The magic money rigs
A reader sent us an interesting snippet of information today.
That seemed a startling fact, so we looked into it. And it’s true.
“RTS” is the UK government’s – or more precisely HMRC’s – Regional Trade Statistics accounts, which seek to disaggregate the UK economy to see how much money is generated in which areas. When independence supporters first discovered that the large bulk of North Sea oil revenues were attributed in the stats to an “unknown region” rather than to Scotland – Wings readers knew about it at least as early as July 2014 – Unionists went into overdrive to downplay and obfuscate the fact.
But as of this year, with the independence referendum safely long in the past, the UK government has very quietly altered the methodology of RTS to now accurately credit oil revenues to where they belong.
If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.
But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.
In just two years, then, Scotland’s economy has suddenly produced over £15bn more than the official UK government figures had previously claimed it did. It’s a bit like popping out to your garage to fetch a screwdriver and discovering a Ferrari you didn’t know you had under a dust sheet.
Now, we’re not remotely expert enough when it comes to the labyrinth of government trade stats to determine how significant that is (the £15bn, not the surprise Ferrari). But we suspect readers will agree that it seems an awfully big statistic to alter without mentioning it, or having anyone notice.
And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?
My thoughts simply are why did they do it?
Oh, this’ll leave a mark. 🙂
Popcorn time anyone?
WTF! So is this how they are able to fund giant spends like HS2 and Crossrail 2 in the south east of England?
£15 Billion? That’s that big black hole of debt sorted.
So if Tony Blair had not introduced the afore-mentioned “Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999” then presumably these figures would have been even higher.
And thereby hangs a tale,
link to liveleak.com
There really is not any good reason why Scottish voters should ever believe the UK media or the UK Government.
Unless we learn this fast, they may well pull the wool over our eyes long enough to buy them another 50 years to repress and damage Scotland.
Who would have believed that an English Based Pro England, so called British government would tell such out and out lies to us Scots?
I guess those of us who have any sense at all know their devious figures are only to subjugate the numpties who believe in the great British empire.
Have some of the establishment elite decided to jump ship… with a view to becoming big fish in a wee pond. A very rich wee pond. Colonising 2.0.
Or do we have a secret supporter who slipped these stats through when no-one was looking.
Interesting, but not going to educate the punter in the street yet… 50 years of ‘its a diminishing resource, it such a burden, it’ll all run out a week on Tuesday’ to counter first.
Where have I heard £15 billion mentioned before…?
I’m sorry Rev but I think the famous burns poem regarding parcels should be permitted again over this as its clear the rouges are at it again.
Scotland has suffered quite enough slight of hand tricks from Westminster, when will we learn ??
So will we be getting a new article from Fraser Nelson ‘No £15bn black-hole after all’ with subsequent apology?
One possibility is that the UK government could use the next GERS figures to say, “Look, pooling and sharing has brought down Scotland’s deficit entirely. Why leave now?”
That might involve UK govt actually having thought things through, though.
Richard Murphy will be interested in this, in his quest to have meaningful figures for Scotland.
The coincidental matching of the figure of £15 billion to the ‘UKOK / WM machine / media’ argument is quite striking, but no doubt Kenny F Alex M and David T will be able to explain this away as quibbling.
All the conspiracy theories of the windfall are obvious. Rather than focus on these lets celebrate what Stuart has recieved and use it widely.
I believe that in long term good will come out and corruption of UK plc is ending.
So what if a few small eleite want to jump ship to an Indy Scotland.
All the Smorgsbord countries have elites but they are not so far removed from the rest of us.
This can only be good.
Does this mean Kevin will need to crowdfund for some new crayons?
It is worth pointing out that the change in methodology only alters the allocation under RTS, which isn’t a very good way to get a grasp on Scotland’s export numbers. ESS should be used for onshore exports and the SNAP Oil & Gas statistics should be used for the offshore industry. It is the latter that is included in Scotland’s GDP when you include offshore activity. So while, it’s good that the HMRC have revised this methodology it doesn’t change the headline numbers.
This also does not change the Revenue numbers in GERS as that doesn’t include export values, and the revenue figures are allocated under the Kemp-Stephen methodology.
oh…and someone did notice, hence why we published the article. ( link to scotfact.com )
Why aren’t the SNP all over this and if this was of importance to NO side wouldn’t it be all over the media ???
Where’s Kevvy-boy? We need a graph.
Are really BIG graph please, Kevvy.
How does this affect the balance of trade between the Scotland, the UK, and Europe? All those graphs showing Scotland’s biggest trading partner to be rUK will have to be changed now, won’t they?
Prior to December 2016, Oil Exports that shipped directly from the rigs were counted towards company HQs.
So these company HQs were not in Scotland. But where? What a bizarre method of counting resources. Unless your intention is to deceive.
But why change now? What possible reason could there be for allocating Scotland’s resources accurately now?
WoS ought to be allocated 1% of that revenue for discovering it.
This is huge Wings.
Nana says:
10 August, 2017 at 11:35 am
Does this mean Kevin will need to crowdfund for some new crayons?
Kevrage will be back to lay down the UKOK rules stuff but this goon also sticks out as one of the UK’s great liars.
His thing about HS2 funding for example, is that Yes, its a massive investment but No was not going to cost Scots anything.
Kleptomaniacs don’t really come close to a label for creeps like the Ligger, who’s now off to nuke war with Orange Hitler on the other side of the planet, as you toryboy do.
Andrew Neil?Verified account @afneil Aug 9
N Korea has only one shot in its locker before US destruction rained down on it. If every made enough to take that one shot, won’t be Guam.
multiply those billions not counted over a period 40 years and it is comes to quite a tidy sum.
When first they practice to deceive… Well, it comes out in the wash eventually, but, you’d never know from our what passes for MSM “journalism”.
Isn’t it a good thing that we had a ref campaign because now we have an army of folk watching them.
You have to ask yourselves why this off book accounting applies to oil & gas from Scotland, but not the London Financial sector.
Scotland cannot be seen to be a healthy, solvent and vibrant country – my god, we’d get above our station and start to question the status quo.
Jackie Bird will be chomping at the bit to tell Scotland this great news before the Daily Telegraph, Times, Daily Record, et sl, beat her to the punch.
Oh look! Rocking Horse shite.
@heraldnomore
Spookily, I was just thinking the same thing.
O/T
I have just watched an amazing program mainly on the Scottish NHS starring Miriam Margolyes.
It compared and contrasted Health Care pre and post 1948 using her late father’s experiences as a GP.
The program was really an eye opener and was so positive about today’s Scottish NHS it puzzles me just how it slipped through the BBC’s SNPbad/Scotland is rubbish filter.
Everybody appearing in the program from medical staff to patients couldn’t be more positive.
The contrast between the program’s content and the daily tsunami of SNHS alleged disasters excreted over us by The BBC and msm was mindboggling.
If only it could be shown at peak time – some hope.
If it appears on the iPlayer watch it and then mount an attack on the media and their negative coverage of the Scottish NHS.
This will mean a lot of negative newspaper articles would need to be pulled to reflect the true position..?
A lot of blank pages.
Let remember that the two years in question were disastrous for the oil industry in Scotland. Just think how much of our wealth has been stolen when the oil price was higher, going right back to the 1970s.
It’s enough to make you weep.
“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?”
The powers that be must be pretty confident there wont be a second indyref.
As I understand it, this is £15bn mineral oil exported from UK directly to elsewhere which is now being correctly attributed to the Scotland part of the UK.
There will be another figure hidden out there. That is the amount of mineral oil produced in Scottish waters then ‘exported internally’ to the rest of the UK itself. The sum of the two figures would of course be the potential oil export value to an iScotland.
So we’re not too poor, too wee or too stupid – just lied to from morning till night!
Well done that alert reader.
Those figures have been as high as that while the oil price has been tanking. What were they prior to 2014 when the oil price was double where it is now.
Maybe those SNP figures for a post-ref Indy Scotland don’t seem just quite so off target now.
And another thing:
So exactly how much oil has China been taking from the N Sea, attributed to company headquarters, and therefore free of UK tax and they’ve received a tax rebate from the UK gov of over £2billion recently…..
Obviously WM trying to ‘take back control’ before Brexit, after which they’ll claim total ownership of the entire N Sea and all it produces. Perhaps the ‘bonanza’ of powers refers to the oil grab as well as the power grab that they are planning and curious that it is a round £15bn figure – wonder why???
Y’know, a lot of people visit this site and read these posts and threads. A great many were probably reluctant no voters last time round, or hopeful no voters, or indeed last chance no voters.
From this week’s offerings alone, there can be little doubt of the truth of Better Togetherness, government by Westminster and information derived from mainstream media.
It’s not a great truth to have to face I’ll admit, but it IS the truth nonetheless. If its any consolation, they pulled the wool over a great many people’s eyes for a very long time.
The next bit is up to you. You can help folk change this and all you need do is put a mark on a bit of paper and maybe talk to a few friends. Let them know what you now know.
Help us put the power to change things back where it belongs. In our own hands, with a government we elect, to administer to our specific needs and aspirations. A government that reflects the wishes of its population, rather than one which manipulates the opinions of those in its care to achieve its own ends.
Pretty certain the help would be appreciated.
so what other figures are they hiding about our economy *sic* whisky Ireland has 4% of the market that makes £2.5 billion euros for the Irish economy yet Scotland has 80% of the market yet UK claims it’s worth £5 billion
“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?”
Wasn’t there a recent EU regulation relating to how a country’s finances are reported that the UK now has to comply with?
Stu: “…why change the rules now?”
Because they’re jolly good chaps and thought it just wasn’t cricket. Hurrah!
Stu, your analogy is flawed. It is not like finding a Ferrari in your garage that you didn’t know you had. It is like having a Ferrari and your neighbour telling you that you haven’t got one to the extent that you a provided with psychiatric treatment in a secure unit until you admit that you haven’t got a Ferrari. Then being discharged and being complimented on your Ferrari by your neighbour who has been using it to the extent that it is knackered and now you need to replace the wheels and the engine so he can have another go.
No Yoon spokesperson has ever explained why Norway continues to earn more in tax per barrel oil.
A little reported fact is that Oil companies making more profits at $50 per barrel than they did at $100 per barrel yet the UK Government is not taxing them.
link to oilandgaspeople.com
uk government lying about Scotland’s oil production – who would have thought that possible?
How could this have been hidden from us with all the freedom of information requests submitted by bcc or the blood hound dedication and integrity of our press in sniffing out the truth?
Perhaps the red and blue tory branch party leaders should be offered opportunity to to comment along with bbc in Scotland and the paper press.
When stealing natural resources and artefacts from other countries during the empire, the English elite bought off some locals to spin the news locally that the English taking resources people needed and artefacts local people treasured, was somehow good for the local people! They also gave local babbles and glass beads, this is what labour in Scotland call pooling and sharing!
What is the difference in Scotland 2017 – there is none!
How far do you imagine England would get stealing oil from Irish waters or telling the Irish that leaving the EU against their stated will would be good for them? No where, the Irish have their own TV and press, they are not swayed with propaganda, plus the placemen are long gone execept in the North! The Irish see England for what it is.
The last thing some Scots would admit to, and that’s being taken for a fool all their lives by the English elite. It is 2017 and Scotland is being looted for resources and our democracy strangled.
Time some Scots opened their eyes!
I followed the link from Rab Boyce @11.38 – thank you.
link to scotfact.com
It’s a link to the article the Rev has quoted from.
Interesting ( but you need to read it in a quiet room).
It basically says that HMRC are not really massaging the statistics, however reading the sentence quoted below it still feels as if we are being shafted somewhat!
A much better source of Scotland’s Oil and Gas exports would have been the SNAP Oil & Gas figures, which were available at the time and are, crucially, designed for this purpose. SNAP estimates that Scotland’s Oil and Gas exports outside the UK in 2015 were £6,973m. Of course, Scotland produces more Oil and Gas than this but £7,859m is ‘exported’ to the rUK.
Gus 1940
What as the NHS programme called? I would like to catch it if possible.
Thanks
They will tell us it is just an accounting device to make us appear not “too poor”” ,and thus save us embarrassment. Thanks very much.
Wow, don’t worry the razor-sharp intellects of the Scottish press corps will get to the bottom of this soon with their keen investigative skills and tireless diligence.
This is why Wings is of such fundamental importance Asti. If you want to start a crowd finder to get a fuckin pedicure I’m in lol
This MUST be broadcast far and wide.
We must all write to our MP or MSP with this information. It is a vital rebuttal,of the too poor lies.
So what happened in previous years?
Any idea when this will appear in BBC Scotland news?
2035? 2045? Never?
Vote now.
Christ..that’s almost half their bloody Brexit bill right there !!!
No doubt this will be on the front page of the Daily Record tomorrow.
Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?
So, with the Rev’s recent ‘Too Wee’ series debunking the myth that Scotland is ‘too wee’ to be an independent country, we now have the concrete evidence that thoroughly debunks the “too poor” mantra.
Okay, who wants to have a go at the “too stupid” schtick?
(I suppose after these recent revelations, if in IndyRef2, we vote to stay witht he UK then I suppose that really will prove the “too stupid” meme).
Someone asked why publish now. I think it’s to show how Scotland can suddenly boom when they vote in 10 Tory puppets. Just picked up latest unionist ploy it’s to smudge the border between Scotland and England. Seems Now Tory MP in Borders they are to work together to make the border both sides one region
The next time anyone from SNP who is involved in any kind of interview Must demand to discuss this matter first.
As ever we can depend on the Westminster Parties Covering up, Distorting, completely lying about Scotland’s economy!
Their manufacture £15 Billion Scottish Deficit, their contrived Black Hole, could have been paid off with 2 years worth of uncovered revenue.
Dirty, Lying, Scheming Shower of B***ards!!!!!!
Fireproofjim
The title was ‘Matron, Medicine And Me: 70 Years Of The NHS’ and it ran on BBC1 from 1.00 to 11.45.
My program guide has it as a Repeat.
Been thinking….
Westminster is corrupt and they have been hiding the truth about Scotlands oil and gas receipts since it started being extracted.
Why believe them now?
£15 Billion is a convienient figure to just arrive at isn’t it?
Wonder if it is actually a lot more?
The whole UKOK toryboy show in Scotland and England seems to be built on lies.
For example,
link to businessinsider.com
Unemployment in the UK is now so low it’s in danger of exposing the lie used to create the numbers
Government statistics put unemployment in Britain at just 4.5% — a low not seen since the 1970s.
But the real rate of unemployment is four times that.
Why does Britain have no wage inflation, if the labour market is so tight?
The answer is that unemployment is not really that low. In reality, about 21.5% of British workers are either officially unemployed, inactive, or employed part time even though they really want full-time work.
Note especially that the rump of “inactive” workers — the black bars — has stayed roughly the same for two decades.
The situation is worse from the perspective of men. The percentage of inactive male workers has tripled in the past 40 years, as more and more women are drawn into the workforce to replace them:
etc.
I’m not up on international accounting, but can someone please have a look at Gibraltar’s fuel consumption? Latest figures acording to wikipaedia is 42,000 barrels per day which seems a lot. In fact, it accounts for over 50% of Gibraltar’s export figures.
Gibraltar being a tax haven, is this money missing from our coffers? Or is it taxed at source?
[…] Wings Over Scotland The magic money rigs A reader sent us an interesting snippet of information today. That seemed a startling […]
This might be a indicator as to where the Tories Dark Money comes from, the Westminster Governments (have / are ) complicit in robbing the Scottish People of they’re resources . Please Share this Link to every social media site available , not forgetting Families & Friends , print of some copies & post them through Unionist doors that you’s know of , leave copies in your workplace buses/trains ect ect .
Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?
Dave
They have squawked themselves to a standstill?
its always been there just well hidden , it begins to question what else is being conveniently hidden for political advantage ,
Ian Lang devised the smokescreen of GERS knowing full well the intention was to muddle, and confuse, because the treasury retained the real data and continues to obstruct access to the full picture , thats why ratings agencies have openly admitted they cant give a definitive answer on scotland’s economy based on guesswork i believe 25 out of 26 figures are informed guesses, GERS has only recently started being questioned as to their accuracy and its obvious there figures cant be defended .
@ Jockanese Wind Talker.
You may be proved right in your observations in the long term .
This needs more forensic examination Rev .
All those billions wasted by UK Gov to subsidise London/bankers,
according to Tory manifesto 2017 p21 `more than £300 billion in tax revenues were provided by the North sea for UK`
should have been used to rebuild Scotland`s infrastructure,from new roads/bridges/internet connectivity/airports/ports/social care/green energy/modern social housing throughout Scotland not just the cities and big towns but the countryside and esp the highlands and islands,
£300 billion taken and not a peep from our Scottish press/media.
And there’s your deficit right there, lying cheating, robbing swine…when will we wake up…??
Oh good. I have been banging on about this for quite a while, because, to put it simply, I wanted to know how it was that Norway continued to derive a healthy revenue stream from its sector of the North Sea even when the oil price had slumped to its lowest level, yet Scotland’s oil revenues appeared to have vanished almost completely.
I wonder what provoked Them to finally tell the truth? I mean, why now in particular? With that one release of actual facts, They have in effect admitted that the “too poor” leg of the “too wee, too poor, too stupid” stool was a lie. My great fear is that this may prove to be another clue as to the regime’s thinking: like Gove’s announcement to Danish fishermen, which could be at least partially true only if the Scottish Government no longer had anything to say about fishing in Scottish waters, could They be releasing this information now because they think it won’t matter because Their plan is to either abolish the Scottish Parliament completely, or turn it into a glorified COSLA?
Unbelievably massive:
Scotland’s GDP £150bn, adjustment £15bn, 10% increase in Scotland’s economic activity.
But ‘economic activity’ is not the same as ‘publc spending’:
Scotland’s public spending £70bn, Scotland’s tax take £55bn, deficit £15bn.
‘Economic activity’ is the total value of all our work and play, whereas ‘public spending’ is what the government takes out of that in taxes and spends on our behalf. So let’s not get too carried away here. The extra £15bn of oil has presumably already been taxed, and so has no effect on the public spending deficit.
Gus1940 – just heard the EBC 1 o’clock News reporting the NHS England’s waiting lists and times are the worst in TEN YEARS. Will we read in tomorrows yoon press, Tory & Lib/Dem BAD – I’m not holding my breathe!!!
Auld Rock
This is good and bad. Good that someone flagged it but bad that the SNP didn’t. Don’t they have people that do this sort of analysis? Bearing in mind that it was misinformation about the economy that largely persuaded the swing voters to vote no the last time, isn’t it obvious that a much truer picture of the economy needs to be as widely available as possible to make sure that the swing voters don’t get fooled again.
We know that the msm will ignore this sort of information but I’d have thought that the best place to initially highlight information like this would be in the Scottish Parliament. Then it could be passed on using the alternative information sites like Wings. How much confidence (or fear) would it give to voters if information like this was first announced in the Parliament. It would make the Scottish government look like they were simply ready and waiting to take full control of an independent Scotland, rather than firefighting against the usual lies and deceit.
If the pools are so important in being ready to call Inyref2, what effect would a situation like this have on them. The polls need to have solid information to change them otherwise they remain stuck based largely on misinformation or a lack of important information.
I recently half listened to a discussion in a pub about Brexit, with the usual arguments for stay or leave. And as usual it went round in circles until someone asked, ‘was there enough accurate information to make a solid decision one way or another’. It was the only thing they all agreed on. No there wasn’t. Scotland needs as much accurate information about the economy as it can establish if it’s to avoid the same misinformed guessing that the Brexit referendum highlighted. It comes down to meaningless slogans vs properly determined facts. That should be a no brainer for the majority of voters.
Hundreds of billions of not Scots Oil and Gas revenues quietly looted and this great master of toryboy fraud gets his beeb gimp soapbox, for his climate change denying.
