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The treasonous plot

Posted on November 03, 2018 by

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  1. 03 11 18 07:56

    The treasonous plot | speymouth
    Ignored

220 to “The treasonous plot”

  1. Ghillie
    Ignored
    says:

    Chris 🙂

    Makes a change from them dumping their toxic waste in Dalgety Bay and the Solway Firth!

  2. jimnarlene
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    says:

    Remember, remember 2014 in September, the lies,the Vow and fear mongering plot.
    Remember, remember 2014 in September
    Those lies will never be forgot

  3. Malky
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    says:

    Yeah, who needs Guy Fawkes in times like these?

  4. Mabeda
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    says:

    Brilliant.

  5. A Bruce
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    says:

    Great cartoon.

    Mr Fawkes had a great idea but maybe Westminster will just fall down. I understand it’s structurally unsound.

    A more malign and nasty government would be hard to find.

  6. Ghillie
    Ignored
    says:

    Jimnarlene @ 7.27 am

    Oh!

    You’re a poet!
    And didn’t even know it =)

    Like it 🙂

    Actually Chris, now I can see why the tories always go about looking like they’ve got a nasty smell under their noses!

  7. Clootie
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    says:

    …more than half my fellow Scots voted to keep that cesspit in command!

  8. Les Wilson
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    says:

    Very powerful image Chris,but an utterly truthful one.
    Excellent work.

  9. Breeks
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    says:

    Aye, but somewhere in the midst of that steaming pile of muck is the pristine wee jewel of our Sovereignty, which we need some brave soul to venture in and recover….

    Hat’s off Chris. That’s yet another belter.

  10. Golfnut
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    says:

    Great pic, thought there might have been a lot more pish though.

  11. winifred mccartney
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    says:

    What a gift you have Chris – you capture perfectly the whole rotten scene – they have indeed destroyed their ‘precious union’ and everything else all by themselves from the inside – who needs Guy Fawkes when we have such corrupt self serving people inside the house.

  12. James Barr Gardner
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    says:

    It’s no the first time that some wan hus said the Hooses o’ Parliament smelt like a cludgie !

  13. starlaw
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    says:

    Those dark and dreadful un-hallowed halls. Well done Mr. Cairns

  14. Gary45%
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    says:

    Brilliant Chris.
    Nice One.

  15. sassenach
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    says:

    Another great one, Chris, I do believe Indy is now an unstoppable force as more and more people must be seeing Westminster as the cesspit it truly is.

    Ignore polls, too easy to manipulate them – the tide has turned since 2014.

  16. Bob Mack
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    says:

    How many honest ,upstanding and dedicated Westminster politicians does it take to light the bonfire ?

    Both of them !

  17. David Smyth
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    says:

    Metaphors abound: something rotten in the state; bonfire of Eton and never defecate on your own cellar.

  18. auld highlander
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    says:

    You would need an awful lot of Carbolic soap to clean that mess up.

  19. Fillofficer
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    says:

    Aaah, mundells’ crypt

  20. Susan Smith
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    says:

    Love that poem jimnarlene. Very clever. Get it out there. More people should see that.

  21. galamcennalath
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    says:

    One of your best ever! Love it!

    Who gets to light the fuse?

  22. Tom
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    says:

    one of his best. Another Chris ‘best’ is his book on Cool Scots. There is at least one laugh-out-loud moment on every page. But no listing for comedy-genius Chic Murray?? C’mon, let’s have volume 2, and get that fixed …

  23. Cactus
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    says:

    Aye and just out of shot is a trail of gunpowder leading from the Brexit barrel at ground zero all the way up the stairs to the POW…

    Marvellous May cowers at the top of the stairs with lucifer in hand, ready to…

    USE’D’ by date: 29/03/19

    Westminster will soon become irrelevant to Scotland.

    May is some Guy.

  24. Frank Gillougley
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    says:

    A powerful and evil cocktail indeed, to keep everyone and everything in its place, all relayed to you of course by the Media and its ideological masters, big brother (or Ingsoc, as its otherwise known as).

    But, the good news is that i suspect that even this poisonous cocktail cannot hold together indefinitely, as it too is also subject to the laws of physics i.e. entropy.

    Incidentally, the colour yellow, as Chris has chosen, IS the colour of madness.

    Medication time – that, and toast.

  25. Scott
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    says:

    Another great one Chris.

    I don’t do twitter but have a look at WoS and saw this one about Loyal Scots Company,typed it in to have a look and came up with this.

    https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC425000/officers

    Very interesting and a bit scary,sorry for being OT but someone with more savvy could have a look and write about it.

  26. Muscleguy
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    says:

    Nice one Jim and excellent ‘toon Chris. I particularly like Sewel Schmewel. Forced to admit it in court too. Very Captain Barbossa.

