha aye haud doun the colonized, aw the wey back tae Dundas and afore an up tae nouadays wi Sturgeon, Yousaf, Flynn, Sarwar, Union Jack, an whitiver Lord Advocate an aw the colonizers institutions as weel.
Colonialism is aye a ‘co-operative venture’ wi native elites wha jine in ‘the ‘colonial racket’ – for this is precisely how colonial plunder is enabled.
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
I’ve been hooked by the National!
I want to know if the Act of Union was signed in a barn.
Geri
Ignored
says…Western Isles voting for tories/brexit…
I’m a Scottish nationalist.
The wee rant I wrote was ‘proving’ Stuart Campbell’s point.
Take the Scottish votes out of my imagined 2028 GE and you get NO CHANGE.
Its the mindset of a couple of posters who maintain that all Scottish votes counts when only a tiny fraction of those votes choose the winning side in an election. It is that mindset that bugs me. They are entitled to see things their own way but it is far from attractive to me as someone who believes in the Scottish Nation.
Boris Johnson who receives £1 million per year for services to fascism and a page full of nonsense for the daily hail has posed the question today of why every free Briton isn’t allowed to burn their own Xmas Tree in their own hearth.
Thank God there isn’t global warming, international wars and economic crises to worry about as the NHS is driven to destruction.
It wasn’t a barn or a shed it was a summer house. I wonder what the press back them called it.
The Act was so unpopular that it was impossible to sign on the Royal Mile, as was first intended, because protestors had blocked the way.
This is where Summer House comes into the story – a quaint, glorified garden shed no bigger than seven feet squared. Today, you would have no idea it existed unless you were really looking for it.
Here’s a link to the story if anyone is interested.
https://archive.is/6ggec
Competition:
What would you call the shed, barn, summer house where the ‘Act of Union’ was signed.
Any modern day examples of ‘signings in shed’
Geri
Ignored
says:
6 January, 2024 at 1:27 am
…It’s a nonsense we have foreign politicians, from another country, stand in Scottish elections.
Bang on, I didn’t think enough before replying previously. Just up off the couch with a cric in my neck and a slight hangover. Off out to buy some Ibuprofen
I’m kind off topic but I think I will be forgiven ‘cos fitba is a much loved topic. I just never thought I would commenting on fitba.
OMG I’ve been hooked by headlines in the National & talk about fitba!
Maybe I should have had a ‘The Longest Lie’ this morning instead of going out at the crack of dawn in the bloody freezing weather.
I had to Google ‘Puskass’
Now I know. Good old Google!
What I’m wondering is if ‘goalies’ do a different sort of training to the ‘up front’ guys and also why a player would be called a ‘wee mess’
If I continue to comment on fitba I’ll have to learn a whole new language.
Hairdryer that’s an interesting one too.
Je parle fitba! That’s your Zinedine Zidane!
It’s no wonder I get PMTed. But hey you’ve now got the X so you can ignore me.
Just give me an X and don’t go clyping to Stu!
Good that you point the reality of the zilch impact that Scots seats have on forming a UK government.
Reinforcing this point against a continued MSM chunter that Scots seats do matter needs to be done. Say something often enough, long enough and some clowns will believe it.
For me the Feeble Fifty for those who can remember them not really so long ago, they summarised the issue. But of course they were Labour and were Unionist.
Sadly the Feeble Fifty were surpassed by the Feeble Fifty Six. Being and independence party the SNP could of course withdrawn and commenced negotiation. That after all was what they were elected to do.
But of course it doesn’t really take much to undermine a political party. Fifty six people out of five and a half million citizens is nothing. Even more so if you can nobble the top influencers to include key party apparatchiks. With that done you can then take the wheels off the wagon – which has been done.
2014 was too successful, independence was there, and so the game had to change. Trying to destroy others like Alex Salmond was therefore no accident either.
So now we have an SNP that through its ditching of pursuing independence against hug electoral mandate, through its ditching of opposition to Brexit, through its ditching of commitments to set up a Scottish Energy Company, a Scottish Bank and so much more not forgetting of course hugely unpopular policies that were never part of any manifesto or policy discussion we are where we are.
The Brits dark arts brigade in all its tentacles have played hard and they have destroyed the SNP.
And now the Brit media, as the Rev has just pointed out plays up the big lie that Scottish seats counts and that democracy works in our united fucking kingdom.