BBC Scotland gimps are also ferocious climate change deniers but its clearly a tory thing.
link to politicalscrapbook.net
It was a cracker from BBC r4 tory roasters right enough.
Fill their tory pockets with loot and bootie, their beeb gimps take the wtf strain for them.
How it works in teamGB.
HandandShrimp says:
10 August, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?
They are having meetings to decide which they hate more: the Tories or the SNP? And spending all day tossing coins.
Whilst the topic is OIL.
Let us not forget Stat Oil statement whilst trying to justify their £billions of investments in Rigs on shortbread radio
Gent stated ” @ $50 / Barrel & costs of $15 / Barrel there is still room for plenty profit”
Words to the effect , I so wish I recorded it.
Derek Rodgers
What we need now is the actual public spending attributed to Scotland (and spent here) and not estimated spending as in the GERS figures. What is actually spent in Scotland and not just charged to us without knowing how the bill is made up?
Rab Boyce
From your page Scotfact, are we to assume that GERS is an amalgam of ESS and SNAP? Why do you say SNAP does not have a regional distribution?
You also say “This also does not change the Revenue numbers in GERS as that doesn’t include export values, and the revenue figures are allocated under the Kemp-Stephen methodology” Ate you saying GERS revenue doesn’t include oil/gas export values, but these ar brought in through SNAP??
Can anyone explain why they change the rules now to make it look good for Scotland??
“This is good and bad. Good that someone flagged it but bad that the SNP didn’t. Don’t they have people that do this sort of analysis?”
If the SNP did the research and released it to the MSM in a Press Release you can have a fairly safe bet it would be ignored or turned into SNP Bad news. Perhaps the SNP IS doing this research but having it ‘released’ through other means that WILL find its way into the MSM without the obligatory SNP Bad distortion applied?
It’s a canny game we have to play.
Derek Rogers…
Scotlands public spending £70bn, Scotlands tax take £55bn…still trust those figures?
@Dave McEwan Hill. Negative SNP Bad propaganda will be less effective if it’s relentless without a break.
A non political acquaintance who has relied heavily on Scotland’s Health Service asked why are the BBC always saying there’s problems with our health service.
They’ve overdone it and taking their foot off the gas.
The news where you’re not…
link to imgur.com
Hahaha!
The yoons will make up any old garbage to grasp on to the ‘Black hole’
The only big hole is where their brain should be.
The yes side should make a graph that most people would understand and let the other side try to say why it is not.
Regarding the lack of anti-SNP stories today, this would indicate that these have been put on hold until the journos are clear not to write pieces that are so easily disproved. The tsunami of pulled stories is making them look somewhat incompetent.
They have been told to stick to innuendo rather than anything that is based on factual stats which are readily available.
The above is unlikely to appear on RepScot, at least until they have worked out the negative spin it can be given. Something like Scottish GDP bigger than reported, but critics say this is an example of how Scotland has benefited inside the UK and would weaken an independent Scottish currency.
Seems i have upset the BBC and facebook.
I posted the following on BBC Scotlands facebook page and now Facebook have ‘mark it as spam’, presumable at the request of the BBC.
BBC Scotland, suppressing the truth yet again.
……
Wee question for BBC Scotland.
Will you be investigating the bombshell news included in this article from Wings over Scotland concerning the ADMISSION from HMRC that OIL REVENUES have been UNDERPLAYED and hidden by using accountancy tricks.
This was a claim made by the Yes campaign in 2014 indyref and rubbished by mainstream news organisations, including BBC Scotland.
I suggest EVERYONE read this article, even if you do not like the messenger, the MESSAGE is confirmed by HMRC.
Feel free to share this news on your BBC Scotland news platforms, although, i will not hold my breath with it being the state sponsored BBC.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
……….
“As of this year, with the independence referendum safely long in the past, the UK government has very quietly altered the methodology of RTS (Regional Trade Statistics) to now accurately credit oil revenues to where they belong.
If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015”.
“But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and£6.8bn respectively”.
“In just two years, then, Scotland’s economy has suddenly produced over £15bn more than the official UK government figures had previously claimed it did, (during indyref) but we suspect readers will agree that it seems an awfully big statistic to alter without mentioning it, or having anyone notice”.
“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now”?
….. …
With an upcoming indyref, where the uk government will surely claim Scotland is, ‘Too wee, too poor, too stupid’ to become an independent country, a false claim fully promoted by the State propoganda station (BBC), this exposing of the ACTUAL REALITY of Scottish oil wealth MUST BE REPORTED by broadcasters like the BBC if they wish to claim ‘neutrality’ in the upcoming debate.
I look forward to Jackie Bird informing Scots that we were deceived in 2014 about our oil wealth by the uk goverment and their compliant media sources (including the BBC) and watching as she (JB) explains the REAL figures of that time as laid out by the HMRC figures in the article.
Prove your neutrality, go on, i challenge you to do so.
Run this bombshell story.
Great work by the Rev.
“2017 is gonnae be so quiet” ?? Never ate so much popcorn in ma puff.
Its kinda weird having a smile knowing that some thieving bastards have been robbing ye blind.
I wonder how they’ll cover up this beauty. MORE POPCORN ,PURLEEEESSS.
If the £15b oil exports was not attributed to Scotland, then presumably the tax take on that wouldn’t have been attributed to Scotland either?
How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?
That supposed £15b deficit is known to contain debt repayments, nukes, illegal wars, expensive embassies, a percentage of infrastructure expenditure in SE England, costs of Westminster, etc.. now of these will apply to iScotland.
I’m guessing the residual deficit just got even smaller if missing tax take is added to the equation.
“How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?”
bugger all.
Jockanese Wind Talker wrote on 10 August, 2017 at 12:47 pm:
“Been thinking….Westminster is corrupt and they have been hiding the truth about Scotlands oil and gas receipts since it started being extracted.Why believe them now? £15 Billion is a convienient figure to just arrive at isn’t it? Wonder if it is actually a lot more?”
Was thinking something very similar – If that’s what they’re telling us then how long before someone discovers the truth?
Nothing from the fat slob that gave us Project Fear. Pity. I often wonder how an actual interview with at least this git but even more, Scotland’s greatest rogues like Crash Gordon and Lord Flipper really would go. Its clearly a kind of psychosis in yoons, lie, lie, lie, lie…
Blair McDougall?Verified account @blairmcdougall Aug 6
Mainstream SNPers who mocked us when we complained about abuse & now find themselves on receiving end of monster they created: no sympathy.
“How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?”
We’re currently paying the oil companies to take it away.
Stoker
I suspect the Westminster Government may need to have accurate accounts for the Brexit negotiations of it’s wealth and not have things hidden. It will be a first.
Why they are doing this now raises so many questions. Any Yoon who tries to excuse or legitimise this obvious jiggery pokery deserves the contempt coming their way.
I had high hope for George Kerevan on the Treasury Select Committee to get into the books but he was one of the main Tory targets.
Media, Finance and Foreign Affairs – all SNP hard hitters who had every possible Yoon resource utilised to get rid of them, I wonder why?
Still funny.
Not a chance in hell of this neo fascist spin doc even mentioning colossal NOT Scots oil revenues suddenly popping up. Still can’t get over why the great and the good socialist workers of SLab, are all huddling under the wing of a neo fascist from the Daily Heil. What is going on in SLabour.
Alan Roden?Verified account @AlanRoden Aug 7
More
.@AndrewSNicoll: “That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you need reporters. We check stuff.”
What’s the opposite of a £15bn “Black hole”?
@Derek Rogers
as you,me and anyone with more than 3 brain cells know (which eliminates Scottish press/media),
all accounting figures/statistics/measurements are intentionally labyrinthine and byzantine that they can be manipulated to show any conclusion desired,
if as you say the £15 billion has already been taxed would that not be added now to Scotland`s `tax take`.
Kevrage has deigned to mention this sudden appearance of the lost revenues of his scotland region. He used to comment btl here on WoS as Kevin Rippey or near that. Be great if Kev could do come on again.
Anyone taking odds of the big chicken not actually laying down the fiscal law, WoS btl, toryboy Kev style? cluck cluck Mr Rippey, cluck cluck.
Kevin Hague? @kevverage 2h
Kevin Hague Retweeted Peter
correct – but Wings has never been one to let understanding stand in the way of whipping up a grievance
Brian says:
10 August, 2017 at 2:46 pm
What’s the opposite of a £15bn “Black hole”?
About half of a Crossrail2.
link to crossrail2.co.uk
But as BoJO the Clown explains,
link to youtube.com
If anyone can find me a specific figure for England’s deficit, I would be interested in seeing it.
I can’t find it anywhere, but by subtraction (UK – Sco+Wls+NI) leaves somewhere around only 43% of the UK total deficit attributed to England which is around 85% of the population.
Will this be reported on main BBC evening news?
How the UK Government is keeping the natives of Scotland ignorant of our immense wealth and how we are being robbed blind of it by London?
There won’t be a Jackie Bird of it mentioned.
So why now?
Well, let”s think outside the box a wee bit.
In the not so distant future, the UK will be departing the EU with its tail firmly between its hind legs. A big chunk of its financial sector will have buggered of elsewhere from London. The UK economy will tank–BIG TIME TANK.
When this happens the solution to the screaming and wailing Kippers will be to stop funding the scrounging, subsidy-junkie Scots.
Until some nice man from the UK Treasury finally admits to the kippers “Em, no. Scotland actually pays its way in the UK. Look–here’s the (partially corrected) books. We actually need Scotland to stop us going totally under. So shut your pie hole, kipper and let’s talk about Northern Ireland.”
Of course Westminster lies about Scotland’s oil. They have clearly been shown to have lied about it over several decades, and have still not apologised. So, I repeat, of course Westminster lies about Scotland’s oil. They still are, and always will, until enough Scots sniff the coffee, wake up and realise what an utter bunch of lying f*****g barstewards they are in London.
link to archive.is
link to oilofscotland.org
Meanwhile in Norway (who didn’t have all their oil stolen by England..)
link to nbim.no
Tackety Beets @1.43pm
Further to your interesting reference to Statoil:
Statoil President and CEO in the company statement (July 2017) .“… At oil prices around 50 dollars per barrel, we have generated 4 billion dollars in free cash flow, and reduced our net debt ratio by 8.1 percentage points since the start of the year.” Also, Statoil’s Chief Financial Officer states that three years ago Statoil needed oil prices at US$100 per barrel to cover investments and dividend and today “we do the same at US$50”.
Source: link to oilprice.com
And more from Statoil on future projects: “Johan Castberg is one of the largest projects in Statoil’s portfolio yet to be developed. It includes three oil structures located about 249 kilometers north of Hammerfest on the Norwegian Arctic mainland.”
“According to a new analysis commissioned by the company, an oil price of $30 per barrel will be sufficient for the field to be profitable. The project is very robust to changing oil prices, dollar exchange rates and fluctuating environmental costs, the company says. It is expected to come on stream in 2022, and have an operating lifetime of 30 years.”
“The national employment during the development phase (of the Johan Castberg project) has been estimated at almost 47,000 man-years, of which close to 1,800 will be in North Norway.”
Source: link to arcticnow.com
Also, Statoil is currently building the world’s first floating wind farm offshore Scotland and already provides electricity from offshore wind to c. 650k homes in the UK.
Source: link to statoil.com
In case anyone forgets, the Norwegian state owns 67%, of the company! Wee Norway – but not too wee, far from too poor and the polar opposite of too stupid!
Or even better, here is the live link to the Norwegian sovereign oil fund (which could have been Scotland, if England had not lied and stolen our oil). Then they wonder why we want independence.
link to nbim.no
Gerry….I have been raising this point repeatedly whilst *debating* with Yoons online.
According to HM Treasury Scotland has a deficit of £15bn, Wales £14.7bn and NI £9.5bn. That equates to almost 60% of the total UK deficit…from around 18% of the UK population.
Either Westminster are truly generous to the devolved regions, or the Treasury are lying c*nts…
Publish sources please.
Adds more credit to the article and makes it easier to verify.
And I don’t want to labour the point, but here, for everybody to see, is what it says on the first page of the website regarding the Norwegian sovereign wealth oil fund;
“The Government Pension Fund Global is saving for future generations in Norway. One day the oil will run out, but the return on the fund will continue to benefit the Norwegian population.”
Read it and weep. Then vote for a restoration of Scottish independence, free of London colonial abuse and theft.
In case you missed it:
Gallas – The 40 Year Fleecing of Scotland’s oil wealth by Westminster
link to youtube.com
A bit o/t but relevant- As ever the BBC in Scotland headlines education and its perceived failings, I have to add all these attacks on public services, one thing is missing the Unions, are they being complicit, are they acting with the Unionist parties to attack the freely elected government, I have to wonder about their motives in assisting attacks on their members on a daily basis,
This undermining appears to run very deep one way or the other the SNP must fall and be seen to fail , it doesn’t matter if they have been elected ,this state within a state operating the shadows .
It just highlights the monumental impediments the SNP face, it is a wonder that they have managed to continue to operate at all, swimming through shit doesn’t come close.
The question that needs to be answered is why. Why even list this one asset and commodity under an “unknown region” in the first place?
Kevrage and his twitter followers are quite odd to watch in action.
How do you get from,
“If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.” with “But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.”
To whatever it is this merry band of unionists think, because its their bloody toryboy UK gov,
Kevin Hague?
@kevverage
Follow
is Wings over Scotland (Stuart Campbell) wilfully misleading people or does he genuinely not understand national stats?
my guess: both
5:39 am – 10 Aug 2017
End of conversation
New conversation
TSE? @TSEofPB 2h
Replying to @kevverage
Well the number of people who go on about the Whisky Export Duty does make you think it is both
1 reply . 0 retweets 2 likes
Replying to @kevverage
Both. His pathology is such that even when he knows he’s wrong he will not concede error. Being uncompromising impresses acolytes
0 replies . 0 retweets 1 like
Reply Retweet Like 1
Mel Mac? @MeIodyMac 37s
Replying to @kevverage
both. And the bandwagon of willing ignorance is on overdrive.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
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JWTheSpa? @SpaJw 10m
Replying to @kevverage
If Stu wants it to be true it is true even if it isn’t. See also Brexiteers.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
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Pro UK Anti Theism ??? @AyrshireBog 2h
Replying to @kevverage
He twists and lies about facts to suit his political argument.
Replying to @kevverage
He’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a bad argument.
Can we create an oil fund and finance our Scottish Investment bank now, please?
Aye! Precisely. That Unknown Region is what I’ve been shouting at Wingers about for a very long time.
It is the infamous, “Extra-Regio-Territory”. That has been on the go since before oil, (and Gas), were discovered in the North Sea.
By the way it also includes other things that Westminster wants to hide among the welter of other statistics deliberately created by such actions as devolving Westminster powers to only three of the bipartite United Kingdom’s four countries in order to make Westminster the de facto parliament of the country of England and the other three countries, including the Kingdom & Country of Scotland that is legally the other partner of the two kingdoms in the union.
Then, to make it even more complex, they did not devolve the same powers to what they had made into three English dominions.
The three Scottish branch offices of the Westminster Establishment Political Parties did not just stand by and allowed them to do so – they led the charge to steal Scotland’s natural assets for, “The Crown”. a.k.a. The Westminster Establishment and then hid the McCrone report deep in the bowls of the Westminster house of shame.
If these troughers can hide all this from us ,what are they hiding for themselves??
And this?
Bradford Millar says:
10 August, 2017 at 12:06 pm
so what other figures are they hiding about our economy *sic* whisky Ireland has 4% of the market that makes £2.5 billion euros for the Irish economy yet Scotland has 80% of the market yet UK claims it’s worth £5 billion.
Its all coming oot in the wash eh!!
I’ve been telling of this for some time “on the doorstep”, and so often the response was – I just think we’re better to stay together.
Now next,what about generated power? Scottish generated surplus is sent to the National Grid that then charges us a premium for transmission. Meantime power generated in the Home Counties receives a subsidy.Transmission losses they claim justifies the policy. Does Scotland receive any book entry credit for power supply? And as Scotland’s renewable energy production increases so this scam will continue.I doubt that I need check whether power generation policy is reserved to Westminster.
To the SNP, it really is time you started blowing’ your trumpet, get a billboard campaign going of your successes; fully establish an investment bank; start talking about a Scottish currency.And do not budge on Brexit. We voted to stay in the EU.
@heedtracker says: 10 August, 2017 at 3:43 pm:
“Kevrage and his twitter followers are quite odd to watch in action.”
Are they not just so?
The really hilarious thing about the whole bunch of them is that the bold Kev draws up his wee meaningless graphs that would see a wee schoolgirl fail her exams and they never can quote any sources.
The Rev Stu never fails to provide corroboration.
How do you get from,
“If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.” with “But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.”
To whatever it is this merry band of unionists think, because its their bloody toryboy UK gov,
Kevin Hague?
@kevverage
Follow
is Wings over Scotland (Stuart Campbell) wilfully misleading people or does he genuinely not understand national stats?
my guess: both
5:39 am – 10 Aug 2017
End of conversation
New conversation
TSE? @TSEofPB 2h
Replying to @kevverage
Well the number of people who go on about the Whisky Export Duty does make you think it is both
1 reply . 0 retweets 2 likes
Replying to @kevverage
Both. His pathology is such that even when he knows he’s wrong he will not concede error. Being uncompromising impresses acolytes
0 replies . 0 retweets 1 like
Reply Retweet Like 1
Mel Mac? @MeIodyMac 37s
Replying to @kevverage
both. And the bandwagon of willing ignorance is on overdrive.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
JWTheSpa? @SpaJw 10m
Replying to @kevverage
If Stu wants it to be true it is true even if it isn’t. See also Brexiteers.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
Pro UK Anti Theism ??? @AyrshireBog 2h
Replying to @kevverage
He twists and lies about facts to suit his political argument.
Replying to @kevverage
He’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a bad argument
“Its all coming oot in the wash eh!!”
Just as well ’cause we’ve fat chance of it coming out in the press!
Robert Peffers says:
10 August, 2017 at 4:08 pm
@heedtracker says: 10 August, 2017 at 3:43 pm:
Indeed Rabbi.
On the one hand we have BBC Scotland desperately running down Scotland, day in day out. On t’other, we can watch twitter tory yoons argue up is down, black is white. And if you disagree, you’re on the “bandwagon of willing ignorance, on overdrive.”
Even yoon metaphors make no sense.
Takes me back to the figures from 1921.
Revenue contribution by Scotland £119,753,000
Expenditure on Scottish services £33,096,000
Retained in London for ‘Imperial Services’ £86,657,000
(Imperial Services = disbursed in England)
Scotland has been shafted for a very long time.
So my question, does this change the final figures in GERS. I have to add that I never look at GERS simply because it represents Scotland as what IS at the moment – a glorified local authority.
The SNP however did use GERS as part of its white paper in 2014.
The key things we should focus on are
1- units of oil pumped out of the North Sea
2- how much of that was kept by companies like BP, shell etc
3- the resource capacity of England as a standalone nation
4- why the banking sector in London should not be included in GDP (it is as Adam smith wrote ‘unearned income’ used primarily for speculation)
Guess what was found at the back of the sofa…
link to imgur.com
If this is completely the way it seems to be. The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?
It seems to me Scot Govt accept such changes in the way figures are presented without much or any investigation. Or are they just too busy trying to get off the backfoot all the time.
Scot Govt always seem to want to take the moral high ground on misrepresented facts and ignore them.
Lets take Westminster and the civil servants on and challenge them when they present false figures and stats.
In any event, Scotland’s unionists, including Kez, Ruth & Willie, want the English ruling classes to have it all. It’s no loss to them – they’re on the gravy train, getting their share, with lots more still to come.
Hey Proud Cybernat.
Is the answer to your question Westminster’s money grapping hands?
“The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?”
