The Modern Politician
Posted on
February 10, 2026 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A play in three acts:
And you thought ours were spineless.
Poor old Anas, though.
If 24 hours is a long time in politics these days, a week is forever.
And a month hardly even bears thinking about.
As for a year and a half, well, the less said the better.
Nobody can go until after May.
Simply because Labour is going to lose big in May. That will demand resignations.
If somebody resigns now, their replacement will still have to resign in May. So the only sensible option is to postpone the first resignation(s) until then.
It really isn’t that complicated!
Swinney took over not long before the 2024 election, got absolutely horsed, but didn’t have to resign.
I would say it was Flynn that got horsed.
But then he didn’t have to resign either.
I posted earlier that I think Sarwar is safe. I also think his breaking ranks was part of a plan orchestrated by himself, Starmer and the cabinet. By siding with Scotland’s dislike for Starmer, he boosts Labour support in May 2026.
But it’s only 12 weeks away. We’ll find out soon enough.
H McH: that is precisely the conclusion I have come to, too. By posing as a pro Scottish Labour Leader and possibly threatening a breakaway from Westminster, he riled the Labour MPs in Westminster, who are always rabidly anti Scottish independence of any kind, into throwing their weight behind Starmer. The Scots manipulated and used like old hankies yet again. The mantra has always been that Labour would never come to power or stay in power without its Scottish MPs, just as the Unionist trope is that the UK cannot remain of Scotland secedes. The only light at the end of this particular tunnel is that Labour will lurch from one crisis to the next and may not survive anyway.
The other Scottish issue is the FWS case against the SG. The big guns are already in the pro ‘trans’ camp shouting the odds, which would suggest, ever so slightly, that the FWS case was the better one. Even if they lose, the SG will not fall over this issue because few care enough about women and girls in Scotland to make it a make-or-break issue, but it will weaken them, and with the Sandie Peggie appeal coming up, again, this might not damage them enough, for the same reasons, to cause them to lose the forthcoming election, but they will be seen as weak and under the control of a powerful lobby.
If they align once again with the Greens, we can expect bedlam.
I’m going to have to be a teensy bit controversico here, but I have to admit that I can’t stand that Winnie Mandela.
…and we still don’t know the official length of “a generation”…….
I’ve never known a prime minister as hated as Two Tier, and I remember Maggie Thatcher.
At least with Maggie you had the sense you could vote your way out.
People know now that MP’s don’t intend to represent you, they’re out to harm you. Most people you speak to these days no longer have any hope for the future, most expect things to get worse. And they probably will.
The UK is closer to becoming a failed state than most people realise.
Also, at least Thatcher stuck to her fucking guns. You can’t tell what Starmer believes in from one day to the next.
Zionism?
If only he did believe in Zionism.
We could have a grown up debate between the pros and the antis of this country. We wouldn’t have to wait until the changing demographics, fuelled by uncontrolled, third-world, medievalist mindset immigration, brings bloodshed to our streets.
As the immigrants are indisposed to the use of anything other than lethal force to get their own way.
She, like every other leading politician, reacted to public pressure. She abolished the poll tax and did not introduce the national curriculum as planned.So did not always stick to her guns.
Her legacy remains though. The neo liberal policies she brought in have been followed by every other UK government.
The deindustrialisation of Thatcher has ruined the health of much of the Scottish population and of the North of England.
See the research of Scott-Samuel and his team if you doubt it. Or Allik et al for his research into the effect of deindustrialisation on Scotland’s massive drug problem. Or David Walsh for his analysis of excess deaths under the Tories and austerity and the decline in the poorest populations of Scotland of life expectancy.
That’s where sticking to Thatcher’s guns gets you.
“The deindustrialisation of Thatcher has ruined the health of much of the Scottish population and of the North of England”
Excellent, sam. Your pathetic lies have forced a smile to my lips.
You’re another of the regulars on here who formed your tribal, bigoted views at a time when your mind still held some elasticity. But it has long since fossilised – I understand that – and you are never going to change before the grave.
Nevertheless, some residual part of me still can’t resist setting the record straight.
30 seconds of research online will find the reader a graph of UK life expectancy since 1765. Thatcher came to power in 1979. Life expectancy in 1980 was 73.01 years. It has continued to steadily rise until 2020, when it was 81.15 years. The pandemic knocked it a little. The most recent year for which a figure is available, 2025, it was 82.06 years.
So much for your risible vilification of Thatcher, and your ludicrous gurning about “austerity” too.
Labour always overplays its hand, or, at least, the Left always does. Even more than the Right. It is as if all the parties are on a mission to destroy themselves and destroy their countr(ies).
First, it was the ‘trans’ vote that they all needed, now it’s the Muslim vote. In fact, both have destruction of p[arties and countr(ies) built into them. The ‘trans’/’woke’ cohort and their support were determined to upend everything that made any sense for over two thousand years, and the Muslim vote (in England, particularly) is hellbent on creating a new state based on Sharia Law.
A lot of ordinary folk could see this coming, but our betters decided that we and our silly culture, constitution, history needed to be replaced because we are just not fecund enough (with democracy the sacrificial lamb) so they boxed themselves into a very tight corner and have not a scoobie about how to get out again and will never admit that they were wrong.
Older folk will remember when Muslim women and lassies did not wear hijabs, niqabs and burqas in Scotland’s, and the UK’s, cities In fact, there is something very self-harming here in both ‘trans’/’woke’ and female Muslims, and their respective support, almost on a parallel, and it is here that we can see the contradictions most clearly. Women are the (often unwitting) canaries in the coal mine, as they are with AI and Big Tech.
We expect society to protect women and children. Legislation should reflect what is viewed in our society as just/unjust, etc. Laws are now imposed on society by a political caste that no longer reflect the understanding the punters share on right and wrong. They are now a class apart working for international capital, the ‘anywhere’ elite. Epstein might help concentrate minds.
”An ex British Prime Minister was involved in a three some with Ghislane Maxwell according to Andrew Lownie who has impeccable sources. At a guess the ‘encounter’ was recorded by Epstein and is being withheld for now. What pressure was brought to bear on this (presumably) man.”
The formerly Scottish, National Party, during Nicola Sturgeon’s rule took on the role as administrator for Westminster. Is it a surprise that extreme social policies were pursued and Nationalism abandoned?
The top dogs at the Crown Office, Polis, Civil Service and the Press maybe approved of this change. Just a thought with regard to the Salmond Affair.
Sad to say, GM, some of us have never expected society to protect women and children because it never has. For the past fifty years, every policy, it seems, has been directed to make life as hard as possible for women and children. You are right that most people have a strong sense of just and unjust, though, and I fear that the revolution Britain has never had is going to erupt very soon because of the policies brought into being my every government of every shade.
I suspect that we may be entering the latter stages of unfettered capitalism. No government anywhere knows how to stem the tide and every government for the past few years has embraced insanity in its endeavours to do so. England seems to me to be the country where it will happen.
We fight hardest when our backs are to the wall, and the English show almost unlimited patience, but I think that patience is going to give way, and, as a result, our backs are going to be against the wall. This is how we will gain independence, but the price will be very high and all that has gone before will be swept away in a very short time. Ordinary people everywhere, in the UK, and elsewhere, have had enough of middle-class stupidity and elite solutions that are worse than the problems.
Why would they admit they are wrong, Lorna?
Which part of “the SNP look set fair to be re-elected with most seats in May for 5 more years” is eluding your comprehension?
None of it, H McH. I agree that they will be re elected and I agree that they will never admit they have been wrong about anything. I was in the SNP when Swinney was leader, just before Salmond reappeared as leader. Since Alec Salmond’s stepping down, we have had one useless FM after another, each one worse than the one before. So, explain what you mean you thought I meant?
“explain what you mean”
If politicians get re-elected time after time, then in the eyes of the voters, they’re not doing too much wrong.
Why then, would any politician apologise if the voters continue to support him or her?
H McH: if you believe that politicians get voted in because they are doing nothing wrong in the public’s perception, you are so wrong. They get voted in for many reasons, not least, in the case of the SNP, because there was little chance to have any other independence party or grouping elected in their place.
The real and fundamental problem is that most of those who vote SNP nowadays do so because they still believe in independence but lack the critical faculty that should be telling them that the SNP is, to all intents and purposes, a Unionist party out of financial and political necessity, since they have squandered, literally and figuratively, every opportunity. It is the equivalent of doing to same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.
I would doubt that everyone even then votes for independence, but I do believe it is the biggest vote. Like the Irish before 1918, the Scots are caught on a treadmill and can see no way off it because they lack imagination and courage. They will not even vote for independence unless we are tied to the EU, which is sinking under its own hubris. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
It is my belief – and, of course, I may well be wrong – that most SNP voters who want independence, and they are not the only ones who vote SNP – would happily throw women and children, their grannies and their dogs and cats under the bus for the opportunity to say, we did it. Except that what is happening now – ‘trans’/’woke’ ideology, unlimited immigration and open borders, political and financial hubris, gross stupid in so many politicians, and so on, would see an independent Scotland, if we got it tomorrow, collapse in a welter of struts pulled from under it by these imported ills
I want independence. I want independence very, very much, and always have, because we are dying under the Union, but importing these ills into an independent Scotland will collapse it before it gets off its feet – because that is what these ills are designed to do. That is why we need to cleanse the Augean Stables first.
Lorna, thanks for your reply.
“most SNP voters who want independence, and they are not the only ones who vote SNP – would happily throw women and children, their grannies and their dogs and cats under the bus”
If you say so, Lorna. Some of these voters must be women, grannies, dog owners and cat servants too.
Heck, with the voting age at 16, some of them will even be children.
I don’t usually believe that people will go and vote for representatives who they truly believe will make their lives worse, but perhaps you are right and they do.
Then again, we’re a special place, hoaching with special people. So perhaps it’s just a Scottish thing, and I’ve been indoctrinated by the alien values and foreign mind set of the coloniser into believing that the purpose of voting is to improve things!
“we need to cleanse the Augean Stables first”
By implication, a fully liberated people will need to remove its colonial collaborators – wha aye deceive an haud thaim doun – as well as the colonizer, failing which colonialism would continue. Though history tells us removal of the colonizer may come first, i.e. when power transfers to the former colonized group.
Alf: ditching England is not going to be the final answer because there are other kinds of colonisers just waiting in the wings for the opportunity. That is what I am saying. I really don’t expect you, or any other man, on the BTL comments to understand my point of view. You think you are immune because you are male. What is coming for you in either case, will not be nearly as bad as that which is coming for me and all women and girls, if we don’t do something about it before independence.
H McH: yes, the purpose of voting is to initiate change, but, if you think you are initiating the right kind of change by voting SNP, you are sadly mistaken. Why on Earth would I, a woman, vote SNP, Green, Labour or Lib Dem. All of them would happily preside over the loss of every right I have gained in the past 100+ years? Do you think I button up the back? As I said, those parties and their supporters would happily destroy my country for me while trying to keep it for themselves. I have felt all my life that women have always drawn the short straw, but never have I felt quite so threatened as I do now. It is utterly preposterous that 51-2% of the population should feel this way.
“a fully liberated people will need to remove its colonial collaborators”
You’ve got some balls, Alf. Respect.
You’ve made it clear enough before that your colonial collaborators include the majority of Sovereign Scots whose first language is English, spoken and written.
It’s rare to see a minority making such a declaration of intent against the majority, but fair play to you. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Just as, with the example of President Trump in mind, we can’t say that once in power, people never do the things they said they would do when they were powerless.
Oh Yes, the British born Anas Sarwar MSP, has shown us all around the world how politics is done in Scotland. By saving Keir Starmer and bring himself down instead.
Doesn’t anyone in Holyrood check with their ministers before they hold a press conference about their boss, obviously not.
I would expect Anas Sarwar will be stepping down before Keir Starmer.
Anas Sarwar thinks the Labour party is a business and he owns it and it belong to him and he could do what ever the fuck he wanted because he was against Scottish Independence and that is all that mattered.
The British elite and the unionist in Scotland is all he needed and this is where our politics is today, people like him deserve no place in Holyrood or our parliament ever.
What is just as embarrassing is that a “media” outlet, Politics UK, assured us yesterday that Morgan would call on Starmer today to resign, then publish the exact opposite story today.
Does anybody in “journalism” (or government) ever lose their jobs for these kind of laughable mistakes? And if not, why not?
Sarwar, another one of England’s lap dogs, should have resigned over Grangemouth. We all knew he wasn’t going to though. It wouldn’t surprise me if Poodle Sarwar was replaced by another Yoon Poodle before the week was out.
Which of England’s Labour lap dogs is the most AI Friendly or the most Trump friendly?
AYE, YOUR WRONG he’s got his own mind and he’s no one lap dog. He’s a British politician who in politics for the money and nothing else, he’s isn’t even a labour supporter he a parasite who’s in politics simply because it feeds, cloths and their is a lot of monthly money and a good pension pot.
Grangemouth closed because the SNP/Green wreckers at HR voted for virtue signalling Scottish Nutt Zero by 2045.
5 years ahead of the target for the UK.
Why the fuck should Sarwar resign for something that is plainly the responsibility of the SNP/Green nutters?
Also, as I have just pointed out to Lorna, if a majority or even a sizeable minority of Scots cared one jot about Grangemouth, then the SNP wouldn’t be about to be re-elected yet again in May.
But they are. Go figure.
H. McH: you really do underestimate the strength of feeling many in the SNP have about independence. For them, independence is the be-all and end-all. Nothing else matters. To be honest, I used to feel like that, too, but not for a long time. I still want independence as much as I ever did, but I know that the SNP and Greens will not deliver it. It is possible, likely even, that the SNP and Greens will hook up again, and that every form of decency will be thrown on the rubbish heap. Both these parties lack humanity: they will fight for wrong-headed and ridiculously unreasonable policies but will not back human beings; they would rather see them starve, die of cold, be raped and sexually assaulted before they would give up their indecent policies. The irony is that they actually believe they are being humane and good while they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The thing you always have to bear in mind about Scottish politics is that Scottish politics is different.
“Scottish politics is different”
Indeed so, but we must understand why this is the case.
Its because we are talking about the politics WITHIN a colony, in which politicians must try to serve two masters, the colonized and the colonizer.
In the colonial framework political elites are destined “to sacrifice” (Cesaire) the former in protecting the interests of the latter, i.e. the dominant culture.
Fowk canna ser twa maisters – thay aye luve ane an laith the ither.
Much as we see, and in all aspects of life and nation, Scots and Scottish interests continue to be sacrificed on the altar of Anglo-colonialism.
Great stuff, Alf. Could have been better though – needed something from Fanon to add that little bit extra.
BTW. Am I the only reader to have concluded that when Andrew wrote “The thing you always have to bear in mind about Scottish politics is that Scottish politics is different”, he was having the mother of all laughs?
Perhaps Andy could enlighten us.
I reckon it’s a set-up – Sarwar claiming Starmer should go does absolutely no harm to the PM and I assume they think that the Scottish voters are gullible enough to believe that Sarwar is somehow independent of Westminster and Starmer.
All smoke and mirrors.
The corruption of Mandelson is now become clear. But it was clear before. Starmer must have known. It could not have been otherwise unless one believes the moon is made of cheese. But others, many others knew.
But is this government going to do anything as Starmer clings on. Of course not, like prince Andrew, still eighth in line to the crown, crime, corruption and sexual depravity pays. Andres walks free as does Starmer.
So move along folks. But before one shuffles on folks may care to reflect on the Flamingo Land story for Loch Lomond. One of the National Park elected representatives has for years been expressing concern about his suspicions of malfeasance by the Park Authority and Scottish Enterprise.
Interesting then, that against this background Sir Keir Starmer only recently appointed the chair of the national park to the national lottery board.
Here is an extract form the UK government web site –
” The Prime Minister has appointed Dr Heather Reid as the Trustee and Chair of the Scotland Committee to The National Lottery Heritage Fund board ”
Of course to suggest their is any malfeasance between public authorities and commercial developers, especially when much is in commercial in confidence is most probably no cause for concern whatsoever,
No doubt a sound appointment by Sir Kier.
On another topic will Sarwar and Starmer make a vow to ensure the Daily Record publishing plant in Glasgow stays open instead of moving the work to Oldham as reported in the BBC Scotland news website.
If not expect the increased transport costs to increase the price.
Vows visions pledges and promises they’re really not worth a toss coming from the mouths of politicians. So Starmer and Sarwar can make all they want and they’ll amount to nothing as usual.
I was going to mention about the ‘Scottish’ Daily Record publishing plant moving to England but it seems little point in the day and age.
With Working from home, mobile phones and the cost of going to the pub even just for a pint amongst other things, there seems little point in spending money on a bulky newspaper.
There’s also no point in gloating as the 100 odd jobs at risk belong to people who have no say in what they are printing.
While it it not right to gloat over the ‘Scottish’ Daily Record publishing plant loses, it is right to gloat over BBC ‘Scotland’
link to archive.is
The BBC site asks why Scottish people aren’t involved in it’s Scottish arm and it says:
Spin,spin, spin…
It’s unwise to mention vows and the Daily Rectum in the same sentence.
O/T
I saw this article about how increases in Business rates are affecting business in a part of Glasgow:
link to archive.is
We are seeing local businesses being hammered but big businesses, who can easily absorb these costs, are getting their costs decreased.
I have no doubt this is happening in every part of Scotland. There are myriad of reasons why the High Street is disappearing and most of it is driven by customer habits of getting everything online but it doesn’t help when governments are penalising local businesses like this who play an important part in the local economy.
You draw attention to a very concerning aspect Bilbo where a huge corporate business in the name of Tesco can have its rateable value of its store in Yorkhill, Glasgow reduced by over 8 percent whilst small local businesses across have had their rateable value increased by up to 120%.
Tesco is the UKs biggest supermarket tens of billions of turnover. The local shops and cafes by comparison are the microscopic opposite.
So why has the rateable value been cut. It is a good question. Could it be that big corporate money talks. It very much seems so. Has there been cuts to other Tesco stores the Tesco stores. Its certainly a strange one and begs the bigger wider question. How can the rateable value of a huge business like Tesco have its rates reduced whilst everyone else’s rates go up.
Money, big money talks, and talks big. And that is why we need answers. What is going on?
We cannot forever keep financially hitting the successful to keep the subsidised in business.
I prefer the German/Austrian type model where supermarkets were kept out of certain areas such as newspapers, cigarettes, public transport passes, leaving them for the smaller outlets, rather than our system where they have prayed on everything from clothing to electricals to food to go.
Meanwhile in Canada, a coach and horses has been run through the argument that anyone is safe near transgender menwomen.
We don’t know if it just the latest manifestation chosen by the mentally ill particularly the psychopathic, or of it is due to the medication they take, but it must be terrifying to be cornered/locked up with on.
I wondered that when I saw media reports saying that the shooter was a woman “in a dress”. Immediately smelled a rat.
Yes, exactly. The media twists itself out of shape to try and not hurt the feelz of this dangerous lobby. Only one girl, I think, in the States, carried out a killing spree and I believe she claimed to be a boy. There is something inherently violent about this ideology which just adds to the psychopathology where the young person may well be mentally-ill and latches on to the gender wang. Such a situation would lead to little or no mental health care and complete affirmation of the new identity. What is really bad is that others might have been killed by believing that it was, in fact, a woman who carried out the shootings. This insanity has to stop or be stopped. A Swedish study showed that girls fed testosterone were far more likely to become violent in the male pattern.
Ha . A woman ‘in a dress’ is code for ‘we are too scared to mention it was a trans.!
“girls fed testosterone”
Crivens! I’d heard of maneaters. I’d never realised it was a literal description.
Well what would you call it, H. McH. How else do they take it? By the by, it now appears that, from the FWS case against SGMinisters that, although the menz rights under human rights was lauded, the women’s rights were not even looked at, although they were supposed to be the same. Therefore, their rights in the prison system were systematically ignored in favour of the menz in frocks as if they did not exist. Only when FWS brought up that fact was that entered in evidence and, now, the court will have to take that into account. It is almost as though all women’s and girls’ rights are being removed for some purpose…
As an aside this Wednesday morning I’ve just read an article in the Telegraph reporting outrage at new government letter heading dropping HM from Government letter headings.
If ever there was an example of inappropriate and outrageous opposition to something by politicos and the press this is it.
Maybe all government livery should have HRPA Government. Eg His Royal Prince Andrew’s Government. ( or lBAU for lush bags are us)
What’s been exposed is as serious as it gets.
Andrew needs to be pursued for his actions. The King needs to speak to what he knew and what he intends to do. The family, or should I say the firm, is utterly tarnished and discredited.
Rotten and corrupt Caliguan behaviour has no place in our society and folks know it.
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS…
“The true interests and desires of a society are embodied in what Rousseau called its “general will,” but it is no straightforward matter to determine the contents of this will. The “multitude . . . often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it.” So citizens have to be guided—and, when necessary, compelled—by those who have a better understanding of what they really want. The multitude must sometimes, as Rousseau put it, “be forced to be free.”