George Monbiot is a Marxist (with a biology degree though, unusual). I blame Marxists for mis-leading the environmental movement – wittingly or otherwise – into the blind alley of “progressive” social policies, like a fool’s notion of directly-managed “equality” being an actual target rather than “more equal” being the likely outcome of living within ecological boundaries (as far as we can determine them).
But his piece in the Guardian today is an excellent description of our predicament. They have not set up comments. I see the colonial idea debated at length here as being a bit stretched and over-refined by some. Is it any more than what powerful invaders have always done to the less tooled-up – i.e. is there anything else? And if not, why make such a distinct thing of it?
You’ll have to figure out how to kill the obscuring ads that appear with this link to his article.
https://archive.vn/HjkOZ
Geri 1:27
The Western Isles never voted to join the then EEC in the first place.
But they were “dragged in agin their will”. Just as well social media and armchair warriors didn’t exist back in the seventies, as we might never have heard the end of it.
And in other news, the way that WM works, in the event that the allocation of seats to parties (or coalitions) is about equal, one extra seat for Party A can give Party A (or its coalition) that all important majority. So it can form a government and given strict party discipline, govern effectively.
Doesn’t matter if the constituency represented by that seat is around Aylesbury, Aberystwyth or Aberdeen.
Simples.
Poor, deluded Scotland last delivered a block of useless SNP dead weight to WM. If the pollsters have it right, we may be delivering some Labour MPs in 2024 and who knows, if one or two of them are any good, they may get a cabinet position and even the opportunity to shape UK policy in a way that benefits Sovereign Scots.
I fully realise that to the ideologically pure, the idea of our elected representatives actually doing us some good at WM is anathema, and thus I must be ritually stoned or similar by the religious fundamentalists on here.
But still, our recent years, when we have been represented by over promoted intellectual pygmies, and only because they belong to the correct tribe, have not been good ones for Scotland.
Maybes this is how the Indy movement should plan going forwards – identify the smart, competent, ambitious and driven politicians, and then convert them to the pursuit of Indy.
The historical approach, to promote the Indy faithful, or the ethnic box tickers, and then attempt to make them smart, competent, ambitious and driven has been (AS excepted) a spectacular failure.
@Effijy 10:21
Sorry to find you failed to exorcise your personal BoJo demon over the Hogger. Does he squat on your chest during the hours of darkness – that’s how these things used to work in medieval times?
Maybes you are unaware that the progressive Irish government, to which I am sure our ruling SNP junta looks for inspiration, are outlawing the domestic consumption of any solid fuels; coal, wood, peat, etc. within a few years. I expect oor ain pretendy FM to follow suit quite soon.
The idea is to bring domestic energy consumption under the same centralised control as they will with personal motorised transport once everybody has been forced to go electric and computerised. Basically, toe the line, or you will be unplugged from the grid – no power, no heating, no transport, no banking, no shopping.
Maybes you truly believe that’s a future in which you will finally be free.
Maybes you need to finally get over BoJo in 2024. If nothing else, find some contextually useful replacements for the ‘F’ word. It’s been over applied to the point of meaninglessness.
I think that is the last we will see of Dundee Scot, but unfortunately since he is reliant on the Establishment for his wages, he will be back under a new name.
Willie.
Have you ever wondered why down south often states britain is in a Commonwealth and where that idea grew from?
John Main
Ignored
says:
6 January, 2024 at 11:23 am
Geri 1:27
The Western Isles never voted to join the then EEC in the first place…’
Do you think that after 40 years of new liberalism any country in the global west (a descritpion I don’t like but its there so Ill use it..) has the institutional capacity or the human political capacity to do things rather than talk about them and talk about them in ways that proves they don’t have a grasp of what they are even talking about?
This is against a background of serious problems, possibly existential problems for many or even all of these nations.
The point I was making John Main is that I have an errie feeling, its just an impression mind you that all the functioning institutions we once had across countries as far afield as Canada and France, The UK and Australia have sold it all off and the politicians of these nations and the educational institutions that feed them just seem to talk shite in sound bites about values and they all look up and maybe to the side when they are doing it and never down at us.
FFS for fuck sake!
When you get free FFS on the NHS do you get to pick the face you want?