Think anout it. If the SNP ‘broke’ this story, just how many anti-SNP people would even have clicked on the message let alone read it? With it NOT being an SNP ‘breaking story’ we have more chance of anti-SNP people actually reading the thing.
We have to box clever.
WTF, is it any wonder that Westminster is desperate to keep Scotland in this dying union. I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.
Robert Louis says:
That should make every Scot feel utterly sick, ashamed, and angry!
Unless of course you are a British Wannabe English born in Scotland, then it’s all UKOK.
“I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.”
Don’t get angry – get mad!
Effectively, since oil was discovered in Scottish waters in 1970, Scotland won the Lottery every single day – and then promptly gave the winning ticket to the English Ruling Classes – every single day for 17,000 days.
To the English way of thinking, a naive, gullible, illiterate, brainwashed fool of a nation and their money are easily parted. That’s probably close to how the whole world thinks of Scotland now. Tragic.
Time for a change in Scotland. High time.
Everybody
Please send this Wings report to – info@snp.org
For their Press Office.
I have done this and also sent to my MP.
This has to get a lot of publicity. It could be a game changer.
Just made a mess of my shirt with the coffee…
“And then the man continued, pointing to Ginger, who was at that moment lying on the floor of the hall licking his bollocks, “See that dug? When Scotland is independent that dug will be on a stamp.” And that is now my favourite personal reason for wanting Scottish independence, because after Scottish independence Ruth Davidson will have to lick my dog’s behind.” – WGD
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
The thing is that we were pretty well aware that a country can’t be swimming in oil and be poor, well not unless the government’s and corps who want it decide to steal it. And we new they were stealing, just not exactly how or indeed how much.
I know the UK gov taxes profit, Norway taxes extraction, so why is the UK extraction Levy classified information?
The UK gov allowed the oil companies to walk away with £27 billion in Corporation, so just how much profit do they make if the corporation tax comes to £27 billion, and are even the figures they have adjusted no more than a smoke screen.
stewartb Says:
Tackety Beets @1.43pm. Further to your interesting reference to Statoil:
Statoil President and CEO in a company statement (July 2017) .“… At oil prices around 50 dollars per barrel, we have generated 4 billion dollars in free cash flow, and reduced our net debt ratio by 8.1 percentage points since the start of the year.” Also, Statoil’s Chief Financial Officer states that three years ago Statoil needed oil prices at US$100 per barrel to cover investments and dividend and today “we do the same at US$50”.
Source: link to oilprice.com
And more from Statoil on future projects: “Johan Castberg is one of the largest projects in Statoil’s portfolio yet to be developed. It includes three oil structures located about 249 kilometers north of Hammerfest on the Norwegian Arctic mainland.”
“According to a new analysis commissioned by the company, an oil price of $30 per barrel will be sufficient for the field to be profitable. The project is very robust to changing oil prices, dollar exchange rates and fluctuating environmental costs, the company says. It is expected to come on stream in 2022, and have an operating lifetime of 30 years.”
“The national employment during the development phase (of the Johan Castberg project) has been estimated at almost 47,000 man-years, of which close to 1,800 will be in North Norway.”
Source: link to arcticnow.com
Also, Statoil is currently building the world’s first floating wind farm offshore Scotland and already provides electricity from offshore wind to c. 650k homes in the UK.
Source: link to statoil.com
In case anyone forgets, the Norwegian state owns 67%, of the company! Wee Norway! – yes but not too wee, far from too poor and the polar opposite of too stupid!
@ manandboy
Let’s not forget, that for Westminster to succeed with the deception, they required the assistance and complicity of every unionist MP from day oil was discovered. Every single Sectretary of State, chancellors and Prime Minister from Scottish Constituencies facilitated the theft of Scotland’s resources. After the info surfaced regarding Irish whiskey, we can probably add Whisky to the bill.
Methinks, this Billionaire must have known something we never have.
link to bloomberg.com
This is serious stuff, perhaps came out with something like the EU looking into the UK’s finances? and they must be bricking it.
That’ll cover the mysterious 15billion black hole Scotland seemed to have during indyref.
Just hearing on BBC R4 that there is no room on the Isle of Skye and police are asking people not to go there unless they have a room booked.
Why is the BBC perpetrating this myth…
O/T sorry but just found out that Alex Salmonds show at festival has been extended
Well done Stu. What a week! And isn’t it brilliant to see that so many people are fighting back now with great sites out there that I had no idea of such as:
link to scotfact.com
…………………………..
Has anyone contacted Sarah Smith, Kezia Dugdale et al?
link to youtube.com
Seems that many people outside of the UK are well aware of Scotland’s wealth, such as Jim Rodgers.
link to youtube.com
…………………………………
@ Mike says at 12:08 pm …. ”Stu, your analogy is flawed. It is not like finding a Ferrari in your garage that you didn’t know you had. It is like having a Ferrari and your neighbour telling you that you haven’t got one to the extent that you a provided with psychiatric treatment in a secure unit until you admit that you haven’t got a Ferrari. Then being discharged and being complimented on your Ferrari by your neighbour who has been using it to the extent that it is knackered and now you need to replace the wheels and the engine so he can have another go.”
Love it Mike. It’s spot on.
…………………………………
@ geeo says at 2:18 pm …. ”Seems i have upset the BBC and facebook…………”
Well done Geeo. Let’s ALL email the BBC, STV, newspapers, political parties and so on.
O/T
For goodness sake we’re loaded folks!
‘As world’s largest tidal energy plant in Pentland Firth generates 1GWh which is enough for 700 000 homes, will Scotland become the most energy-rich country in Europe?’
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
…………………..
Prof Robertson’s ‘feel good site.’
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
……………………..
And this one should go alongside Prof Robertson’s articles. From ScottieDog (last article 9:39 am).
’10 yearsafter the Crash: looking back at BBC coverage.’
….”When considering the lessons learnt and still to be learnt ten years after the Crash, it’s worth reminding ourselves of research conducted into public broadcaster the BBC’s famed impartiality through a major content analysis study conducted by academics at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Dr Mike Berry wrote an article two years ago on their findings which is worth revisiting as we reflect on that catastrophic series of events……………………………………
But generally, the BBC either totally or largely excludes such voices and, in doing so, shows a systematic bias in the direction of orthodox neoliberal thinking and values.
link to taxjustice.net
Interesting that you pinched this from Scot Fact but seem to have omitted the most salient point on the page:
“The most prolific example of a wrong conclusion drawn is a meme that began circulating in 2016 that suggests the ‘Unknown’ region in RTS is used by HMRC to mask the strength of Scotland’s Oil & Gas exports, and that the majority of the ‘Unknown’ Region’s exports were, in fact, Scottish Oil and Gas.”
“Interesting that you pinched this from Scot Fact but seem to have omitted the most salient point on the page:”
“Omitted” by including a link to the full piece, you mean?
And that’s not a salient point at all, it’s a complete irrelevance. Who care what the “majority” of the Unknown Region’s experts were? We’re concerned with the part applicable to Scotland.
O/T
‘Scottish ‘history police’ launched to make sure museums get their facts right.’
‘THE tourism operator who challenged a heritage museum on the Isle of Arran over its account of the Clearances has set up a social media forum to discuss the many matters of dispute in Scottish history.
Catriona Stevenson established the “History Police” pages on the website of her company Clyde Coast Tourism, but after a series of encounters with factual inaccuracies at venues throughout Scotland, she has expanded to Twitter and Facebook.
Using #historypolice, 31-year-old Stevenson says the forum is for “discussion and inspiration”, and it is already proving popular and controversial…..
link to thenational.scot
………………………..
‘Lesley Riddoch: It’s Scotland’s fish – why we need to fight Westminster’s Brexit power grab.’
Fishing is a big part of Scotland’s national heritage. IT’S Scotland’s fish. Strangely that slogan couldn’t match “It’s Scotland’s oil” as an economic and emotional argument for independence — until now. Thanks to the cross-border row brewing over Brexit, fishing and farming are fast becoming totemic symbols for Scottish home rule, even though they represent a small part of the economy and working population – farming produced just one per cent of GDP in 2016 — and even though many fishermen voted for the Union and leaving the EU. But those loyalties could yet change thanks to Brexit and the greed of the Westminster government………
link to thenational.scot
………………………………….
‘Edinburgh University to help train ‘digital leaders’ for England’s NHS.’
‘SCOTTISH university has been selected to help train 300 “digital leaders” for the NHS in England and Wales. Edinburgh University is joining forces with Imperial College London (ICL) and Harvard Medical School in the US to launch an NHS Digital Academy.
The health service south of the Border is playing catch-up with NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government, who launched Scotland’s Digital Health and Social Care Strategy 2017-22 in November last year. Edinburgh, ICL and Harvard were selected to lead the Digital Academy development after a competitive tender process…..’
link to thenational.scot
……………………….
‘PALLIATIVE care in Scotland is amongst the best in Europe — but “we need to do more”, experts say.’
‘End of life support was compared with that offered by other European countries by academics at Glasgow University. Scotland was ranked seventh for the provision of inpatient care and hospital support teams, and came in at five for the home care available.
Until now statistics for Scotland has been included with UK data, but last year’s Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care has allowed experts to take a closer look for the first time.
Professor David Clark said ‘’ the results are encouraging. Scotland is in the top ten EU countries for all three types of service – not many countries do as consistently well across the board……’
link to thenational.scot
……………………….
‘Scots comic book writer Mark Millar’s firm bought by Netflix as big plans announced.’
‘SCOTS comic hero Mark Millar hailed the “biggest news ever” today as international entertainment company Netflix bought his firm for an undisclosed sum.
The acquisition is the first in the history of the streaming firm and will see the US streaming giant develop films, TV series and children’s content from characters created by the Glasgow-based writer.
Announcing the move yesterday, Millar said: “Warner Bros bought DC Comics in 1968. Disney bought Marvel in 2009.
Today Netflix purchased Millarworld and I’m still blinking. This is only the third time in history a comic-book company purchase on this scale has ever happened.” …….
link to thenational.scot
……………………………
And a wee snippet from Lesley Riddoch’s ‘Let’s not forget what we’re fighting for – the chance to create a better Scotland’ which I can’t get online! Taken directly from the newspaper.
….”In England this week official figures revealed a record number of prisoners were set free by mistake and violence in jails is at an all time high ….
England’s jails are in meltdown with riot squad officers sent into Hertfordshire prison for the second time in 24 hours this week …..
Figures seized by the Scottish Lib-dems last month seem to suggest the same level of prisoner assaults in Scotland as England but according to the Scottish Prison Services these statistics are not directly comparable. If three guards restrain one prisoner in Scotland that’s recorded as three separate attacks (in England it’s registered as one attack).
Well, well there you go folks,
The voice of the people BBC & the peoples channel STV not interested in this news at al !
Surprising UK deceit of Scottish economy is not news ???
No UK state manipulation of our media ? Just laziness ?
Piss poor reporting ? What does it matter what u call it we are being Duped and they dont give a flying feck or are they scared ? Any ideas folks ?
Imagine if this was proof of some SNP govt financial deceit?
Think they’d miss that off the schedule ?
So £15 bn is no big deal after all. only when it relates to Labotory black hole pish ! Fuming ?
‘Why is Norway still getting much more tax from oil?’
‘……….. Looking at how the tax breaks apply to Shell and BP: in the 24 countries where Shell extracts oil and gas, all except the UK made Shell pay taxes. While the UK gave Shell £80m in tax rebates, Shell paid Norway £2.7bn. So, Norway generated 62 times more tax from one company than Westminster generated from the entire UK industry last year reported. Given that Shell alone cut up to 13,000 jobs and paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2015, it might surprise people that Shell paid £7.9 billion in shareholder dividends for that year, and in 2016 Shell paid out bumper £11.1 billion in dividends to its shareholders, more than any other company in the world…..’
link to businessforscotland.com
……………………………..
‘Osborne and Cameron confirm Scotland better off outside the UK.’
Two short videos. Oh and by the way they both get the population stats relating to Norway wrong …. 4 million. Data from Bibby via the MSM? Norway’s population is on a par with Scotland’s at around 5.3 million.
link to businessforscotland.com
Twists of history! Just imagine if the Vikings had extended control over the whole of Scotland and hung onto it. We might all have become Scandinavians! We too might in time have become model democracies and be actually benefiting from our own natural resources. Just imagine being so lucky, eh?
Too many homeless, Sturgeon must act
Sailors stuck on a boat, Sturgeon must act
Sugar is bad, Sturgeon must act
Football IT hacking, Sturgeon must act
Hospital delayed, Sturgeon must act
Housing market stagnant,Sturgeon must act
Education shambolic, Sturgeon must act
QE2 hospital cladding danger, Sturgeon must act
Eilidh Doyle too slow, Sturgeon must act
Murder 50 years ago, Sturgeon must act
Rain tomorrow, Sturgeon must act
All on the oil less reporting scotland
Hi gus1940 and Fireproofjim.
RE: ‘Matron, Medicine And Me: 70 Years Of The NHS’.
This was first shown around a year ago as a daytime programme. I missed it at the time. I watched it this afternoon, after hunting it down – thanks for reminding me. (Miriam Margolyes is ace!)
It was produced by BBC Northern Ireland, which maybe explains why it had no “SNP BAAD!” element. you can find it on iPlayer at:-
link to bbc.co.uk
@Donald Bruce who wrote “Just picked up latest unionist ploy it’s to smudge the border between Scotland and England”
Think you’re right Donald.They and the DUP are using the opposite technique in NI – Furthering divergence between NI and the Republic of Ireland in order to prevent any even gradual movement towards Irish Reunification.
link to eurofree3.wordpress.com
So Scotland has to insist on the differences between her and England and big them up
But as you mentioned it’s “the latest” ploy.
Others include the manipulation of the mass media which the Rev is doing his utmost to disclose to us.
Eyes wide open folks for more!
PS about that BBC programme on the NHS that was mentioned. A You Tube link would be great if possible for our diaspora that can’t access the iplayer.
Good to see Elisha McColgan qualifying for the final of the 5,000 metres and even better to see her saltire wristband.
@ Snode1965 who says:
“According to HM Treasury Scotland has a deficit of £15bn, Wales £14.7bn and NI £9.5bn”.
Can’t comment on Wales and Scotland but I do know people who have been driven round in circles trying to get the figures for NI. No confirmation from anywhere – just this statement as Snode says
So, the Expiliexregius spell has worn off then?
@ Ben
The UUP’s 2016 manifesto states: “There was a time when we were net contributors to Her Majesty’s Treasury, now Stormont is dependent on an annual £11 billion subvention from Westminster every year.”
from link to factcheckni.org
@David McCann says: 10 August, 2017 at 11:25 am:
“And thereby hangs a tale,
link to liveleak.com
Well actually no. A tale doesn’t hang there. In the first place it really wasn’t a secret as we who were SNP and independence activists knew about it and, as was usual back then, no one believed us and the Scottish Main Stream Media were not about to inform Joe and Josephine Public of the facts.
A bit like many other such facts – like the McCrone report for example. We activists told anyone who would listen and, remember there were pro-union Westminster Unionist parties with a majority of the Scottish seats in power in Scotland at those times and it was their political colleagues and them who had voted these so called secret things through both the Commons & the Lords and Her Royal Majesty who signed them into United Kingdom law.
If no where else they were reported in Hansard. It wasn’t secret it just was not publicised by the media in Scotland.
We knew about it but no one believed us when we told them about it. Preferring instead to believe we were the lunatic fringe spouting conspiracy theories.
Just the same when we told them that as Scots they were legally sovereign and neither the Queen nor the government were. As usual they believed the BBC, SMSM, the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties. Around 50% of them still believe whatever the unionists tell them to believe.
Things are hardly any better even yet. Which is why we did not win independence on 18th September 2014.
Ohho! Caught !!
Can’t wait for the next whine ‘but what about Scotland’s huge £15 billion debt?’ !!
Gonna have fun with this = )
Thank you Alert Reader 🙂
And thank you Rev Stu as always 🙂
Lots of smiling 🙂
@ Bradford Miller 12:06
That stat is incorrect. When it surfaced on facebook a few weeks ago it was easily disproved. What might be worthy of investigation is how the generally multinational brand owners book their sales and profits, and how much tax revenues arise in which jurisdictions.
Eire has a low corporation tax regime, so it might be perfectly possible for a company to allocate its profit to Eire and pay less tax than they would in the UK. The export price of Whisky and Whiskey are approximately the same. But UK internal taxation is £7.54 a bottle plus VAT, so that brings in a lot of revenue for the UK treasury. However there is no export tax. Just taxes on profits. That is where independent Scotland has to be smart. Taxing at £7-54 a bottle would reap a few hundred millions to the Scottish treasury. rUK would still make much more than us.
The main contribution Whisky is going to give independent Scotland is in balance of trade ( as well as employment etc ). That is the big contribution the fiddled oil revenues also identifies. The UK treasury will still have extracted such taxes ( or rebated the oil companies LOL ) as were due on the revised figures. But the contributions to Scottish exports of oil and of Whisky are where those numbers matter. We already suspect/ know that Scotland runs an external trade surplus, while rUK runs the world’s second largest deficit. That in theory makes our putative currency strong.
As the economics are not straight forward, and the BBC would distort any argument – and anyway it takes more than 30 seconds to explain it – there isn’t much point looking at all the possible scenarios that independent Scotland could see. For simplicity, the Norwegians made shed loads of money extracting pretty much the same amount of oil, from pretty much the same place, at pretty much the same time. In the UK the directors and shareholders of BP, Shell and a lot of other oil Companies kleptocratically captured those revenues for themselves.
And Whisky company profits rarely stay in Scotland. Same story.
Rab Boyce @ 11:38
I have a similar question to that of Colin MacFarlane upthread @ 13:47. Are you actually saying that GERS takes no account of export figures at all? That would seem to be a major omission. And would still be even if they were “only” ignoring export to rUK. Either way, that would be a grave distortion of the present-day situation, let alone the entirely different situation with independence.
This UK financial chicanery seems to have more layers than an onion. Rather reminiscent of a fraudulent company whose books are “cooked”.
@Gerry who quoted the UUP’s stats – the professionals I spoke to were unable to find out with NI paid (tax, VAT etc) compared with what it received. Their calculations worked out about a £5-6 bn difference, not £11bn, but they unable to get any factual proof of figures.Anywhere.
If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.
davidbsb @ 20:26,
Your point about “balance of trade” is worth expanding upon. Unlike many production industries (eg. car manufacture), whisky production essentially doesn’t depend on the import of any raw materials (excepting the import of some malt from England), so its gross value and net value to the economy are essentially the same, and are entirely independent of the exchange rate. This is what makes whisky supremely attractive to the UK Treasury.
The same goes to a large extent for renewable energy production and oil production, especially if we invest in R&D and construction facilities here.
With those latter two we are in effect sitting on two goldmines, one which is finite but still with significant life, and the other which has near-infinite potential.
It is frankly impossible that we could be “too puir” if independent. For that to happen, it would need gross mismanagement at a level of incompetence that only BLiS could provide.
(Maybe that’s why they are so dead set against independence. They know they just couldn’t hack it!)
I don’t profess to know the financial ins and outs of this change but I do suspect there will be a political angle to the change of figures and given its HMRC, an arm of the UK government, it will not be pro-independence.
I suspect that we will see in the next few weeks something released that shows the value of this figure has dropped from £6.8 billion to something considerably less due to the drop in oil price. At which point the pro-union press will say Scotland’s economic output dropped by a zillion percent whilst glossing over that we are no longer comparing like for like figures.
Call me cynical but I’ve seen this play book too many times to believe that anything positive for Independence will be reported in the media.
O/T, totally.
Up in Edin city today. Two things, the ‘BBC’ have taken over Heriots school grounds, took a leaflet but told lass it was out of interest otherwise no thanks, She looked a bit surprised. English, nice and all, but no idea, sorry. How much will they be paying to rent huge grounds from this (charity) private,expensive, school?