According to Bertrand Russell, writing in 1946, such sentiments made Rousseau “the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships.”
Extract from The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb
The quandary for «democracy» when the toy of self-serving factional interests and when the «general popular will», which is the representational purpose of democracy, is marginalized or silenced what is to be done should the system ie the established political order be no longer accountable and possibly incapable of self-correcting and becomes the preserve of a few who plunge deeper into anomie. A system faking democracy? Shock & Horror, all a sham?
Scotland has very likely been in this state for centuries and may be innured to the trickery of the «ignoble liers».
Independence=cold turkey, stick with the lie purr the «experts», go with the flow, the shock of reality could be a terrorsome dawning.
The Scottish experiment.
Trick them into believing they are in a union treaty with England.
Get rid of the Scottish side asp in the same year.
Hey preto.
We can fake their democracy and to have fake representatives in Scotland..
Its still the most successful experimental hoax played on Scotland to date.
We do know what two tiers beliefs are, and he follows them to the letter.
Reduce the success and workings of the the old Empire and government to…bring about one governing body and one world government from outwith Britain,
Once you understand his puppet purpose and aim you cannot unsee it.
Get rid of the democracy of the people.
Labour moved into the SNP for a reason,
The next step is to reduce the ability people having the right to vote by reducing the when and where they can vote,
Then leave them with a one single party choice to vote for, ( Reform )
Which can be infiltrated latter on for control , the same way the SNP were.
The long term planning of the elete cretins,
Slowly slowly catch the monkeys.
And Britain becomes a one world order government by steady reduction of the peoples democratic rights.
The replication of reducing Scotland to a one party system is being done in England, Wales and Ireland,
Nobody worth voting for, the vote for then for the one party that promises they will fix your local world.
But what happens when that single party also fails to keep its word,
We are left under a one party dictatorship with no other options by simple reduction.
And then voting is withdrawn altogether.
The path you and I are travelling on is not always seen in the dark.
Making your options so awful, they can guide you into making the choices they aways wanted you to make.
Psyops and psychology worked on the democratic voters.
The awful governance and policies of Tories, Labour, Greens, libdems and the SNP are the worst of the worst applied for a reason,
To direct us into voting for a one party system of Britain.
A one party system that is easier to infiltrate and manage later on.
And I have not forgotten the Labour/ SNP party trying to do the “all under one umbrella attempts” either.
Reduction of voters choices in Scotland. For gaining control of the grass roots independence movement. And the restrictions they were going to place upon them if it had succeeded.
As usual, I read the comments starting from the bottom up. I note 6 in a row from Cheyne, all unread by me and got no further. What fun!
Chas
Try reading top to bottom and left to right.
Things will make more sense..
If you don’t agree with someone’s viewpoint try engaging in reasonable debate or just pass on by.
I really don’t think you should try to monster others in an open forum like this whose views you simply disagree with.
Remember; it’s nice to be nice!
For an overly extreme example; just see how nice and demeaningly deferential HMcH is to the site proprietor further up!
Heck I thought he was going to offer him a b**w j*b!!
Yuk!
Can I suggest that you pick an article written by Stu some 3 or 4 years ago. Any one will do. Look at the variety of different ‘names’ posting. Compare this with the anything current. Do you see a difference?
The likes of Cheyne, Baird, Confused are swamping every article with the same repetitive mince time after time. I genuinely believe that a lot of sane, sensible posters do not want to be tarnished with the same brush as the above named and simply don’t bother posting comments any more.
It is impossible to engage in reasonable debate with any of the aforementioned who simply possess one track minds. They see themselves as above debate for some unknown reason. Do you read EVERY post from the likes of Cheyne?
You spent too long cooped up in barracks, YL.
Normal Scots don’t think being nice requires blow jobs to be offered.
I rest my case..
You get upset by certain posters but abstain from adding “whanging oan” 24/7 contrarians like HMcH to your list of site polluters!
Doh..
HMcH & 1.26
But then again, you aren’t a normal Scot are you.
Aff yer (f8scist) knees Mosley and consider using mouthwash..
It’s 1:15 am, YL.
Aren’t you usually on the canal bank at this time?
I hope you didn’t catch something! Actually, that may not be true.
Alf !
Still waiting for an answer to my query yesterday concerning your fascinating comments about how “different animal species” are affected by “post-colonial theory” !
My query was …
Alf !
……Can you also clarify Memmi’s quotes on grey squirrels please ?
Surely they completely contradict the clearly expressed views held by Fanon ????
thanks !
Form an orderly queue, Insider.
I’m still waiting to hear how Alf presents the passport issued by an imaginary country when he travels abroad, but has yet to be arrested and thrown in a foreign shithole chokey.
O/T
shooter in canada a tranny
Quelle surprise
Aye, and the BBC still don’t know that…
Tragic, tragic, tragic the death of six killed and the twenty seven is just that.
Who know what was in the evil mind of the shooter. But the question has to be asked about the apparent killer.
Eighteen years old the shooter was a biological male who had transitioned to a woman. With reports saying that he started to transition some six years ago which would put him at the age of twelve, one does wonder what was going on in this young child’s life.
This is exactly the type of thing that people fear. Was the boy filled full of sex changing hormones. Was he chemically castrated before radical reconstructive surgery. Was he a child in puberty pushed through transition programmes for ideological woo woo reasons.
Big questions need to be asked. However as was to be seen on the news tonight there are many many young people who are now utterly anguished due to irreversible sex change interventions made when they were young adolescents.
That they have been irreversibly damaged the US has just passed legislation to allow them to sue for damages.
Absolutely heart breaking what happened today in Canada.
Well said.
An example of how feminisation of society, nihilistic ideology and care in the community/ abandonment of the clinically troubled just doesn’t work.
What will it take for people to see?
Cue pile on I suppose..
Apparently, reliable sources state that he was a violent child from an early age and would hurt his sibling. This is a sign of psychopathy rather than anything else, or, certainly, an alienation from normal social interaction. If he was like this long before he reached aged 12, when he supposedly ‘transitioned’, then his being ‘trans’ was not enough alone to make him violent. It was already there and affirmation of his ‘trans’ identity probably made him think he was untouchable. This is the real problem that has to be dealt with, but nobody seems willing to do so: is underlying mental ill-health a factor in ‘trans’ in the very young?
I’m not sure if the online pictures of the Trans shooter is real or AI generated but he looks like an ordinary lad and even when ‘feminine’ he just looks like a young fella with a wig and makeup on.
Reports say he had a history of mental illness but if these pictures are correct, if he thought he was a woman then it he would have ended up more nuts and that’s what most likely tipped him over.
Thing is, we aren’t likely to find out as MSM such as ITN have dropped reporting on the issue in record time.
School shootings and who the perpetrators were previously were headline issues for days.
Can’t upset the pit upon train spotters (according to the media) though eh?
Pervert apologists..
@andrew scott
Aye- a woman in a dress actually means- a man in a frock (MIAF).
@ Young Lochinvar 12.32am, Well said and as usual the POLITICIANS and deviants pushing this ideology are avoiding any responsibility for this slaughter
Canadian politicians have been pushing this lunacy for years ans just like the SG have refused to recognise the threat this mental illness poses to normal people,IF the SG were really interested in the possibility of similar incidents taking place against our womenfolk and children they would only have to look at the numerous posts on social media that the sites owner has posted numerous times
The fake hand wringing by the numerous scum responsible for this slaughter will NOT bring the dead back nor will it give solace or comfort to their families , and the trauma and injury faced by the survivors may never go away
Thatchers care in the community was the epitomy of GREED
It’s criminally remiss of your so-called friends and family not to have told you that Thatcher lost office a touch over 35 years ago.
These uncaring cants should also advise you on the location of British Columbia. It’s in Canada, a foreign country that Thatcher never had any control over.
Have your captors not told you there have been 4 UK Labour governments since Thatcher? At least 3 of them had the time and money to reverse Thatcher’s reforms, but they didn’t. Whilst here in Scotland, where the SNP charges us extra taxes to do things better, the opportunities over the near 19 years of SNP rule to improve our fully devolved SNHS seem to have been fucked over too.
Or, perish the thought, maybe it’s just you, twathater, that sees a link between Thatcher and foreign, voluntarily mutilated teenagers gunning down their neighbours.
She tried to run the country as one would run a domestic budget at home. That was madness. Selling off the family silver was never going to work because private, in some industries and services, simply cannot work and obviously so. Public utilities, NHS, house-building for social housing, etc. All these are life-or-death services and need to be state-run for the long-term health and well-being of your citizens.
Most other things can be privatised and the better for it. Capitalism per se is not a bad thing, but when it is allowed to do exactly as it pleases, it becomes incompatible with a democratic (or even pretendy democratic) society and preys on the least able to face it. On the other hand, in countries like China, it can be the driver of prosperity, but, again, only if harnessed for the good of everyone and not the few. They execute those who, like Icarus, fly too close to their own sun. They usually don’t wait till they plummet.
Globalism can also be a good thing if not allowed to destroy domestic industries and services because that leaves you, in the event of war or pandemics, for example, at the mercy of foreign suppliers you cannot access or who bump up prices whilst selling you inferior goods. Food, especially, needs to be home-grown, in the main, or your population could starve very easily.
The succeeding Tories and Labour politicians carried on Thatcher’s mistakes and amplified and expanded them. Most things can be turned to good, but, unfortunately, they are often turned into massive money-making endeavours for the few, using resources that belong to everyone and causing harm to many. The Internet and AI are just two examples. Can be good inventions, but used by twisted individuals, they create chaos for the many.
It may be grim observation but one cannot help wonder to what extent the sentiment of the woo woo ideologues to call for ” death to Terfs ” may have played a part in the thinking processes in the Candadian shooters evil mind.
Willie: I think the fundamental problem is that adherence to this ordure is a mental ill-health issue, not a physical or spiritual one, laced with deviant sex as a side dish. That boy was obsessed with guns and he had shown signs of instability, but no one had the courage to take away his playthings and take him to a psychiatrist – if you could find one in Canada, or anywhere, who would have the guts to call this out for what it is.
When you plaster an ideology that basically says you are divine on top of mental ill-health and thrown a pile of guns into the equation, you have the perfect recipe for disaster. On top of that, add in the fact that almost all violent crime is a male thing, and pretending to be a female, and everyone else being forced to pretend you are a female, makes the potentially disastrous recipe wholly toxic because no one can lie to themselves – and others, but especially themselves – indefinitely. It blows the mind. I really believe that women and girls have nothing whatsoever to do with it. We are the excuse and the blame always lies with us, apparently.
You know, Lorna, you are a very intelligent person, and a lot of what you say makes sense. It’s just that your absolute illogical loathing of the male of the species makes you ultimately very difficult to take seriously. You turn every single post into moaning about the lot of women, as if you are living in Iran or somewhere, and your victim mentality is a real turn-off. It’s a shame, really, because, with a more balanced, sensible view – deluded, mendacious female supremacists of any stripe never want to admit that their sex produces child-killers and child molesters, rapists and murderers – your input would be far more valuable and palatable.
You would sway a lot more minds. Or as many as are swayed by the tiny amount of people reading a deranged comments section like this, really. You are either gay, or some man/men hurt you deeply, and it has so badly poisoned your view you come across as the Wings version of the insane Valerie Solanas. A real shame, really. Genuinely without meaning to be condescending, I hope you find peace in yourself, because your constant posts here betray that that is far from your default setting and mindset. If we’re talking about mental illness, that is.
Good to see Sir Jim Ratcliffe under fire for stating the bleeding obvious – that the UK is being colonised. It has to be said. The pile on from the deniers clearly identifies the obstacles to getting this under control.
Depressingly predictable to observe the silence of oor ain “colony wangers” on a simple observation that chimes with the majority of Scots, but doesn’t play into their own minority obsession.
Give or take a billion or so and a knighthood, we’ve a lot in common, Sir Jim and I.
In other news, also studiously ignored on here, the Swiss are about to hold another of their referenda – on whether the population of Switzerland should be capped at 10 million. The proposers see it as a good way to slow their own colonisation – have a legally enforced definition of when the country is full.
The opponents, when not bleating about wacism, point out that it’s illegal under the agreements that Switzerland has with the EU. And Switzerland is not even a full member of that Great Replacement Project run from Brussels.
No wonder this story is ignored by Wings BTL. The tortuous gymnastics the anti-colonisation, pro-EU eejits would have to go through is beyond even their ability to tie themselves in knots.
The only thing Ratcliffe cares about is getting a Reform government elected that will be beneficial to his UK business interests.
If Labour had more friendly policies towards his business interests, he would have kept his trap shut as he has done over the years where we have experienced large amounts of immigration.
Sure, Bilbo. You’re gonna slag off Ratcliffe, not because he’s wrong, but because he’s got more money than you.
I’m flogging “Give Me Ideological Purity, Or Give Me Death” tee shirts. How many do you need?
Turning if I may it may be of much interest to readers to learn about the suspension of an elected reprentative to the Loch Lomond national park authority.
It is a matter of great concern.
Sid Perry is the elected representative to the national park authority for the Loch Lomond West and Balloch ward.
Over the years Mr Perrie has raised substantial questions and concerns with the authorty management about potential malfeasance of policy and process by the authority in relation to the hugely controversial Flamingo Land development.
No doubt a thorn in the authority’s side. However, the consequence of this was that on Tuesday, a physically ill Mr Perry was in absentia, and without any representation, suspended for six months for the crime of allegations about being rude and disrespectful of the park authority chair when asking questions.
It cannot however not be noticed that in his suspension it concides with the run up to the now delayed and awaited decision on the cotroversial Flamingo Land development proposal.
Suspension in the run up to a controversial decision therefore begs a very big question. This is precisely the time when you need democratic oversight.
So was Mr Perry removed for political reasons and to close him down.
Mr Perrie’s summary suspension as an elected representive is therefore absolutely chilling.
Indeed as the Epstein papers are now showing, malfeasance runs deep. Who guards the guards, but the guards themselves is a very old dictum. But it is as true today as it was when it was said.
Well worth a read. Details have been reported on Parkswatch Scotland blog.
Sounds about right. Democracy? Quite simply a fallacy
Being a lover of history, you realise there is nothing really new, and any sweet scam you can think of, has been done, many, many times; one thing the english did with their colonies was – have them export cash crops for profits, shits and giggles and their palatial mansions, but – make the colony import the food it needs to eat; “making the colony dependent on the coloniser”? And Scotland loses all its refining capacity, industry went during thatcher, all our banks are now london controlled (the payments system), and almost everything we need comes up the motorway on the back of a lorry (- what ferry to the continent?), so if there was a “supply chain problem” (just in time), we could all be fucked.
Still, the principles apply generally; you want rid of unpleasant people – attack the food supply, as the english did in ireland, other places and Stalin copied for the holodomor (bolshevism was a jewish operation, but we don’t talk about that)
In the UK this would amount to : BAN HALAL
– so you lose the BAMS.
On “animal cruelty grounds” – get the greens on board for this.
Then you also ban KOSHER food just to be even handed : thus losing the infestation of the brain parasite which controls the UKs politicians, academics, media, lawyers, bankers, and generally commits murder and theft all around the world (- then when anyone notices, shrieks “holocaust”!)
But what to do about Scotland? How do we rid ourselves of the Anglo menace??
I went to a Bernard Manning show once (ironically, but the jokes were funny, he was talented I admit) and he said durng a routine … we’re ENGLISH – WE EAT HOTPOT …
and there you have it folks : get the english out, we simply
BAN HOTPOT
– for being “unfit for human consumption”.
And, for the bonus, like the english, playing both sides – if you want to make money on this, since there will always be some holdouts, you can make a sick profit on all your halal/kosher/hotpot smuggling operations, selling the gear with a bigger markup than all the white powders the young disco dancers like.
You don’t stop at one thing though – you keep going : ban the genital mutilation of children – no circumcision, male or female, no tranny surgery. That’s another problem solved. And we can hire dedicated teams of “penis inspectors” by recruiting from around the Calton Hill area of reekie, Merchant City, or anywhere in england (on gasterbeiter visas).
Worth asking, Confused, have you ever submitted material to Viz?
For some reason “The Bottom Inspectors” comes to mind.
THE 1973 futurist fantasy by the french travel writer/trad. catholic/monarchist/ nationalist Jean-Paul Raspail called Le Camp des Saints deals graphically with a mass «third world migration» into Belgium, France and later into all of western Europe. It recounts the end of western civilization. It is the go-to text for all who view immigration as fundamentally bad per se.
In a long foreword to the 2011 edition of book, no english version available, he elaborates rather more on the reasons for that end of civilization and revises the focus somewhat, In effect he hints at the theme civilizations are not conquered from without but from weakness within; the gradual loss of purpose, self worth, belief in the values of the high culture and the positive values it expresses and so forth. He also engages with Islam which in 1973 was not much of an issue.
In the 20c Europe initiated two apocalyptic wars which effectively eviscerated the continent, killing tens of millions, changing borders, expelling people from ancestral homelands, driving millions into nomadism, creating hermetically ethnically sealed entities i.e countries, that had not existed before.
The rot began there, not with the arrival of the first «non european» and the idea of the ethnically homogeneous and «pure» nation-state.
As a non european, with cosmopolitan cultural baggage of a rich variety, the notion that immigration is the work of the devil overlooks the huge home bred dynosaur eating its offspring centre stage.
Re modern politicians, is not mr Anas Sarwar totemic of the modern Scottish iteration?
Eunuchs all?
“In the 20c Europe initiated two apocalyptic wars”
We don’t do that any more, TURABDIN. We’ve lost all will to fight, hence the malaise Sir Jim is being asked to apologise for referring to.
Given that the most bloodthirsty nations/races are now Asian (Orcs, Female Haters and Covid Spreaders), we don’t need to worry about our legacy.
It’s in good hands.
Many of us reading here may yet be cursed to observe that the body count of the 21st century is gonna make the killing fields of the 20th century look like amateur hour.
Denying the very existence of the female sex is the ultimate in anti female hate. That has come from the West.
Denying the very existence of the female sex would be the ultimate in anti female hate, Marie.
But I’m unaware of anybody anywhere who is doing that.
So it must be coming from your heid.
Does the Daily Record ever feel like they are flogging the wrong horse?
Just a little bit of the effect of Thatcher on the NHS
link to pilc.org.uk
A survey last year of 9000 Unison members found many of England’s NHS Trusts had infestations of rats, cockroaches and silverfish in many Trusts.
According to a study of 125 of England’s NHS acute Trusts the privatisation of NHS cleaning services resulted in increased incidence of MRSA. My mother died from a hospital acquired infection of MRSA.
It is the “light touch regulation” dogma of neoliberalism that has caused the long series of England’s NHS Trust scandals and the financial crash of 2008
” 1980 – Prescription charges increase 500% over 18 months.
1983 – Health and Social Care Act 1983 begins outsourcing services. Ancillary services – cleaning, laundry, and catering – are outsourced to private companies and local health authorities are given deadlines to put these services out to tender.
1984 – Healthcare workers go on strike against privatisation at Barking and Hammersmith hospitals.There is already a long list of contract failures by private sector providers, including failing to meet hygiene standards and leaving nursing staff to complete cleaning.
1987 – Plunging hygiene standards caused by outsourcing leads to spread of MRSA in hospitals.
1988 – Health and Medicines Act 1988 ends free dental check-ups and eye tests.
1990 – National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 established NHS Trusts, and the beginning of the ‘internal market’. Trusts would be self-governing bodies and require hospitals to compete for contracts from health authorities. They are responsible for managing their own budgets, staff pay and conditions, and have new freedoms to expand private wings and ‘for pay’ beds.
To be fair Sam the Scottish Government under Alex Salmond did much to try to minimise the Thatcher type policies now so extant in England.
Free prescription at point of delivery, free eye tests and of course resistance to the corporate commercialisation of healthcare now so extant across England. Indeed in another example and after an outrageous number of thoroughly avoidable MRSA deaths in the Vale of Leven Hospital his health secretary brought back into public service the hospital cleaning services that Labour had previously privatised.
But all of that is now very much at risk. Indeed, with polls now suggesting that around one in four Scots is intending to vote Reform, a party with a leader who supports USA style privatisation, the game for an NHS could soon be up.
Turkeys and Christmas you couldn’t make it up whilst all the while untold natural wealth get plundered out of Scotland.
“one in four Scots is intending to vote Reform, a party with a leader who supports USA style privatisation, the game for an NHS could soon be up”
12 weeks to save the SNHS, Willie!
Odd though. I thought the bookies have already signed off on the SNP being the largest party at HR from May for the next 5 years, regardless of how that 1 in 4 Scots vote.
And I thought running the SNHS is not only wholly devolved, but has been for near 19 years. Devolved to an SNP administration that has freedom to raise additional taxes and hypothecate them to the SNHS too.