Do the NHS have a range of free faces. A bit similar to choice you used to get with free specs. Remember them? (John Lennon & his NHS specs is another story for later when I run out of things to say.)
Would you be able to pick a free ‘Audrey Hepburn’ face for example which I believe is what Dylan Mulvanney chose.
Did Dylan Mulvanney get his FFS for free?
I believe he was close to the president who was possibly ‘doing it for Dylan’
Free FFS on the NHS! FFS!
Can anyone get it?
Not that I’m interested in FFS but I wouldn’t mind a some free dental treatment especially some free implants.
If you register for free NHS FFS when you are 12 years old do you get the free face of a 12 year old even if you are 23 years when you get the FFS?
If you get free NHS when you are 50 years old can you request the face of a 20 year old?
I have many question about free FFS on the NHS. Is it it for men only?
This is an utter scandal but then what isn’t in this country?
That’s GM got the X now!
I am leaving the Scottish nation to one side you in this one because we would need to build many of these institutions from scratch (which is actually what needs to happen anyway).
Ruby
Ignored
says:
6 January, 2024 at 12:08 pm
That’s GM got the X now
I’m done Ruby pal. No sure what’s got into me today. Off to Castlemilk to watch a Scottish amateur cup game. A team from my home town Breadalbane FC have a chance of winning the Scottish Amateur cup this year. If they can do it I will believe that anything can happen this summer..
Get into the fitba, it still has something going for it despite it all.
I know exactly what got into you today!
You got wound up!
Watch out for the wind-up merchants!
It happens to the best of us. I got PMTed for months due to getting wound up.
Enjoy your fitba!
Good Luck to your team! Never say never! 🙂
Stu,
Scottish votes never counted in a union.
Because Scots were not asked to join the union,
That statement is on UK parliament site.
And of course the Scottish government was dissolved in 1707.
So cannot send any representatives of constitutents from Scotland Since 1707,
So no representative Scottish votes in Britain according to the laws of Britain on “parliament dissolution.”
Maybe just my advanced age, however I’m still not quite getting the point of this new “ignore” function.
I had hoped that it would remove from (my) view the 3 or 4 frequent posters who wearily iterate and reiterate, at great length, similar posts often several times daily. It doesn’t.
So, I just continue to require to skip over the irrelevant, the incompetent and the serial self indulgent.
Correct, plus a situation reinforced by the government gerrymandering resulting in fewer Scottish and Welsh seats and a correspondingly larger number of English seats ensuring the ongoing democratic deficit.
Whit a shambles.
You’ve got to do that yourself Sven.
The ‘ignore function’ puts green & red warning signs on the posts you want to ignore.
Just remember the phrase ‘red & green should never be seen’
Did you ever imagine that someone like me would be giving you a lesson in self-restraint. 🙂
I like the ignore function.
The Parliament of Ireland.
The parliament of Ireland was not included in the treaty of union between Scotland and England,
Ireland remained a separate kingdom under the Crown of England until 1800/1801,
Act of parliament of Great-Britain > 1800 c 67( Reganal 39 _40 _Geo _ 3.
The Union with Ireland Act 1800
An Act for the union of Great Britain and Ireland.
Chapter 67 39 and Geo 3.
Extract qoute: In the Uk parliament
[ 1.]
The Parliaments of England and Ireland have Agreed upon the Articles following.
And whereas in furtherance of the said Resolution, both houses of the said two parliaments respectively have likewise agreed upon certain Articles for effectuating and establishing the said purposes in the tenor following:
End of qouted extract.
So the “parliament of England” was not dissolved and actually has two rolls
The parliament of England can still create treaties with Ireland as one and the same “parliament of Great- Britain” in 1800.
Whilst the parliament of Scotland was Dissolved in England nearly three hundred years prior 1707.
The One united kingdom of Great- Britain between Scotland and England under the treaty of union Articles lasted from 1707–1800.
Until the “parliament of Englands” dual indentity also calling itself the parliament of Great- Britain entered into a union with Ireland in 1800.
Stu.
The duel identity of the parliament of England as the parliament of Great-Britain Has to be the “Longest Lie”.
ANDREW MARR: “How can you know that I am self-censoring?”
NOAM CHOMSKY: “I didn’t say you are self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you are saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are sitting”
————
SILENCE OF THE SHEEP
Endless English on the media
Explaining the world to me.