Next, barriers, yes, around the castle and the mile, it’s like a war zone. Huge barriers, like the ones you see at border control type. Necessary? Depressing, imo. First time I ever saw these barriers, like, majorly obvious.
GERS.
Scotland we know will be told, sorry, no, the rest of the UKok, and the world, will be told how s***e Scotland is.
Don’t go to Skye, everythings crap. The hoards of people, sooo many tourists, loads fun being had, it’s fab, but we are still hearing that Scotland is s***e!
What are the economic figures for rUKOK and when can we read about them. Not even sure what they are called. With brexit and all. They must let the punters know how rich rUK is, no?
link to nationaldebtclock.co.uk
This is the kind of revelation that the SNP should be screaming from the rooftops so I am dismayed once again by their silence.
“why change the rules now?”
The powers that be must be pretty confident there wont be a second indyref.’
Thats what I take from this.
Are our leaders really this inept or bribable, or have they deceived the deceivers?
Only time will tell
They’ve impoverished us for centuries.
Within the first handful of years after the oil was discovered, that’s when they began the systematic destruction of Scotland’s industries and put a generation of Scots on the dole paid for, no doubt, by the revenues they had been raking in from our oil.
It’s sickening and imo a long term plan was hatched from the McCrone report forward to reduce further our population and maintain the illusion that the Scots were incapable of sustaining themselves. Their fear of our independence and any clamour for this, once the people knew what had really occurred would potentially set this in motion.
I believe with all my heart they have made sure that our health and wellbeing had to become the worst in Europe, take away people’s chances in life, destroy the industries that sustained them and create a generation to generation cycle of unemployment. The influx in the same period (the eighties) of heroin and the devastation and the legacy that too wrought, is imo partially responsible for the increased mental and physical problems along with alcoholism, which is often a refuge for those who are in fact very sensitive to the realities of their plight. It bred hopelessness, apathy and more saliently it trapped people in downward spirals.
In 2014, we dared to think differently about ourselves, we dared to believe we had a real opportunity to govern ourselves, to reject the UK status quo, which has always maintained Scotland as a backwater. This is why we are now getting increased levels of propaganda even on our tourism front, because we still dare to believe in ourselves.
We have never been so close folks, so near.
2014 woke Scotland up, we began talking amongst ourselves, the scales fell from our eyes. We just need to keep helping others to take the blinders off and see the potential, see the lies that have been told, see the possibilities for our future generations.
Weaponise our history, use it to our advantage…get folk reading the truth about Scotland, what we were and are even without the oil, this is a good start:
H J Paton’s, The Claim of Scotland
link to worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com
@Ben
Net Fiscal Balance Report 2012-13 and 2013-14.pdf – a few years out of date obviously, but if you go to here in the report
link to finance-ni.gov.uk
it states
“For 2012-13 the estimated fiscal balance in NI was a deficit of £9.5 billion (29.1 per cent of GVA). The 2013-14 ‘fiscal deficit’ decreased to £9.2 billion (27.9 per cent of GVA)”
Some more details also on the next page.
Rock at 8.57
Bullshit. The last thing we need is distraction like arguing about deficits or not in a Scottish economy that is trapped in an collapsing UK economy.
It has no relevance whatsoever as to how an independent Scottish economy would be run.
We all know they fiddle the figures. Sadly lots of people who should know better by now keep arguing with them about them when we should be concentrating on the huge potentials and the huge challenges wof an independent country
thanks gerry – I am no expert in anything to do with finance or banking – can hardly find my way round my own account.
I will certainly forward your link on to the interested parties who spoke to me and sincerely appreciate your help
Ben
“If you have any questions regarding HMRC Trade Statistics unit or the data we publish, or you cannot find what you are looking for on this site, contact our Customer Service team. Their details can be found in the Contact Us page.”
From link to uktradeinfo.com
Link to Contact Page link to uktradeinfo.com
O/T Received my copy of my entry on the Electoral Register from Glasgow City Council. Nationality: British.
I’m not happy that I’m being labelled British. I regard myself as Scottish, not British.
Anyone else feel this way? Can anything be done about this?
Rock says:
10 August, 2017 at 8:57 pm
If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.
Its only 70p Rock and as you say, it props a giant multinational media corp with hundreds of titles too, which is nice.
What aboutery this though Rock.
If you buy a NOT Scottish oil sector in the UK territorial waters, you can fill up your oil tankers, sail them off to anywhere in the world, and UK gov is so lazy fair, they dont even make proper records. They dont even give it UK place locator name.
Or, lets look at how UK gov liggers differentiate between UK territorial waters and the UK, Rock.
Make yourself useful and try to work out that teamGB conundrum. In teamGB, there’s 2 types of territory, the watery bits with all the oil, gas and fish but they’re not the UK, then there’s the hard rocky bit, with giant union jacks draped all over it now.
Cant imagine many other countries being so laissez faire about their territorial waters really. Imagine a Norway that let just anyone extract Norwegian hydrocarbons, sail off with them and not record them as from anywhere.
Good old planet toryboy. Sneaky shits to the last.
Me confused.
“Where oil is processed on rigs in the North Sea and dispatched directly to other countries, the oil does not enter the UK and therefore does not obtain any regional coding. The RTS methodology categorises this oil trade based on the location of the oil rig.”
Yes. no.
There are a number of reasons that the Norwegian government do far better than the UK in terms of it’s overall revenue from Oil and Gas in their sector.
The latest figures for total revenues for 2016 of 127.9 billion NOK are substantially less than those for 2015 at 232 billion NOK. In GBP terms that is £12.4 billion and £22.4 billion respectively and for 2016 was made up as follows in billion NOK:
Taxes 42,1
Environmental taxes and area fees 6,7
Net cash flow from SDFI 68,1
Statoil dividend 11,0
The net government cash flow 127,9
Statoil is 67% owned by the Norwegian government but another biggie is net cash from SDFI, this is a return on investment made by the state in their fields.
Today, the state has direct financial interests in 190 production licences, 43 producing fields and holdings in 17 joint ventures that own pipelines and onshore facilities.
None of that in the UK of course who don’t believe that the state should own or invest in any assets even if profitable. In fact if it’s profitable the UK would sell it into private hands. Pathetic.
Sorry forgot the link for anybody that might want to read more.
link to norskpetroleum.no
Anyone else feel this way? Can anything be done about this?
Yes Colin, emigrate.
Aweright ScotFact says ~
An you can take that to the bank!
It’s magic 😉
Alex Clark @ 11.18
Question is ….how do we get our Politicians to run with this model after Indy ?
With so much wealth around we will need to be very careful not to allow the Westminster style of selling everything that’s not nailed down to their pals to take hold.
We will just be finding out the true extent of our resources,the vultures that will be circulating already know!
It’s not as if there are a load of trustworthy Politicians around….we know that at least three of our political parties state that their first loyalty is to Westminster,so they will take watchin.
Although I must admit I am so looking forward to worring about That!
Rock says:
10 August, 2017 at 8:57 pm
If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.
Cobblers. Rock you don’t read the National so what’s your problem? I’ll buy the National – I agree with some bits no doubt and disagree with others. As it should be.
Your a tom Gordon or a torquil but without the panache! Naw they don’t have it either. You are a fake.
Well done the UK for accsessingall that British oil ….that will do HMRC proud , and should help to keep UK personal and company tax rates low
Aye Colin
Score it out and write “Scottish” before you send it back. Don’t let anyone tell you your nationality. It’s not rocket science.
Same goes for the drivers license with uj on. Stick a saltire over the top.
Dont be a victim.
@colin alexander says: 10 August, 2017 at 11:08 pm:
” … I’m not happy that I’m being labelled British. I regard myself as Scottish, not British.”
Why is that, Colin? Don’t you actually live in the British Isles, then?
Has the Westminster Establishment, without telling we Scots, cut Scotland off from England, Wales and Ireland, (not to mention Man and the Channel Island Crown Protectorates), and sailed us off into either the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean?
Last time I looked Scotland was still attached to the British Isles and hence her entire population are part of the population of the British Isles a.k.a. they are British.
Are you perhaps confusing Britain and the United Kingdom?
I have been Scottish, British and European all my life and hope to die still in that circumstance. What I sincerely hope to live long enough to be able to do is proudly claim I am NOT living in a Scotland governed as a the United Kingdom of Britain.
Thing is, Colin, I’m in my eighties now and I have never allowed the Westminster Establishment to brain wash me with their claims that they are, “THE British Government – because they do NOT govern the whole of Britain they remain “A”, British Government and, with a little bit more hard work, I hope soon to force them to admit they are not THE British Government and reduce them to being the Government of the Kingdom of England – or even better still – (with a reunified Ireland and a free Wales), just the Westminster Parliament of the COUNTRY of England.
Why no National on August 10? Of the 4 oulets I tried in Ayr none had received any deliveries. The Tesco garage at Silverburn had none either. Is something afoot?
Apologies if this has been covered already.
Have to confess that addiction to crosswords/Sudoku forced my first purchase of a Daily Express for almost 3 years. No change there – still a disgusting biased rag masquerading as a newspaper. God do I feel dirty!
When we vote Yes to an iScotland, the first song that will be played is Auld Lang Syne.
@ Cactus, only cos we dont yet know the words tae…” YA FECKIN DANCER” lol
The long German view,
link to independent.co.uk
“I was genuinely shocked by the state of some of the towns, and by the many people I met who felt neglected and who were now driven by resentment. It made me feel very German because I longingly thought of the bundesfinanzausgleich (equalisation payment mechanism), a system that aims at balancing the wealth of the Bundesländer and leads to a fairer distribution of funds throughout the country.”
Google translate’s pretty amazing too.
link to de.wikipedia.org
Aweright Big Phil, aye and many more will be made too.
Here’s five possible entries for the iScotland day setlist:
1) The Proclaimers
2) Dougie MacLean
3) The Corries
4) Nazareth
5) AC/DC
What say?
Magic money rigs… s’like big gold bars sticking out of the ocean.
I guess that’s the difference between rigs and trees…
Magic money trees don’t exist (only in fairy-tale la la land):
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Magic money rigs do exist, their value is solid liquid gas fuel.
“Same as it ever was, stop making sense”.
We’re on a road to iScotland.
This is what happens when John Bull has the keys to our car:
link to youtube.com
Have a fantastic Friday folks.
Drive to the conditions.
Links
link to snp.org
link to publiclawforeveryone.com
link to talkradio.co.uk
link to itisintruthnotforglory.wordpress.com
link to randompublicjournal.com
‘Scotland’s new MPs have a historic opportunity to make our mark.’
link to archive.is
link to amnesty.org.uk
link to irishnews.com
link to aljazeera.com
It’s being rumoured that George Osborne and Tony Blair are to form a new Centrist Party, for crying out loud!
link to twitter.com
Money to burn
link to endpropaganda.wordpress.com
link to speyejoe2.wordpress.com
link to defenceconnect.com.au
link to newscientist.com
If U.S. Attacks North Korea First, Is That Self-Defense?
link to archive.is
link to yeswecan.scot
Nana; Good Morning, it’s not too nice here today, windy and overcast. Thank you, for your links, they brighten every day up a bit.Kettle’s on! 🙂
Robert Peffers
Who are we?
If you wish to call yourself British Scots European that is your choice. If others just wish to call themselves Scottish only so be it. I’m sure most folk on here know the difference between the UK and the British isles. Unfortunately some English news outlets when saying British they mean England . That’s just the way it is. Go out and see Dunkirk – English only for the boats!
I’m sure they meant French Scots Irish Welsh Dutch Poles etcetera . Wee slip of the tongue? Or a mindset of superiority by the middle and ruling English classes.
Watched ITV news last nigh covering the latest disastrous figures from NHS Tory England.
As there was no defending the stats as such, they tried to shield them by assuring that Scotland, Wales, and N.I.
are all struggling too?
Not a lie! They all are, due to Westminster cuts and mismanagement, but the story was denied a comparison
as it would show Scotland’s NHS fairing better that any other area.
Can’t have that in the UK Media. Can we?
Thanks Nana
Some interesting reading and listening there. 🙂
BBC Scotchland
We neeed more more money to clothe our children for school is the tack this morning. North Ayrshire labour pays £40 odd quid to the needy. Others over £100
I blame the snp government for the unfair society due to the economic debt that we are in, the decades of inequality etc. Oops that unionism for you.
News on Radio Shortbread. The Grouse shooting this year will be a disaster, same old Scotland same old Tripe.
BBC also stating this is worth £150 million to Scotland. Where does all that money go?
Excellent piece here on ‘fake abundance’ of the uk. An economy run on private credit.
It’s one of the big reasons to get out…
link to renegadeinc.com
Good morning Smallaxe, it’s colder here and looking quite dark.
@Macart
The last four were sent to me and to be honest I just skimmed the defence one but thought some wingers might be interested.
I’m having to skim a lot right now as I’m trying to sort accommodation for my son.
Unfortunately I now have a little knowledge of the unbelievable hoops folks have to go through to get a visa extension. His would have been flatmate has had her’s denied. She is distraught as she’s just finished her masters and was going on to do a PHD so now has to ‘go home’
It is awful how the home office is treating people with delays and just basic stupidity.
Westminster turning the world away.
Artyhetty @ 9.17 pm
The BBC are camping out at Heriots?!
Much like Cromwell’s troops who trashed the chappel, stabling their horses there. Nae respect.
Oh the parallels and the irony!
I wondered where they’d gone. Well out of sight at least.
Mibbe they’re just hiding.
Near Bristo Sq was pretty public and an awfy easy location to raise a protest.
Mibbee Jingling Geordie Heriot will haunt them = )
@Nana
“I’m having to skim a lot right now as I’m trying to sort accommodation for my son.”
Yeah, doing a bit of that myself right now.
Pretty grim news about your son’s ‘would have been’ flatmate. After all that effort… to be uprooted at the last will be a helluva wrench.
The UKs dash to ignominy and isolation continues.
There is much talk as to whether or not incomers from England should be allowed to vote in Indyref2.
A point that has never been made is that there are 2 distinct types of incomers as regards the likelihood of them voting YES.
The first is retirees:-
They sell up in England, buy a house in Scotland take advantage of our superior Scottish NHS, free prescriptions, bus passes and elderly care.
They have no committment to Scotland and its future, their children will almost certainly not live in Scotland or ever will. When they die their assets will for the most part return south of the border.
Meanwhile because of the crazy English House prices they will have caused house price inflation in the desirable areas in Scotland where they settle making house ownership for local native population a distant prospect.
It must be obvious that very few of said retirees have any interest in Scotland becoming Independent and that it would be a waste of time trying to convert them.
As a matter of moral justice I see no justification for these transients to be given a vote in Indyref2 as they have no real interest in the future of Scotland only in their own comfortable retirement.
The second category is permanent settlers:-
These are people who move to Scotland to take up a job or to start a business with a view to living here while bringing up a family who will probably remain in Scotland.
These people and their families obviously have an interest in Scotland’s future and if they don’t already support YES deserve a vote and it should be possible to convert them to the wisdom of voting YES.
I acknowledge that it would be impossible to split the 2 categories of incomers as regards voting rights but hope that in my clumsy way I have made a point worthy of discussion.
Robert Peffers @ 12.25 am
As someone who studied archaelogy many moons ago,and who found the Romans too modern and of little interest, may I please be exempted from accepting these visiting tourists to Scotland naming of my Country? How very cheeky of them! (However,love the food!)
I do not accept their naming of the whole of the collection of these isles as Briton.
Therefore I do not consider myself to be British in any shape or form = )
I guess this is a kind of ancient anarchism 🙂
@ScottieDog says: 10 August, 2017 at 4:19 pm:
“So my question, does this change the final figures in GERS.”
Why would the GERs figures represent anything whatsoever that is in any way an accurate statement about the Scottish economy? They quite simply are guesstimated figures picked out of the minds of Westminster Establishment employees specifically charged by the de facto parliament of the country of England with demonstrating that Scotland is dependent upon the people of England for subsidies?
There is documentary evidence contained in letters written by elected Scottish MPs, (Westminster cabinet ministers), to their English Masters), that state just that. GERS were designed by Westminster with the express purpose of demonstrating that Scotland was, “Too wee, too poor and thought by Westminster to be too bloody stupid to know any better”. Know what, Scottiedog, they were absolutely correct. A majority of the Scots were indeed too bloody stupid and it has taken a very long time and a very great deal of hard work by independence activists and, (mainly),the SNP to get those outside the SNP to begin to wake up to the truth that England is ripping off the rest of the United Kingdom.
Not only that but the whole truth being exposed is balanced upon a knife edge with that majority of stupid Scots unionist versus knowledgeable Scots independence voters in the balance.
It is a wrong conclusion, none the less, that we didn’t know such facts as the GERS figures were mince, what the McCrone Report contained or that Scotland has always subsidised the rest of the UK.
A minority of Scots have known the facts and have spent a lifetime trying to get the truth out to the rest of Scotland and just read through Wings and you will find that right here on Wings a plethora of posts saying, “The SNP/SG need to do something, (an unspecified something that they never specify), while the commenters are thus blaming the SNP/SG for the problem.
The fact is there are no sources of the true figures that are available to anyone outside the Westminster Establishment set-up and they control the media and thus the publishing of any meaningful information.
@ Ghillie – I thought the Romans used the term Britannia because the natives called themselves Pritani, a p-celtic word? The q-celts used cruithne. Just my understanding.
Gus 1940 @ 9.01 am
Ok, you make some interesting points there. And I did share your concerns. But simply put, we cannot know how anyone feels about the country they arrive in and how they may vote, with their personal interests to the fore, or what is most beneficial to their new home.
Think about it, it would’nt make sense for a retiree coming here from a country where they have to pay for their presciptions and suffer a struggling NHS and then be a turkey voting for Christmas and vote against the very Scottish Government that allows said retirees that reassurance and great quality of life here.
I know it does happen. But how daft of folk to move somewhere they think they will enjoy an easier time in their sunset years and then sabotage it?
Yup, I too am thinking of a certain lady who wrote for the notorious ‘Scotland in Union’ doing exactly that! And she may now have changed her mind!
But in fairness, ‘English for Independence’ are quite the opposite of that daft mindset and I would rather use the time we have before the next referendum to convince all newcomers to Scotland, short term and long term, that Independence for Scotland is the way forward for everyone in Scotland = )
O/T a bit
This from Robert Fisk in the Independent
“There are still honourable Israelis who demand a state for the Palestinians; there are well-educated Saudis who object to the crazed Wahabism upon which their kingdom is founded; there are millions of Americans, from sea to shining sea, who do not believe that Iran is their enemy nor Saudi Arabia their friend. But the problem today in both East and West is that our governments are not our friends”
[…] the revelations yet again by Wings Over Scotland on how Scotland has somehow NOT been allocated its true wealth from its oil in 2014 and 2015 to the […]
Capella @9.19 am
Really !? Sh*t.
See, still too modern for me.
Nope, still don’t want to call myself British, nope.
Arms folded. Wee strop going on.
CACTUS SAY SOMETHING TO CHEER ME UP !!
Nana, heartfelt sorrow for your son’s friend’s difficulty in staying here.
This just feels so wrong!
We too have young friends struggling with the same red tape.
I can not bear the thought of them being thrown out of our Country.
And surely these cruel new rules are counter productive if the UK government is chasing away the very students the UK educated.
What happened to us all being citizens of Space Ship Earth?
Capella, it was the Greek geographer Pythias of Massillia (Marseilles), the first recorded person from the Mediterranean to visit these islands, who named them “nisoi Bretanikoi”
(pronounced Neesee Vretaneekee). He was familiar with P Celtic and took “pretan” from that language – similar to modern Welsh. The Greek version translates as islands of the painted, tattooed or marked people.
Subsequently the Romans amended the Greek name to Britannia. Google helps. xcuse any errors.