Leading me to conclude that if the SNHS isn’t safe after May, it will be because it will still be in the hands of the same clueless, secretive, virtue-signalling numpties that have been fucking it over for near 19 years now.
And of course, they’ll still be pissing millions of pounds PA up the wall on their gender woowoo, while hounding anyone who objects out of their job.
Quick, Willie, another post blaming Thatcher and Reform before anybody cottons on!
Aye, sam, ye’re a grand auld fossil so ye are. We should slap a protection order oan ye.
You can’t refute the constantly improving UK life expectancy figures for the entire period since Thatcher (other than after Covid), but you can ignore them. And so you do.
Just as you can’t refute the three Labour terms Blair was given (13 years in total), during which the government had the power and the dosh to do whatsoever they liked with the NHS, but you can ignore them too. And so you do.
Coming up 19 years of fully devolved SNP administration of our SNHS. Ignored – check!
1990, eh? I wonder how long ago that was. In your heid, I mean.
You are such a fucking idiot I usually ignore what you say.
UK life expectancy has been improving ever since it began to be measured. Except during the 1918 flu epidemic and the two World Wars. It is a good measure of population health and the general well being of a community.
Under Thatcher, life expectancy faltered. It did not stop improving but the rate of improvement decreased allowing other European countries to overtake Scotland’s life expectancy.
That, under the Tories the life expectancy of some of the poorest has decreased, is a big red flag for public health researchers. Today, under Labour, life expectancy has stagnated – so a bit worse than under Thatcher.
Of course I don’t ignore Blair/Brown, you cretin.
The huge scandals in NHS Trusts I have already mentioned are down to the Blair/ Brown governments and the “light touch regulation”.Not to mention the financial crash.Or PFI.
The point is that Thatcher introduced the market into the NHS and since then Labour and the Lib Dems have all followed Thatcher’s path.
Since Thatcher
The point is that it’s 35 years since Thatcher exited stage right, and despite some of the opportunities I list, nae cant has seen fit to reverse the largely illusory deterioration you like to wang oan aboot.
“Today, under Labour, life expectancy has stagnated”
Oh get a grip. They’ve been in power about 20 months. What are you imagining they’re doing – shooting dead the patients in Intensive Care?
And there you go again, ignoring the 19 years of devolved SNP running of the SNHS because the lies you would have to tell about that one would choke even you.
“fucking idiot” “cretin”
Aw, sam. And still you expect to be taken seriously.
Maybes naw, eh?
@ Sam 12th Feb 2026 @ 6.20pm , Sam you could have just stopped after,
“You are such a fucking idiot I usually ignore what you say.” to the 77th twat, he is being paid by our colonisers to antagonise and disrupt
Indy supporter HaHaHaHaHa
Haha, Twat H, good one!
You, sam, Northy, willie, Marie, YL and many more – you should get on the payroll. sarah too.
Your every lying, hysterical, bigoted, chip-on-shoulder, scum supporting post poisons Indy and besmirches Scotland’s honour.
Indy’s opponents could never trash the cause as well as you do. You may as well take the money for your efforts.
Nigel Farage’s policy is to privatise the health service in the style of the corporate market supplied healthcare in the USA.
Farage is the leader of Reform. He is close to the corporate world. The UK has in place legislation that allows for all of the devolved countries to have no legal right to resist any private takeover by let us say an American corporate health care business.
A Reform government in Westminster predisposed to American privatisation deal could therefore sell off the NHS – against Scotland’s devolved governments wishes.
A big bucks sell off, rich pickings for the corporates, Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson would be proud.
Most powerful devolved country in the world was what the great Gordon Brown vowed. But what coutry was he talking about?
Well now, willie, why didn’t you say earlier?
If Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson are for selling off the SNHS “agin oor will”, that changes everything.
12 weeks to save the SNHS right enough.
[Just between you and me, if that doesn’t work, throw Epstein in too. But you didn’t hear that from me. Make out it’s your own idea]
NORFOLK POLICE CRITICISED OVER INACCURATE RECORDING OF SUSPECTS’ SEX
Norfolk Constabulary has faced strong criticism for recording suspects’ preferred gender in official statistics.
Women’s rights activists have accused the police force of putting “ideology over accuracy” and for skewing official statistics with its policy to, “in most cases”, record self-identified gender, not biological sex.
Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refers to biological sex. Baroness Falkner of Margravine, who chaired the EHRC, urged organisations to immediately update their guidance or risk legal action.
SCANDALOUS
Ermine Amies, spokeswoman for the Women’s Rights Network, called the policy “scandalous” and accused the constabulary of “actively misleading the public they serve”.
She stated: “Our constabulary must revert to recording sex to restore trust, accuracy and compliance with UK law, with self-ID and other data recorded separately as relevant.”
Director of Advocacy at women’s rights charity Sex Matters, Helen Joyce, said: “The recording of trans-identifying male criminals as female is one of the most destructive consequences of gender ideology.
“Men commit far more crimes than women, especially violent and sexual crimes, meaning that even a small number of men recorded as female seriously skews crime statistics.”
POLICY DECISIONS
A spokesman for Norfolk Constabulary said: “On all custody records there is provision to record sex at birth and self-defined sex for detainees.”
He added: “The policy, which is similar to many other forces, will remain as we wait for additional guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and National Police Chiefs’ Council.
“We adhere to national guidance set by the National Police Chiefs’ Council in relation to custody searches involving transgender suspects and officers. All our cells can be used by persons of any sex.”
(The Christian Institute, 12 Feb 2026)
link to christian.org.uk
“We adhere to national guidance set by the National Police Chiefs’ Council in relation to custody searches involving transgender suspects”
Does that mean that a drunk Scottish bloke lifted for committing a nuisance in a public place can self-id as a laydee, admit to carrying a concealed offensive weapon, and insist that only a young, fit WPC can search him, sorry her, for it?
Asking for a friend.
Looks like the troll collective has got some overtime pay. Oh deep joy.
Looks like you’ve got SFA practical, plausible or sensible that could make a start on righting the troubles Scotland is currently afflicted by.
Here’s the thing, Dave. I don’t believe that saying “Thatcher” fixes or changes anything. If that’s trolling, then I’m a troll.
It’s the inalienable right of every Sovereign Scot to troll the people who say “Thatcher”, then sit back believing they’ve ended all arguments in their favour.
Even in 2014, just saying “Thatcher” didn’t work. It sure as hell isn’t gonna work now.
Besides oil, minerals, fish, vast military training territory, overspill living space etc, we note yet again stark geopolitical reasons why Scotland ain’t looking at independence any time soon, if ever…
Ponder this. Ponder Swinney. Ponder this again. Have we no giants left in the land?
‘ARCTIC NOW A NATO BASTION: Why UK doubling troops in Norway and Trump’s re-organised NATO leaves Putin weak in the Arctic’ (Philip Ingram “discusses…Britain’s pledge to double troops in the Arctic”, 11 Feb 2026)
youtu.be/QpKOhNUGRPU?si=8wltJxDWhhwewpKh
Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 44, Issue 2, March 2020, Pages 319–342, link to doi.org
“1979 and all that: a 40-year reassessment of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy on her own terms”
“2. Economic growth
everyone in the nation has benefited from increased prosperity – everyone. (Thatcher, 1988)
In the first instance, we consider the impact of Thatcher’s policies on the UK’s economic growth in three aspects: national income, household income and poverty. We will consider, in each case, the inheritance of the 1980s and whether it is reasonable to suppose the UK economy was revitalised by the policies of the 1980s.
2.1 National income
If it is the case that the adoption of free-market ideology improved the UK’s economic prospects (Thatcher, 2003), it is reasonable to suppose the rate of economic growth was greater after this adoption than before. However, the data (Table 1, Figure 1) undermine this supposition.
Table 1.Annualised increase in real GDP per capita of post-war governments
Government Years Annualised growth rate
Conservative 1951–64 2.82%
Labour 1964–70 2.22%
Conservative 1970–74 2.59%
Labour 1974–79 2.31%
Conservative 1979–97 2.09%
New Labour 1997–2010 1.37%
Coalition
(Cons./Lib.Dem) 2010–15 1.32%
Conservative 2015– 1.13%
Wow, sam. So not only did life expectancy continue to increase during and after Thatcher, but by your figures, real GDP per capita did as well.
Thatcher, eh? Fit a barsturt! Makin ordinary people live longer wi mair dosh tae spend an all.
Was there ever such evil in the world?
@2.23pm – a man speaks. And he’s wrong.
“denying the very existence of the female sex”
That’s what you claimed, Marie.
Feel free to provide some examples (or even one) to back up your claim.
I think your problem is one commonly seen on Wings BTL. You are so used to exaggerating every gripe into a foot stamping, scweaming fit, you are no longer aware you are doing it.
If men can become female by declaring that they simply feel that they are then female as a sex category ceases to exist. This is the ideology now being promoted by Western elites and the politicians they have captured. The repercussions for females are catastrophic.
Except H McH, Marie is right. If you say that any man can be a woman or boy a girl, you take away, essentially, all rights that attach to being a human female. It simply does not work the same way with ‘trans’ identified women because, ‘trans’ or not, no women (or none with two brain cells to spark off each other) is stupid enough to actually believe they are men and can muscle their way into male spaces, etc. without consequences.
That’s why the authorities are not daft enough to place these ‘men’ in male prisons. There is just no comparison between ‘trans’ identified men and ‘trans’ identified women. Whatever women are, they are still vulnerable to male violence. Even if a woman was to get her vagina sewn up and have a roll of arm flesh sewn on to her crotch, many men like anal sex and blow jobs, so she still wouldn’t be safe. Even if they passed as effeminate men, they would not be safe either.
Nah, Marie is right: the elimination of the female sex by allowing ‘trans’ identified males into the category destroys all female rights because these rights attach to the female sex and not to ‘gender’. Take that away and all rights go away with it. I admit it’s a novel way of destroying the female sex, not at all like Afghanistan that decrees they must not be seen or heard, must have no doctors, no schooling, no money from working, nothing of their own. Not even sunlight. The end result, though, is precisely the same – and will be, if women allow it to happen, which far too many seem willing to allow.
Except, Lorna, Marie is wrong.
Blokes aspiring to or just claiming to be girls no more denies the very existence of the female sex, than a fat, mouth breathing, falling over lardass aspiring to or just claiming to be a footballer denies the very existence of professional footballers.
If you can’t see the difference between denying rights and denying existence then I can’t help you.
But, because this is important, I’ll try once more to explain how an over-exaggerated, hyperbolic use of inaccurate language does more harm than good.
The trans blokes are subverting and diluting women’s rights by trying to claim them for themselves too.
It makes no sense to claim that a trans bloke can be simultaneously pretending to be a woman while denying there is any such thing as a woman.
H. McH: what you don’t get is that these men do not just want to be women facsimiles, they claim to be ‘special’ women with all the benefits of being of the male sex, too. So, what they actually want is all our rights plus their own as men. Get it? They really, really don’t believe that women are a sex class. That is the point. No sex class, no rights attaching.
They don’t actually want maternity leave, they want paternity leave exactly as women (used, if they get their way) to have maternity leave. If you understand what ‘trans’ really is – cross-dressing fetishism and paraphilia in adult, heterosexual males and a mental illness in the very young – you’ll get it.
Some are homosexual but they are not a threat to women in the same way, but they still hate us, many of them. They really, really don’t want the sex category of woman, adult human female to exist at all. They want to be men with all male privileges plus all female rights to exist as a sex category expunged in favour of a new men-women category and lesser female creatures who are little more than orifices.
Oh and young people with the bodies of children, some of them, the PDFiles, hence the puberty blockers. It is you who doesn’t understand, and you who is exaggerating. Try listening to them and what they are actually saying. They actually, really want to replace women, not stand alongside them, but keep inferior women for sex and puberty-blocked children, even as they claim to be ‘women’ themselves. You need to get out more and look at the world we live in, H. This is post modern ‘reality: a topsy-turvey world.
I see our resident Yoon Troll NAZI Child Rapist Protector is back.
Is anybody else sensing this?
A surge in Indy support that started around 10:18 last night and is still building!
Surely it can’t just be me?
Warning!
This is a public safety announcement.
Unwary readers risk serious psychological damage if they treat the comments posted in this place by unionists (colonialists if preferred… same thing) as anything other than the insane splutterances of the few sparkless synapses remaining to a dying empire’s fading consciousness.
Please adopt the following protective mind-state at all times when reading unionist comments.
Scots:
Ther scarce be a wird pit doun here fae colonialists (unyonists if preferryd… baith be alike) that’s onythin’ ither than abuise, threit, lie, errure, afftak, diveesion, diversioun, distractioun, logicale fallace, or hatesome antiScot rethorik.
English:
There’s barely a comment posted here by colonialists (unionists if preferred… same thing) that is anything other than insult, threat, lies, error, mockery, division, diversion, distraction, logical fallacy, or hateful anti-Scots rhetoric.
A self-identifying extra-terrestrial, millennia-old Pict writes, folks.
Heed wisely his words.
That aside, guid tae see ye back, Northy. Mind noo – nae mair postuing in thon lyeeng tongue, the Inglis.
Your warning has sadly come to late Northcode, it is clear that many of the posters on here have long since been overcome by the serious psychological damage which you caution us all against. Look at the sad cases of Cheyne, Baird, “James” et al.
“Clearly, the sea-change which occurred in UK economic prospects in the 1980s was not a change for the better; per capita real income growth slowed markedly post-1979. Since 1979, each government has underperformed its predecessor in this regard; however, these governments have also adopted broadly free-market policies (Dorling, 2010; Stepney, 2014), including increased labour market flexibility, free-market globalisation, increasing reliance on debt, exploitation of fossil fuels and privatisation of public assets.
This analysis supports that of Cribb et al. (2016) who consider, among other measures, net equivalised1 household income (after housing costs) by birth cohorts. They show incomes have stagnated across much of the economy since the 1980s. In their early 30s, for example, the average household comprised of those born in the 1980s is earning less than their elder siblings (born in the 1970s) did when they were in their 30s. Similarly, the 1970s generation, on average, are earning less than the median households of those born in the 1960s, 1950s or even 1940s, despite these latter are generally retired (Cribb et al., 2016).”
link to academic.oup.com
link to academic.oup.com
“Despite this reduction in income, the economically vulnerable were able to increase their expenditure during the Thatcher years (Goodman and Webb, 1995) through borrowing. Household debt increased from 37% of GDP in 1979 to 73% by 1990 (Cecchetti et al., 2011).
Poverty
Given that the better-off households experienced the greatest growth in incomes, and the least well-off households experienced the lowest growth of incomes, inequality increased significantly during the 1980s. Such an increase might be justified (Rawls, 1971) if the increasing inequality was to the benefit of the most economically vulnerable. Thatcher (1988, 1996) argued this was the case; the data undermine this contention. A recent analysis published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (Belfield et al., 2016) indicates that this increase in inequality still impacts families today [2020]: Much of the relative poverty currently experienced in the UK dates from the 1980s. In particular, the so-called ‘Breadline Poor’, those with insufficient resources to participate in the norms of society (see Dorling et al., 2007 and references therein) have seen their prospects decay since 1980.”
“Conclusion: income growth
Neo-liberal policies failed to boost the UK rate of growth across the board. Although the incomes of the already affluent grew more rapidly than average national income, Thatcher’s hoped-for trickle-down of prosperity did not occur. Insofar, as anything did trickle down, it was not prosperity, but debt. It is also worth noting, the governments of Thatcher and her successors have overseen an increase in health inequalities alongside an increase in income inequalities. This is despite the Thatcher government’s adoption of the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy for reducing such inequalities (Shaw et al., 2005; Dorling, 2018).”
link to academic.oup.com
Aye, sam, I dinna doot that cutting and pasting screeds of mince to bury your witterings has been a successful policy for you in the past.
So ah cannae fault ye for trying it again.
But for them who care (can there really be any?) this all started because you wrote:
“Thatcher has ruined the health of much of the Scottish population and of the North of England”
The statistics for life expectancy show your claim to be a lie. No amount of your burying your lie beneath acres of obfuscation can stop it from being dug up again and exposed to the light of day for instant rebuttal.
It’s a classic case of selective presentation of statistics to present a misleading conclusion, in this case to avoid recognising the significant period of high growth in the mid-to-late 80’s directly attributable to Thatcher’s policies by averaging out the growth rate across the early 1980’s during a severe recession she inherited from her predecessor.
I particularly like the explanation around efficiency of privatised industry which relies on nothing more than a bare statement that “there is little evidence” without undertaking any analysis.
“the governments of Thatcher and her successors have overseen an increase in health inequalities alongside an increase in income inequalities”
No shit, Sherlock!
Note the intention to ignore that well over ten million immigrants have entered the UK since 1990. The vast majority of them poor, many of them penniless. Just how daft does anybody have to be to not see what effect that must have on income inequalities?
As for health inequalities, somebody was wittering on in the Guardian yesterday about how as NHS treatment is primarily needed by the very young and the very old, young adult immigrants save the NHS money (until they get old).
Neatly avoiding the obvious fact that as so much NHS effort is expended on vaccinating and treating problems early, by allowing young unvaccinated adults with untreated conditions to settle here, we are taking people who will, by definition, be less healthy and cost the NHS more over their remaining lifetime than an indigenous person of the same age.
Just yesterday, the stats for the occurrence of serious health issues among the children of immigrant cousin couplings were being published, while our politicians, and their apologists, were studiously trying to look the other way.
And the usual apologists have the brazen gall to start wittering on about health inequalities!
They really do think our heids zip up the back.
“1997-2010: The New Labour Years
Having initially opposed PFIs, the incoming Labour government further entrenched the system after their election in 1997. They also expanded outsourcing to even more services, such as social care and mental health services, despite the failures already
demonstrated by earlier attempts.
Public health spending increased in this this era, but with strings attached. The NHS was significantly restructured to expand the internal market on the basis that greater competition would improve efficiency. In reality, this only served to pit hospitals against one another to the detriment of local services, and eventually created greater and greater obligations to contract out to private companies.
A 1997 – NHS (Private Finance) Act 1997 further facilitated the PFI scheme, and a wave of agreements were signed after it passed.”
link to pilc.org.uk
There are 14 NHS Trusts in England under investigation for maternity care. In 2022/23 800 babies in England may have dies unnecessarily according to preliminary investigation.
Outside the maternity scandals there has been a series of scandals in NHS Trusts: Shrewsbury and Telford: Morecambe Bay: Bristol Royal: Winterbourne View: Mid Staffs.
The Francis Report into the Mid Staffs NHS Trust recounts systematic failings in healthcare that left patients routinely neglected.The Trust focused on cutting costs and hitting government targets, not patient care. Patients were left to lie soaked in their own urine and excrement for considerable periods of time. No care was taken to ensure that patients were fed. Basic standards of hygiene were not met, with relatives resorting to taking sheets home to wash. Some families were forced to clean toilets themselves for fear of catching infections.
England’s Trusts will repay some £80 billion of PFI debt for £13 billion investment.
Between 2006 to 2023 Scotland has paid £14 billion in PFI debt.
Sam !
Ok Sam !
We all know you can “cut and paste” now !
What’s your next “Computers for 10 year-olds” exercise ?
Sam @ 9.15am
I don’t think people really realise the effects of PFI. These effects are many fold.
Introduced by Thatcher for thereafter it to become a hallmark of Blair and Brown’s new labour economic policy PFI shifted debt off the public borrowing requirement. Fiscal wheeze you may say but leasing an asset over 25 to 30 years was not borrowing. Well that’s what they said.
However, in terms of finance, and as the title PFI implies, funding was secured from the private sector. Cheaper than government borrowing you may ask. Well most certainly not and the country certainly know that now, as it struggles to pay the mountain of accumulated PFI debt – or should I say ” leasing ”
A info graphic that I once saw depicted a big very long oil tanker , with the accommodation block at the rear depicted as the capital construction cost whereas the huge length of forward tanker, much hidden underwater was the enormous amount of finance many many times the size of the accommodation block. Every picture tells a story if you look.
But bigger, possibly much more significant than that is the impact that PFI and design, build, and self certify as to quality and safety has had.
The concept of the private sector know best and delivers best was at the heart of PFI. Freed to design, build, self certify and then maintain before a handover, or maybe a re-PFI, the commercial interests did what it did best and made money.
Free to self certify I think it would be fair to say that design parameters were pushed to the edges of the design envelope that the self checking builder could deliver. Quality built out you may say but absolutely true.
Schools with walls falling down, poop poor poor quality building arrived. And in terms of safety we know only too well what an industry freed in the private sector to do what it does best. The self certification of defective murderous cladding panels on Grenfell Tower is a stark example of that.
And as we can see the concept of one shop design and construct seems to have afflicted much more. The QE Hospital being testiony to that.
Its a grim grim situation and now with many of the early PFIs now coming to the end of their concession period the question for our economically supercharged vibrant and utterly successful economy is what next.