Knowing that any random Scot in their midst
Will know no more than the edited English,
And that even if they do, they will not speak of it.
SÀMHCHAIR NAN CAORACH
Sasannaich gun chrìch sna meadhanan
a’ mìneachadh an t-saoghail rium. Tha fhios
nach bi fios nas mò aig corra Albannach
nam measg seach na Sasannaich deasaichte,
agus fios nas mios, ged a bhios, cha chan iad guth.
Ruby @ 13.22.
I’m aware of the “flagging up” of the visual indication, thanks Ruby. It simply does not provide the facility for which I had been hoping.
I long ago gave up imagining the many and varied types of persons who feel free to offer me guidance on almost any subject under the sun, solicited or not.
When I worked in gents’ tailoring, the saying was “Blue and green should never be seen”. They don’t go together nor contrast. They are not a good match.
Try to think of any football or rugby clubs that have blue and green as the main colours of their strips.
Here the Archbishop of Canterbury tells us all that we must learn to be a bit more understanding and forgiving when it come s to Prince Andrew.
https://nitter.net/Grouse_Beater/status/1743582360849850758#m
Of course the Third Estate (clergy) has close ties to the royals, and apart from Iran, England is the only other nation that allows the clergy to interfere in politics, some the UK clergy sit in the unelected and undemocratic HoC.
As for Prince Andrew we know that he doesn’t sweat we also know what he really is.
“If voting made any difference it would be banned”
Noam Chomsky.
Scots in Scotland voting in a GE make absolutely no difference to the outcome. This year the Blue Tories have f*cked up the economy, (and just about everything else whilst supporting genocide in Gaza), so badly that its likely the Red Tories will get into Number Ten, however it doesn’t matter which one of the two gets into power, because in reality there’s no real difference between the Blue Tories and the Red Tories (Labour.
Across the pond in the Great Satan’s country (USA) virtually the same scenario is unfolding, the only difference there is that Genocide Joe Biden is trying his hardest to make sure that his possible rival in the Republicans Trump, doesn’t get to stand, and instead he is charged with sedition.
Of course a mega campaign of smears and lies was implemented against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK to depose him as Labour leader, the media, Mossad the CIA and even his own party politicians cringed at the thought of a socialist PM in power at Number Ten.
Lets see how’s that working out for the UK now that Corbyn’s no longer leader?
Barrhead Boy has a good article us awell.
Anyone attacked by a Devil Dug in Scotland should sue the guy below (Humza Yousaf), Alex Salmond, when FM expected the Scottish Government to be sued when prisons in Scotland became (and still are) illegally overcrowded. I’d imagine Yousaf’s careless attitude towards Devil Dugs that have as a breed already killed people in the UK, could be costly to him or his government.
“THE Scottish Government does not think a ban on XL bully dogs is “required” in Scotland, the First Minister has said.
Asked about the matter, Humza Yousaf said the Scottish Government was “monitoring the situation” and keeping a ban “under review” – but added he didn’t think one was needed.”
RoS
There are plenty of metrics suggesting the U.K. economy is not doing too bad, for example, compared with the Euro Zone countries. Here in Scotland, the SNP/Greens under pretendy FM Yousaf are doing worse than than the UK average. Yousaf’s new taxes will take a year or so to demonstrate to the faithful that you can’t tax your way to prosperity, whilst the laughable “progressive” accelerated abolition of fossil fuels use in Scotland is not only going to dent our GDP by 4% when Grangemouth closes – it will drive jobs and investment south of the border where a saner regulatory regime is being maintained.
Re your completely overhyped use of the ‘g’ word, I know you can’t help yourself and won’t ever change, but some of us at least know enough about the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Mao’s “Great Leap”, etc to call you out on your BS.
Have you one iota of justification for how your endless carping about your various Satans is in any way relevant to the cause of Scottish Indy?
Taiwan’s elections are on the 13th of Jan, if the Great Satan’s (USA’s) compliant party/government doesn’t win there could be conflict in the country, possibly the same could be said with China in mind.
Taiwanese military reservists are being called up and told that they’ll be buried in the Martyr’s Cemetery if they fall in the very near future.
“but some of us at least know enough about the Holocaust”
John Main.
Which one?
The North American one, the Tasmanian one, the WWII one, the Armenian one, East Timor and Cambodian, there were several.