Every cloud has a silver lining!
” Conservatives will never win power again after Brexit ‘disaster’, former Tory government adviser says “
link to archive.is
[text only archive]
Yes but, recent history has shown us the London alternative is Labour who are a bunch of Tories anyway in all but name. Scotland needs to get rid of the Union, not just the official Tories.
@ Bill McLean @ Ghillie – thanks that reminds me where I read about the Pritani – Barry Cunliffe’s book “The Extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek”. A good read.
” An influential former British government adviser who has called for a new political movement to block Brexit said on Friday that two senior members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s government were sympathetic to his plans. “
link to archive.is
Lots of ‘buzz’ about an anti Brexit party/alliance. I wonder if anything will come to fruition?
Some people say it’s undemocratic to try to overturn the result of a referendum, and certainly we wouldn’t be wanting anyone challenging a YES result in IndyRef2!
England voted to leave the EU, so perhaps they should be left to get on with it!
However, we have had two referendums now where the winning option was achieved by telling packs of lies to the electorate in 2014 & 2016. Is a win based on deceit and false promises at all valid?
At a minimum, there needs to be new strict electoral law governing referendums to stop such fake democratic outcomes in the future.
I was heartened to hear an Inglishman on the radio this morning telling me that Grouse shooting was part of the fabric of Scotland and that all the shooters who pay up to four thousand pounds a day to come and kill these birds don’t in fact do it for fun but for the altruistic reasons of land management to keep Scotland beautiful
These are the same folk who used to shoot Scottish people as part of their fabric
Grouse shooting they say brings in 150 million a year to the Scottish econonmy
The people who know what they’re talking about tell us re wilding and green tourism with cameras and binoculars would bring in around 1 and a half billion
I think we could afford a little less animal murdery land management with some of that cash
Or maybe the rest of us Scots could just shoot the folk who rip off our country with their Grouse shooting mince talk
I’ll take some of that fabric, but then again like them I’m biased
@Michael says: 10 August, 2017 at 4:54 pm:
“If this is completely the way it seems to be. The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?”
Oh! For the love of, (pardon the pun), Mike!
I personally have been harping on about the fact that the UK government have taken every penny of oil & gas revenue since the first drop of oil & the first whiff of natural gas was extracted from the North Sea. However it was always reported as being extracted from, “Extra Regio Territory”, and that around 98% of that Extra Regio Territory is in what is internationally recognised as being from within Scottish legal jurisdiction.
I have posted that fact right here on Wings on numerous occasions. Guess what, Michael? Not too many Wingers even realised the significance of that fact and thus did not pass on the fact when they were out campaigning on Scottish doorsteps and the Scottish MSM and United Kingdom were certainly not telling Scots about it.
“It seems to me Scot Govt accept such changes in the way figures are presented without much or any investigation.”
Sheesh! Where the hell do you imagine I found out the truth about, “Extra Regio Territory”, or of the existence of the McCrone Report before succeeding Westminster governments buried the report deep in a Westminster vault.
The SNP have known, and attempted to inform Scots, for as long as I can remember – the trouble was, and is, that the Scottish general public, including many Wingers, have just refused to understand and listen. Furthermore, going by comments on Wings like this one from you, even committed activists, are still not listening and only now beginning to awake to the truth.
The SNP, and others, have been attempting to tell you the truth for a very long time. Will you be listening now?
If you doubt that as fact then here is some evidence that people really have been attempting to get the truth out for many, many years. Yet here you are still blaming those who were attempting to tell you the truth.
This is a link to one of a series of reports drawn up by a Scottish Forensic Accountant named Niall Aslen.
link to siol-nan-gaidheal.org
I’ve also been posting links to his work for a great number of years.
If my memory serves Niall originally titled his work, “The Great Lie”, and, if you googled that title, up would come Niall’s report. Then a strange thing happened.
When you Googled that title you got thousands of false trails to all sorts of other websites from all sorts of really strange organisations claiming all sorts of things were, “The Big Lie”, and Niall’s efforts were lost in the welter of other suddenly claimed big lies. Conspiracy Theorist? Who me? Aye! Richt!
So that, Michael, is the truth. The SNP, and other independence organisations, have known, and have been telling Scottish people the truth, for decades and the fact is the Scottish voters, and even independence activists like Wingers, are still, like you, blaming the messengers instead of the perpetrators.
Read back over the past few months on Wings and you will find I have highlighted where Wingers are posting more SNP BAAD and SG BAAD criticisms of the SNP than the Yoons are and I’ve had pelters for pointing that fact out here on Wings.
The stark truth is that the SNP and others have known and attempted to publicise the facts for decades and been silenced by the Establishment and the vast majority of even independence activists just refuse to listen to the truth.
We have pointed out that all Oil & Gas revenues go directly to the United Kingdom Treasury. As such they are NOT credited as Scottish raised revenue by Westminster. Instead they are reported as having been raised from, “United Kingdom Extra Regio Territory”, and thus have nothing to do with Scotland.
Even although around 98% of those Extra Regio Territories lie in waters that are under Scottish legal jurisdiction and, under an independent Scotland, would be Scottish natural assets.
Capella = )
Aye. That Barry Cunliff.
My Professor Dennis Harding’s arch nemisis. (Mibbee it wasn’t quite that dramatic but that’s what they lead us to believe)
Still had to read both their books for the exams though.
Back to business. Nope. Still not wearing it. Not British.
Heels dug in.
@ Ghillie – well then – have a read of the first chapter of Barry Cunliffe’s book “Britain Begins”. You can Look Inside on Amazon. It describes the early historians’ record of the Pritani.
link to tinyurl.com
Robert Peffers 10.21 am
Well said.
Mentioning the McCrone Report used to be met with ‘The what? Never heard of it’.
Not now.
@Ben Madigan
NI does run a deficit. It is truly financially supported by rest of UK. London would cut them loose in a truce if there is a successful referendum on reunification.
I’m reading a good book on the subject, almost finished.
Kevin Meagher, Why Ireland will be Reunited, and how it will happen.
It’s modern, being finished last year. He sets out brief, relevant history, then more modern issues of economy, relationships etc.
I’ve found it easy to read.
@Andy-B says: 10 August, 2017 at 5:11 pm:
“WTF, is it any wonder that Westminster is desperate to keep Scotland in this dying union. I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.”
Nah! The thing is why has it taken you so long to realise the SNP, SG and people like myself have been posting the truths for decades and even dedicated independence activists have just not been listening to our truths.
We knew and told people the GERS figures were mince – the people did not listen
We posted the information contained in the McCrone Report before Westminster buried it and again people did not listen.
We have highlighted that the Scottish per capita GDP is usually, year on year, higher than that of all other UK countries and indeed the UK as a whole and people have not listened.
The tragic fact is that even here today on Wings we have Wingers bleating, “Why have the SNP and SG not told us or done anything about it”.
Neither the SNP or the SG can legally do anything about it without the legal support of the majority of the legally sovereign people of Scotland and to date a recognisable, or legally recognised, majority of the people of Scotland has not been given to the SNP or SG.
We may, (just), have got to that stage but there has not been a specific referendum that returns that result in a manner the Westminster Establishment cannot shrug off or ignore.
They are though, very, very desperate that no such referendum will ever be held and if you cannot work out why they are so desperate then you really should be thinking about it right now.
The people who know what they’re talking about tell us re wilding and green tourism with cameras and binoculars would bring in around 1 and a half billion
Scottish Highlands are either a desert like environment, with all life being burned off by ghillies ever couple of years, or theyre vast plantations of alien species pines for paper. Anything else that can survive fire is either shot or poisoned,
before shooting season starts.
Scottish rivers that spring from the Highlands are dead now. Atlantic Salmon spawning have been fished to extinction. 12 thousand years of spawning runs in the fall and spring, gone in a decade or two.
That blood sports dude on BBC Scotland boosting up blood sports in Scotland this morn, is representing quite a lot of blood sportsmen and women who are in reality an environmental holocaust, for Scottish biodiversity.
They can do this because they own Scotland.
They know they are horrifically destructive, so the use their BBC Scotland gimps to lie us all about it all, as usual,
link to archive.is
“Scottish bird of prey colony hit by mass poisonings
RSPB and ornithologists express disgust after 12 red kites are found dead in Black Isle area, targeted with lethal toxins”
Highland landowners, blood sports dudes, their flunkies, would look at you like you were insane for expressing anything against killing all raptors in the Highlands. As soon as grouse spot a raptor, they don’t fly, meaning a lot angry wealthy blood sports dudes in your face.
And who wants that.
@ valerie re NI’s deficit. Nobody disputes NI has a deficit. It’s the size of it that is being queried. Thanks for the thumbs up about Kevin meagher’s book. I will certainly get a copy
Ben
@Heedtracker 10.42
Your post would make me weep, that man abuses these beautiful lands.
This shooting of raptors is getting to be one huge pisstake by the shooters though. Have to say I’m sick to death reading it, and no one on the estates being held to account.
More beeb gimpery for a Friday, anyone? Wales this time. We’re not the only uk region plagued by tory media dingdongs.
link to dailypost.co.uk
Welsh speakers have reacted with fury after a BBC programme posed the question whether the language was a “hindrance” to the country.
But the discussion did not have anybody who could speak the language involved, with contributions from author Julian Ruck and Ruth Dawson, Wales Editor for the independent news and analysis website The Conversation.”
Gosh no one from the “other side” of a beeb gimp tv debate. Must be a Pacific Quay ligger on his hols.
@ben madigan
Soz! Was just confirming I had up.on the NI figures via Kevin’s book.
I would quote them, but I’m not clever enough to retrieve it from the Kindle! Worth reading the Amazon reviews of Kevin’s book, as they cover it well, imo. Kevin writes regular pieces in a variety of stuff like Politics,co.UK, Business Insider etc
Westminster in the 1970s lied about the real value of oil in the North Sea and also supressed the McCrone report.
No Westminster Government will ever come clean and reveal the true extent of North Sea oil wealth it has stolen from Scotland and its people.
We witnessed just how desperate Westminster was to hang on to Scotland during the 2014 indyref, with all the lies and scare stories they could dream up.
What Westminster will do is keep on lying and telling us
its much better for us to pool and share resources and continue being Governed from Westminster on the broad shoulders of the UK.
O/T
Ghillie and anyone who may be interested.
😎
SIU
Our Glasgow team want to remind you of a few upcoming campaign dates.
• Wed Aug 9 – 4.30pm – Leafleting – Waterloo Chambers, 19 Waterloo St, Glasgow G2 6AY
• Sat Aug 12 – 10.45am – Tell Us Your Story Street Stall – Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8AH
• Wed Aug 16 – 4.30pm – Leafleting – Waterloo Chambers, 19 Waterloo St, Glasgow G2 6AY
The local team will be handing out leaflets and signing people up to Scotland in Union on the above campaign date.
This Wednesday will be an ideal opportunity to meet with your Volunteer Coordinator and fellow supporters to find out how you can play a part in Scotland in Unions future.
Tell Us Your Story campaign: For the last few weeks we have been running our campaign every day, publishing the opinions of our supporters for others to read. This is something we want to continue with and with your help we can.
We now want to outreach to local people and ask them to share their story on the streets of Glasgow with our volunteers.
So, if you are free then please come along and offer some support.
Reply to this mail for further details or any questions.
We all have a story to tell and we want to hear yours.
Thank you for the continued support.
Glasgow Team
Scotland In Union
Keep those heels firmly dug in Ghillie.
liz g; Good to see you back. 🙂
Dr Jim @ 10:19am;
Note the above date “Sat Aug 12 – 10.45am” is that not the start of the…?
😎
@ Ghillie
I think to often we forget that this islands name was Albion, Alban, Alba. The name Pritani, as I understood it, came from our fellow Celts in Gaul, the romans and Greeks certainly adapted the Celtic name to their own language. The Celtic language belongs to a group of four Indo European languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Albion belongs to an older language, possibly pre Celtic, Alban is brihonic and Alba is Q Celtic. As on Irish commentator wrote in the Belfast Telgraph, Scotland can’t leave Britain, it is Britain.
Capella. I know.(not happy) Read alot of BC’s articles and stuff, had to. Was taught to take him with a pinch of salt, to carefully scutinise his evidence. He had just started writing in the 70’s. You see, they were rivals, my Professor and he. I suppose BC might have occasionaly had something to say (said with resignation). Still can’t take him seriously. Back in the day Denis fair had it in for him. Would probably deny it all now!
But nope, still not British, not geographically or otherwise. Nope, reject that.
Oh pooh. Now Robert is going to be after me.
Quick diversion, better and way more important things to discuss 🙂 PS Thank you Smallaxe!
Valerie says:
11 August, 2017 at 10:51 am
@Heedtracker 10.42
It is an endless horror Valerie. For what its worth, if youre a walker, not a hiker or anything so dramatic, you can walk in the Highlands today and come across little patches of hillside that the muir burning has missed and it teams with life.
We can see for ourselves how the Highlands can quickly recover at least some of its native biodiversity. Which is why it all has to be burned off every few years, with the right wind, by blokes with a few rags and a jerry can of petrol.
One of Scottish blood sports industry great lies, is that burning off all life on the Highlands means heather can grow for the grouse but this is just a crock. Its all merely to let the shooters can get clear views of birds and deer. That’s all.
For spawning Salmon in Scottish rivers, it does look like they will never recover, and that they are now extinct.
Right up to the early 80’s you could watch leaping Salmon on the Dee at Banchory, an incredible natural spectacle, all gone now. Fished out by rich men hell bent on killing everything they can, for fun, in their Scotland region.
One thing I never understood was why such a powerful outfit like the Royal family have let this happen. They love blood sports, they own Balmoral castle and estate, with one of the most picturesque stretches of Salmon spawning river Dee, anywhere really. And yet they’ve just continued to catch spawning Salmon as if there was no end. And ofcourse, there really is an end.
We are told to be horrified at countries like Brazil, for the way they are burning down their forests but its no different from the way our imperial masters destroy the Scottish Highlands.
And its up to likes of our endlessly hideous press and BBC Scotland to tell us to celebrate it all.
We are mad species.
Smallaxe,
SIU in Glasgow starting on the glorious 12th.
Wonder what kind of reception they might recieve.
Polarised, I should think.
Heedtracker;
Not only raptors are killed but Magpies and Blue Jays are routinely subjected to the same treatment down here in the South of North Britain.
Democracy a sham, political campaigns based on outright lies, vast amounts of money being spent on stifling dissent and burying factual knowledge aka the truth- a template for the apparatchik of the disunited kingdom;
‘A constant refrain from politicians and others is that we have to leave the EU because we have to respect democracy, where by democracy they mean that 52% voted to do so. Arguments that the vote was based on lies by the Leave side are met with dismissive remarks like both sides were the same, or what do you expect from politicians and so forth. The important thing, we are told, is to ‘respect democracy’…
I personally think an important part of democracy is that politicians do not base campaigns on complete lies, and that knowledge, evidence, facts and expertise are respected and are easily accessible to all voters. Otherwise elections can be won by those who tell the biggest lies. If this happens and is not remedied democracy is a sham…
As I noted here, lies were central to the Leave campaign (more money for the NHS, Turkey about to join the EU) and have already been shown to be untrue, while the central plank of the Remain campaign (dubbed Project Fear by Leave) has already come to pass. Polls suggest the Leave lies gained them votes. Only one side in the campaign spent a large amount of time dismissing or denigrating academic expertise (be it economists or lawyers)…
People overseas, in the EU or outside, are mystified at what the UK is currently doing. The main supporter of Brexit overseas is an authoritarian regime, which should give you a clue about what is going on. There are two overwhelming reasons for challenging the referendum result: it was arrived at after a deeply flawed campaign, and we now have information that clearly shows the extent of the Leave campaign’s lies. The Leave campaign abused democracy before the vote with lies, and then abused the word subsequently to stifle any dissent’
link to socialeurope.eu
Sorry, should read Albion, Alban,Alba. No idea how Alba became ceased with predictive text.
Is this sudden increase in Scottish revenue going to be used to justify Scottish proportion of payment to EU due to Brexit?
Or, more accurately, to justify Westminster reductions to block grant?
@ Golfnut – that happened to me. Sometimes the site changes Alb* to Caesar! for some reason connected with people ending their posts with a Gaelic salutation beginning Hail. Seems that the Rev disapproves.
Ha ha! and it’s just changed Sao* to Hail!.
Smallaxe says:
11 August, 2017 at 11:11 am
Heedtracker;
I know. I grew up on the River Dee and you never saw a Heron, ever. But they’re coming back too. At first you think the ghillies are no longer shooting them all, but its not that, there are no Salmon left so what’s the point of shooting Herons.
They still kill anything they spot though. We came across a dead seal, shot in the head and body in front of Robert Gordon uni bit of the Dee, but it was probably shot further up river.
At that same spot, a huge migrating Atlantic Salmon counter thingee was built across the shallow bed of the river there, concrete, shiny copper strip, the lot. Had to be demolished though, no Salmon.
Why do we as a society, tolerate and even celebrate the wholesale destruction of our environment and biodiversity, by a few filthy rich morons? oh wait. Its how it all works in their Scotland region.
link to twitter.com
produces beeb Scotland gimp stuff like,
link to bbc.co.uk
Backlash over tree threat letter
By Kevin Keane
BBC Scotland’s environment correspondent
17 February 2017
From the section Scotland
“Backlash” is pretty good, beeb tory gimp wise. Wtf, more like.
Heedtracker @10.42 am and Valerie,
Killing for the rank joy of it has to stop.
The ‘muirburn’ is madness.
I have witnessed huge swathes of the land eaten up by fires raging out of control, started by those on the estate, licensed to do so.
On one particular occasion in the far north, a good chunk of the Moine, north of Kinloch Estate, by the Kyle of Tongue, was destroyed. Fires light during a dry spell and high winds. Beggars belief. Several fire brigrades were called out and fought the blaze for more than a day and a night. Needless to say the Estate are not a popular crew with the local population for a number of reasons.
A sad loss were the nesting Merlins who would not abandon their nests. God only knows how many small creatures were killed. It took years for the heather and grasses to regrow.
The shooters do not add much to the local economy and nothing to the local ecology.
One day we will look back on this use and abuse of our land, the cruelty to our animals and the destruction of our landscapes with horror and disbelief.
It would be good to let our native woodlands regenerate.
I do not see this huntinshootinfishin continuing like this in Independent Scotland.
Today’s Scottish Review has a disgraceful article by that twisted individual Kenneth Roy on the subject of Michelle Thomson and the SNPbad Open Goal she presented to the Colonialists by her decision to go running to The Broadcast and print media last Sunday.
His one-sided article is in essence an attempt to metaphorically assassinate Nicola Sturgeon as regards the alleged treatment of Thomson by Nicola and the party HQ while completely ignoring the 2 year long near constant vilification of Thomson and by association The SNP by the colonialist politicians and their fan club in the broadcast and print media.
Until last Sunday I was 100% in sympathy with Thomson, in particular over her disgraceful treatment by the media and colonialist politicians, but by running to those who did their utmost to destroy her with the predictable presentation to them of an Open SNPbad Goal showed incredibly bad judgement and is unlikely to open any door of opportunity to a return to active politics – certainly not with The SNP.
@ heedtracker – there are salmon on the Dee. The dead seal was most likely killed at the mouth of the Dee where there are salmon nets. The salmon counter wasn’t demolished because there are no salmon but bercause there was a design fault and it fell apart. There are other salmon counters on the counting salmon.
You’re right about the heron surviving, I often see them on the tributaries of the Dee. The ghillies can still shoot Goosander though because they prey on salmon.
Accuracy always!
PS Heedtracker I’m not that kind of ghillie. The opposite. Just short for my given name =)
It is a simple matter of expediency that when, not if, Scotland retakes her independence, the then former United Kingdom will still work in co-operation with each other for the very good reason that co-operation is in the best interests of both former United Kingdom partners.