Will the public sector take over it’s thirty year old schools, hospitals, colleges and roads or will they proceed to negotiate new PFI type deals. It a huge question as is the actual build standards.
It is high time that there was proper academic research into what has happened with regard to the procurement of infrastructure these last 30 to 40 years and what it has actually delivered, or should I say burdened us all with.
There is always a man who can build cheaper and for less in the pursuit of profit but that couldn’t possibly be true.
Its a grim grim situation. An economic miracle, or at least for the the corporate profiteers, but not the many.
“defective murderous cladding panels on Grenfell”
Oh my aching sides.
As I recall, the majority of Grenfell victims were people who had walked deserts, swam oceans, and mortgaged their lives to get a little piece of the comfort and security Grenfell offered them.
Exactly the same people as are walking deserts, swimming oceans and mortgaging their lives today. While you wring your hands, willie, others have more important concerns.
“Introduced by Thatcher”
A tiny bit of internet research dates the announcement of PFI to two years after Thatcher’s resignation.
Still, if you need a lie to hang your argument on, just lie, eh? You know it makes sense!
Great post, Willie
Sam says “great post”.
Well looky here. One liar complementing another on his lies.
It is very clear that union- globalist are trying very hard to keep the Scots down and in there place as opposition and here for no other reason on a site that supports independence.
I like them doing this,
It allows anyone else reading and very helpful in proving Scots are right when they state the Colonial thumb imprint has been and is still being used on Scots in attempts to keep them there,
I never complain about them, never try get rid of them, because it was one hidden and not so obvious to people outside of Scotland,
But in the modern world, people from around Britain and further afield can witness and validate it for themselves the long spoken about suppression and constant oppression on Scots
Excellent constant examples of what Alf Baird, Che, James, North Code, . Willie, Sam, Fearghus, Dave Holden ” et al, have been drawning attention too,
Give the union Globalist enough rope….
And they do the advertising for us, providing the evidence that was so often difficult for Scottish people get across with no media voice in the past,- however, we now have the help and assistance in full view of the Centuries of the oppressors and suppression.
Thank you union Globalist for the free advertising of Scotlands true condition under the Colonial thumb print.
Whats not to like, regarding Scots being proved correct on the subject of Colonialism.
We tried proving that Scotland was under Colonial oppression and suppression,
‘Low and behold’ the colonists are now helping us.
Yes James, the English now feel the urgent need to become liberated, to reclaim their sovereignty much like us Scots, before it is too late. The only problem is that some of them, as with many Scots, remain confused by the longstanding colonial cultural illusion that is ‘British’ identity.
For it is this colonial and cultural illusion that also draws in people from elsewhere and who then claim to be ‘British’, but are far less likely to ever think of themselves as English (or Scots, Welsh, or Irish).
Which means all the peoples of these isles need to end the faux ‘Union’ in order to save themselves and to protect their own nations and national cultures from perishing.
“all the peoples of these isles need to end the faux ‘Union’ in order to save themselves and to protect their own nations and national cultures from perishing”
Seriously, Alf?
That could only be true if you believe the Scots, Welsh and Irish are imposing the alien, foreign values and attitudes of the colonisers on the English.
Unless, of course, you’re pivoting to accept that what I’ve been saying all along is true. We’re all being colonised, to the tune of over 10 million since the turn of the century, and the thick end of a million every year.
And the real colonists have values and attitudes a lot worse than anything we’ve seen before.
“We’re all being colonised”
Yes, that seems pretty obvious, even to Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
However, for Scotland and Wales most of our immigration still emanates from one country – England (e.g. Dorling’s ‘white flight’). Immigration for the Celtic Periphery nations is therefore rather different than England’s experience, although all our ‘national cultures’ and national identities/ consciousness and hence nations themselves may end up perishing if immigration continues at current levels.
Hence it can be argued that reclaiming national sovereignty is imperative for all ‘UK’ nations as is the need to finally end the colonial-cultural illusion of ‘British identity’ and with that a faux ‘British nation’ that draws and facilitates global immigration primarily from former (albeit still exploited) colonial countries.
Re the stats at 9.54am.
Aside of GDP distribution into societal income classes a cursory review of the GDP growth from 1951 to 1979 reveals that post that date average GDP growth has more than halved.
This of course is a headline and the realities are more nuanced than that.
What however might be worth adding is that in the years between 1951 and 1979 the UK manufactured all manner of things ranging from steel, to cars, to ships, to consumer goods. It also owned gas, electricity and water utilities along with things like ports, airports and even airlines. But who owns them now and where to the profits go.
And today with growth struck firmly at zero percent, or 0.1% as is reported, one has to ask has all this neoliberalism delivered.
Scotlands people not being in a 1707 treaty of parliamentary and political union, and not in a Monarchy union as a result of Scotlands 1707 parliament being dissolved by the parliament of England, the parliament of Great Britain and the monarch of England from the (1707 treaty of non union) the same year 1707.
The Great Britain parliament being dissolved in 1800.
And of Course taking into account the 11 missing days of England staying in the treaty in 1752.
And altering its date to a International treaty after it was signed in two different years.
So Scotland not in a union with England,
And
England not ina union with Scotland.
Now wait for the Colonial oppressors and the suppression attempts of the Colonist to disprove the historical records wrote by the fair hand by Hansard in the English parliament of Great Britain.
As Scotland was dissolved from it in 1707.
WHILE SCOTLAND SLEEPS
link to archive.is
Scotland’s political class need the biggest kicking ever delivered by human feet.
Interesting.
Linked perhaps to the proposed plans for a Chinese Super-Embassy to be created in London, and Starmer’s refusal to divulge what his meetings with Beijing were about.
Willie,
But who owns them now?
Good point,
Because Scotland and its parliament were dissolved out of a political parliamentary union with England in 1707,
Its in the records
Willie,
Who owns them now,
Scotland did then and does now,
The union between Scotland and England was not completed to create the parliament of Great Britain,
Or the parliament of the Anglo-Irish united kingdom.
Because Scotland was Dissolved from the union in 1707, and again, just to make sure, for a second time in 1800.
We are talking big time reparations for Scotland, the Country and realm that was not captured into a 1707 union with England.
TURABDaian,
Scotland is asleep.
If you have a dissolved Scottish parliament from Englands parliament and the parliament of Great Britain
Then we cannot have Scottish representation sitting in Westminster parliament as it became the English parliament of Great Britain,
And agreement settled with Ireland was known and recorded as the Anglo- Ireland agreement at the beginning of the 1800s,
does not include Scotland as it representation was dissolved in 1707. And again in the year 1800.
We are not part or parcel to the united kingdom of Great Britain nor of the united kingdoms of England/ Ireland.in context or as a combined legal construct entity,
Thus Scotland was dissolved from the parliament of Great Britain and from the 1707 treaty with England in 1707.
There are no Scottish politicians.
Scotland is asleep.
Once a Country is dissolved from a two partner treaty then it become a one Country treaty, with its self.
The parliament of England was not dissolved but simply transferred into the new named parliament of Great Britain.
Which did not include Scotlands realm or its parliament or any legal form of representatives left after its dissolution from the parliament of Great Britain in 1707.
Scotland was no longer part of the construct of the parliament of Great Britain.because dissolving the parliament of Scotland in 1707 also dissolved it obligations as a Scottish parliament to the 1707 treaty of union.
England went forward as the parliament of Great Britain alone,
The charges brought against Murrell are:
Embezzlement of £459,046.49 of SNP funds over a 13-year period (2010–2023).
Purchase of a £124,550 motorhome (Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e) using SNP funds for personal use.
Creation of false duplicate sales documents relating to the motorhome to portray it as a legitimate party expense.
Use of £16,489 of SNP funds towards a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf in 2016.
Use of £57,500 of SNP funds towards an £81,000 Jaguar I-Pace in 2019, and allegedly creating a false invoice to disguise the purchase.
Claiming £18,408.91 in expenses he was allegedly not entitled to, including alleged false invoices.
Spending £159,757.39 of SNP funds at 82 retailers on items allegedly for personal use or the use of others (2014–2022).
Spending £81,610.19 of SNP funds on Amazon purchases (2010–2023), allegedly for personal use or others, and recorded in a way said to disguise their true nature.
————————————————
Innocent until proven guilty.
Good taste in cars, if the allegations are true.
Any chance of a link, x? Seems important to me that if these allegations are to be bandied about online, there should be some evidence to substantiate that these are the actual charges.
I like to predict new trends, to get in on it; here is one –
REMIGRATION
is the new rock and roll, the cabbage patch doll, the buzz lightyear, the tiktok, the discord of this era.
instead of trying to “stop the boats” – with what? – you just make life intolerable for the undesirables, who we now call
REMIGS
– “did you see all the remigs down that govanhill, disgraceful … ”
so the hot new parties will designate remigs as undesirables and gradually remove their rights as citizens :
can’t rent a room or work; anyone who employs you or rents to you, gets hefty fines and the jail. No more multi occupancy housing. No halal, kosher or hotpot style food. Random accent checks and comparison with an approved pantone colour chart.
ID required for all purchases. Denied fire, water and shelter, within the bounds of the imperium for 500 leagues.
The Remig-BAMS, it is game over, but for the entrenched Remig-Anglos, we need to dig them out of their entrenchments; simple – we tax the shite out of them, whack up all taxes, especially for them, and make up new ones. Pretty soon buying a townhouse in Mayfair is a lot cheaper than trying to own a 2 bed flat in Newington, oh yes. And once gay sex is banned in Scotland, all the nigels will run.
“did you see all those remigs over in Skye – the highland games sounded like a home counties gymkhaha so it did … “
a useful read
link to archive.ph
– some snippets
thatcher pumped the oil like fuck, she pished it up a wall, to finance “the city boom” in the 80s … or in more polite language :
“Many now point to Norway’s Stavanger, rather than Aberdeen, as the region’s main hub. BOTH DRAW FROM THE SAME BASIN, BUT NORWAY TREATED OIL AND GAS AS A LONG-TERM NATIONAL PROJECT, EXTENDING PRODUCTION AND KEEPING TIGHT STATE CONTROL OVER COMPANIES SUCH AS EQUINOR ASA. THE RESULT IS A STEADY FLOW OF TAX AND DIVIDEND INCOME INTO NORWAY’S $2.1 TRILLION SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND.
Speaking to oil executives in Oslo last month, Energy Minister Terje Aasland contrasted Norway with the UK, calling the industry there “essentially irrelevant.”
“They’ve been a bit all over the place,” he said in an interview after the speech.”
– the oil paid for the neoliberal deindustrialisation; it made the south east/city/golden triangle, rich, and the rest of the country, died. Scotland was beaten twice, robbed, then destroyed.
oil, gas, wind, solar and hydro, for efficiency, must be managed as a single entity; energy should be considered -infrastructure- which is the domain of the state, and is owned by the people. With cheap energy, the consumers are happy, as is any industry who comes here; when you make the export of energy illegal, you keep all that cheap power in Scotland, and the companies need to come here, to build here and employ, here. Only an indy country will do this; the english will steal the energy, pay you buttons for it, and pretend they are doing you a favour. Energy is real wealth, you cannot print it, or pop it out of thin air via a ledger entry; with energy you can do anything you want. And any hydrocarbons get refined here.
and if you want cheap long term gas, you can get it down a pipeline to your door (I know a guy); LNG is expensive, stupid.
So, it’s a decent article, and a lot more frank, i.e. the foreign business press, than any UK MSM – but it misses something huge; the north sea is only half of Scotland’s waters, which are mostly untouched; you might say – these are deeper waters, and they are, but its a tech problem waiting to be solved. There is immense research ongoing right now on undersea drones (for military purpose partly), but when the robots can do all the drilling, you can put the rigs under the sea, or on the bed. This tech is not developed, and is, again, something we should be getting in to. There is also a lot of mineral wealth, rare earths, on the seabed.
– scottish waters are only a semi-tapped goldmine, which could be used to make the Scots a rich independent country, with living standards far higher than currently. There are prizes still on the table, waiting to be won; and with such wealth you can create incredible infrastructure, open up the country, repopulate the highlands (with Scots, not anglos, not BAMS, no carpet bagging scum).
also useful, faffs a bit, the meat is from 27.00 on –
link to youtube.com
– the city is not an engine of wealth creation, lt is a parasite on all our necks.
the UK is utterly incompetent; it can’t do anything, and anything it partially manages to do, comes in much too late, miles over budget; there are too many examples, but consider HS2, the world champion of fuckup, total gold standard 3 stooges keystone cops joke times, something which will never be exceeded except maybe the nuke program, to build a hinkley every 5 years till 2050 – a project with no real purpose than to guarantee the highest electricity prices in the world for decades to come. And why is the country so shit – because of bankers; every major project is over complicated by middlemen, looking for a cut; think of the godfather 2, the man in the white suit – Fanucci – looking to “wet his beak”; he was nothing compared to the city, an amateur.
Everything goes through the city, they get a cut of everything, and the longer it takes, the more interest they charge. But it was not always thus – during wartime with non market economy, the UK did incredible things (as did the Germans, US, Soviets) – all done on punch cards, card indexes, slide rules, pencil and paper, log tables. Alas, the financialisation of the economy means there is no money “in the real world”, the real economy, is a waste of time, so the smart people get into finance – structuring a basket of derivatives, or trading at the nanosecond level – a colossal misallocation of resources. The market system is not a perfect invisible hand automatically solving all problems – it is an inefficient, wasteful, one armed bandit, that can only eat cash.
Just wait till the Nigels are forced to deal with something real – like flood defences; they won’t build any (they don’t know how), they will setup an options market, where people can buy and sell contracts on “sea level rises”. It is all they know, and another reason why we need shot of them.
reform aka destroy – want to turn over the entire country to the bankers, gut any regulations they still have to obey … it will be worse than anything we have seen, and there will still be a tsunami of BAMES, since they are cheap labour and drive down wages.
Dante put sodomites and usurers – paedos and bankers – in the 8th circle of hell, almost at the very bottom; for only tr4itors are worse.
capitalism isn’t what is used to be; started out as a “good idea” and was against the pests of the age – the landed gentry, paying no taxes, extracting rents parasitically from the rest of society – enter “free markets”. Adam Smith was also very much into his moral philosophy, but his modern fanboys forget all about that.
The system isn’t “capitalism” anymore, to give it its proper name would result in a long german-like word, and thus unwieldly – it is best to think of it as being like the monster in “the thing”; it consumes, then absorbs the DNA of all it has consumed, adapting it all to its own ends, usually in the worst way possible, or good ideas turned to bad. It keeps morphing from one generation to the next, always changing its operations, especially in response to external stressors or internal crises The last modification, to a new regime, was down to 2008; we entered an era of the “perma bailout” (for banks) and “perma austerity” (for the people) – and no fucking jailtime for the made men with a banking licence.
The next phase looks like “techno feudalism”, a hi tech form of rentierism, i.e. its rigged games all the way, no more free markets – the tech corps, mega banks, private capital – sits like a facehugger on every government; they now own the game, and you know what – all that “competition” is wasteful and we won’t do it anymore. The economy is carved up, i.e. the means of life itself, to be the sole possession of a small cartel in each sector (so it doesn’t look like a monopoly). Honest and decent politicians have little chance of doing anything, even with the will – but don’t worry, since they were bought and paid for a long time ago.
For the young people, it is a stark choice – you get to live inside the castle walls under their rules (own nothing and be happy; total surveillance), or take your chances outside the “moat” (where we have systematically removed any ability for you to survive at any level). People will look back and say – do you remember when our grandparents “owned the house they lived in” – with a garden front and back; grandad even took his water from a well, got power from a windmill and “grew his own food” … and … and … when he wanted to go somewhere he got into a “car” which he would drive himself anywhere he wanted, without prior approval, issue of a travel permit, or checking his carbon credit status … they had no smartphones and used these things called libraries, wrote things down with a pen, on dead tree parchment.
Central banks are building “programmable digital currencies”, which gives them complete control over everything; the money will only be able to be spent within a time period, on certain things and certain places, tailored to the individual, and of course – they can empty your wallet at any time.
This, on banking, might interest you.
link to lawgazette.co.uk
“For most of this century, hefty legal claims by customers of and investors in banks have come thick and fast, forcing the sector to set aside billions following mis-selling scandals and frauds. The UK’s retail banks found their own television advertisements, promoting partnership and trust, competing for airtime with claims management companies and the Financial Conduct Authority, which reminded anyone who took out payment protection insurance (PPI) that the product was widely mis-sold, and that customers may have a claim.”
link to worldfinancialreview.com
“As the Financial Times (2022) has described, the crashing of two leading powers of the world – the British Empire and the Soviet Union – brings these two countries together. Thatcher’s relaxation of financial supervision and the commission on deregulation of the New Labour government gave the UK a chance to accept dirty money from corrupt Russian bureaucrats and oligarchs. By funding British politicians and manipulating legal loopholes, Russian dirty money has found London a great place for laundering, which has seriously disturbed the order of the financial market (The Economist, 2022). In this essay, the problem of the causes of this terrible situation is analysed and some possible solutions, involving either legislation or directive policies, will be provided and discussed.”
Yes, London launders an estimated £90 billion of “dirty” money from crimnal activities each year.
Happy anniversary (tomorrow) of the battle of Skaithmuir 1316.
A bit like medieval WWE Englands best and their hired best thought they would rumble with the Good Sir James Douglas and ended up getting their a8ses handed to them on a plate.
Yet another Scots victory airbrushed out of Anglocentric British history..
Sorry YL, was that arses or asses?
What’s going on with you anyway? Are you posting from a Morningside town house perchance? Standing just behind the curtains, peering through the net screens, bone china cup of weak, milky tea in one hand, squinting to see what the ethnics at the bus stop across the road are up to?
Your posts give off that kind of vibe.
HMcH
You’re projecting again “old boy”..
Well I’d like to imagine this anniversary may just, just mibbes, mighta have helped put some fire in the belly of our Rugby team today.
Well done lads!
Cue the cringe pile on..
Not from me, YL.
I will always support the right of every Scot to imagine whatever vividly phantasmagorical hallucinations his or her heid is capable of concocting.
It’s only when the imaginee starts to believe his imaginary inventions have some congruence with reality that the problems start.
But you already know that. You maintain the partition between your imagined world and the real world and you’ll be grand.
I was thinking – what I call thinking, anyway – that the theorised nature of astrophysics’ Black Holes and the supposed process leading to their creation acts as a metaphor for the end of empires.
England, the event horizon of the collapsed super-massive imperial star that was once called the British Empire.
London, the centre of the black hole created by the empire’s collapse and mysteriously hidden behind its event horizon.
England-as-Britain was packaged and sold as the fictional motherland of those peoples its empire colonised around the world… more than half a billion folk and a quarter of our planet.
But the core of that imperial fiction has become unstable and is gravitationally collapsing inward upon itself as its star’s, its empire’s, outer layers are blown away by galactic forces beyond its control.
There is no resisting England-as-motherland’s pull on the peoples it once ruled such is the force of their desire to return ‘home’. For hidden deep in the psyches of those folk is the notion they are ‘British’
They aren’t interested in being French or German or Spanish… or Scottish – they are the imperially bedazzled on their robotic march to the place they have been made to believe they were spiritually spawned.
They are drawn by a powerful fantasy handed down to them from previous generations; they have been made into artificial ‘English’ who crave the attention of their creator and who wish only to nestle in its imperial arms, comfortably lost in their dreamy delusion of Britishness.
You should go to London to investigate, Northy.
I believe nothing, not even information, can escape a black hole.
You could find out if it’s true and report back.
To most people ownership means first and foremost a home of their own. (Conservative Party, 1979)
A major plank of Thatcher’s social policy was to facilitate home ownership (Conservative Party, 1979). This accords with her goal of transforming the UK into a ‘property-owning democracy’ (Thatcher, 1993, p. 698), in which a high proportion of citizens owns a stake in the nation.
Right to Buy
One of the tools utilised by local government to address the lack of affordable housing in the mid-twentieth century was to build and rent so-called council houses of an appropriate quality and quantity. Council tenants’ ‘Right to Buy’ was foremost amongst Thatcher’s policies for increasing home-ownership (Conservative Party, 1979). Introduced in the Housing Act 1980 (HM Government, 1980), and extended in The Housing and Building Control Act 1984, Housing Act 1985 and Housing and Planning Act 1986, the policy gave tenants the right to buy the council house in which they resided at discounts of up to 75% below market prices (House of Commons, 1999).
Not all public housing was sold, of course; not all tenants could afford to buy, and not all council houses were desirable properties to own. In practice, the better public properties were sold to the more affluent tenants (House of Commons, 1999). Those fortunate enough to exercise their Right to Buy benefited from the gift of public assets worth over £200 billion (2010–12 values) through the discounts offered (Atkinson, 2015, p. 162). Thatcher thus generated a substantial amount of goodwill towards her government amongst some members of the electorate, even amongst former opposition supporters (Stepney, 2014).