  27. Sharny Dubs
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    says:

    Love it Chris, made my day!!

  28. Hamish100
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    says:

    A picture is worth a thousand words.

  29. galamcennalath
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    says:

    Barrel, top left … *nism?

    Racking my brain!

    Someone tell me. 🙂

  30. Frank Gillougley
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    says:

    galamcennalath 9.58

    I’ve got it! – Onanism!!!
    – and there’s plenty of it as well!

  31. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:


    galamcennalath says:
    3 November, 2018 at 9:58 am
    Barrel, top left … *nism?

    Racking my brain!

    Someone tell me. ?

    Controversial – Zionism?

  32. Robert Peffers
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    says:

    Brilliant Chris, but way back behind all that more recent stuff is the big barrel that is the Treaty of Union 1706/7.

    You know the one that Westminster forgot had happened on 1 May 1707.

  33. Breeks
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    says:

    Chauvinism?

  34. Xaracen
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    says:

    @ Breeks
    Actually, I thank that one is ‘cronyism’.

  35. Meg merrilees
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    says:

    Absolutely brilliant and spot on with Guy Fawkes approaching.

    I notice the May says we can’t afford to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia- blood money indeed!!!

    Had a quick look at that Loyal Scots Company seems William Keir Thow from Aberdeen is the only shareholder and has held £20,000,000 – all the shares – in a dormant company that just appointed a Secretary in March 2018.

    Sounds like a dormant company that might be about to waken up! Saved a copy of some of the paperwork from companies house – just in case it is hard to find again…

  36. Breeks
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    says:

    Sectarianism?

    On a roll now…

  37. Bob Mack
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    says:

    @Scott,

    The Loyal Scots company was set up by Mr Thow to gather funds to fight the 2014 referendum. He failed miserably, but left the company open in case we had another indy ref.

    He is a businessman ,but none too bright. I reckon he has named Esther McVey as a Co director with a Danish address to help illicit funds for the future from the gullible

    Summary— basically an anti indy shell company selling shares at £1 each to Unionists, hoping to raise up to £20,000,000 Mr Thow works in IT.

  38. Scot Finlayson
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    says:

    And yet the MPs and Lords still chunter on about `British Values`,

    like everything British it is a fantasy of the Great Days of Empire,

    where the British State brought civilisation to the world through a red tide of extreme violence, murder,slavery,corruption,lies and pillage,

    Westminster is built from these `British Values`.

  39. Ken500
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    says:

    The polluters of the world. Cess pit. The Westminster unionists about to implode. Hysterical if it was not so tragic.

  40. galamcennalath
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    says:

    Scott says:

    Loyal Scots Company

    Aye, loyal to whom. Loyal British Company would be more appropriate.

    And, what is it all about? Dormant? A very great deal on money on the books and tied straight to The Tories.

    Sitting festering in Scotland like one of Chris’s barrels.

  41. Bob Mack
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    says:

    Unionism.

  42. Ken500
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    says:

    Company address 38 Tullos Crescent, Aberdeen

    Director ID 15 Bishop Road Inverness.

    Conformation statement 2018 – Late – 145 days overdue. Over three months.

    Twitter – Likes writing letters.

  43. handclapping
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    says:

    Total crap; why is there no BBC in the frame?

  44. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Ken500 says:

    Company address

    For mail ….
    84 Chapel Lane, Wilmslow SK9 5JH

    Tatton Conservative Association and Office of Esther McVey MP

  45. Luigi
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    says:

    Aye, all those powder kegs sitting there, perfectly positioned in WM, under their fat backsides. A death trap of their own making. All it will take now is a wee spark.

    We wait patiently. 🙂

  46. auld highlander
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    says:

    Ken 500 @ 10.31
    15 Bishops road is a guest house which was up for sale recently. Don’t know who the new owner is.

  47. Bob Mack
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    says:

    @Galamcennalath,

    There is no money on the books. They are offering shares for purchase at £1 each up to the value of £20,000,000. I would be very concerned if those had been subscribed,but they were not.

    The Esther McVey connection is of more interest. Is she planning to use the company as a conduit for funds to fight indyref2? Who can say? Esther McVey!!

  48. manandboy
    Ignored
    says:

    There is only one Chris Cairns. I suspect Banksy reads Wings every Saturday.

  49. galamcennalath
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    says:

    @me

    *nism

    Totalitarianism

  50. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Bob Mack says

    There is no money on the books

    You are right. The shares are unsubscribed. McVey’s involvement also appears to be more recent.