The present set-up really is that there is no United Kingdom and hasn’t been since Westminster devolved Westminster/English powers to what Westminster regards as three English Dominions.
What we have is a de facto Parliament of the country of England that reserves, for itself, what it decides is English Only matters by the USE of EVEL. Thus Westminster directly governs England but no one is elected as a member of the parliament of the country of England because no such parliament and no such government of England exists other than Westminster and Westminster is legally elected as the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
So in effect the whole UK is subservient to the unelected as such de facto parliament of England. Thus the entire United Kingdom is run for what would seem to be the benefit of the country of England – but wait up – there is something else they never willingly tell us about. There is a Mayor of London who runs the whole of Greater London and London is finance in the same manner as are the three devolved countries of the two partner kingdoms that comprise the United Kingdom. In other words there are four, not three, now devolved administrations in the United Kingdom that are funded by Block Grants but the Country of England is governed and funded as The United Kingdom directly by Westminster and no one is actually elected as a member of the Parliament of England.
So, in actual fact Westminster is the unelected as such parliament of London that has devolved London/Westminster powers to everyone else and a power devolved is a power retained.
So, give the Unionists credit where credit is due. They have pulled off the biggest con-trick in World history excepting only the existence of a God in a Heaven that there is not the slightest shred of evidence to prove to actually exist.
I would make “Sportsmen” eat everything that they killed, fur feathers and scales included!
Some of the ground nearby is heavily polluted with lead shot also.
Thanks Golfnut, definitly not British then = )
The seals are eating the salmon.
Robert Peffers @ 11.57 am
Agree that the unionists have pulled off a huge con trick. One that won’t last though.
God in Heaven.
I can assure there is evidence.
For now, God is Love. Open your heart. That’s all = )
Blessings pet 🙂
Stu Campbell said: Pro UDI supporters say: “If UDI is in the manifesto and the SNP win, nothing else matters. That’s a democratic mandate.”
But that argument carries no weight in international law.”
Stu gives no case law, no legal rulings, no evidence to support this assertion that UDI democratically voted for carries “no weight” in law.
This isn’t a generalised discussion. This is about Scotland.
Scotland’s declaration of independence would be based on saying the Union Treaty has been dissolved. That Scotland is independent because The Union has been ended.
That’s the sort of UDI Scotland would be declaring.
Stu says that would carry no weight in international law.
I think he is mistaken. Any opinions on this?
In order to clear something up about a previous post. I got a nippy email about it.
The point I am making (and have been making for some time) is not that it is OK not to register the UK’s theft of Scottish resources (and full marks to the Revs revelations of yesterday) but that we waste our time arguing about deficits and black holes and all kind of figures thrown at us out of a Scottish economy trapped in a UK economy. This is exactly where our enemies want to trap us. After all they make up the books and own the media.
Many people felt all those years ago that the oil discovery made our independence inevitable.
More percipient people understood that instead it would make it absolutely imperative from the UK’s perspective to hang onto us.
We then arrived at a position in which a significant percentage of the Scottish people were led to believe that we were reliant on oil revenues to be economically viable. This of course is not and never was the case – but the unionists then made hay on this and then the collapse of the oil revenues.
The SNP is sensibly making a case for Scottish economic viability without any reference to oil revenues. (A “bonus” if mentioned at all).
This is why we are not shouting about oil revenues.
gus 1940 @ 11.49am
Having reached 70-years of age, I can now admit: “Regrets, I’ve had a few”; number two on the list is that, over 30-years ago, I managed, somehow, to restrain myself from delivering a Glesca Kiss on Kenneth Roy, as he – pissed out of his mind – was being obnoxious in Ayr.
Sorely tempted though I was, I restrained myself, because: he wasn’t enough of a challenge; I reckoned, when he got out of A&E he’d be as big an arsehole as he was when he went in; and finally, he wasn’t worth the bother.
He has not improved in the intervening time, indeed, I feel he has got worse.
In order to clear something up about a previous post. I got a nippy email about it.
The point I am making (and have been making for some time) is not that it is OK not to register the UK’s theft of Scottish resources (and full marks to the Revs revelations of yesterday) but that we waste our time arguing about deficits and black holes and all kind of figures thrown at us out of a Scottish economy trapped in a UK economy. This is exactly where our enemies want to trap us. After all they make up the books and own the media. And have always fiddled the oil revenues
Many people felt all those years ago that the oil discovery made our independence inevitable.
More percipient people understood that instead it would make it absolutely imperative from the UK’s perspective to hang onto us.
We then arrived at a position in which a significant percentage of the Scottish people were led to believe that we were reliant on oil revenues to be economically viable. This of course is not and never was the case – but the unionists then made hay on this and then the collapse of the oil revenues.
The SNP is sensibly making a case for Scottish economic viability without any reference to oil revenues. (A “bonus” if mentioned at all).
This is why we are not shouting about oil revenues.
Capella says:
11 August, 2017 at 11:49 am
@ heedtracker – there are salmon on the Dee. The dead seal was most likely killed at the mouth of the Dee where there are salmon nets.
There are not Capella. The mouths of Scottish rivers and estuaries used to black with Atlantic Salmon returning to spawn, waiting for the tide.
Here’s the stats, for just one spot on the Dee.
link to fishpal.com
It says, “Given suitable conditions the beat has the potential to produce salmon catches in the region of 200 per season.”
Is that a lot, hundreds of beats on one spawning river?
Look at what they recorded caught, in the last 5 years.
115 in 2012, down to 11 last year. It is possible ofcourse that these guys are not reporting what they catch, entirely possible.
Science wise, the crash in Atlantic Salmon, or mass extinction is just as dramatic as the great collapse of Atlantic cod species extinction by US and Canadian over fishing off NewFoundland. Much the same has happened to our seas and rivers.
But then we exist in the great miasma of BBC led UKOK tory propaganda, that brushes all of it away, and let’s all watch gogglebox and eastenders.
What you’re mistaken by is trout, sea trout, still being caught. Its a similar fish right enough. But its not the north Atlantic pelagic salmon, which is now extinct.
There is attempts at restocking Scottish rivers with vat reared fry but how to tell the fry to head off across the Atlantic ocean to Canada every year?
Even that fishpal monicur is creepy as feck. Hi, I’m a fishpal, I like killing fish, for fun, because I’m a Fishpal.
Ken 500 @ 12.05 pm
The beasts have got to eat = )
The seals and the salmon were here long long before the posh fishers or the estates.
And the whales take the seals. Where is it all going to end!
ps I think I’m right that you were taking the piss of those who shoot the seals for having the nerve to go near lord such and such’s salmon 🙂
O/T again – apologies but it is a charming BBC article (unusually) about an Italian village where many are believed to be descendants of Scots soldiers marooned there in the 16th Century:
link to bbc.co.uk
Gus1940@11.49
I hear what your saying but there is a bigger picture here.
She will be back for Yes2Indy.It’s a given!
Phronesis @ 11:14,
Amen to all that.
It would be a great shame if, come the next indyref, there are still any former yes voters who remain fooled by all those outrageous Brexiteer lies.
You make the valid point that a deal of truthtalking is necessary for democracy to thrive. But it also requires that ordinary voters demand the truth and refuse to be seduced by lies, no matter how superficially attractive they may appear or how much they pander to existing prejudices. In the end, the health of democracy is down to all of us.
And as far as independence is concerned, people need to wise up to who truly gains from staying in this crocked Union.
OT But I have just heard a BBBC commentator speak of ‘minor medals’ which makes me incandescent .
Who is this pillock ? I wonder if he ever won a ‘minor medal”
Jingly Jangly, got my birthday wishes – thank you!
Cracking photographs by the way!
It would be good to let our native woodlands regenerate.
I do not see this huntinshootinfishin continuing like this in Independent Scotland
Ghillie
There’s huge shooting and fishing industry across Europe and the US, all of its in native biodiverse forests and moorland.
Its only here in the Scotland region where everything is either burned off the Highlands, for a clear shot, or covered in fast growing non native pine plantations, tax free, because its such a great enviromental thing to do right.
Highland estates have to make money for the owners, we have to listen their bullshit, and then pay their subsidies, to do it all.
@ heedtracker – we seem to be agreeing that there are, in fact, salmon in the Dee. Yes, numbers are declining, mainly due to climate change. So we have a basis for discussion.
Capella says:
11 August, 2017 at 12:42 pm
@ heedtracker – we seem to be agreeing that there are, in fact, salmon in the Dee. Yes, numbers are declining, mainly due to climate change. So we have a basis for discussion.
You’re funny Capella.
Other news, none fishy, but
link to independent.co.uk
Robert Peffers says: “So, give the Unionists credit where credit is due. They have pulled off the biggest con-trick in World history excepting only the existence of a God in a Heaven that there is not the slightest shred of evidence to prove to actually exist.”
All very well and good, Robert, but then you go and spoil it all by saying something rather silly, particularly so given that there is not the slightest shred of evidence to prove that God in heaven does not actually exist. Its a bit like climate change which millions of people believe doesn’t exist and millions of people do.
Kevrage, in action, with a tory dingdong who’s never actually been elected ever. Its who they’re going UKOK nuts at that makes this kevrage tantrum really funny. Scottish tories for YES:D
Scottish YES TORIES? @YesTories Aug 10
More
#BREAKING HMRC confirms Scotland has £15 billion more than reported in GERS. This means Scotland has no deficit.
Murdo Fraser Retweeted
Kevin Hague? @kevverage 17h17 hours ago
More
a moronic lie RTd 247 times – so that’s at least 247 slack-jawed, dim-witted, mouth-breathing, glacially slow-minded keyboard mashing idiots
Ah, TGIF.
In a totally scientific survey carried out by two comedians working at the Fringe it was found that Independence supporters positively affirm their beliefs by always raising their hands and saying so whereas Tories and Unionists hate to admit they’re Tories and Unionists
You really don’t need numbers and statistics shouted at you to work out who’s wrong there, they know it and are embarrassed and ashamed as hell about it
and for the shower who won the referendum why aren’t they proud of themselves
Leads me to think they’re only proud on the day they win something, the rest of the time they have to wake up to what they are
The rest of us Independence supporters are proud of our belief in our country all the time
Like Shrek #Ibelieve
Cheers Dorothy, hope you had a good one. glad you like the photo’s got zillions more I ain’t put on my site (Yet!)
@Ghillie
That’s disgusting, taxpayer money and public service freighters fighting deliberately set fires, on tax dodging estates!
It makes my blood boil what’s happening with the land, and the poor wildlife. What’s the bloody point in conservation of kites, when they are target practice?
I started hill walking aged 30ish, and being older, I did it the right way, imo. I walked with a hill walking club, with VERY experienced guides and walkers of all ages, who knew and loved the the hills and land. They taught me hillcraft, safety and instilled respect in the younger members.
I remember standing on Ben Lomond summit, and one of the older members pointing to Glasgow, saying, can you imagine all the poor youngsters down there, who have no idea of this beauty? And worse, never will.
Dave McEwan Hill says:
Indeed. The YES side should be setting the agenda and putting the UKOK side on the back foot trying to react to our twists and turns.
Clearly they have been trying to set the agenda for years now. Too many debates are on their turf and on their terms.
Even on a one to one basis this happens. Unionists come up and regurgitate some well worn, oft repeated by the media argument, and you end up responding. I try to be dismissive and say that I simply don’t accept any truth in their point and if do wish to believe it then we’ll have to agree to disagree. Then quickly I jump in with something like, do you think it’s acceptable the UK’s state pension is so miserably low? My favourite Union attack device, especially with older voters!
Just trying to catch up on here! Great links and posts. Your comments / link K1 (10:18pm) are excellent and absolutely spot on, so reposting. And yes …. ”We have never been so close folks, so near.”
”They’ve impoverished us for centuries.
Within the first handful of years after the oil was discovered, that’s when they began the systematic destruction of Scotland’s industries and put a generation of Scots on the dole paid for, no doubt, by the revenues they had been raking in from our oil.
It’s sickening and imo a long term plan was hatched from the McCrone report forward to reduce further our population and maintain the illusion that the Scots were incapable of sustaining themselves. Their fear of our independence and any clamour for this, once the people knew what had really occurred would potentially set this in motion.
I believe with all my heart they have made sure that our health and wellbeing had to become the worst in Europe, take away people’s chances in life, destroy the industries that sustained them and create a generation to generation cycle of unemployment. The influx in the same period (the eighties) of heroin and the devastation and the legacy that too wrought, is imo partially responsible for the increased mental and physical problems along with alcoholism, which is often a refuge for those who are in fact very sensitive to the realities of their plight. It bred hopelessness, apathy and more saliently it trapped people in downward spirals.
In 2014, we dared to think differently about ourselves, we dared to believe we had a real opportunity to govern ourselves, to reject the UK status quo, which has always maintained Scotland as a backwater. This is why we are now getting increased levels of propaganda even on our tourism front, because we still dare to believe in ourselves.
We have never been so close folks, so near.
2014 woke Scotland up, we began talking amongst ourselves, the scales fell from our eyes. We just need to keep helping others to take the blinders off and see the potential, see the lies that have been told, see the possibilities for our future generations.
Weaponise our history, use it to our advantage…get folk reading the truth about Scotland, what we were and are even without the oil, this is a good start:
H J Paton’s, The Claim of Scotland.”
link to worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com
@ Valerie at 10.57
I have a paper copy of Kevin Meagher’s book, so if there is something specific you want quoted and can give me a page number for (are kindle versions paginated the same? – should be easy enough to find even if not), I can post it here, within reason to avoid copyright-breaching.
……….
@ Golfnut at 11.01
Hebrew is absolutely defintiely not an Indo-European language (it’s Semitic, along with Arabic and a few others), so the fourth item in your list must be something else.
@ Valerie at 10.57
I have a paper copy of Kevin Meagher’s book, so if there is something specific you want quoted and can give me a page number for (are kindle versions paginated the same? – should be easy enough to find even if not), I can post it here, within reason to avoid copyright-breaching.
……….
@ Golfnut at 11.01
Hebrew is absolutely definitely not an Indo-European language (it’s Semitic, along with Arabic and a few others), so the fourth item in your list must be something else.
O/T but this has puzzled me for a while. How did the government at the time persuade Prof. Mccrone to keep quiet about his report? I can see them hiding the actual report away, but was the man himself paid or something to keep quiet? I can’t find anything but information on the report and it’s secrecy on Google. Nothing on why he didn’t speak out/up. Thanks
I believe I have found the source of the extra allocation of the billions in oil exports.
I was looking for something else but stumbled on this report.
ONS Country and regional public sector finance.
Apparently, for the first time, the ONS are issuing their own report on the nations finance, using *experimental statistics*.
As part of their new methodology Scotland is allocated it’s geographical share of oil n gas trade and revenue.
Not had time to read fully, but looks interesting.
Ben Madigan….report allocates £10 bn of deficit to NI in year to 2016.
Tatu3 @ 13:41,
If I recall correctly, McCrone was a civil servant at the time, in which case he would have been bound by the Oficial Secrets Act. (But someone will surely correct me if I’m wrong. =grin=)
But in any case, in that era, “leaking” was just not the done thing. And you mustn’t underestimate the Scots unfortunate tradition of self-supression for the sake of Unity, not least among the professional classes. (That very servile thing which all this BritNat rhetoric over “divisiveness” is intended to re-establish.)
Psst…don’t tell beeb Scotland gimps, but the rest of the world is watching us.
link to psmag.com
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
26 July at 21:03 ·
Again and again, we see other countries rising to the challenge of climate change. In Scotland, Wind turbines have generated 57% of their total energy needs during the first six months of 2017.
In the month of June alone, Scotland managed to generate over one million megawatt hours of electricity, enough to power 118% of Scottish homes. Their goal is to reach a 100% renewable energy system by the year 2020.
Just a few years ago, Trump sued Scotland because an offshore wind farm would ruin the view from one of his golf courses. Mr. President – the world is moving towards clean, inexpensive sustainable energy whether you like it or not. We will transform our planet’s energy system.”
Scotland’s still decades behind where we should be, but Bernie’s got to be the next Pres of the USA. Although our tory media will do same as what they did to Pres Obama, piss all over him.
No won by Fear & Fraud.
Scotland is a ‘marginal seat’ – it could go either way. Hence the extreme anxiety among Unionists. Many No voters in 2014, either voted through fear or through being taken in by lies. Westminster therefore knows only too well that the result in 2014 was a fraud and cannot be secure in the future.
The Yes Campaign must therefore do everything in their power to dispel the fear and expose the fraud which led to so many No votes.
I know many of you are afraid to, but start by displaying a Yes badge. I’ve worn mine every day since before IndyRef14 and while many notice the badge no one has reacted negatively. Same with the car.
Flags are great but only on certain occasions. Badges can be displayed all the time to be seen by everyone you meet or pass by.
I wonder if votes were lost through the fear of Yes voters to display their support for Independence by wearing a Yes badge.
Badges encourage others to vote yes. Wear yours. Today.
The National NEVER promotes the McCrone Report.
subscription not working properly
manandboy says:
11 August, 2017 at 2:23 pm
The National NEVER promotes the McCrone Report.
Why do you The National bashers put so much on The National? One paper out of hundreds of tory rags, is not the messianic thingee you think it is, unfortunately.
Just keep buying it, get in touch with them and politely suggest to them what you would like to see.
We all know that UKOK hackdom is a bit prickly about their wonderful and noble profession/professionalism/wildly mental vote yoon, vote tory, red and blue, use of fact:D
Just to show that WoS is nothing if not educational.
Here is a link to the language tree of ALL the Indo-European languages, both extant and historic.
Note that “Scots” is depicted as a language in its own right,
Following on from heedtracker at 2.07…
Here’s a good news story from yestrday that I picked up from Prof Robertson’s site today. As far as I can see, none of the msm’s web sites have featured the story.
‘University of Dundee is UK’s highest ranked institution for influencing innovation’
August 11, 2017 johnrobertson834
‘The University of Dundee has secured the highest ranking of any UK institution for its role in influencing innovation, a global report shows.
The Nature Index 2017 Innovation supplement, which scores an institution’s influence on patents through academic research, ranks the University of Dundee at 26 in its global listing, ahead of US Ivy League universities Harvard and Yale, which ranked 33 and 35 respectively, and Duke, which ranked 27.
Note that no other UK university made the top 50.
link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com
Not “too stoopid” either?
A fact I picked up from WoS twitter …
Section 181 of the Canadian Criminal Code prohibits wilful publication of a false statement or news that the person knows is false and that is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment.
If only such a law applied in the UK!
We need a free press, but that shouldn’t mean free to ’cause mischief to the public interest’ with fake news.
I understand other western countries have similar safeguards to their demoncracies in place.
Robert J Sutherland at 2.03pm. Thanks.
Hey Ghillie x ~
Here’s me first thought on how to help (from) being ‘British’…
Being the most excellent SCOTTISH always comes first, naturally.
But instead of being ‘British’, ye could be ‘T R I B I S H’
A mild twisting of the letters, Tribish any good?
iScotland Rules KO.
We’re tribal. 😉
Apologies for the duplication – I spotted a typing error and hoped I’d cancelled the first posting. Correcting it meant it wasn’t flagged up as a duplicate.
Anent Grouse shooting
£150m pa from how many thousands of hectares of land?
If they can’t generate a better return than that they shouldn’t have title to it
@ Gala at 2.35
Great find
Does Holyrood have the power to introduce a similar law in Scotland anyone?
Anent grouse shooting
£150m pa from how many thousands of hectares of land? If they can’t generate a better return than that then they shouldn’t have title to it.
Testing – two posts not appeared
Sorry – too impatient!!
Aikenheed says:
11 August, 2017 at 2:44 pm
Anent Grouse shooting
£150m pa from how many thousands of hectares of land?