Right to Buy was also good for central government financially, at least in the short term. The bulk of public proceeds went to national, rather than local, government (Disney and Luo, 2017). These proceeds were significant: by 1999, Right to Buy had raised more money than any other privatisation of public assets (House of Commons, 1999); by 2003, the central government had benefited to the tune of £36.8 billion (Atkinson, 2015). The local government saw little, if any, financial benefit from the policy. Furthermore, it retained the statutory duty to accommodate the homeless despite its much-reduced stock of housing. This proved problematic as the number of applicants for council housing more than doubled during the 1980s (Disney and Luo, 2017).
Unsurprisingly, home building by local authorities collapsed after Right to Buy; however, the private sector did not make up the shortfall (Figure 4). Compared to 1979–80, the UK rate of home completions declined 13% by 1990, 29% by 1997 and 51% by 2013/14. Of the housing which was built, an increasing proportion became owned by foreign interests (Dorling, 2015; Valentine, 2015; Atkinson et al., 2016; Fernandez et al., 2016).”
“Forced through globalisation to compete in the housing market with the international super-rich while UK housebuilding per capita declined, the average Briton has found housing less affordable since the 1980s (Dorling, 2015). The rate of owner occupation (including vacant properties) is currently declining. The vacancy rate is itself an issue: In England alone, it is estimated that over 600,000 potential homes were empty in October 2015; more than 200,000 of these for a period in excess of six months (Wilson et al., 2018).
Neither is renting more affordable; in the three decades from 1987, rents increased at a greater rate than median household incomes less direct taxes (ONS Online e). Over the same period, the real housing benefit (rent subsidy) required by median households more than doubled. In 2017 alone, total housing benefit paid was £22 billion (DWP Online c).
Home ownership, other than through inheritance, amongst younger generations is becoming ever more rare. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Cribb et al., 2016), the UK’s millennial generation, born in the 1980s, has only about two-thirds as much chance of owning their own home by age 30 as those born in the 1950s or 1940s. Increasingly unable even to afford rent, many young people are simply living with their parents (ONS, 2016).2
Conclusion: housing
Right to Buy generated funds and goodwill for central government, and boosted home ownership amongst the more affluent former council house tenants in the short run. However, there is no evidence Thatcher’s policies made it easier for the typical Briton to buy (or rent) a home in the longer term. The amount paid in housing benefit has increased at more than twice the rate of inflation since 1987, implying the taxpayer is increasingly subsidising, not affordable home ownership, but high rental costs.”
link to academic.oup.com
Great post, sam.
I think you’re the only one I know who accepts that the ten+ million immigrants don’t need roofs over their heads.
BTW. Where do YOU believe they sleep at night?
Sam: in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s until well into the 1970s and even early 1980s, most young people stayed with their parents until they married. That is, most young people who were working-class/lower middle-class. When they married, they would either stay with parents/in-laws or hired a caravan to live in and put their names down for a council house. Others rented privately.
That was the reality, not the fiction that passes for truth. There never was, in working-class/lower middle-class circles a huge buying-up of property for homes among young people until well after Thatcher came to power. Yes, those generations had free education and grants (in the 1960s and 1970s) and jobs were easier to come by, but people lived quite austerely, with far fewer having cars or a bank account or holidays abroad. Start-up furniture was often second-hand and appreciated.
The nonsense that is spouted about the ‘good, old days’ is rampant rubbish and all it does is fuel inter generational resentment for a lie. They should not lump working-class and higher middle-class together when making these pronouncements. While middle-class people did aspire to be home owners, no such aspiration was quite as strong in working-class households, although it might well have been a dream for some. Does nobody ever ask the people who were alive then for first-hand testimony?
Born in 1948,brought up mainly in East Kilbride,which was fresh and new then in 1957,my catching TB was the reason for the move to EK,from a “room and kitchen,inside toilet,no bathroom tenement flat opposite Kelvingrove Art Galleries. So the street in EK was all rental properties,and a fair few neighbours suffering from TB as I was. All working class,in local employment,and happy to rent in what was a lovely environment.
Anyway,time passed,and in 1978,I bought a flat,ground floor in Shawlands. Because it cost £3,500 pounds,a Glasgow District Council Loan was the way to do it,as mortgage societys would not lend below 5K. The 2 appt flat was a gut job,the family mucked in with decorating, second hand furniture,and in the end,it looked absolutely great. The £40 monthly payments were a stretch,but I survived. Anyway,2 years later I got 11k when I sold it,and moved to something a bit better. Don’t forget,I started with nothing. Anyway,that gave me the bug to own and do-up properties,mainly because I enjoyed it. My mum and Dad didn’t understand why I would ever want to buy,and not rent. That’s what working class people were brought up believing,but I kind of bucked the ethos. Todays’ generation expect to move into something new,fully furnished etc.etc.But you know,I never forget that first flat,and all the make do and mend,and the memories all those cast-offs afforded. My age and memory,and rose tinted specs will play a part in that, but who could forget filling a lemonade bottle with hot water to heat the bed….and it bursting.
William Campbell: yes, I absolutely agree with you, but it was not the norm until Thatcher introduced council house ownership. I am not saying that working-class people were brought up to not have aspirations; what I am saying is that it was not for everyone, just as university was not for everyone; and high-powered jobs cannot be for everyone.
Nothing wrong with aspirations, but it simply was not the paradise that present young generations are being gulled into believing it was. Life was simpler in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, but it was harder than today in so many ways, while still being far better than previous generations of working-class people had endured – WW I, the Great Depression and widespread unemployment, deprivation and rent strikes, public housing stock that was deteriorating alarmingly.
Then, WW II, Austerity, lack of housing, the return to peacetime production and hundreds of thousands of women made unemployed. The eventual introduction of the National Health Service (by a Labour government) and the mass building of houses, which took at least two decades after the war, with many, many people living in insanitary conditions. Let’s not gild the lily for the sake of fuelling inter generational resentment because life has actually never been a bowl of cherries for many people. Remember, hundreds of thousands of British men lost their lives; civilians, mainly women and children, were blown to pieces by bombing; children and adults were displaced from the cities where the bombs dropped daily. We have little idea today of just how bad it was for so many of our citizens in the past, and we should be grateful that we don’t.
What about the mental health of children who were often removed from family homes for their safety? Many, from the poverty-stricken inner cities did not even recognise beds with sheets. I think the difference is that people from those earlier says did not have the expectations that modern people have and were satisfied with less, not because they were not aspirational but because they had different values, greater social cohesion and far, far less self-obsession.
WHILE SCOTLAND SLEEPS, the British state yet again falls out of its comfy bed and is in freefall.
link to archive.is
“Oligarchical authoritarianism” – that’s what we have. That’s what we’ve had for a long time now.
The charges brought against Murrell are:
Embezzlement of £459,046.49 of SNP funds over a 13-year period (2010–2023).
Purchase of a £124,550 motorhome (Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e) using SNP funds for personal use.
Creation of false duplicate sales documents relating to the motorhome to portray it as a legitimate party expense.
Use of £16,489 of SNP funds towards a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf in 2016.
Use of £57,500 of SNP funds towards an £81,000 Jaguar I-Pace in 2019, and allegedly creating a false invoice to disguise the purchase.
Claiming £18,408.91 in expenses he was allegedly not entitled to, including alleged false invoices.
Spending £159,757.39 of SNP funds at 82 retailers on items allegedly for personal use or the use of others (2014–2022).
Spending £81,610.19 of SNP funds on Amazon purchases (2010–2023), allegedly for personal use or others, and recorded in a way said to disguise their true nature.
Weren’t Beattie and (micro- managing) Tricky Nicky counter signatories?
And surely in some manner as cohabitor she must have been a beneficiary of all/ some of these dodgy purchases?
She knew.
Marie.
Off course she knew.
And the timing of stepping down days before “blue tent day” has tip-off written all over it.
To think I once supported her..
“She knew”
We are surely moving ever closer toward realising the true nature of colonialism and “its fascist roots” (Cesaire) which by necessity demands a regime and justice system guaranteeing immunity for some and malice for the rest, especially dissenters.
Sam,
The Council house stock was accumulated through tax payers, and was public housing stock, payed for by the public, however once in control of local Councils, the councils became consumed and reduced by other Councils, then government controlled those Councils to a much higher degree than they did after the war building period,
Once laws and legislations were passed to further government control they encoured these to be sold again to the tax payer,
The proceeds of the largest sale of British housing went to the government purse,
Now again they are looking towards the the tax payer to provide a third government income via inheritance tax if you sell the home you bought,
At the moment it is set at a certain price when sold, no doubt that will be reduced to collect more revenues when needed,
In Scotland, The taxes you pay to buy your home, the taxes you pay to keep your home, and the taxes you pay to sell your home and the taxes you pay to pass it on to your family, not selling it at all,
Then add on the Scottish income tax… Poll tax on Scots…because Scotlands people still pays the The standard British income tax as well.
is a gigantic money making machine scam on the people in Britain whom are not in a treaty with the parliament of Great Britain,
The reality that there is no treaty of union hits home when you realise that adding- on Scottish tax to British taxation does not leave Scotland and England in the same and equal tax brackets as stated in the article of that treaty,
Westminster parliament of Englands great Britain tells the lie of the treaty once again,
Believe their fairy story,
For all historical records and evidence points in a opposing direction, to an alternate reality.
As one of a people whose country has been colonised, their wealth of natural resources stolen, and who have been subjugated by their neighbour in the name of greed for three centuries, there is a certain pleasure tae be haed watching England bleat and whine about being ‘coloniZed’ – a self-inflicted colonisation made by imperial invitation, by the way… eejits.
Maybe England shouldn’t have sold the “we are your motherland” routine so vigorously during its great days of empire to those folk whose descendants are rocking up on its shores the day claiming their entitlement as Britons tae live there..
I expect the soap opera called “The Empire Fights Back… Tears of Loss” will become must-see viewing for indigenous Scots over the next few years.
Karma isn’t just a bitch – she’s a bitch… and then some.
You have a good point about Empire and the long tail of consequences. This was even predicted in the 18th century by poets like John Savage! But Ratcliffe does not talk for England but for right wing Reform voters. Farage is delighted of course and it might even boost Reform’s chances at Holyrood.
Because, the influx of people from ex-GB colonies to Scotland is happening for the same reasons. Maybe time to remember the massive contribution to Empire from Scotland with all this talk of colonisation.
Odd isn’t it.
The same people telling us no former colony ever wants to turn the clock back are the ones telling us the best and brightest of the former colony’s people naturally desert the former colony to re-settle in the colonising power.
Not exactly a great advert for Indy is it? But joined up thinking never was their thing.
Hatey, I think the word colonise has lost all meaning tbh. In my book, migrants to the UK and Scotland, wherever they are from (England, the rest of the world) are not colonising anywhere, they are migrants, not an invading group seeking to take over the place. Empty places can be colonised by the first people to go there, but that was all a very long time ago.
The confusion lies in the changes migration brings about, which can be significant if numbers are sufficient, but to colonise is to try to take over, with intent, not simply go there to try and better your situation or simply because you fancy a change.
link to communitylandscotland.org.uk
“Scores of estates in the West Highlands and Islands were acquired by people using the equivalent of well over £100m worth of riches connected to slavery in the Caribbean and North America. Many would go on to be leading figures in the Highland Clearances, evicting thousands of people whose families had lived on their newly procured land for generations.
These are amongst the conclusions of a research paper titled ‘Plantation slavery and landownership in the west Highlands and Islands: legacies and lessons’ published today, by two university academics – both from Hebridean backgrounds. It has been written by Coventry University-based Dr Iain MacKinnon from Skye, and Dr Andrew Mackillop, a senior lecturer in Scottish History at Glasgow University, who is originally from Harris.
It shows how 63 estates were bought by significant beneficiaries of “slavery derived wealth”. The majority (37) changed hands between 1790 and 1855, the main period of the eviction of thousands of people. Almost 1.2m acres were involved covering 33.5 % of the West Highlands and Islands.”
” In my book, migrants to the UK and Scotland”
Where can I get a copy? I searched Amazon books but couldn’t find it.
I found Doun-Hauden by Alf Baird, tho – a must read for all indigenous Scots who want to know how Scotland was colonised by England and was made into a non-self-governing illegally annexed territory by an invasive interloper.
H. McH: yes, I have often thought about that, too. Independence for so many former colonies ended up in conflict and tribal wars, mass pilfering by psychotic leaders with Swiss bank accounts and rampant Islamism. Did it have to be like that? I don’t think so, really. That’s the thing. It is always a choice whether you want to go down the road of creating and building a decent society or you want to flee elsewhere. Not saying it would be easy, but, if you want a country to call your own, it has to be done.
Saw a piece of news about the Spanish migrants whom the Spanish government have allowed to apply for citizenship. Hundreds and thousands of young men; nary a woman or child in sight. What happens to them when all the young men go to Europe, the continent their forefathers fought to be rid of in the colonial wars? Do they just wait to be slaughtered/drowned/starved/raped/murdered? Looks like it. A sensible immigration policy would prioritise families, discourage healthy young men, and regulate who comes in better than it does now. Africa is a wealthy continent that needs to direct its wealth and its populations to building a better future and we should not be taking its best people or its criminals. The hard Left seems to believe that people with a black skin or a brown skin are quite incapable of being bad in the same ways that white people can be bad.
“I found Doun-Hauden by Alf Baird, tho – a must read for all indigenous Scots who want to know how Scotland was colonised by England and was made into a non-self-governing illegally annexed territory by an invasive interloper.”
Thanks Northcode.
As far as I can tell, ‘Doun-Hauden’ remains the only academic and hence applied theoretical analysis fully explaining Scotland’s colonial reality, also providing a theoretical framework in that regard. Which explains why our colonial establishment does not wish to debate the book’s findings.
But that is only to be expected with such anti-colonial literature in a colonial society. For as Memmi wrote: “the colonizer hates theory”, and with good reason too, for it is theory that unveils and exposes colonialism.
link to cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com
There you go, Northy.
A rare opportunity to praise Alf, for praising you, for praising Alf.
Dinna get confused, noo!
First you’re an interstellar Pict, now you’re not an interstellar Pict, it’s hard to keep up, Northy.
Any ideas for what you’ll be after a generous libation of the water of life tonight? Or do we just have to wait and see?
Oh dear it seems that the commitment to openess and transparency with regard to the release of 2008 documentation in relation to trade envoy Prince Andrew has run into difficuly with documentation release being blocked.
Under noted is an extract from a report in today’s Times that confirms requests for disclosure
” …were refused, in part because it was claimed that disclosure could “endanger the physical or mental health, or the safety, of individuals involved in these arrangements.”
Text stating that information is withheld under Section 38(1)(a) and (b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, due to concerns for health and safety.
In other cases, his requests on Andrew’s time as trade envoy have been refused on the basis that the records were commercially sensitive, a risk to national security or constituted exempt royal communications ”
Dear oh dear, the cover up appears to continue unabated in the Crime Syndicate County of Windsor.
Might be worth a read of the piece. And closer to home its interesting how the Murrel case now proceeds to court just as a Scottish election looms.
The UK, the world’s greatest democracy and constitutional Monarchy – eh?
If as predicted the SNP are the largest party after the election,they should hold a referendum asking.
Should the Scottish NHS be privatised Yes or No,I believe that there would be a large majority against it so enabling the Scottish Parliament to tell reform about the result and to abide by it as they frequently talk about the result of 2016 and occasionally 2014.
If as predicted Reform win the next general election the only referendum they will have will be on the return of capital punishment.
” Alex Salmond’s £3 million compensation case against the Scottish Government is to go ahead, it has been announced.
Multi-millionaire businessman and rock star Paul McManus will underwrite the cost of the action.
Mr Salmond’s widow, Moira Salmond, has assigned the legal rights of the case to Mr McManus, and it is he who will now sue the government.
Mr McManus said: “I did not know the late Alex Salmond, and I disagreed with his politics, especially on the matter of Scottish independence. However, I strongly believe that those at the top of the SNP plotted against him and used levers of state which could have resulted in him being wrongly imprisoned.
“If the government, can do this to one of their own, what chance do we, Joe Public, have if they decide to target us. I want to see those responsible held to account and to face consequences.”
Work has been progressing for several months led by solicitor advocate Professor Peter Watson of PBW Law and partners Michael McKitrick and Pamela Rodgers.
Professor Watson said: “Litigation is a remedy of last resort, but it is hoped that this litigation will result in answers to many troubling questions that were first asked by Alex Salmond and will now be pursued by Paul McManus and the team we have assembled.” ”
———————————————–
Good.
Willie,
Aye, and Scotland is not even in a union with England, GB parliament or UK parliament, since it was dissolved of all links to eather one of them,
And the Scottish parliament being dissolved and resolved of all legal obligations to England and treaty from 1707 onwards,
This in Englands mess,
Perhaps England and Ireland parliament don’t wish Scotland to know just how perverted they are,
We need to dissolve the English- Ireland sub- parliament in Scotland and create a parliament of our own before this foreign perversion contaminates Scotland any further.
Although it is washing over, and through the English registered parties up here already like the spreading of a mental related sexual disease.
North Code,
I did notice the new claims that England is being Colonised by the legislation passed in their own parliament long ago,
Scotland can blame Westminster for it decisions having a impact on Scotland Wales and Ireland, , however Westminster cannot blame Scotland for lack of defence of Englands borders and shores,
Life and karma is a bitch,
Peter McAvoy.
Englands registered political parties shouldnt even be sticking their nose into Scottish elections,
Because they are named as Scottish elections not britains elections or the uk election,
Good news in 3 court cases today:
Alex Salmond’s case v Scottish government is continuing;
The law proscribing anti-genocide activists in England has been ruled unreasonable. Have to wait to see if appealed by Westminster;
Fox-batterer’s case v ECHR re transvestites’ rights to be in ladies loos, lost. Have to wait to see if appealed.
Something to smile about today as a distraction from gloom about the May 2026 election. So much to do to make a difference and so little time or big gun support.
Yes – it’s been a good day. Good interview on the Holyrood journal website with musician Paul McManus who is funding the Salmond case.
Good news Sarah,
I’m glad Salmond case is continuing, what happening with the C-24?
@ 100%Yes: the January update from Liberation about their activities is on their website, liberation.scot, under the News tab. It looks busy!
@100% yes – if you look at the Liberate Scotland website under “news” you’ll see . . nothing at all going on and one rambling article that can hardly be said to be “news” of any description.
The C-24 approach failed because the committee has no remit to consider territories not on the list of NSGT’s agreed by the general assembly. Craig Murray and Alf Baird spent the money supposed to be raised for Scotlands approach instead banging on about the people of New Caledonia, and then fell out with their legal advisors. That’s why they’ve gone from spamming BTL continuously to total radio silence on the subject.
And up pops Aidan with his dishonest re-interpretations of the reality, yet again!
The C-24 approach has not failed, YET! For the umpteenth time, it is merely awaiting other necessary developments, which are not expected to be rapid. But as Salvo/Liberation and Craig Murray have pointed out, the signs to date are very encouraging.
It’s not over until it’s over.
@Xaracen 8.33am
OK, so what happens when (or as you prefer if) it does fail? As I’ve been saying for some time – to much inchoate screeching and abuse from the usual hard of thinking moonhowlers in here of course – this route is likely to take more time than conventional routes, as well as being more difficult.
So what then is your Plan B? Return to the conventional routes or do something more radical when your pipe dream proves to have been a waste of time and effort, which would have been better directed at just securing the earliest possible plebiscitary election?
Please do tell us about these “encouraging signs”. As I say, it’s done, nothing is happening on this front.
@Andy – what “will” happen is what IS happening now, moving on to the endorsement of this Liberate micro party who are apparently going to go from not even registering in the polls today to being part of the Government after May. When that doesn’t happen (which of course it won’t) it’ll be onto the next cunning plan, which will no doubt be something along the lines of reconvening the convention of the estates.
“which would have been better directed at just securing the earliest possible plebiscitary election”
Do you seriously think that any English government will pay the slightest attention to a pro-indpendence majority vote in a plebiscitary election? Every UK party worth the name has declared an emphatic NO to any demand for an independence referendum. As far as they are concerned, Scotland’s independence is for the English government alone to grant or withhold, and not the Scots.
That is why the UN route has to be pursued, because it can set aside the unwarranted WM block.
Aidan, you were already told what the encouraging signs were. If you couldn’t be bothered to read them when they appeared, that’s your problem.
It’s neither mine nor anybody else’s problem because these mythical “encouraging signs” don’t exist. The approach has failed, as you and everyone else knows.
@Xaracen
You’re not paying attention. Par for the course amongst the moonhowlers in here of course: the red mist of unreason and film of spittal on their screens probably doesn’t help either, but that’s one of the chief reasons this place is dying on its arse because it’s overrun with unreasoning wallopers.