@Sven 1.09 pm
The intent was (is?) that comments from those you press the ignore button for would indeed disappear, but it seems not to work here. The comment from the link below may explain why:
“CIB has been written to work “out of the box” with standard WordPress comments and several common variations. In testing, the default setting worked as intended, in a a few cases after minimal adjustments without custom CSS or PHP, with 96 out of 100 “Popular,” “Featured,” and custom WordPress themes. CIB is not suitable for 3rd Party commenting systems like Disqus or Facebook Comments, however.
More generally, though CIB can also be adapted to modified commenting templates, the further that your theme and commenting plug-ins diverge from typical, up-to-date WordPress, the more adjustments you may have to make.”
Looks like you’re stuck with scrolling past the red boxers.
https://wordpress.com/plugins/commenter-ignore-button
Andy Ellis @ 15.44.
Thankyou for that info. Scroll I shall.
I’m wondering if just wishing posts would disappear out of one’s sight might work. 🙂
I think it might!
I haven’t seen ‘Captain Yossarian’ or ‘A Scot Abroad’ for quite a long time.
Bit miffed that we didn’t get to know the conclusion of ‘The Sinking School Saga’
Perhaps I should have held back a bit longer.
Anyone got any info?
Should I give Ellis the X?
Probably best! 🙂
“£730 million was lost because of the fiscal settlement’
Ash Regan highlighting the fact that the Scottish taxpayer is helping to fund a British Government black hole.”
https://nitter.net/AlbaParty/status/1743573124610773010#m
Colour theory! I luv it!
IMO Royal blue & lime green go really well together. There was a time when a royal blue couch with lime green cushions was all the rage.
It’s my first day learning about fitba so I don’t know much about strips but I do know the the grass which they play on is green.
If the ‘blue & green should never be seen’ ruling became law in football would it mean Scotland would have to always wear their pink strips?
‘Pink to make the boys wink’
I wonder where all these phrases about colour come from?
There are loads of them.
ie browned off
in the pink
one’s true colours
to be green
blue movies
clockwork orange
green fingers
etc etc etc
I wonder if the ‘blue & green should never be seen’ dictat had anything to do with trying to ban tartan.
I don’t think I would be far off the mark if I said every tartan contains blue & green.
Ruby says on
“I’m kind of off topic but I think I will be forgiven ‘cos fitba is a much loved topic. I just never thought I would be commenting on fitba. If I continue to comment on fitba I’ll have to learn a whole new language. Hairdryer, that’s an interesting one too.”
Don’t worry yourself about being “off topic” because i will tell you a wee Scottish fitba story, related to your comments, that can loosely be considered *on topic* because it involves the BBC in Scotland, who are central to the plot in Stuart’s article above this btl thread. 😉
First of all though, just for you, the term “hairdryer treatment” was first brought into football by a player named Mark Hughes who was referring to the manager of the football club he was playing for. A Scottish-born manager, with a reputation for not suffering fools (some folk would call it bullying these days). That managers name was Alex Ferguson. Arguably the most successful football manager Scotland has ever produced.
The saying “hairdryer treatment” refers to a verbal roasting, up close in your face sort of style, at very high volume by another individual, and done in the presence of others. Something Alex Ferguson was infamous for doing when he was not happy with his players performances, on or off the pitch, you were left in no doubt he wasn’t happy with you.
Can’t tell you though if it was invented in relation to Ferguson and football or if the saying existed outside of footballing circles prior to Hughes using it in an interview with a reporter. But that’s the story of its arrival into the football world in England’s top league at the time. When Ferguson was manager of the very highly successful Manchester United.
The current wee Scottish fitba story involving the BBC that i promised you, just to keep it on topic you understand, 😉 will follow as a separate comment coz i don’t like creating super-long comments that almost turn into chapters of a book. LOL!
Ruby @ 18.18
I doubt if the Act of Proscription could be regarded as being as overly shade concious, Ruby. Indeed, many setts of those days would likely have been woven by vegetable dyes from whichever local plants were available to the district weaver. So many of the pieces of cloth produced would have much more resembled the “weathered” effect of today’s replica colours, rather than the more strident annaline dyes of the Victorian era which celebrated the resurgence of Tartan. And brown earthy setts are not unknown, indeed the Dumbarton District of my own area is brown based.