If they can’t generate a better return than that they shouldn’t have title to it
Scottish Highland’s were cleared for several tory purposes. A lot of people have compared and contrasted how dead the Highlands are today but its taken a couple of hundred years.
Our neighbours with a similar geography to ours, have not really suffered anything like the Clearances from their rural regions, Instead they are cherished, worshiped even and they are subsequently full of life, business, massive tourism, great transport networks, lots of little towns and village, all thriving, from Austria and Italy, to Norway and Sweden, it’s all worth a visit, but it will make you weep for the Scottish Highland’s though.
Look at the bizzaro mess that is the A9, as the English motorway network has boomed for decades, our imperial master baiters decided that a deadly road through some of the world’s most beautiful scenery, is good enough for the sweaties.
And 55% said ok.
Holy fuck, wuv goat thum thurr tum.
569 MILLION open-air defecators daily, in India. Thurr ah wee bunull amang wurr, nae Scoattish Independence basturts, aland wae UkRap leein statisticians.
@ Brian Doonthetoon – great link thx – not stupid at all.
Re grouse shooting.
The landscape you see around you is largely man made. Apart a few scraps of temperate rainforest on the west coast and the highest mountains, everything else has been fashioned by our ancestors. Forests burned millennia ago.
The much photographed scenery would IMO be much improved if much of it was returned to something closer to wild OR more productively used.
Wild means tourism, productive means food and employment.
Upland glens are full of abandoned clachans. Two hundred years ago the inhabitants would have reared cattle high in hills in summer, fed on hay at one end of their dwellings in winter. Not suggesting we return to that! However a lot of upland areas would have been summer grazing pastures. They could again.
Other areas could be returned to the wild. The diversity of wildlife could be phenomenal and 10000s of tourists with cameras would be worth a lot more than 100s with guns!
iScotland could be a quite different country, in many more ways than might at first be imagined.
I’m a SNP supporter but I don’t expect The National to shout Yaay SNP! every day, they have to try to get other folk to read the thing as well as us or what’s the point
I’m not personally a fan of the paper but that’s for other reasons so cut them a wee bit of slack they’re doing their best for our side and that’s a dang sight more than we had before
Tatu
Gavin McCrone was an economist with the civil service.
Dr Jim says:
11 August, 2017 at 3:19 pm
I’m a SNP supporter but I don’t expect The National to shout Yaay SNP! every day, they have to try to get other folk to read the thing as well as us or what’s the point
Logic dictates, business wise, that there is a huge YES Scotland SNP voting market out here in Scotland.
But as the National people keep saying over and over, this is not what they are about.
And its clearly a boardroom, tory boardroom exec decision, produce a pro indy Scots national newspaper, but do not make it completely pro indy.
We live in a tory owned region, the National is a business punt. Appreciate that and its fine.
Look, every day of the UKOK year, BBC Scotland gimps fart in to tv action with a smirky botox pumped gal like Jacky Bird, and her tv news back drop is always a horrible view of a motorway bridge over the Clyde.
If it was me, a backdrop to the beeb gimp Scotland’s Scotland is shite, Scots are worse tv news, might be views of one of the worlds most beautiful capital cities, up there with Vienna, Paris, Rome, St Petersburg, Copenhagen… auld reekie Edinburgh.
But that would make Scots feel good and that’s not what beeb Scotland gimps are about at all.
@crazycat
Thank you for that! It was the size of the deficit that ben madigan was interested in.
I just remember it was covered in the commentary of NI economy. Page numbering differs on kindle to your paperback due to personal choice of font and size of print, so numbering different.
As you know, Kevin covered some shared costs with RoI, for tourism and economy. It’s interesting that even the DUP sometimes look to emulate what happens in RoI, where it’s making economic sense.
Aye, Tackety Beets (1-43pm, 10th August), ah heard oan Radio Scoattlin early 2017. Yoan heid-bummurr fae ah U.S. investment fund, thit bocht intae wurr Noarth Sea eiyull [fae Shell}.
Hiz wurds wurr, $15 (fifteen) U.S. oapurratin-costs, per barrel . Ah thocht whin ah heardit, it soundit ah guid hing tae haud tae mine.
For any The National detractors, and Rock in particular.
Fuck off. You are aligned with arses, and its all we have. I’m sick to death hearing it. Don’t buy it, but stop your sabotage.
The National are hosting Wee Ginger Dog next Tuesday at Muirfield Community centre in Cumbernauld. Kick off at 7pm. No ticket necessary.
“The National”. I feel some havering coming on. 🙂
The UK’s use of the word “national” must seem confusing to outsiders. It’s meaning varies a lot!
Clearly The National paper relates to Scotland.
The National Lottery refers to a UK wide institution.
The National Health Service never did relate to the UK because there was always NHS Scotland and NHS England&Wales (later split).
Long established National Buses is English. Likewise The National Grid which excludes the high voltage systems operated by the two Scottish energy companies (boards, as were).
The National Careers Service provides information, advice and guidance across England. Then there is the National Trust, England again.
The National Archive is an odd hybrid of some UK and Empire records while other collections are England only.
Also the National Crime Agency is somewhat complicated being essentially England with limited jurisdiction in Scotland.
Clear as mud, as they say.
We all know the United Kingdom is made up from several distinct nations. National is Scotland should mean, of Scotland. National in England should mean, of England. Simple. It isn’t always!
I would suggest the confused situation comes about because many South British confuse England and The UK. What is the nation? Should be clear, but to many down south, it never is or has been.
@Gala at 3:18
Excellent points.
And how many were made on Radio McGloom this a.m. when the £150m pa was being punted?
On the day we vote as and for iScotland, The National could distribute their Thursday issue in the morning for FREE to all of the bus, train stations and other public transport hubs in iScotland. FREE to you and me too, or crowdfund the iScotland issue, afterall, they’re the ones with the paper presses and delivery network! But then, we have Wings.
I would expect to see ‘Vote Yes’ as the front page cover.
Sometimes, it’s good to take a stand.
You forgot one @galamcennalath says at 4:00 pm
“The National”. I feel some havering coming on.
National Lampoons
😉
galamcennalath says:
11 August, 2017 at 3:18 pm
Re grouse shooting.
“The landscape you see around you is largely man made. Apart a few scraps of temperate rainforest on the west coast and the highest mountains, everything else has been fashioned by our ancestors. Forests burned millennia ago…..”
For me, it’s the holistic statement that might be made; Scotland, the country which is trailblazing the way for other nations through a green agenda for renewable energy, surplus electricity diversified into hI tech transport, industry and hydrogen fuels from sea water, while at the same time progressing from conservation of habitat to full restoration of lost habitat and ecosystems as a deliberate, concerted remedial action.
If we were clever enough, and produced an innovative but integrated strategy for the whole country, society, and economy, then in a few years, we could be seeing some incredibly dynamic and visionary ideas to rival and exceed what Norway has done and achieved with its oil.
Suppose we did try to replant vast acreages of Caledonian Pine forest, because we’d be restoring it, we could install modern infrastructure and facilities at a grassroots level, so we might reap the rewards of eco tourism and activity tourism without invading and disrupting an established ecosystem.
There’s no need to restrict it to forestry. If we have successful marine reserves, might it be possible to integrate these with developments in wave energy and marine wind turbines. Perhaps we can develop underwater observation facilities for tourism, and perhaps submersible vehicles see local development and diversification from commercial applications to leisure. Sounds ambitious, but Scotland has some terrific visibility for Scuba diving, and if we manage the environment in a particular direction, then who knows what we might create.
With the carte Blanche Scotland would have as a new country with its own constitution, we could make our country into a thoroughly marvellous and integrated project designed to benefit everybody from our wealthiest to our poorest, from our humblest water vole to the most exotic reintroduction of bears and wolves if we’re ready.
We could perhaps look at having activity camps like the US, where kids go off to Summer Camps and get involved with skill and team building environmental challenges.
I don’t know any other country in the world standing on the threshold of such opportunity. It’s almost as if Scotland is its own biosphere project… or could be. Not just for the spectacle of seeing it done, but the spiritual enrichment of doing it.
Rock and man and boy
The National is all we have on a daily basis and pro Indy despite the carping.
Rock disnae read it anyway but I’m sure let’s his persona slip once when a reference to an English paper he reads. Obviously pro Indy of course.
Re snp and Indy movement we should recognise that Ruth the Davidson is being stamped down by her Tory colleagues and for all to see. Mundell is well Mundell and our loyal north east coast fishermen are being humped and not by a whale but by their own pro Brit fishing chief. Dugdale made the bloomer re rail performance and Rennie – who is he?
The pro brexiters are messing up and we should be happy for their lies coming home to roost but the time for a full campaign showing that independence and self determination is the way will be required for the new year. Timing is everything.
Funnit.
Ah dinnae ken, hoo tae dae yoan facy stuff.
Sah, lang-haun : link to kitco.com
Oaperaetin coasts, ah unnurr $15 U.S. dollars per barrel, it siz.
@ Valerie / ben
Flicking through looking for figures, this is what I’ve found in Kevin Meagher:
p73
p.79
He then cites a major study from “2015 which makes the case that Irish unity brings with it massive economic wins for both parts of the island of Ireland.” His reference is this: link to prcg.com
The original report may be a better source than Meagher’s precis of it. There are disaggregation issues with NI statistics just as there are with Scotland, but the report does include a model where the RoI “takes on NI’s deficit”. The report has 84 pages and I haven’t read them all!
I also haven’t managed to find an explicit reference to a deficit value in Meagher – the £9 billion in my first quote may be the closest, though it isn’t really the same thing.
Breeks
All of that is being 100% blocked by the filthy rich and their BBC liggers and gimps.
link to bbc.co.uk
The illegal beavers?!
Only in the tory region of greater England, Scotland.
One of the great yoon tory triumphs, red and blue, in say the last 40 years, is to make Scots turn their backs on their own beautiful country.
Its been an ongoing propaganda war, by the BBC, on the Scottish psyche, that their land is not worth anything, that blood sports are to be celebrated.
You can see this specifically in the way great Scottish cities like Glasgow have turned their backs on the Clyde.
Its almost toryboy petulant really. All cities in Europe bar Glasgow, make massive use of the river waters they’re built on but not Glasgow.
It used to be so different, with great days out of Glaswegians doon the water, to Dunoon maybe and beyond. Or even The Broons and their but n ben, in the Highlands.
All of that life has gone, even a but n ben in Scotland is an upper middle class luxury.
Again, all of this UK/England centric, London and English cultural domination is not by chance.
We all probably know and care far more about English football leagues than we ever do about how our Scottish Highlands are essentially deserts, bloody play grounds for the filthy rich who love killing small animals for fun.
It is all rather pricy too. If you need to ask how much, you probably don’t have the £70k you need for one gun.
link to purdey.com
For Ben Madigan
I stopped being a Kindle numpty, and have some stats from Kevin’s book on NI.
——————-
The NI Executive employs around 27k Civil Servants managing the affairs of 1.8m people, while the EU Commission has 33k officials dealing with the EUs 743m people.
——————-
NI economy (2012) was worth £37.2billion (roughly equivalent to the size of Yemens) compared to £129 billion for Scotland, and £1.6 trillion for UK.
————————-
GDP per head was £20,409, compared to Scotland’s £24,317, and £25,985 for the UK as a whole.
————————
There are two fairly obvious conclusions. The first is that NI is the least valuable, dynamic and diverse part of the UK economy. Second, it is plain enough that the economic dividend of peace and political process has not been felt keenly enough.
Clearly, thirty years of the Troubles hardly helped matters, but NI economic woes are deep seated.
———————-
The above are the exact extracts from Kevin Meagher book.
United Ireland, why unification is inevitable and how it will come about.
Btw, with The National’s FREE iScotland day issue, ye could also add a “Wee Coloured Book” to each issue with the mail-drop.
Mibbies the “Wee Oil Money Book”.
Bring it HOME.
Oops for the bonbon there, sweet.
Btw, with The National’s FREE iScotland day issue, ye could also add a “Wee Coloured Book” to each issue with the mail-drop.
Mibbies the “Wee Oil Money Book”.
Bring it HOME.
Problem for our imperial master baiters is that when people start to get close the natural world about them, they start to love and cherish it. And they tend to not want to see it destroyed, for fun, Highland and Lowland. This is a year ago but its on its way again.
link to bbc.co.uk
A protest has been held over wildfowl being shot at a Moray nature reserve.
A compromise over the shooting of wild geese and ducks at Findhorn Bay had been agreed, but later broke down after it was rejected by a national shooting body.
The six-month shooting season began on Thursday.
Or this,
link to insidemoray.com
A MORAY CAMPAIGN group calling for an outright ban on the shooting of geese in Findhorn Bay has been meeting with local MSP and Scottish Rural Affairs and Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead.
Over 800 people in the Findhorn area are behind a petition that claims an increase in shooting has resulted in dead and injured birds falling on to their homes.
I just hope they don’t release Lynx, as has been mooted,,because they will only end up dead.
These Arseholes just can’t leave the poor creatures alone.
@
manandboy says:
11 August, 2017 at 12:55 pm
” … Its a bit like climate change which millions of people believe doesn’t exist and millions of people do.”
Nah! Climate change is not in any way remotely like the existence of God. The existence of God, any kind of god, is the rather stupid attempt to prove that a concept existing only within the mind can exist in fact. Climate change is a fact of planet Earth that has been a fact of planet Earth since ever Planet Earth has existed.
The very land we walk upon carries great numbers of solid evidence that the climate that has affected that soil has always been changing. The very rocks that comprise Scotland prove climate change.
Whether the present changes in those constantly changing weather patterns are affected by the activities of human beings is also true beyond any doubt for the evidence is real and unmistakable.
The only matter that can be argued about is whether the present global warming is mainly due to human activity or mainly part of the normal Earthly weather changes.
Here on Wings the currently thread’s topic, is overwhelming evidence of climate changes. In what is now Scotland the coal, oil and natural gas that is presently being extracted from Scotland is a direct result of changing weather patterns through the ages.
These are all the results of the decay of vegetation from when the climate was tropical in what is now a much more temperate Scotland.
There is not a shred of evidence that there is a God, much less one as depicted by the Christian faith. Note that it is termed a faith for the very good reason that there can be no evidence and the believer must just have faith that a God exists.
Basically it is not possible to prove the existence of something that leaves no sign that it exists but is only believed to do so as a concept of the believer.
Hammer of the Scots Severin Carrell’s attempts at trolling us, no. 2309.
link to archive.is
“I voted for Corbyn. And I still want Scottish independence
Cat Boyd”
Why Ms. Boyd votes for JC and his party, a SLab clusterfuck of raging red tory yoons, 110% against everything and anything Scottish democracy, is not answered, by Ms. Boyd, who ever she is.
Who is she?
• Cat Boyd is co-founder of the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland, and was a prominent activist in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.
Oh.
“In retrospect, Scottish devolution was like a puppet show, where the magic works if you can suspend disbelief and ignore the strings. It just about functioned when the nationalists had no hope of power, and the Scottish executive of the day would loyally defer to London on important matters. ”
Ms Boyd might not be a YES for Scotland’s nation state after all.
Although it is pretty radical, to co-found a radical Scottish independence campaign, yet now campaign against it all and vote for a Labour party that is also campaigning against it all, very radical:D
Very nice of Graun gimps to let her tell their readers that too and the cheque will come in very handy, for the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland, now campaigning against it.
heedtracker says:
Someone who hasn’t been keeping up with Scottish politics ?
Maybe I should vote for Ruth Davidson because I want to stay in the EU? Or Kezia Dugdale because I believe in free education? Or maybe Willie Rennie because of his party’s principles and faultless honest? Or Yogi Bear for his policies in arboreal defecation?
@colin alexander says: 11 August, 2017 at 12:15 pm:
“Stu Campbell said: Pro UDI supporters say: “If UDI is in the manifesto and the SNP win, nothing else matters. That’s a democratic mandate.”
Wee bit of friendly advice, Colin. Never join a debating society.
You will never win a debate as you have no idea of how to debate.
In the first place, not even Westminster has ever attempted to disprove, either in law or by political argument, that the United Kingdom is not the direct result of a treaty between two equally sovereign partner kingdoms.
They have only forced their changes upon the parties without legally changing the original terms of the treaty. To make changes to the treaty would legally require that both parties renegotiate the original terms.
If they did so just who would be the Scottish Kingdom’s legal representatives in the negotiations? I’ll answer that for you Colin for it is obviously something that has never been considered by you. If Westminster was to attempt to legally alter the terms of the Treaty of Union then the legally sovereign people of Scotland under the undisputed terms of the Treaty itself, (read Article of Union 19), is that both Scots, (and English law by implication), are sacrosanct in perpetuity.
Now you should at least comprehend exactly why the Yoons are so very desperate to keep another referendum off the political table.
The people of Scotland, being legally sovereign, are the opposite authority to the Queen of England, (The no longer existent), Parliament of England being delegated under English law to legally exercise the English Royal Sovereignty are the other legal partner in the Treaty of Union.
So just which United Kingdom court of law is qualified to rule on such a matter, Colin?
There is no elected as such Parliament of England and I’m absolutely certain that Westminster’s least favourite choice is to attempt to wash the Westminster dirty linen in an international court of Justice, (Note that is NOT the same Court as that of the European Union.
So the fact is that as the people of Scotland are legally sovereign they cannot declare UDI. They can, though, declare the treaty of Union legally over. The only snag being how to get and present the collective will of the legally sovereign people of Scotland and I can think of only one authorities body that could do such a thing – The SNP/SG. Ironically set-up by Westminster itself.
The English Über Nationalist London centric anti Scottish view of recent constitutional events ….
link to archive.is
One one level shocking, but then if this is the best they can come up with, you can’t help but chuckle.
galamcennalath says:
11 August, 2017 at 6:10 pm
heedtracker says:
That Boyd thing pretty much says it all about her and her party’s almost zero vote base. Did anyone vote for them at all, other than their actual members?
She says,
“That’s why, I’m standing in the middle of two-way traffic, as a pro-independence Corbyn supporter. Have no doubt, there are thousands of others like me.”
Thousands?
JC’s got away with murder so far but he’s just another Westminster chancer.
Or how does the President of CND, then become a prospective candidate as UK Prime Minister and then over night, tell teamGb.
Vote JC and his radical New NEw Old Labour and we will buy Trident 2.0, only £200+bn, to be dumped in our Scotland region, of greater England, because everyone knows how dangerous nuke missiles really are.
link to cnduk.org
With democrats like Boyd being used by yoon culture in Scotland like this, how bad must things really be, future of this farce union wise?
@galamcennalath 6:34pm
Aye, it’s another world doon there. They haven’t a clue about Scotland. This is going to get politically nasty. Frankly I’d rather have it that way than suffer more anti-Scottish BS from britnat ignoramuses.
There are no traffic islands in politics. An Independence supporter also supporting one of the leading lights against independence, who’s got the funny fags.
The National front page;
I have no idea where Cat Boyd is going with her position on Labour. On the other hand if there are a few thousand Rise members perhaps they should join Labour, significantly tilting the membership towards pro independence, ditch the Blairites, as Momentum in England has done, and work with the other pro Yes parties to achieve independence.
I guess the Blairites will cry entryism but it seems to have worked in England.
It would certainly be a sight worth watching, particularly in the vicinity of Severin’s face 😉
@galamcennalath
You’ll notice the dog whistle ‘derail brexit’ horse shit?
THIS from Mike Russell –
“Today was a useful opportunity for an exchange of views between ourselves and the UK Government on Brexit and the repatriation of powers it will involve.
“But following today’s meeting we remain absolutely clear that, as things stand, we will not recommend to the Scottish Parliament that it gives its consent to the EU Withdrawal Bill.
“The bill as currently drafted is impractical and unworkable. It is a blatant power grab which would take existing competence over a wide range of devolved policy areas, including aspects of things like agriculture and fishing, away from Holyrood, giving them instead to Westminster and Whitehall.