A plebiscitary election doesn’t have anything to do with referendums: it’s an alternative to a referendum. All votes cast for parties which have endorsed a plebiscitary platform are automatically votes for independence. Scotland becomes de facto an independent state the moment a majority of votes is achieved.
Becoming de jure independent will be a function of international recognition and negotiations on the split of assets and liabilities, as in all other analogous examples of states becoming independent through history. None of this is rocket science.
If the Scots people are so lacking in backbone that they’re prepared to accept a unionist veto, or being told by Westminster that a majority in plebiscitary elections is insufficient grounds, then they don’t deserve self determination in the first place. They might as well send the Stone of Destiny back to Westminster and melt the Scottish regalia down or sell it off and use the money raised to alleviate some of the social and economic problems they’re too frit to address by claiming their own independence.
The signatories of the Declaration of Arbroath must scorn the toom tabards that call themselves Scots today.
Good post, Andy.
The shades of the signatories to the D of A will also be furious that we lack the balls to finish off the genocide they started by continuing to tolerate Picts in our midst.
That was a solemn undertaking they made to the Pope in Rome. And they were men of their word.
@ Hatey
Having just come back from visiting the Stone of Destiny in Perth and taking in Marie R’s last letter to her brother in law the king of France hours before the English removed her head, it occurs to me that Scots throughout their post Reformation history have appeared to prioritise the wrong things: generally this was religion of course. Later when the dour Calvinism of their forebears lost its vice like grip on society, it became filthy lucre.
The Scottish nobility – which was always prone to prioritise fighting amongst themselves than doing something useful like fighting the English or helping the French – was easily bought off by the auld enemy for entry in to the British imperial project.
All things considered I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if Francis and Mary had managed to have children and we’d become a French rather than an English satellite state. At least the food might have been better.
“Scotland becomes de facto an independent state the moment a majority of votes is achieved.”
And has any leader of any party likely to be a party of UK government declared that this achievement would be formally recognised by him/her and their party, and by Westminster?
No? Then you just made that up.
A plebiscitary election is a political strategy. Recognition is a legal and diplomatic process. The first does not automatically initiate the other. If the English establishment that runs Westminster ignores it -and you know it will- what’s left?
De facto independence means exclusive internal control, not external recognition; that would be de jure independence. A vote alone creates neither, and you know it.
@Xaracen – I don’t think the plebiscite election route is guaranteed to succeed by any stretch of the imagination. It is clear under the UK’s domestic law that such a declaration would be ultra vires and would not be upheld by the courts.
It is however something that has worked elsewhere and might force the issue in Westminster, possibly through the granting of a second referendum. It is therefore probably the best option for the moment and certainly worth a try. In contrast, the appeal to the UN is as it always has been a dead end. It sits in direct opposition to one of the foundational principles of the UN and international law more generally: respect for the territorial integrity of states. That’s before we get into just how much weaker the UN is post-Trump and whether the U.K. would even bother to engage with C-24.
@Xaracen & @Aiden
There is no cast iron guarantee that the either the British nationalist state OR the international community will recognise a declaration of independence by Scotland whether in a referendum or a plebiscitary election.
The presumption and declared intent in 2014 appeared to be that had the Scots people actually grown a pair and voted Yes, then Westminster was going to accept the result. Negotiations on the detail of splitting assets and liabilities would then have begun.
Since the act of secession was by agreement, we already know that other countries which are usually opposed to the right of parts of states to secede for their own selfish reasons like Spain, had said they would have no objection to Scottish independence and entry in to the EU. We know that would have been different in the case of what many would have regarded as UDI in a situation where there was no agreement: Scotland would have been in the same situation as Kosovo, with some states recognising our independence, and some not.
Xaracen: And has any leader of any party likely to be a party of UK government declared that this achievement would be formally recognised by him/her and their party, and by Westminster?
No? Then you just made that up.
If you would interact with what I actually said, rather than what you wrongly infer, I might be able to take your criticism seriously. I never said any such think, so I can’t have made anything up.
I don’t care what British nationalists think, whether party leaders or ordinary voters. No self respecting Scottish nationalist should ever accept that the British nationalist state or its organs – whether political or military – have a veto on Scottish self determination.
I’m simply stating what I believe to be self evident: if a majority of the Scottish population vote in a plebiscitary election which is explicitly couched as one in which a majority will be taken as a mandate for declaring independence, and then we fail to follow that through, then – as I’ve already said – we don’t even deserve independence.
We can’t be regarded as a serious people entitled to self determination if we meekly accept being put back in our box, whether it’s because “now is not the time”, or because the britnats decide they won’t recognise a majority in a plebiscitary election, or a majority in a non-sanctioned referendum.
If there is no democratic route to exercising our self determination without the gracious permission of the British nationalists, then the only alternatives we then have are passive / non-violent resistance and measures to simply ignore their purported veto, or an actual civil war.
I suspect only the lunatic fringe are advocating the use of violence, but I also wonder how that would play in the rest of the UK? Whether the chiefly English administration would have either the will or the means to violently suppress a Scottish uprising has to be open to doubt. There again, given that a substantial minority of Scots appear to be pretty convinced unionists, their loyalties in such a situation can’t be assumed either.
Haha, anti-genocide.
Odd how the genocide stops when the ham ass scum stop dragging innocent lassies down tunnels to carve them up with knives.
But by all means, sarah, you hitch Indy to the antisemitic cause. I’m all for getting these linkages exposed to daylight. At least then, no Scot can claim ignorance of what they’re really supporting.
@Andy Ellis;
The way you stated “Scotland becomes de facto an independent state the moment a majority of votes is achieved.” came across to me that you took it as a generally accepted fact.
But if you meant that it should be an accepted fact, including by Westminster, then we are in agreement.
The right of any people to self determination is guaranteed by the UN. There is however no general agreement of what exactly constitutes a people, nor is there any meaningful way to have international law (such as it is) enforced if a “people” is denied self determination.
It is MY view, and there is I think support for the view in broader circles, that any people which carries out a vote in which the majority support independence should have that independence accepted and recognised as a fact. Whether that happens however is the $64,000 question.
Acceptance is however neither guaranteed nor automatic either by the entity the people is seeking independence from, or from the broader international community.
In some cases, recognition will be relatively unproblematic, such as the large number of former colonies post WW2, or former British dominions like Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Other cases will be far more difficult, like Timor L’Este, Kosovo, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Biafra, Kurdistan.
I’ve always found it problematic that so many people who claim to identify as Scottish nationalists appear to lack self confidence in the justice and automaticity of their rights to see that our independence becomes a “fact on the ground” the instant a majority is gained in plebiscitary elections.
If “the movement” was worth its salt, the 2026 Holyrood elections would serve quite well.
Imagine sitting down on the evening after the polls closed for that vote, finding out the total number of votes cast nationally and waiting to see if we’d reached 50% +1 of the votes for parties which had specifically stood on a plebiscitary platform.
We won’t enjoy that luxury of course, because we don’t have real nationalists fighting for that: just a milquetoast devolutionary party which is rotten to its core and riddled with gender extremists and gravy slurpers.
I now have my doubts the current generation will ever deliver independence. Folk of my age will be lucky ever to see independence happen.
@Andy
You left Tibet off that list, not to mention around 20 colonies the Orcs have their claws into, plus around one fifth of their former colony on the edge of Europe. Then there’s Taiwan.
As neither the Covid Spreaders nor the Orcs are gonna be relinquishing their colonies (current and future) any time soon, it’s beyond laughable that anybody can believe that the UN can apply some kind of “universal law-based rule”.
Unless it’s might is right.
Grouse Beater’s current blog item features this Holyrood presentation by Fergus Ewing regarding the Mark Hirst case:
Fergus Ewing raises the Judgement of Lord Lake in the Scottish Parliament
youtu.be/wX2yOB-5FA4?si=LIFGM0y4VO8zWoEw
Sorry. Try this as direct link:
link to youtube.com
Thanks Fearghas.
Very useful link. A timely reminder that not everywhere in May will Indy supporters have to hold their noses and vote YOON to oust the Devo-YOON
SNP that blocks progress in Scotland’s cause.
#No Votes SNP
“The preliminary hearing for Peter Murrell, the former SNP chief executive charged with embezzlement of party funds, has been pushed back until May.
The hearing had been scheduled for Friday, February 20 at the High Court in Glasgow under under Section 75A of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.
However, it will now take place on May 25 at the High Court in Edinburgh. This will be after voters go to the polls in the Scottish Parliament elections on May 7.”
———————————————-
After elections.
That is clear political interference.
I’d also like to point out that there is no mention of the missing £600,000 of “ring fenced” funds. What happened to it?
Sorry to have to break this to you, Anthem, but there is no such concept as ‘ring fenced’ in law, either civil or criminal.
It’s a plausible fiction used by con artists to separate gormless eejits from their money.
Hopefully you never dug too deep. That will be a consolation to you in the coming months.
@ Anthem – details of the charges have already been posted on here.
Actually, you appear to be incorrect. I have a memory for these things and tracked down the relevant comment that you yourself actually replied to in your own inimitable way last summer.
In response to the article Too Tight To Mention published on July 2nd 2025 there was the following comment:
Graham Fordyce says:
2 July, 2025 at 12:31 pm
If the truth does not emerge about the £600k, there is a civil court action called ‘count, reckoning & payment’ which can be brought against the holders of a fund by any or all of the contributors. I would contribute to the cost of obtaining Counsel’s Opinion if you’re up for it, Rev?
A helpful article on an ‘accounting’ can be found at
link to lawscot.org.uk.
@PhilM
You’ve outed yourself as an alert reader.
I’d started to believe they were as mythical as Scotland’s national animal! 🙂
Turning back to the Crown in whose name all prosecutions are made made, is the Crown disbarred from pursuing the Crown.
I mean what is happening to Prince Andrew still eighth in.line to the throne. Certainly seems that way.But here’s a thing. Back in the day when our current King was the Prince of Wales and married to Diana he was having a relationship with Camilla who was then married to Parker Bowles.
During that time on the 18th December 1989 his discussion or was it love talk on the phone was intercepted and recorded in what became known as Tampongate.
Our King it seems was recorded saying that he wanted to beca tampax in Camilla’s trousers. Not exactly a royal pronouncement the media hushed.the whole thing up, or at least in the UK. But it did emerge in Australia.
It’s maybe indicative of how the Monarchy conduct themselves in the light of the Prince Andrew sexual abuse and corruption allegations.
But yes, the Crown Prosecution Services does seem to be an oxymoron.
Or are we missing something?
Yes.
And lay off the royal we. It’s not for the likes of you.
“And lay off the royal we. It’s not for the likes of you.”
Surprising how often the colonialist adopts the ‘we in Scotland’ meme, as if to signify they are the same people as ‘us’; but as our procurer this can never be so. Even yer hero Mrs Thatcher tried it, tho it gied maist Scots the bowk.
Maist English leaders an monarchs aye gie Scotland and Scots a wide berth, for guid reason tae – thay ken thay’re usurpers, an sae dae we.
Ficticious description or not. The sum still isn’t accounted for.
FFS, Alf. Get ontae ebay. You may find somebody flogging a GSOH there.
Wow. Pointing out that plenty of politicians have had plenty of time (36 years) to reverse Thatcher’s policies makes her my hero. No doubt pointing out that some of the claims about her posted on here over the past couple of days are easily refuted lies counts against me too.
Oh well. I guess alert readers just have to judge the Indy movement by the kind of Scot it seems to attract – liars, fantasists and reality deniers.
I wonder what’s really eating Alf, though. Surely it can’t be my gentle humour in pointing out that every time he travels abroad, he carries the passport of a country he claims doesn’t exist?
Naw. That can’t possibly be it.
“he carries the passport of a country he claims doesn’t exist”
Not so long ago many of the world’s former colonized peoples were coerced into believing they had a British (or French, or American etc) identity, which included their being handed a British (or French, or American etc) passport.
Postcolonial theory tells us many of them even ‘craved’ for such an illusion, and some still do, as UK population change demonstrates since decolonization from the 1950s onwards.
The same colonizing behavioural process influences Scots, more especially those who still reject thair ain leeberation and that of fellow Scots, instead ‘craving’ dependence on the colonizer (Cesaire), including his illusory ‘national’ identity.
You’re missing nothing. Buck House was a brothel.
Marie..
Did you keep a price list ?
Who was on “special offer” ?
(asking for a friend)
This is interesting stuff…
“The crucial function of language as a medium of power demands that post-colonial writing defines itself by seizing the language of the centre and re-placing it in a discourse fully adapted to the colonized place,” – from The Empire Writes Back (Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin) 1989
According to Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin there are two distinct processes by which it does this… ABROGATION and APPROPRIATION.
First, there is the abrogation; the denial that ‘English’ is a privilege and a rejection of the metropolitan power over the means of communication.
Abrogation is a refusal of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of ‘correct’ usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning ‘engraved’ in the words.
Second, there is the appropriation; the capturing and remoulding of the language to new usages. This marks a separation from the site of colonial privilege.
“The intrusion of the colonizer is not always attended by confusion… but control is always manifested by the imposed authority of a system of writing, whether writing already exists in the colonized culture or not. “
Incidentally, the book’s title is derived from Salman Rushdie’s 1982 article “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance” referring to how postcolonial voices respond to the literary canon of the coloniser.
“Appropriation is the process by which the language is taken and made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural experience, or, as Raja
Rao puts it, to “convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own.” – from The Empire Writes Back.
Odd, Northy. Twa posts frae ye in Inglis, the leein language o’ the coloniser.
Fits the Scots fir “heepocrit”? Maybes gie us a toofer, check oot “heeposhit” at the same time.
Holy Mary mother of God, Christ Almighty and fucking hell.
English colonialists, aye and Scots yins anaw, (unionists if preferred… same thing) are gigantic bores, are they not?
In fact the whole of England is a bore. I visited it once and it was BORING BORING BORING… flat, tae, and full of Inglis. Chipping Norton was nice, tho.
This is me, an indigenous Scot, appropriating the foreign language of my country’s coloniZer to express my refusal of England’s ridiculous imperial culture, its unappealing aesthetic, and its language’s illusory standard of normative ‘correct’ usage.
Northcode writes back – with a venjens… and edgy spelling.
Wouldn’t you have been happier in London, Northy? That’s home to more than 200,000 Sovereign Scots.
Haud oan, though. I forgot you loathe, hate and detest colonising cants.
@Insider 09.44am. Buck House was described in exactly those terms by someone I know who worked for Royal Protection. That was many years ago. Also Insider – it’s in the files. Try and keep pace with events doll.
“Marie”
O.K. big boy !
I am intrigued that someone with the handle, “Marie“ can address another (possibly male) commenter as, “doll“.
Is this a sign of these pansexual times?
No.
“NO”
==========
Thanks, doll
Cynicus
Please show some respect when addressing a lady carrying the name of the Holy Mother Of God.
The UN C 24 members of modern politics now are from: Antigua & Barbuda; Bolivia[; Chile; China; Cote D’Ivoire; Cuba; Dominica; Ecuador; Ethiopia; Fiji; Grenada; India; Indonesia; Iran; Iraq; Mali; Nicaragua; Papua New Guinea; Ru… Federation; Saint Kitts & Nevis; Saint Lucia; saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Sierra Leone; Syrian Arab Republic; Timor-Leste[; Tunisia; Tanzania; Venezuela.
The chair of the C 24 is the Grenada representative and the Vice Chair is from Saint Lucia.
It is likely that the Liberate Scotland’s petition will be assessed in June this year under the current C24 members listed above
It seems a majority decision is all that is needed, not unanimity
C-24 will not be assessing Scotland’s petition in June. C-24 has no power to add further territories to the list of NSGT’s. This has already been gone through at length.
The relevant prerequisites for that assessment haven’t been met yet, sam.
Scotland needs to be recognised as a territory by the UNGA, and that needs an existing UN member to sponsor Scotland by having the UNGA, via C-4, vote in favour of that recognition. That might not happen this year, or perhaps ever. It’s not a fast or simple process, it takes a lot of politicking.
Nevertheless, the Salvo/Liberation team were well received and, despite Aidan’s pact with the devil, the signs were looking good before last year’s session closed.
If that recognition eventually does happen, C-4 can then ask C-24 to evaluate Scotland’s full petition and circumstances for NSGT listing, and to come back to the C-4 with its recommendations. If the C-4 and C-24 agree to do so, the C-4 will put Scotland’s bid for listing as an NSGT to the GA for a vote.
If they vote in favour, Scotland will be added to the NSGT list.
That search result looks wrong now. The Chair is from Saint Lucia, Menissa Rambally. Vice Chairs from Cuba, Sierra Leone and Indonesia.
Absolutely loving it, sam. The genocidal cants who unleashed their man made flu on the world, killing tens of millions, while continuing with their oppression of HK and the more old fashioned genocide of their non-Han population.
And the Orcs – merciless imperialist expansionists, despite already having the biggest country in the world, with their own colonies counting well into double figures.
You believe these people are going to rule on Scotland’s future!?!
Jeezo. You may well be serious. For once, I wish it was possible to believe you’re just up to your usual tricks – lying through your teeth.
not immigration but americanization..link to archive.is the big yankee dinosaur munching it way through europe, invited in by those creepy politicians we should have grown to distrust and execrate.
With AI and AGI largely, outside China, in the hands of US corporatist business more munching might be expected.
Pity that yankee dino doesn’t try the local politicians. Maybe they are just not worth the munch, too insipid and jejune.
Civilizations collapse from within.
H. McH: she wouldn’t have opened our borders to all and sundry and she would not have been able to stomach the ‘woke’ agenda in all its variety. I suppose Thatcher had some decent qualities, but she was completely wrong on her economic policies, treating them as a domestic budget list. You simply cannot extrapolate national and international policies from the domestic one of a housewife in Grantham.
Selling off the ‘family silver’ was a grave error. Any sustained scrutiny of privatisation in the UK will show anyone that it does not work at all well, in most cases, in the UK, for anything above a SME. That is one of the lies in the other direction. It is not more efficient when it comes to large utilities and services. It works extremely well for SMEs and always has, but the industries and services that provide human sustenance across the board should never be up for grabs, but she opened the door to those pirates who bought up absolutely essential services, such as water (in England) and greed took over as per, partly because the regulations were so lax, too. Now, of course, SMEs are being bled dry by taxes because there isn’t enough coming into the coffers overall.
Allowing people to purchase their own homes at decent prices was probably a good thing, but, thereafter, preventing councils from borrowing and building more outwith the purchase scheme as social housing was not. The Tories introduced PFI, although, admittedly, Labour utilised it far more. The ‘efficient’ private sector made a killing and still is and councils are hamstrung by payments years after the buildings (schools, mainly) have fallen to bits. It has been a disaster.
Also, allowing people to rent out their properties as AirB&Bs and thus depriving ordinary people of access to what should have been a large rental sector for private social housing/landlord tenancies at affordable cost has been equally disastrous. Any policy that does not take into account the propensity of some/many to use it for personal gain at the expense of state provision is going to be a disaster. I’m no communist; not even a socialist, really, but some services need to be kept within state provision, not because of ideology, but because of human nature and the social consensus. When social consensus goes, as it may go completely very soon in the UK, all hell will break loose. It has little to do with people who want something for nothing and everything to do with sense and foresight and looking after your own people.
Thanks for your reply, Lorna.
Just about every politician gets something right. Starmer, Trump, Sturgeon, Brown, Blair. They won some and they lost some. Thatcher was no exception.
My major point has always been that in the 36 years since Thatcher, over a generation now, nobody has seen fit to reverse any of the policies that are supposedly so bad.
How much easier it is to sit greeting into our drams, than it is to put in the hard graft.
Look where we are now. 10 (?) weeks out from the HR election, and not one single mainstream politician of any party or none has a plausible alternative on offer to another 5 years of the same.
Where are the “Drill, baby, drill” party? OK, maybe Reform. Where are the people calling for resumed coal mining? Indigenous steel production? New manufacturing industries, or maybe just the resumption of old ones?
None of that is on offer and instead of agitating about that, people just want to wang oan and oan aboot Thatcher.
Often you simply cannot turn back the clock. No, I don’t think coal mining was ever anything but dire, but let’s be honest, that’s not why she closed down the pits. It’s not why the steel industry was closed down either. It’s not about wanging on and on about Thatcher, it is her legacy, isn’t it?
She started the first domino keeling over and the rest followed suit. You are right, though: no one seems to want to keep up old industries, let alone new ones, so the UK is doomed to having to source almost everything from abroad. As with Grangemouth, they moved elsewhere and carried on a similar enterprise.
The problem is that if you pay everyone off, sooner rather than later, you end up with no one skilled enough to do SFA because no skills are being passed down to younger people. Ach, no, they say, we don’t want to do this kind of stuff; it’s not worth it. Funny that because somewhere else always seems to be able to do it and we end up having to import at ten times the cost. Even a small, localised conflict now would find us absolutely stymied from having access to just about every commodity, including enough food now that they want to turn the farms into big estates. Ach, well, what do I know?