Just in passing, the reason why even bright colours in a tartan sett merge harmoniously is due to the fact that no colour in a sett ever directly abuts onto another colour. The diagonal weave of the “stripes” merges both colours in a manner which a check, for instance, cannot.
Yossarian found a sinking school in the gaza strip. The IDF killed him for antisemitism.
ASA forgot he was on the reserve list; the IDF, not wishing to risk their jewish souls, sat in the merkava and sent the dumb goy from US/UK into the gazan tunnels, wielding a 45 and a machete.
A great patriot he gave his life to keep palestine jewish, or israel british, or britain jewish … I dunno, all the complex geopolitics is decided by the higher ups who read foreign affairs.
– at least he wasn’t a chickenhawk like many others here, banging the drum for war and then standing back; draft the warmongers, and their kids
let’s send chelsea clinton with an explosive vest to take out a machine gun nest
@ Ruby and anyone else interested:
There was a recent Scottish football match involving Celtic and *Rangers which Celtic won 2:1.
The match had its usual fill of controversial moments, including Rangers being denied a penalty for handball. The referees decision first appeared to be that he deemed it non-deliberate but it then transpired that a Rangers player was offside anyway. And no, i’m not going to try and explain the “offside” rule. It’ll take too long and i’ve never liked the ruling anyway. My thinking being that it is anti-football because it stifles entertainment and that’s what fans pay good money for. To be entertained and hopefully see their side win.
Back to the point in question. Given it was adjudged to be “offside” in the first place then that should have been the end of the matter but oh no. Rangers have been continuing to release statements on the matter. And how they want the SFA to explain the referees decision making. They also requested the SFA release to them the audio recordings of the match officials’ VAR discussion during that game. With the help of the BBC in Scotland Rangers have been keeping this flame flickering, as if they’ve been subjected to a great miscarriage of justice. They haven’t been, one of their players was a mile offside. There is no room for referee discretion on this rule. If it’s offside it’s offside.
The BBC have been pumping this story on a daily basis ever since. But true to BBC practice there are a few key moments that took place in that match which have never been given the light-of-day since the match highlights that evening. Moments where Celtic were very hard done by. They were denied a clear penalty, *AGAIN*, and they were denied a good goal-scoring opportunity when the linesman official flagged a Celtic player for being offside. BBC highlight pictures on the evening of that match showed the Celtic player was clearly onside.
Pictures also showed that the linesman who flagged Celtic offside was not keeping up with play. He was running well behind the line of attack so it’s utterly baffling how he could then give a “offside” decision, one that highlights showed was *not* offside.
There has also been absolutely no mention of several Celtic payers being on yellow cards at one point during the first half while Rangers players were enjoying no bookings in comparison. The referee in that match was one of Scotland’s relatively new breed of football officials by the name of Nick Walsh – the same referee who gave Hearts an extremely baffling penalty against Celtic. A decision not supported by anyone in the media at the time because the Hearts player clearly dived over the Celtic player, *FROM BEHIND*. Work that one out. LOL!
Anyhoo, a couple of days later Rangers thought they were being clever when they came out saying “we just want to understand the process”. NO YOUS EFFIN’ DON’T, YOUS ARE DOING WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE. They were manipulating officials by sending the message that if you make decisions against us then there will be consequences. Their unprofessional stamping of feet tantrum should have been hammered by the SFA.
The BBC in Scotland briefly showed the injustices against Celtic that night in their highlights programme, and have never mentioned them since, to give a full accurate and balanced account says all we need to know. And it’s no surprise to us here on WOS because we already know how they tend to operate on a amateur level.
Here’s a couple of other facts for you. (1): On the day of that game, the BBC online was repeatedly referencing “Rangers v Celtic”. This matters because the home team is *ALWAYS* stated first in football, it’s a way of telling folk who was the home team on the day. (2): During the live BBC text commentary of that game, when Rangers scored their goal, the BBC in Scotland put up a larger than usual text post of Rangers’ club crest with the words and score of: “GOAL! Rangers 2 Celtic 1”. They failed to correct that for approximately 20-minutes. One cannot make such a “mistake”, someone went to a lot of effort to do that just to wind up Celtic fans. The fact Celtic were the home team *AND* were 2:0 up at the time adds to that fact.