“That means that unless there are serious and significant changes to the proposed legislation, the strong likelihood is that the Scottish Parliament will vote against the repeal bill.
“To be clear, that would not block Brexit and we have never claimed to have a veto over EU withdrawal.”
Sign the deal? Uh huh.
What the Express epically fails to understand, impart or even research correctly, is that this is about harmful effects of Brexit on a partner nation that did not vote for Brexit. A nation partner whose population were categorically guaranteed continued membership of the EU in return for voting no, not in an advisory referendum, but a legally binding referendum ballot.
The Express have not only failed to impart this information to their readership, but also the teeny tiny factoid that it was Westminster government who called the EU referendum against the warnings and better judgement of the Scottish government and who dumped this entire constitutional and economic omnishambles in everyone’s lap.
England and regrettably Wales can have the Brexit they voted for. No one is saying they cannot. Equally regrettably, Northern Ireland’s appalling situation looks no better.
How and ever, Scotland, as the only other signatory to the treaty of union, has a say on the protection of its interests and population. Scotland the only nation to return a pro EU vote across 100% of wards. No Scottish government worth the name could or should ignore the constitutional and economic ramifications of these votes since 2014. Now that would be abandoning the day job.
So again. Sign the deal? Well… Naw!
Mind you we are talking about Express hacks metrosplaining in fluent knee jerk to an Express readership so…. (shrugs)
heedtracker says:
“Just keep buying it, get in touch with them and politely suggest to them what you would like to see.”
Done all that heedtracker, twice, to no avail. I’m a little disappointed you think I hadn’t.
Done all that heedtracker, twice, to no avail. I’m a little disappointed you think I hadn’t.
Its my thing, disappointing people:D
Picture the dry laughter from the gimps next door in Pacific Quay, bwahaha Swinney, you’re finished as far as they’re concerned.
link to stv.tv
heed tracker
“Jeremy Corbyn has a truly humane and decent approach to international relations “, I guess at the time the article was written (May) they didn’t know he was for a Brexit.
@Robert Peffers
Thank you Robert for the detailed answer.
So, I take from that, that your view is that Scotland can indeed declare itself independent with full legal authority, as it’s always been a sovereign kingdom.
Hamish100,
“Rock disnae read it anyway but I’m sure let’s his persona slip once when a reference to an English paper he reads. Obviously pro Indy of course.”
Pray tell WOS readers which English paper I read.
The likes of you are unable to counter the points I make and have to resort to falsehoods.
Dave McEwan Hill,
“Rock at 8.57
Bullshit. The last thing we need is distraction like arguing about deficits or not in a Scottish economy that is trapped in an collapsing UK economy.”
If this article is good enough on WOS why would it be a distraction in the “independence supporting” The National?
Robert, Nah!
You’re great on Scottish history, but on Salvation History you clearly know only what your own prejudices tell you. I can put you in touch with some good Scottish Ministers if you like though I’m sure you’re surrounded by them in Fife.
@heedtracker who asked – “Ms. Boyd, who ever she is. Who is she?”
A kinswoman of the Boyd clan, who are a sept of the Stuarts
link to en.wikipedia.org
Why is the National getting picked on?
Why isn’t the National reporting on this Scottish oil wealth scandal?
Not every Stewart is sib to the king.
link to names.gukutils.org.uk
@ Valerie I do not question in any way that NI is a basket case (economically. socially etc)
It is the mirror opposite of Scotland economically in that scotland adds to the UK exchequer and that NI is a constant drain.
Indeed compared with the Republic of ireland, Ni is in dire straits economically speaking. So i am in no way supporting its continuing existence, despite the DUP game-plan for post-brexit NI
link to eurofree3.wordpress.com
heedtracker @ 17:52,
(and others since),
In that article, Ms Boyd also opines:
What a giveaway. What the hell does “internationalist” mean in her far-lefty lexicon? A withdrawal from mutually-beneficial mutual co-operation between sovereign nations to be replaced by… …a big fat null. Everyone on their own, to be picked off one-by-one by the major powers like the US and Russia. To end up (as Alyn Smith reminds us) on the sharp end of a “TTIP on steroids” with the US. Is that what she understands by “solidarity” and “internationalism”?
Just what planet does Cat Boyd live on, with her dilettante Nirvana socialism and her 100 followers and barely many more voters? What a fake. Splitterism personified. No wonder she is now being courted by BritNat media gimps like Sevvy.
I also take very strong exception indeed to her artificial contrast between “socialism” and “nationalism”, as if one is forced to be one or the other. This faux distinction is larded with typical arrogant Labour-speak, the familiar implied slur that a “nationalist” is some kind of political low-life far inferior to her self-proclaimed socialist high priesthood.
If she consulted more with her supposed Spanish comrades maybe she would discover that we are “independistas”. We have various political persuasions and none. And our wish for self-determination is far more universal and superior to her arrogant self-satisfied little doctrinaire bubble.
In my opinion, The National would be vastly improved by dispensing with her miniscule-minority fair-weather-friend self-promoting pretensions.
Robert J. Sutherland,
“In my opinion, The National would be vastly improved by dispensing with her miniscule-minority fair-weather-friend self-promoting pretensions.”
Why would it want to?
Its only purpose is for gullible independence supporters to buy it without having any postive effect to the independence cause, in my humble opinion.
Rock @ 21:10,
=sigh=
Folks,
Whether the ‘Scottish deficit’ is 15BN or 60BN you simply need to ask the following question to the slaveirng unionists..
“where can I buy Scottish bonds?”
Well of course you can’t, because we don’t issue them!
Also any economist worth their salt would perform a stock(debt)-flow(deficit) analysis of a country’s finances but of course yoon media looks at the deficit in isolation.
You may remember an economist (no not the dog food amateur blogger) being invited onto the John Beattie show, remarking on Scottish tax revenue and how it obviously fell short of fiscal spending. He also commented on tax revenues from the city of London being very high. A proper stock-flow analysis would have shown the correct context for this high tax yield, namely the bailouts given to the banking system and the city (getting on for 1 trillion pounds). GERS is just a snapshot in time of the tax revenue. It would show that the origin of these £S of PAYE from the city was government spending. It’s a bit like a lottery winner claiming they are self-made.
Talking about a deficit in isolation is like claiming a river has no estuary..
@ capella – you are right Capella.It has nothing to do with being sibs of the Royal Stuart family.
“the Boyds are also descendants of Walter Fitz Alan, First High Stewart of Scotland,the first name listed as a Sept of Stewart, is Boyd. We are listed as a Sept of the original, Royal Branch of Stewart. Robert Boyd was purportedly the grandson of Walter Fitz Alan, First High Stewart and son of Walter’s son Simon Fitz Walter. Robert’s cousin was Walter, Third High Stewart”.
“At the time that it was necessary to take surnames, instead of being referred to as Walter Fitz Alan and Robert Fitz Simon, they became Walter Stewart and Robert Boyd (Buidhe). You will find Robertus de Boydus listed in records at 1205”.
“We are a Lowland Family, not a Highland Clan. We are recognized as a Clan in our own right, and not just as a Sept of Stewart”.
“With regard to the Tartans……
Boyds are “entitled” to wear any of the 66 Stewart Tartans — with a few exceptions”
link to news.rootsweb.com
I am by no means attempting to give undue, or indeed any, influence to clan structure,affiliations etc in modern Scotland.
However, it is clear Ms Cat Boyd is a kinswoman of the Boyd clan.
It is also clear that many Scotsmen and women are proud to belong to their respective clans and to wear their own clan tartans on appropriate occasiona.
A Mackenzie would never wear a Macdonald tartan, for example
Brian Powell says:
11 August, 2017 at 8:22 pm
heed tracker
“Jeremy Corbyn has a truly humane and decent approach to international relations “, I guess at the time the article was written (May) they didn’t know he was for a Brexit.
To be fair he was a very reluctant Remain. He was on that C4 satire grot the Last Leg, or something and he told them he out of ten on Leave or Remain, he was a meh 7.
But look at him now, Leave mental as anything, probably an 11 now. Pure Westminster Labour, died in the wool opportunists.
Maybe in the round, a PM JC might be a more rational post Scotland ref2 independence negotiator, than say an enraged tory zoomer like PM Teresa, or Gove, or worse PM BoJO the clown.
Holy fuck.
JC can make it though and its going to be very weird watching red tory SLab trying to deal with Momentum types.
Even on the basis of SLabour picking a Daily Heil neo fascist like they did as their Press dude.
How will a triumphant Momentum, who do look the real leftie deal, even stand to be in the same room as an ex Daily Heil nutter like Roden, as SLab and Lab discuss how to take down Scottish democracy?
No matter how much Dugdale and chums are paying Roden, he’s pure far right tory and there aint no undercover tory/spook planting shenanigans going on there.
Momentum will be watching SLab’s bizzarro picks with scratching heads.
link to twitter.com
Rock. 9.10pm
Your humble opinion resonates with me.
McDuff says:
11 August, 2017 at 10:00 pm
Rock. 9.10pm
Your humble opinion resonates with me.
You must be very easily resonated.
He bores the pants off everyone else.
just to support what i was saying earlier today and yesterday about no clear figures for NI’s deficit.
Its size has become extremely important in the Reunification of ireland debate and discussion
First 8 mins approximately
link to bbc.co.uk
PS UK obfuscation is similar in NI and Scotland
O/T
I have just watched a recording of the BBC4 programme on the Tornado 100mph run.
Tornado is a new build A1 class steam locomotive epitomising “British Engineering Skills”
Operating company is DB cargo UK Ltd. A wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG, registered address Potsdamer Platz 2, Berlin.
DB Cargo is the largest rail freight haulier in the UK
link to uk.dbcargo.com
Irony?
Brexit?
Cat Boyd (and her Great Hero JC, for that matter) might be better advised to put her (and his) prejudices aside and absorb the lesson of a far more authoritative article than Sevvy’s little puff-piece on her:
link to archive.is
Not least the following acute observation:
That was an amazing find, Stu and shocking too. Thank you for this. This is going to be incredibly helpful to rebute those obnoxious yoons that insist in claiming that the oil is a hindrance to Scotland rather than a blesing.
15bn is a hell of a lot of money. Isn’t it curious the coincidence in the figure with the alleged deficit hole in GERS? One has to wonder what else are these liars hiding.
By the way, if the 6000 sq miles that labour so generously took from Scotland to give to England were included in Scotland’s allocation, how much of a difference would that be?
Irony?
Brexit?
Last week, we watched a huge cargo ship with giant wind turbine props on its deck, sail towards Glasgow I think.
The ship had BBC Charters, all down the side of the hull. Given that BBC Scotland are all the most ferocious anti wind energy climate change deniers in Scotland and passionate warriors against all the evil turbines thrown up by the even eviler nats ruining their region, …
Here they are in fact.
link to bbc-chartering.com
[…] a bit of a story happening around Scotland’s oil trade since Wings Over Scotland highlighted an otherwise completely unreported change in the way the UK measures how much oil it […]
A word about publicity seeking couldnae pass a quali airheaded infant school Cat Boyd
FAKE!
Deny it’s existence and it’ll go away
@colin alexander says:11 August, 2017 at 8:24 pm:
” … your view is that Scotland can indeed declare itself independent with full legal authority, as it’s always been a sovereign kingdom.”
Yes but while Scotland has always been a sovereign kingdom her people have only been legally sovereign since 1320.
England also has always been a sovereign kingdom but as England alone is a younger country than Scotland and added Wales to the Kingdom in 1284, (Statute of Rhuddlan), then the English monarch became Lord of Ireland after the Holy Roman Se appointed him thus but then forced the parliament of Ireland to pass the Crown of Ireland act in 1542, thus adding Ireland to the Kingdom of England.
More significantly the English parliamentarians rebelled against their English Monarchy in 1688, (The Glorious Revolution), and imported the joint foreign monarchs of the House of Orange, King Billy & Queen Mary but as England and Scotland were still independent kingdom their actions began the Jacobite uprisings that England still claims was a Jacobite Rebellion. Yet as Scotland remained independent until 1707 they could not rebel against a monarchy that was not their own.
Some people are still fighting that battle in Scotland today and they say the will not surrender. ( Cough!).
Another significant factor is that the last, elected as such, Parliament of England last sat on the last day of April 1707.
So how come we have an unelected as such Westminster now being the de facto Parliament of England?
“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?”
I’m not sure about this, but it could be because the UK had a derogation until 2017 to implement ESA2010, which was due to be fully implemented in 2014 in all EU member states – the UK and some others got that derogation because it’s a lot of work to do. Up till this year it’s been producing its Treasury figures according to ESA95 (1995 standard). It’s why Hughes Hallett said GERS was greatly inaccurate, and didn’t meet international standards, such as the USA and Canada have.
Already last October, some tables were producesd to ESA2010 which changed the amounts in an interesting fashion, but that escaped quietly into background noise.
It’s a reason I’m going to be very interested in GERS 2016-17 when they come out in a week or two.
But it might not be that at all, it might make no difference. On the other hand it might, and GERS can be amneded backwards as well – we might see “new” versions for previous years. But hey, I really could be talking a load of crap.
@Heedtracker –
We need you, or someone else, to give us a list of tell-tale signs to help identify those who are ‘easily resonated’.
It’s the type of thing that really needs to be nipped in the proverbial, and about time too if you ask my opinion to be perfectly honest.
It would explain a lot of things though, such as why so much sh*t has been thrown at Indy and the SNP in the last few frantic despairing weeks, perhaps a last-ditch attempt to reduce YES below 40% and make it harder to climb back up. Also why the SNP don’t do much defence or attack on these figures – they’re biding their time.
I did spend a good few hours on ESA2010, downloading every paper in sight but all I could really find was handbooks on how to do the conversion work, and memos about how difficult it was and costly and time-consuming and blah blah blah. I tried my best but they didn’t take to skim-reading or keyword searching and my eyes glazed over with the sheer boredom of it – possibly deliberate in the way it was all written for an outsider.
So I really am on totally unsure gound on this, and wouldn’t bet a button on it, let alone my shirt.
heedtracker @ 22:46,
The shippers have nothing to do with our wonderful broadcaster, heedy (as I suspect you realise). They’re an outfit headquartered in Bremen, so at a guess the BBC stands for “Bremen Bulk Carriers” or somesuch.
Might be a great improvement if the managements swapped, though. We would surely get a far fairer deal if our broadcaster were run by the Germans, while our present shower were obliged to sail off into the sunset… =grin=
Yeah I missed out that bit. From what I could gather, the point of ESA2010 was to force member states to account national spending more acccurately and consistently – including member states’ regional accounts. Scotland is of course a “region”, one of 300 odd in the EU.
Why did they do it? Look at the year… Why the hell are people still surprised about all of this!?
Damn it, we know they rigged the referendum too, obvious!
When will people wake the fuck up!?
Poor Rock . You can’t even remember what paper you said you read?
You don’t read the National. Remember the Guardian?
An oblique mention of Cat Boyd here, the closest to publicity I’d give the woman: link to wp.me
Mornin’ Saturday.
Ye know what that means…
SO many topical choices to craft from.
Links
link to alynsmith.eu
link to snp.org
link to blogs.bmj.com
link to thecommongreen.scot
link to scottovoce.wordpress.com
link to craigmurray.org.uk
This Huge New Study Reveals What The British Public Really Wants From Brexit
link to archive.is
link to legalcheek.com
link to thecanary.co
link to lbc.co.uk
link to thebalticpost.com
Trump threatens Venezuela with unspecified ‘military option’
link to archive.is
[…] As a continuation of this theme I have, over the last few days, been aware of the reports on the Wings Over Scotland blog that UK Regional Trade Data has been restated to allocate to Scotland the benefit of oil sales […]
Nana; Good Morning, dull day again. Thank You, for your hard work providing these links for us on a daily basis, they are very much appreciated, my dear Friend, especially at this time when we know that you have a lot more than links to be bothering about.
I hope that one of the good people on Wings in the Aberdeen area will be able to offer some help asap. Thank You, again. Kettle’s on! 🙂
Good morning Smallaxe, Thank you for your concern, very much appreciated.
It’s a nice day here. Best make the most of it before the lunatics cause havoc.
Who are the baddies? I’m sure the bbc will be along to tell us fairly soon.
link to bloomberg.com
link to global.handelsblatt.com
Mornin’ Nana
Slept in… It’s Saturday. 🙂
Richard Murphy’s take on it:
link to taxresearch.org.uk
Constantly referring to GERS towards indy2 would be a mistake folks
GERS is a selective account of a Scottish economy trapped in a failing UK economy and has absolutely no sensible relevance to any set of accounts that an independent Scotland would produce.
Any Scottish deficits indicated in any GERS account should always be described as “Scotland’s UK deficit” or “the cost to Scotland of remaining in the UK”.
The key point here is not so much GERS but that Scotland has no control over its deficit.
A deficit is an indicator of the activity of the private sector I.e – households, business etc.
Higher deficits indicate lower tax yield. The only antidote to this is to increase the purchasing power in the private sector. More money means more demand for goods and services. More demand means more sales meaning more job creation which in turn returns more tax receipts, more VAT revenue etc etc. This results in a smaller gap between tax yield and govt spending (lower deficit).
Capitalism runs on sales.
A government can only increase purchasing power by increasing the money supply. The scotttish government doesn’t have the power to do this.
I might get shot for saying this but economically the term ‘Scottish executIve’ is a much more accurate description of what holyrood can do. Focusing on GERS is like feeding the beast.
@ScottieDog / @Dave McEwan Hill
Yes to both of you, but (there’s always a but), in Indy Ref 1 we used GERS (the famous £4.4 billion) to support our side, and since the oil slump, the unionists used it to support theirs.
Hey! We have something in common at last! And when you have something in common, you can work to use it to your advantage, to promote your aims, not theirs.
So – if GERS improves and becomes magically accurate, both sides can interpret the same sets of results, without arguing about detail. And that’s what the undecided or soft NOes and YESses can see.
And yes, an illustrative example set of accounts for an indy Scotland highlighting the differences, is a project that should be done – by the SG.
McDuff,
“Rock. 9.10pm
Your humble opinion resonates with me.”
The silent majority who read this blog are with us.
Our worst enemies are the clueless pompous armchair pundits posting here who are incapable of seeing things as they are.
Hamish100,
“Poor Rock . You can’t even remember what paper you said you read?
You don’t read the National. Remember the Guardian?”
When did I say I read the Guardian?
The likes of you are unable to counter the points I make and have to resort to falsehoods.
[…] the revelations yet again by Wings Over Scotland on how Scotland has somehow NOT been allocated its true wealth from its oil in 2014 and 2015 to the […]
[…] As a continuation of this theme I have, over the last few days, been aware of the reports on the Wings Over Scotland blog that UK Regional Trade Data has been restated to allocate to Scotland the benefit of oil sales […]
With respect, do you readers really think Scotland will gain independence through the ballot box ?. I think not.
Whit, thurr ballit-boax, urr thae readurrs?
Yoan Sun, wullnae set thurr nicht.
Ah bad loat, thae Fergusons. Yoan yins, wae wan ‘s’.
Isabel Melville says:
10 August, 2017 at 12:54 pm
“I’m not up on international accounting, but can someone please have a look at Gibraltar’s fuel consumption? Latest figures acording to wikipaedia is 42,000 barrels per day which seems a lot. In fact, it accounts for over 50% of Gibraltar’s export figures.
Gibraltar being a tax haven, is this money missing from our coffers? Or is it taxed at source?”
Most of that will be fuel for ships. Gibraltar is a very busy port for bunkering with a big fleet of tankers which refuel everyting from ferries to giant bulk carriers aand oil tankers.
Would clearly Explain the (Supposed) Black hole then
“why change the rules now?”
Because it might soon be necessary to explain to post-Brexit England that it cannot survive economically without Scotland. So any course of action is justified.