“No, I don’t think coal mining was ever anything but dire
Says it all. Perma “worried” woman rather than celebrate the industry that fuelled pretty much all other industries that created everything she takes for granted in the modern world, describes the hard graft which was mainly done by those pesky men doing the dirty work as dire.
If the political commentariat who have the time to pontificate online so much was made up of folk that had half a clue about the actual “dirty” work which attempts to keep the society we live in afloat, then we might be in a better place.
Go do some 84 hour weeks offshore in the energy industry, offline and away from your family, or come home every nicht stinking of pish and shite after dealing with sewerage, and then just maybe the concerns you twats come out with might alter to be something that actually resonates more with the everyday trials and tribulations mainstream society has to deal with as they try to get by in family and business life.
And whilst here, keep up the good work Confused, after a month and a half break away from this now backwater of a site, you’re posts are the most interesting and thought-provoking to read on here compared to the dross posted by trolls and others.
The small C conservative Milquetoast “Civic Nationalists” clearly don’t have the gumption or motivation to deliver what they purport to want.
Big Country – Steeltown
Vid contains footage of dirty men doing hard dirty work so not safe for some.
link to youtube.com
Dan’s back and he’s fucking complaining, to nobodies surprise. Of course Lorna is right, coal mining was both dangerous and extremely unpleasant, the risks of a disaster and the terrible lung diseases miners suffer from afterwards.
If the mines were open we can guarantee you’d be complaining about Scottish lives being blighted to supply England with coal, wouldn’t you? So either way there’s a whinge. If you find the ramblings of a nativist bigot like Confused “though provoking” there’s some great speeches from South African politicians on YouTube. Go knock yourself out.
@Aidan
Any pits that do re-open, most of the dirty, dangerous work will be done by ROVs and robots.
It’s 2026 FFS, even here in Scotland.
24/7 production, no holidays, no health and safety, no worries about temperatures and methane and no NUM.
Dan does have one good point though. We milquetoasts do mostly lack Confused’s enthusiasm for antisemitism, mobile gas chambers and machine gunning the disagreeables into mass graves.
We’ll not be apologising for that.
Dan: I said it was dire because it was. I do not fgotget that it was many people’s living. Of course it was a massive industry in its heyday, and I did point out that Thatcher did not close the pits out of concern for the health and well-being of the miners. She thought she could access coal from abroad at half the cost which has now risen to double and more than the cost to produce it here would have been. Idef*****gology, Danny Boy.
I daresay the wee bairns who were paid to crawl underneath the looms and had their fingers and limbs broken or sliced off had their concerned parents complaining about the lack of money coming into the house when the bairns were sent off to the school instead. What a shame you weren’t there, eh? You’d have put them right!
I have always said that we would have moved on to a different kind of coal removal and had clean coal by now, with decent jobs to offer the miners, but it would cost untold billions to have the mines pumped out and workable again. The off-shore industry? Well, it never was ours, was it? It was hived off into the coffers of Westminster and squandered instead of ploughing money back into investments into renewables. Norway is light years ahead of us in that, too. Funny that, eh?
I have not the slightest doubt that renewables, such as they are, will be hived off, too – well, they already have, haven’t they, by, lo and behold, Norway and Denmark, mainly, facilitated by the UKG. Not voting for independence in 1979 and 2014 guaranteed that we would continue to be fleeced, but, hey, what do we know, we are all trolls and eejits, says Danny Boy. I voted for independence in every election and both referendums, Danny Boy, and look at what the rewards have been. And don’t f*****g call me a “permanently worried” woman. As a woman, worried or otherwise, permanently or otherwise, there is a helluva lot to be worried about, no, with the SNP and the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour? Ideology, Danny Boy, ideology!
@Cynicus 13.40 You’re welcome darling
Congratulations, Rev, on alerting GM Police so they could arrest Lynsey Watson. [Pity they bailed him but still.]
But how is it possible for you to track him down at a court hearing whereas the police seemed not to have done? One would think there would be an England police database of outstanding arrest warrants which could be checked against all court cases so an alert would be given.
You are wasted, Rev. GCHQ/MI5/MI6 all need your talents!
Aberdeen University: JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES (2025), Volume 12, Issue 1, Pp: 50-70:
‘IRISH CONTENT AND CONTRIBUTORS IN RUARAIDH ERSKINE’S GAELIC MAGAZINES’ by Petra Johana Poncarová (University of Glasgow)
« The article provides the first detailed examination of Irish content in the Gaelic periodicals founded and edited by the Scottish author and activist Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar (1869–1960) in the 1900s–1930s, especially in the monthly ‘Am Bàrd’ (1901–1902), in the quarterly
‘Guth na Bliadhna’ (1904–1925), and in the weekly ‘Alba’ (1908–1909). It illustrates how Ireland served as a source of inspiration and a point of contrast for the Gaelic revival and national movement in Scotland.
« The article identifies a number of contributors for the first time and discusses the involvement of influential political and cultural figures such as Douglas Hyde, Peter Toner McGinley, Liam Ó Rinn, and Patrick Eric Mac Fhinn.
« Furthermore, the article explores the coverage of Irish topics in Erskine’s magazines provided by the editor himself and his team of contributors, including poet and playwright Donald Sinclair.
« In terms of Erskine’s personal engagement with Ireland, the article goes beyond the magazines, drawing on information from contemporary periodical press and from Erskine’s standalone publications in English that testify to his acquaintance with leading Irish politicians, including Charles Stewart Parnell, and to his involvement in the London émigré networks where Scottish and Irish initiatives collided.
« The article proves that engagement with Ireland was of momentous importance to Erskine and his Gaelic magazines and laid patterns that were followed by later influential initiatives in Scotland, including the quarterly Gairm (1952–2002). »
Immediate PDF download:
link to jiss.aberdeenunipress.org
I notice the Isle of Islay is having a lovely holiday sailing in circles round the West Med. for over a week now.
link to vesselfinder.com
You don’t think …
Naw. Nae way could painted oan windies been carried forwards from ane set of blueprints tae the next!
Storms out in the Atlandic caused the delay with Portugal and Spain getting hammered. Earlier this afternoon I had a look at Marine traffic and there is a lot of shipping heading for the strait. Plus they were involved in a rescue.
link to hebrides-news.com
Plenty of wee coasters and fishing boats even smaller than the new £50 million Isle of Islay sailing oot there off Portugal and in Biscay. Problem may be the inherently unstable, prone to slamming and roll monohull prototype designs CalMac still insist upon, which are obviously not very good for rough seas, as the west coast cancellation record confirms.
RMT members among the 30(!) or so delivery crew will no doubt be enjoying their 2-3 week break on the Costas courtesy of the texpayer, all ready for another break when they eventually turn up. Truth is had this been a well designed privately operated ferry it wad hiv been hame a while ago:
link to pentlandferries.co.uk
REAL WORLD: Scotland voted to retain SNP administration in Holyrood.
Scotland voted for a Labour government in Great Britain.
Scotland is getting what it voted for. Good and hard.
I think agent X that you may have stumbled on an issue with regard to the MV Isle of Islay.
It’s been on its way from Turkey for weeks now. Got as far as Gibraltar, moored up for days and then turned back to Moor off Almeria in Spain. Story in media a few days ago was that the Calmac boat was involved in the rescue of a man clinging to a life belt off Morroco and that there’s been bad weather weather too, with more to come.
So yes, what is going on. It should have been in Scotland by now And I too, have been tracking its movement on the Vessel Finder website site and can’t understand what is going on.
Let’s hope we don’t have another problem ferry. That would be beyond belief. An outrage in fact.
Willie !
Wheesht for INDY !!!
31-20
Well done, Scotland
Which miserable killjoy is going to be first to come on and moan about the rugby? Congratulations to the Scotland team on a memorable win.
14 February, 2026 at 6:33 pm
David Holden says:
“Which miserable killjoy is going to be first to come on and moan about the rugby?“
=======
ME
Not about the team who racked up yet another famous Calcuta Cup victory.
The ITV commentary was so bad that I turned down the sound and tuned in to BBC Radio 5 live.
A big mistake!
They interspersed rugby commentary with snippets about what was going on in English FA cup matches. Even English rugby fans would’ve been annoyed by this, far less us on this side of the Tweed.
We regret to announce the sinking of the MV Isle of Islay in stormy seas off the straits of Gibraltar. Captain Swinney is believed to have gone down with his ship. The crew was rescued by Moroccan and Spanish fishermen.
Scotland mourns.
‘Captain Swinney is believed to have gone down with his ship.’ If only but I’m afraid he fucked off quick sharp to ‘spend more time with his wife and family.’ Scotlands elite (read: low life high flying scum) cheer.
rugby : after the postal tries have been counted by roof davison the too wee too puir inferior not quite second rate adjuncts of the master anglo race, by jings …
got fucked 45-17
according to the scoreboard sponsored by GERS
rugby is a retained matter
the barnett formula shall be cut as obviously the Scotch are too well fed and thus cause problems to Gods Chosen People
and brigadoon melts into the mist once again …
get fucked if you think public schoolboy head the ball means a fucking toss to anyone
“flower of scotland” is also the shittiest anthem in the world; makes me want to slit my wrists
the servile “scots” commentators didn’t even take the opportunity to rub it in :
“IF WE BEAT ENGLAND -AGAIN- WE GET THEM TO KEEP … I THINK ITS ALL OVER”
what you watching this shit for, on the other side are plucky brits sliding down the ice on a tray
– this is what I call sport
BTW if Scotland had been indy for 30 years and had a 2trillion wealth fund we could have engineered a race of genetic supermen, fuelled them on tunnocks wafers and full sugar irn bru, and anglo-stan would have been fucked 197-0. We would also have won the world cup the last 7 times.
low horizons, no imagination. Structure your ideas about the world by using england and the english as a benchmark, and see yourself left behind.
Quite right, Confused.
You forever see the English as arse bandits and look where that’s got you.
There is a lot to unpack in your latest offering but just a wee tip for you. Try shutting the door on the microwave oven before you use it. You can thank me later.
Confused
A great many national anthems are shitty and dirges, heck God save the King is defo top ten chart placed on that front.
Before you slit your wrists; Bear in mind that Flower of Scotland is a folk song and not meant to be sung to the pipes. The pipes get the pitch, tone and pace wrong IMO.
I recommend a quick search for the (original?) 2 verse late 60s rendition by the Corries (black and white filmed at Ruthven barracks) to see how it should be sung.
Hopefully you’ll change your POV and save your wrists.
flower of scotland is also RACIST and this is “zero tolerance” in a modern nation
– what r u thinking ??!!
“sent him homeward to think again” ?
this is like far right faragist neo fascist nazism of the trumpian right
a crack team of black lesbian rap artists and housing activists from govanhill, sponsored by bella caledonia will rewrite it
welcomed them in-ward, to think again
… about multikulti
we shall still rise now and be a diverse no borders region open to all comers
…
SING!
I didn’t know he was a Spurs fan…….
link to x.com
Seems that the new MV Isle of Islay may have been sustaining problems.
The ferry built in Turkey was originally scheduled for handover in October 2024. However, because of what was stated to be supply chain and labour issues delivery did not happen until the boat was handed over in mid January 2026.
And so with the boat finally handed over on the 15th January 2026 the boat thereafterleft Turkey on or around the 19th of January with the maiden passage to Scotland scheduled for two weeks.
Thereafter, with crew familiarisation the ferry was to enter service on its Scottish routes.
The passage to Scotland has however been very seriously delayed.
As of today, some four weeks into its passage to Scotland, the MV Isle of Islay has only just exited the Mediteanean on its way to Northern Spain where its estimated time of arrival at A Coruna is 17th January.
What delayed the boat in the Mediteranean is not clear albeit that Calmac suggest that there has been bad weather that has caused the boat to lay up. It has also been advised that the boat was involved in rescuing a man in a life belt off the coast of Morroco.
To what extent this explains the boat’s passage to Gibraltar where the boat thereafter appears to have turned back to the port of Almeria has not been advised.
But four weeks in the Mediteranean out of a scheduled 2 week passage to Scotland is a substantial period of delay.
Let us hope that that this latest period of delay together with the preceding delivery delay in handover is not related to technical issues.
Delayed delivery of ferries critically needed to service Scotlands island communities is an ongoing absolute outrage and maybe Calmac,and or the SG could advise what is happening now with this latest ferry.
Willie @ 05.07.
Gosh Willie, if it left Turkey around the 19th January and is now scheduled to arrive Corunna 17th January it’s managing to travel back in time … something not even our pathetic Ferguson Marine vessels have achieved !
@Sven
2027?
The SNP and Scottish Greens will be delighted that Ebay are procuring donations for the Mermaids charity. Are Mermaids brainwashing, corrupting or supporting young people?
You decide.
“Donate to charity
Mermaids
Mermaids has been supporting trans, non-binary and gender questioning children and young people…”
All these problems in and for Scotland.while Colonised.
And Scots sleep away the weeks, months and years in a daydream thats being operated as a nightmare.
Plebicite elections, to make us tthink we may gain independence are as daft as begging Westminster for a referendum, simply because, they are all ignored by Westminster parliament regardless of results.
If the UN itself is not Colonised by Englands Great Britain or Anglo- Irish agreement to create their United kingdom. Will depend on how much thought the other nations in the UN apply to themselves and their own Countries freedom of decolonisation,
For nearly all treaties true or false stand today on one perarious foundation,
the 1707 treaty with Scotland that was not completed and Scotland dissolved in that treaty, from actually being in the parliament of Englands Great Britain hoax,
Not something that globalists or unionist want any attention bought too,
For it would free to many Countries from Colonisation with immediate effect, not just Scotland, if the
Records and treaties of the Great British Empire were found to be based on a foundational lie.
It would destroy the aimed for one- world governance that is being applied at the moment to dismantle every Countries own government,
Holding on to Scotland by Englands Westminster parliament pretence and hoax is one of the few detrimental issues for nearly all other treaties bases for control over many other Countries.
Including Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales,
It is the lynch pin.
“Englands Great Britain hoax”
Aye, an Imperial hoax drawing in the ‘crazed’ colonized. According to the great Rees-Mogg himsel, where the meaning of Great Britishness is:
“Britishness, a desire to have that Britishness, or if you prefer, Englishness”.
Thus to be ‘British’ simply means to be English – i.e. English language, culture, values etc – Britain and England being one and the same.
link to youtube.com
I think it’s the Covid Spreaders who like to say that a journey of one thousand miles starts with the first step.
Although, if they measure in miles, then they must have been colonised somehow.
But I digress. I note you’ve decolonised your spelling of colonised, Alf. So that’s your first step right there. Any second step on the cards?
Ironically though, as the Scots equivalent of colonised appears to also be spelled with an ‘s’, you’ve just replaced English colonisation with American.
So maybe that first step needs retaken.
I say, old chap, Mogger’s unnatural and deeply condescending accent is straight out of the empire’s metropolitan centre, don’t ya know.
To Rees-Mogg England comprises England + Scotland + Wales + Northern Ireland + England’s few remining overseas territories.
I’m sure he’d rather drop the name Britain as an alternative name for England altogether and have the ‘British Isles’ known only as England.
Rees-Mogg’s particular brand of racism – delivered with an upper class affectation authentically reproduced – towards all folk not English embraces the spirit of an empire lang deid.
It’s very easy to picture Mogger swaggering about in some stylish outfit from a bygone age… an outfit designed by Hugo Boss, perhaps.
Excellent comment, James. I really appreciate your insights. All power to your elbow! Don’t let the naysayers discourage you, it only goes to show you’re on the right track.
You think, SR?
319 years of “history stuff” can be unwritten by proving that something underhand went down in 1707?
Oh well, I guess that would fix Thatcher’s deindustrialisation. Maybe the American War of Independence too. Certainly be good to never have to hear anybody wanging oan aboot Culloden and The Clearances ever again.
Perhaps you could clarify. Once all the treaties since 1707 are annulled, will Scotland be out of the EU because the UK never joined, or in the EU because we were never Brexited by the racist cants down south?
I appreciate that’s a tricky one, so take all the time you need.
And for the older readers, what’s the story about their pensions once we’re freed with immediate effect due to verification of James’s foundational lie showing records and treaties to be invalid?
Colin Alexander,
Both the SNP and the Greens party in Scotland are registered parties in England.
All political parties in Scotland are registered in England,
I DOUBT FEW WOULD NOW ARGUE against the case for calling the US politician Donald Trump a species of «fascist»and his country a classic neocorporatist state in which business and politics and varieties of nationalistic «leverage» share the same bed.
Artificial Intelligence is the new influencer in predatory US not so soft power. Like AI the US is liable to rogue behavior. The warning lights have flashing for years, there are now daily red alert signals but the political class, our overworked politicians, especially in Europe, seems colorblind to the consequences of allowing a foreign country with a trackrecord in bullying to have such total control over a technology (and its deployment) which will impact literally everything within their national borders and possibly subvert their country’s interests.
A warning here from the US about the dangers of failing to engage with and challenge this manifestly counter democratic, new world order.
«President Donald Trump’s trade wars are teaching the world a harsh lesson: dependencies get weaponised. In the White House’s view, international trade is zero-sum. With his AI Action Plan promising “unchallenged” technological dominance a further ambition is clear. Will the rest of the world recognise that embracing US artificial intelligence offers Trump an even more potent tool for coercion».
link to archive.is
CONGRATULATIONS to Scotland/Alba on defeating England under the captainship of an Australian/Tongan/ItalianScot.
Slàinte..
Thanks TURABDIN for the excellent FT link on US Strategy for AI.
“Its pillars focus on supercharging domestic AI development and adoption, aiming to yield economic benefits and prevent “woke” model use.”
===========
This will offer scant comfort to Judge Kemp if systems continue to “hallucinate” and deliver rubbish aligned with woke agendas.
Even more worrying is this:
“ Algorithms are not transparent and can be manipulated to bias outputs.”
AT THE MOMENT it is all down to the algorithm «training». At the moment that is certainly far from being a diverse multilateral affair. And, there is the matter of the «black box». What exactly is the AI doing, the process, «the thinking» that the human trainers cannot easily determine. When AI eventually has the capability of training itself and writing its own algorithms……?
AI is exciting, a «trip into space» with thrills and dangers in abundance, but humans need to hold on to reason and common sense when undertaking the trip.
Guid day tae aw ma fallae scribbledouners here in this place this fine Sunday day, aye.
May Christ oor saviour wha died oan the cross fir oor sins smile doun oan aw yous ungrate sinners this day.
An observatioun… in rhyme:
He jottles here he jottles ther,
Thon deevil jottles iverywhaur
Is he in heiven?
Nae soul kin tell
But he’s aften in this place,
That some wid caw hell…
But wha coud a be speikin aboot?
Whit sinner among aw us sinners here dae a pint ma juidgement taewart?
Is it tae ma ain self a cast sic a juidgement upo? Nae likely… a’m a guid and honest virtuous maun o’ fayth, sae it cannae be me.
I am also a fayr maun wha’s guid speerit hings by a tack in this earthly domain confrontit as it be each and ivery day wi mundane tentatiouns.
And tho righteous in the een o Him oor Heivenly Faither I winna condemne anither tae ridicule by pittin a name tae thaim, e’en if that ‘ither’ be a twistit sowel wha haes yit tae see the errure in thair worldly ways here oan Earth and sae still abides in companionrie wi sin.
A’ve leuked deep intae ma ain hert and e’en tho I’m a maun o’ great virtue and fayth dare not cast the fyrst stane.
Sae leuk deep intae yer ain herts and juidge fir yersels if yer worthy o’ God’s luve.
May the blessing o’ oor Faither in Heiven be upo ye aw.
BBC reporting that Upton has walked from NHS Fife.
Perhaps a case of New Year – New Grifts.
Yup, Big Theo has gone, in a huff no doubt.
Watch out private health providers, troublemaking pervert circling in the water of that sectors job market..
@Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh
THANKS for the most engaging link to the Poncarová article on Erskine.
The lady is a Czech, i believe, bringing a cosmopolitan insight to a subject that really can benefit from such a perspective.
Erskine, Grieve, Cunninghame-Graham, Mackenzie were all part of that colorful cosmopolitan, internationalist version of Scottish nationalism, a form that was truly inclusive and «argumentative» as opposed to the rather beige static self satisfied version currently on offer.
Cat, pigeons, sack…..bring it on!
Scotland|Alba has nothing to lose but its fear of stepping out the door.
Thanks TURABDIN. In a footnote to the article by Poncarová to which you refer (link posted by me above at 14 Feb 2.36 pm), she alerts us to a forthcoming MacDiarmid book ‘Hugh MacDiarmid 1923–2023: Visions & Revisions’ (Amsterdam, 2026).