Also this season the BBC in Scotland have been reporting press releases, by Rangers, on their main news page as headline news. One could maybe justify these actions if it was being done on the text sport pages but not on the main news pages. And even worse is the fact they haven’t even been news-worthy articles. It’s been trivial items such as “New Rangers manager wants to create a team of winners”. Well no fuckin’ shit Sherlock. That’s the aim of every single football manager on this planet. These pathetic “news-worthy” articles bordered on the sycophantic, along the lines of ‘Rangers new manager eats porridge on match days’. LOL! No other club in Scotland gets that amount of coverage on the BBC’s main Scottish news pages.
They even put a recent 2:0 win over wee Dundee(?) recently. Big fricken deal! That’s supposed to be on the sport pages like every other Scottish teams match efforts etc. I monitor the BBC in Scotland text pages every day, for political garbage they promote, and i can assure you, no other Scottish club gets that amount of promotion on those pages. Their appearances on those pages are as rare as Chicken teeth. The BBC in Scotland must have a Rangers fan operating behind the scenes when one considers what’s going on. I’ve often contemplated bringing this to the attention of their bosses in London but decided it would just be a total waste of time. I’ve personally experienced, and seen on here often, how the BBC manipulates inadequate responses to genuine complaints.
Oh, btw, one last point on this. Today the BBC in Scotland is still pushing this story on their main news pages. This time they are saying that the Scottish Football Officials’ Union is not happy about the integrity of their match officials being called into question. The BBC is also announcing that Rangers’ request for official Willie Collum to never again be allowed involvement in any Rangers’ games was refused. I can only assume Rangers have shifted their original anger at the referee to now targeting that days match 4th official. And guess what, Willie Collum is a Catholic school teacher from a big Celtic supporting family. Make of that what you will.
Also, just look into Collum’s record in matches involving Celtic v Rangers. The majority of his *BIG* decisions in Rangers’ favour far outweigh those given in Celtic’s favour. Aye! Scottish fitba, if you didn’t laugh you’d greet.
Apologies for this epic saga. There was more to say than i first thought. And that’s not even the half of it. LOL! Mind you, supporters of all of Scotland’s other football clubs will tell you that this is the case of *both* Celtic and Rangers when up against their own teams. And quite a lot of the time i can only agree with them, they do suffer a very disproportionate amount of injustices against their clubs when playing against Celtic or Rangers.
Important factoid: BBC in Scotland recently stated that, in a game against Kilmarnock, Rangers had conceded their first penalty in 75-games. Adding further fuel to the popular belief among Scottish football fans of all persuasions that Rangers tend to be awarded more penalties than any other Scottish club. This was certainly true when their new doppleganger club entity was being guided through the lower leagues to Scotland’s top league. There were times that Rangers had been awarded more penalties, than all other clubs put together, in the particular division they were in at the time. Facts? Nah! This is just the conspiracy theorists being paranoid. 😉 LOL!
Ruby
Yossarian had to leave when he found that his grandstand was sinking. Or perhaps he just read ‘Closing Time’ – Joseph Heller’s sequel to ‘Catch 22’ in which the good Captain turns out to be a depressive loser.
Ass Caught Abroad stood on something nasty on his sister’s farm. His ‘refresher’ course is taking longer than anticipated.
However, you need not worry(?), as others have come out of the woodwork to replace them.
Stoker, James Forrest has been all over this, the ramifications of it all.
@Ruby (6.10)
Crivvens! You missed out Black Affronted!
In response to ‘Confused’ on 6 January 2024 at 11:06 pm
Thank you for that. And quite right too. But where are all the powerful voices on this? Hibernating? LOL!
Thank you Stoker for these informative post.
I have a lot to learn about football. The BBC bias I was already aware of. Never gave much thought to them going as far as to distort football results!
I was aware of the ‘Scottish when they lose British when they win’ policy.
The one good thing about them extending their bias to include football results it might make football fans question the veracity of what they broadcast overall.
Good one!
We need to find the origin of all these phrases.
I missed loads, there are 100’s of these colour phrases.
PS I’m Aquarius too!
Could 2024 be the actual ‘dawning of the Age of Aquarius’ or have we already past that?
Good one! 🙂
Nae worries we’ve got the ‘ignore X’ to sort out the woodworms.
The BBC lies, well no shit Sherlock. I havent paid the English TV Tax in over ten years now.