  51. manandboy
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    says:

    SCOTLAND’S FREEDOM OF SPEECH – KEPT IN THE TOWER OF LONDON

    With no broadcast media, only The National, available to the Scottish government, the denial of freedom of speech in Scotland ought surely to be an issue in the Independence debate, and not only in the UK but also in the European Union. Every little helps.

  52. HandandShrimp
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    says:

    I can’t see ‘Esther death to the poor McVey’ being a strong selling point for any Unionist campaign.

    As if the Unionists don’t have enough embarrassment with the antics of the swivel eyed fruitcakes in SiU over the FM’s visit to Auschwitz. I don’t think that people like Gallagher have any sense of proportion or even a grasp of common reason any more. If they see a picture of Nicola they go into attack mode never stopping for a moment to think whether this is going to make them look bereft of humanity. The lightning rod their tweets provided for holocaust deniers and assorted anti-Semites simply made them look even more isolated and deranged.

    I wonder how long it will be before the more mainstream Unionists will follow Adam Tomkins and put some distance between themselves and SiU.

  53. Dan Huil
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    says:

    Britnats are bricking it.

    # Underneath the arches… # by Fullygan and Blimpen

  54. Valerie
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    says:

    Brilliant, like Muscleguy, the “Sewel Schmewll” caught my eye.

    I think the biggest barrel of poison would go to City of London banking. The trillions held in the off shore havens, culled from God knows what and where.

    Off topic

    I always appreciate Wingers sharing book recommendations, so to share one.

    I ordered Bob Woodward’s (of Watergate busting fame) latest book “Fear”, based on Trump’s first year. I’ve been keen to read Woodwards take, he has such an impeccable reputation. He has had unique access to key people, tons of notes, tapes, interviews. He also doesn’t “attribute”, thus giving protection to sources.

    I’ve barely started it, yet it’s pulling me in right away with the writing, and the beginning of the campaign.

    He rightly said he and his coworkers quickly realised this history had to be documented from day 1, as well as the actions of those around Trump.

    Check it out!

  55. Artyhetty
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    says:

    Ah, the stench of British Nationalism in the morning, toxic.

    Don’t worry, once the Britnats’ Brexit is done and dusted, those barrels will all fall down and leak even more toxins out for the great Northern British region to inhale.

    Better get some masks, because they will soon suffocate the last vestiges of democracy in the UKOK. Scotland, deprived of any 21st century oxygen, will be taken back at least a century, the people are a side issue, collateral.

    Scotland’s abundant resources will be bled even more, siphoned away to London. The Britnats are laughing all the way to the bank, ha ha ha.

    Scotland, you better get out of the cesspit otherwise the toxic Britnat poisonous gasses will finish you off. Keep the brand? You won’t have a name if they can get away with it!
    (You can tell I’ve been watching more ‘Gotham’ can’t you, but it’s quite similar to dystopian UKOK!). 🙁

  56. Auld Rock
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    says:

    With all that radio-active material lying about how much more does it need to go ‘critical’?????

  57. Robert Peffers
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    says:

    @Xaracen says: 3 November, 2018 at 10:13 am

    ” … Actually, I thank that one is ‘cronyism’.

    Mair like unionism, a.k.a. British/English Nationalism. a.k.a. Britnat patriotism.

  58. Scot Finlayson
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    says:

    @Valerie

    Woodward and,Washington Post editor,Ben Bradlee had both been members of the Office of Navy Intelligence which is the senior Intelligence Agency of USA,

    `Deep Throat` was Mark Felt,who was Associate Director of FBI,

    not sayin Nixon was not a crook,just sayin he wasnae the only crook,

    Woodward on the Bush/Blair illegal war in Iraq,

    `During an appearance on Larry King Live, he was asked by a telephone caller, “Suppose we go to war and go into Iraq and there are no weapons of mass destruction,” Woodward responded “I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There’s just too much there.`

  59. Robert Peffers
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    says:

    @Scot Finlayson says: 3 November, 2018 at 10:17 am:

    ” … where the British State brought civilisation to the world through a red tide of extreme violence, murder,slavery,corruption,lies and pillage,
    Westminster is built from these `British Values`.”

    Indeed, Scot, it is built upon those British Values. However, to Scotland’s shame, so was Glasgow and it was the Scots regiments and lots of Scottish born administrative staff that ran their Empire for Westminster.

  60. Ian McCubbin
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    says:

    Well who gets the short straw to blow it up on Monday, ha ha ha.

  61. Calum McKay
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    says:

    Russian interference?

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/in-russia-fear-projects-you/

    Fancy that, David Cameron pleading to President Putin to help him stop Scottish Independence?

    To say Wings was a head of the curve on this would be an under statement.