Petra Johana Poncarová writes (footnote 52):
« 52. I discuss Erskine’s connections to Grieve and Derick Thomson in the forthcoming chapter ‘MacDiarmid and the Gaelic World: C.M. Grieve, Ruaraidh Erskine, and Derick Thomson’ in Camille Manfredi et al. (eds), Hugh MacDiarmid 1923–2023: Visions & Revisions (Amsterdam, 2026). »
Poncorová is clearly entirely proficient in Gaelic, since she edited the important 2024 fully Gaelic volume:
‘AN STARAN: Rosg Gàidhlig le Ruaraidh MacThòmais’, Deasaichte le Petra Johana Poncarová, (Acair).
link to gaelicbooks.org
James Cheyne
“All political parties in Scotland are registered in England.”
Is it only me that sees a problem with all the plans for “independence” that begin with:
“Let’s elect politicians in Scotland who then make this pledge of allegiance:
“I, (who will collect loads of money by being a British politician), do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, His heirs and successors, according to Law.” ?
That’s King Charles, King of England and head of the UK state. Also, his heirs continue to include his brother Andrew.
Colin Alexander says:
“That’s King Charles, King of England and head of the UK state. Also, his heirs continue to include his brother Andrew”
Whit ?? You actually think Prince Andrew is one of King Charles’s heirs ???????????????????
Line of Succession: Despite losing his titles, Andrew remains eighth in the line of succession to the British throne.
The current line of succession is topped by William, Prince of Wales, followed by his children, and then Prince Harry and his children.
That’s very much the heart of the matter, Colin. As a conscientious Scot, I could not in good faith serve in the Scottish Parliament, since the Declaration of Arbroath forbids allegiance to the English Crown. So we end up with the absurd situation where Scots who stay true to their nation and their forebears are barred from serving in what is called a “Scottish” Parliament.
Insider @ 15.53.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor does indeed remain 8th in line as heir to the Monarchy of King Charles 111.
Sven..
Try looking up what the word “heir” means !
FFS !
Heir;
A person entitled to the property or rank of another on their death.
A person who inherits or continues the work of a predecessor.
Betraying the namr. More outsider than insider. Heir, when it comes to royalty, is who is in line to succeed the king. That includes Andrew as eighth in line
@ANDY ELLIS,
Timor Leste is a Portuguese speaking democratic republic recognized by the UN, and Indonesia from which it split, as is Albanian speaking Kosovo, <100 UN state recognize it as a sovereign state, Serbia does not.
Both these states, incidentally, emerged from conflict. Both have a population less than 2m.
My people have a language, a culture and history distinct from the Iraqi neighbours and a landlocked homeland but the British, who influenced the League of Nations, «used» us during the post Ottoman Iraqi mandate as did the Americans during their nominal liberation rule. The UN is not interested because of the superior weight of Arab power. So effectively we have to «lump it». Iran, however, is sympathetic.
Scotland is in a unique position of being able not to «lump it».
Politicians who stand in the way ought to be swept aside, whether the majority like it or not. That is the way things are done in this ultra real world.
A boulder in the way is removed, either by subterfuge or direct action.
Have a good evening.
Good shout Turabdin.
“Timor Leste is a Portuguese speaking democratic republic recognized by the UN, and Indonesia from which it split”
Scotland is an English speaking democratic republic recognized by the UN, and England from which it split.
There, sorted.
Oh dear, Alf!
Freudian slip or just a long overdue admitting that for all your huffing and puffing, the majority of us speak, read and write English?
What next I wonder. Admitting the bleeding obvious, that most of us like and want to keep many of the “alien imports of the coloniser”?
Actually the native language spoken in Timor Leste is known as Tetum, and today both Tetum and Portuguese comprise the official languages of the now independent nation, although there are also several other indigenous languages recognised in the constitution.
Scots (and Gaelic) language speakers are nae different, forced to live through ‘the torture of colonial bilingualism’ where only the colonizers language (and hence his culture/values also) is made dominant over a doun-hauden people, which results in socio-linguistic prejudice and ethnic discrimination.
This is why independence is necessary, to enable self-recovery of indigenous languages and culture which are critical aspects in maintaining national consciousness/national identity.
“independence is necessary, to enable self-recovery of indigenous languages”
I see, Alf.
So your published hostility on here to state support and subsidy of the Gaelic language and culture will change overnight to enthusiasm when Scotland is independent.
Will this be at midnight, or perhaps, like the clocks changing, a couple of hours later?
I shared the views of many who opposed Thatcher at the time.
Something seldom mentioned at the same time the dominant Labour party in Scotland who done nothing to oppose her policies and its legacy when they where in power.
It’s time people remembered these times and stopped moaning about it,as it has been long enough to preserve remaining manufacturing and even expand it in our derelict country.
If anything does return it will be the straight white males who do the bulk of the difficult dirty and dangerous work while others sneer.
If you call Flower of Scotland racist read about or look up the actions of king Edward the first of England,why is he called the first should that regnal number have been given to Edward the confessor.
British Museum removes references to ‘Palestine’ from ancient Middle East displays.
Keir Starmer still in power and will remain in power, he’s a zionist tool and Jeremy Corbyns a British fool for giving him the Labour party.
All prosecution is in the name of the Crown.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, or as they say in Glasgow, – nae wan, they do as they please!
Nuff said.
Fourth Scottish church to burn down in six months. As Harry Hilll would put it: “What are the chances of that happening, eh?”
link to news.stv.tv
Two hundred and fifty years… that’s roughly how long, in total, Scotland and England have spent warring with each other. A quarter of a millennium at each other’s throats.
Scotland and England have NEVER been ‘friends’ and certainly aren’t friends today despite what ‘Scotland’s Government’, in collusion with Westminster, would have the common folk believe.
The ‘Auld Enemy’ remains the auld enemy.
And although there are no longer hot wars between the two separate nations the Scots have been embroiled in a cauld war while attempting to resist England’s more covert hostile advances since at least 1707.
Scotland and England are not a single nation; not a united kingdom; not a Great Britain; not one happy fowk.
The Scots and the English are not one people… and they are not the same.
The relationship between Scotland’s and England’s two distinct and separate peoples is one of oppressed and oppressor, subjugated and subjugator, abused and abuser… one doun-hauden and the other hauden doun.
There was never a happy marriage made between the Scots and the English… only the arranged forced joining of two fowk wholly unsuited for wedlock and who were brought thegither tae profit England and no fir the luve o’ wan an ither.
Divorce cannot come soon enough for the Scots.
Ah, C’moan noo, Northy.
Ye’re turnin it intae a hoat war jist by bletherin yer screeds o’ hoat air a’ ower the subject.
Onywuys, aren’t you a colonising Pict frae some interstellar shithole? Fit dee ye ken aboot people.
The Scots regarded you lot as untermensch and made a decent job of jenny siding the lot of you, although perhaps one or two collaborators slipped the net.
A cold war between Scotland and England is a very good way of putting it Northcode and that is so very true today as England and in every covert which way tries to undermine the Scottih nation for England’s economic advantage.
As was declared many years ago the sentiment that ‘now we have catch’d Scotlan we will hold her fast ‘ is so very true.
Unlike Iraq where the UK put the troops in to secure the spoils of that country’s oil, England however for the present as it did with most colonies maintains a cold war.
But you know what, England lost its empire, lost its colonies. And they will lose.Scotland too.
Anyway, aside I’m off to listen to the latest on the crime family they call British Royalty. Their decline as the thoroughly rotten titular emblem of English colonial rule is now there for all the world to see. And the world most certainly seeing it!
A list of the top ten imports the Scots just can’t live without; ‘gifted’ to them by their friendly neighbour, the English:
1. Abuse: The Cringe (psychological)
2. Abuse: Poverty (deliberate economic policy).
3. Abuse: Drug and alcohol (resulting from poverty).
4. Suppression of the Scots language
5. Suppression of Scottish culture and traditions.
6. Suppression (generally), oppression, and subjugation.
7. Theft of Scotland’s Lands, seas, rivers, mountains and lochs.
8. Theft of Scotland’s intellectual property.
10.Theft of Scotland’s rich natural resources.
I’m seeing a lot of abuse, suppression and theft, but it’s for the benefit of the Scots… so all good.
Oh, and let’s not forget the several hundred military garrisons the English built across the entirety of Scotland (and the roads to connect them, thanks General Wade) to house the 12,000 plus ‘British’ soldiers deployed to keep the Scots safe and secure from foreign invaders in a generous act of friendship made shortly after the ink on the Treaty of Union had almost dried.
It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but it’s a start that shows just how generous the English have been to the Scots over the last three centuries.
Thanks, England.
Kindest regards,
Scotland… your favourite illegally annexed non-self-governing territory and imperial possession xx.
Iain MacKinnon -historian.
“There you have the complexity of the fact that there was internal colonizing, as well. Some of the clans, from very early on, were acting as agents of the state, as Crown agents. There’s all this complexity before the period when people were being driven away, and this earlier colonialism is linked to a long process of Anglicization among the clan elites.”
I wonder if Liberation Scotland is interested in the work of MacKinnon. If not, it should be.
From an interview with Iain MacKinnon
link to inmotionmagazine.com
“(But,) there’s a key difference in between what happened in Scotland and what happened in Ireland, at this time. The colonization of Ulster, the plantation of Ulster was going on at the same time. James was trying this in Ireland and trying it in the Islands at the same time. What happened in Ireland was the native Earls or Chiefs had to leave. They were forced into exile. And so the land was then completely colonized by English and Lowland Scots.
So, in that sense the Irish, and this is to put it quite bluntly, they knew who their enemy was because the people who were ruling them and who had control of their land were culturally different. But what happened in the Highlands was, in 1608 – and this was the same time that the colonization was going on in Lewis – there was an understanding that there was a hostile intent from the Scottish Crown towards the Islands. And in 1608 there was a meeting organized between the chiefs and the Crown agents – there were two leaders of them Andrew Ochiltree and Andrew Knox who was a bishop, Bishop Knox.
And they were having this meeting and nine of the Island chiefs were invited to go aboard Ochiltree’s boat for a religious service. And when they were taken on board in the harbor of Mull, the ship weighed anchor and they went off to the South and they were imprisoned. One of them Ruaidhri Mòr Macleòid [Big or Great Rory Macleod], he got wind of it somehow, so he wasn’t brought in.
(But) the rest of them were incarcerated until they agreed to sign something called the Statutes of Iona by which they agreed to various diktats. … (and) one of the statutes was that the chiefs would send their elder sons to the South for education in Lowland schools, effectively through the medium of English, and become acculturated to English-speaking norms or the Lowland Scottish norms.”
Aye, sam, nae doot whitsoeever that thinking aboot the stuff that happened in 1608 keeps maist daecent, richt-thinking Scots awak at nichts.
But, for only the nth time, you’re all over the place.
Surely not even a lying dunderheid like yourself can actually believe that Lowland Scots in Scotland in 1608 spoke English.
That story, currently causing you to drown your dram in bitter tears, is about Gaelic speakers being coerced into speaking Scots.
Something our own Professor Baird wants to see right now in 2026.
Ye missed ane, Northy:
11. Repatriation (if Reform get their way) of all holders of alien, abusive, foreign, beliefs.
As well as militant adherents to the religion of peace, and the aggressive gender nutts, I’m expecting that to be extended to crazed interstellar colonisers too.
So best sell up while prices are still high!
Catch’d Scotland,
Except they didn’t, I been trying to explain why for years,
When you dissolve only one party in 1707 to (Two party treaty ) they did not catch’d Scotland at all, have not catched them,
What they did, was dissolve Scotlands old parliament of all obligations,responsibilities and promises to the 1707 treaty of union.
You legally cannot hold onto something that you legally dissolved. When its gone its gone,
It needed Scotland to remain to create the parliament of Great Britain.
Because it becomes a one party treaty of union with the parliament of England with England Great Britain parliament,
One and the same English only parliament, due to the Monarch of England transferring the old English parliament into The new brand name of Great Britain, no elections held.
But the very creation needed Scotland and would still require Scotland for the 1707 treaty to be binding on Scotland,
But the of England great britain parliament dissolved Scotland from that obligation,
The law of England states that no successor parliament is bound by its previous parliament,
But that is the law of England,
And Scotland has not had a succeeding Scottish parliament since 1707.
The one in Scotland at the moment derives from the England that dissolved the Scottish parliament way back in 1707 from a union treaty in 1707.
England parliament transferred into the parliament brand Great Britain removed it very foundation creation to be the parliament of Scotland and England in a union.
Due to the dissolving of Scotland parliament from that union treaty obligation.
They also dissolved the parliament of Englands – Great Britain of their own free will to creat the Anglo – Irish parliament agreement in 1800.
Again without the dissolved 1707 Scottish parliament.
When your not a catch’d Scotland. Still in a treaty.
When your gone in 1707, you’re gone.
One day, the penny will drop,
Scotland cannot legally do UDI from the 1707 treaty of union that Englands Great Britain parliament. as it had already dissolved Scotland from it.
Scotland became a Sovereign republic of Scotland and its territorial realm in 1707, due to the actions of Westminster parliament in 1707.
Dissolving Scotlands old parliament in 1707 from its obligations to continue the 1707 treaty.
There after any Scot that went into Westminster parliament went into the parliament of Englands -Great Britain parliament of England,
Englands Westminster parliament of Great Britain achieved UDI for Scotland automatically and made it independent again in the same year…1707.
That is why in Hansard it is often said, ” wether there is a treaty or not” when they speak of dissolving parliaments,
Because only the old Scottish parliament was dissolved.
England will continue the Hoax. For as long as Scotland is fooled and asleep.
Scotland has not had a monarch of Scotland since the year 1707.
Scotland has not had a monarch of Scotland because Scotland was dissoled from the treaty in 1707.
The monarch of England at present sits in EnglandS old Westminster parliament that was not dissolved but transferred into the parliament of Great Britain simply under a re branded name by the laws of Englands parliament.
There has been no political or legal union of parliaments between Scotland and England,
One was dissolved, the other one was not,
One day the penny will drop,
Hoping it will be soon , but I realise that Scotland has been deceived for hundreds of years, and it may take years for Scotland to move forward from the deceit and hoax perpetrated on them,
It ain’t gonna happen today or tomorrow for sure, but one day soon…..very soon when it does, the UN will not be required to prove Scotlands case, but in dire need to prove Englands case of their claim there is a 1707 treaty of union between Scotland and England as they claim.
Scotland could walk away now with no Sottish parliament in Great Britain and no Scottish representatives from that parliament , as it was forced to leave the 1707 treaty over three hundred years ago in 1707.
Why do we ask the Westminster active parliament of Englands ( not dissolved ) Great Britain entity for permission to leave what they threw us out of, and dissolved us from in 1707.
It is not up to England parliament politically or legally.
“Scotland could walk away now”
But we’ve got seas on three sides, and English cants on the fourth.
So where are we going to walk away to?
Chomsky – what now for him, does he disappear down the memory hole?
Turns out america’s “#1 dissident” and critic of imperial power is hanging out with, essentially, the “deep state” all along. And we see how the con broke down on tribal lines, talking candidly among themselves; for a long time I bought the line he peddled about issy being a “tool of american imperialism” in the middle east; the attack dog. But here is the lunacy – major powers do not go to war on behalf of minor powers, i.e. “the tail NEVER wags the dog”; if you think this, you have got the power relations all wrong. NC was also very incurious about JFK, he didn’t think it mattered; and I think he was more or less conventional about the details of 911.
One thing NC did for many of us was to open our eyes to the depth of the lying, the subtle, multi layered, nature of the deception, how it runs through media, politics, academia, the tabloids, the broadsheets, “experts” and “pundits” rolled out to our TV screens – and that cannot be forgotten; but the comic irony is how he was part of it too.
“manufacturing consent” is still worth a read.
One thing you have to watch out for, and it is implied in concepts like the “overton window”, is how “acceptable” limits of debate are policed, usually by gatekeepers who style themselves “opponents” of the system; usually socially connected people with nice jobs in the media or academia. The middle class leftists, the “rebels”, they corrall the voice of the people into acceptable, damp squib, narratives. The gatekeepers dilute anger and make sure no punch is ever landed. Broken, by design, and it creates a political system with no real choice.
– on one side you have the “right” which is all about neoliberal economics, i.e. letting the rich loot the country senseless
– then there is the (new, fake) “left” which is all about crazed sex ideas, and doesn’t care about economics, other than to shut everything down
the real con is : the right are still into sex crazed madness, and the left have no economic competence – it’s the same agenda, presented from different directions.
Notably, amazingly, there are almost no socially conservative centre-left economic parties in the entire western political continuum; and yet these should clean up at the polls, with a natural support of more than 70%
In Scotland for indy the gatekeepers are the SNP and places like Bella and the middle class who like to spank it to this weak pish. They will never deliver. I predict in 20 years time (barring some extreme luck), the likes of Hassan, will be talking about “a national conversation about what it means to scottish … ” and to “really go for it, in 2050, or so … ” and how we need to win the “soft noes” among the “new Scots”, and to push for registration programmes among the corrugated iron ghettoes (sharia zones) surrounding all our great cities, where you can “feel the diversity” … (just don’t go walking your dog while eating a bacon sarnie)
“I predict in 20 years time”
it will be about one generation along (20 + 12) from the last effort to reach a decision on Indy.
Funnily enough, the once-in-a-generation inter-referendum period that everybody signed up to beforehand.
With only the minority who lost subsequently developing a pathetic case of post-event “buyers remorse”.
Surely it must be 20 months since the SNP foisted Yusaf on us all – an insult and an affront that should have galvanised every proud, Sovereign Scot to swear a mighty vow that neither razor nor scissors would touch their chin, or their upper lip, or their scalp, or their oxters, or their groin, or their legs, until Scotland was free.
But naw, we’ve had 20 months of tumbleweed. So perhaps we will need every single one of those 20 years, and proud, Sovereign Scots as yet unborn, to get ready for the next one.
Maybe if all the 2014 numpties have dropped out by then, one way or another, we’ll make a better fist of things in 2046.
Wether lowland or highland Scots, you were dissolved from the treaty of union in 1707. By the parliament of England that was transferred into the parliament of Great Britain, which after nearly a hundred years was dissolved, and went on to become the united kingdom of the Anglo – Irish parliament,
Without the 1707 dissolved Scottish parliament,
Scotland holds no such 1707 treaty with the parliament of Great Britain or with the later 1801/1802 Anglo/ Ireland parliament.
Nearly held a 1707 treaty with England until England in 1707 dissolved that treaty by dissolving the Scottish parliament from the obligations.
Since nothing much is happening in Scotland I’ve been pondering the nature of the ‘special’ relationship between England – also known as Britain, or the fictional United Kingdom if preferred – and the United States of America.
Many Americans – those possessed of an imperial mental conditioning and whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower, perhaps – are fascinated by England… London in particular.
Of course, the American fascination with all things English is based on a fantasy. A fantasy seen through the lens of Jane Austen novels and, more recently, the romantic fictions of Downton Abbey and that American-produced abomination that is Bridgerton.
It is my view – dear, gentle reader – that the concept of “The Ton” as it is re-imagined and constructed in the Regency romances penned by Georgette Heyer (English author: 1902-1971), particularly in her novel “Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle” (published 1957), as a literary device that carefully builds and maintains polite high society is superior in its scribbled doun execution to that of the Julia Quinn (American author: 1970-present) novels on which TV’s Bridgerton is based and which borrow heavily from Heyer’s original notion of “The Ton”.
And so, having pondered deeply on the subject of the unique Anglo-Yank special relationship, I have arrived at this conclusion: that America’s fascination with all things fictionally English is rooted in postcolonial theory and is driven by some deep-seated generational mind-programming dating back to America’s pre-independence days when the country was an English imperial possession.
Postcolonial theory suggests that hidden deep in the psyche of those Americans drawn to England is the urge to ‘return’ to their motherland, their spiritual place of origin… just as anadromous salmon are driven to return to the place they were spawned.
Ach Northy, ye crave attention, and sometimes it seems to me I’m the only cant who will take pity on ye.
But if you’re my cross to bear, it’s a small enough effort that I have to exert.
America’s hoaching with Scots and Irish as we all know, many of them pining to be acknowledged in the lands their ancestors departed prior to commencing their multi-generation sprees of theft, genocide and rapine.
Then there’s the Italians, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, various eastern Europeans. Before we even get to some of the big numbers – Spanish and, of course, African.
You like to post lies on here and I think we all accept you aren’t going to change. It’s still possible you believe that the route to Indy is paved with lies, although with every lying post, the likelihood you personally prioritise points scoring over the cause you claim to hold so dear becomes ever stronger.
But like the other liars on here, you’ve invested too much time and effort to backtrack now.
Hayey,
you fisty cuff with everyone and all metephorically speaking, that just your way, sadly, it just shows a contrary nature,
Most everyone would understand intellectually that it would indicate politically detaching the Country, of Scotland from England,
But not you.