    But lets remember, nearly every head of state from Ulaanbaatar to Timbuktu was mobilised by the british state against Scottish Self Determination!

    What strikes me, is the uk opened the door with an open invite to interfere in Scottish politics, but they then cried foul when Russia turned the tables on them.

    uk state survives on hypocrisy and lying to the people!

  62. Thepnr
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    says:

    Great cartoon Chris. Captures the crumbling edifice that is the Palace of Westminster and is being brought down by their own stinking and corrupt laws and practices.

    Won’t be long now until it collapses completely. I await the day.

  63. Nana
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    says:

    Brilliant cartoon as always Mr Cairns.

    For anyone interested I’ve put a few links on the previous thread, and if I find any more I will add them.

  64. yesindyref2
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    says:

    Anynism

  65. Jason Smoothpiece
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    says:

    O/T

    Purchased my National, not in Tesco as I didn’t want a Union Jack stamped on it.

    Front page story reporting the continuing scandal of the Fascist Spanish states treatment of the political leaders of Catalonia who are still imprisoned.

    We must never forget our friends in Catalonia.

  66. cearc
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    says:

    Down in the deep as dark as can be…

    Unfortunately (for them), as the edifice was built on a boggy, tidal riverbank and without the benefit of dutch engineers, that is not very deep. Inevitably it will all rise to the surface.

  67. Dr Jim
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    says:

    A bonfire of the vanities

  68. Robert Peffers
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    says:

    @Jason Smoothpiece says: 3 November, 2018 at 1:38 pm:

    ” … We must never forget our friends in Catalonia.”

    We don’t forget as seen by the individual EU states who threw out the Spanish Government requests for the prisoners to answer the Spanish extradition warrants.

    The EU, however cannot officially act against a member state’s internal affairs but some folks have run them down for not acting against Spain directly.

    That is not how state or EU diplomacy works. They work behind the lines.

    Which highlights something I noticed yesterday. there are a large number of EU member states, (I think it was 12), that fish in UK waters who have warned the EU & EC that they will collectively veto any deal on Brexit that would result in them being barred from fishing in UK waters.

    But, as usual, The UK and the UK media, “don’t want you to know that”, so it has been mainly unreported.

    Wonder what the Scottish fishery leaders make of that? It means the UK bargaining tools have been taken away from Westminster and the chances of a deal are a great deal slimmer.

    Anyway, when I went to get the report address from YouTube I had several breaks in my access to the net as my provider had a problem.

    I had access to the net but could not resolve website addresses. By the time I got back full access I couldn’t find the report again. It could probably be found with a search.

  69. Ken500
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    says:

    @ Company address of director

  70. Ken500
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    says:

    Unless someone has the same unusual name?

  71. Ken500
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    says:

    A scam

  72. Ken500
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    says:

    Does a football club involved in sectarianism not owe £70Million to the tax +’other losses. HMRC. Support the Union but not pay taxes. Hypocrites? Collection date 2019. No wonder the terraces are empty.

  73. Scottish Steve
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    says:

    What a shame Guy Fawkes failed in his plan. James VI’s reign over the three kingdoms of these isles was the first corrosive step towards union.

  74. Andy-B
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    says:

    Ha, ha, a belter Chris, well done it made me smile.

  75. Davie Oga
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    says:

    Nice to see the weather forcing councils to cancel bonfire “celebrations”. Disappointing to see the Glasgow event going ahead on the fifth. Symbol of the mentality that hold Scotland back. Celebrating an English holiday with sectarian origins. Lots of pretty colours for the housejocks.

  76. galamcennalath
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    says:

    If you read around about the gunpowder plot, it seems have been anti Scottish as much as anything. After the failed event, the authorities branded it as a Catholic plot because that better suited their political narrative. The anti Scottish aspect was played down.

    Fawkes himself expressed anti Scottish opinions.

  77. Brian Cahill
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    says:

    The most corrupt and unprincipled government in living memory. Followed closely by Labour.

  78. Capella
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    says:

    @ Davie Oga – the celebrations at this time of year are actually ancient Celtic pagan rites marking the end of harvest and the start of winter.

    Samhain is the Gaelic name. So enjoy them with joy and happiness as the ancient Celts would have!

    As with every Celtic pagan festival, the church took them over and “Christianised” them. So no need to miss out on Christmas, Easter, Midsummer and Halloween. Think of them as an ancient tradition around these high pastures.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

  79. Abulhaq
    Ignored
    says:

    @David Oga
    The anti-Catholic bonfire night is essentially English. It has no place in Scotland.
    James VI promised English Catholics, including Guido Fawkes, he would be ‘liberal’. On arrival in London with his Scottish court he found the English establishment unsympathetic, hence the ‘plot’.

  80. Davie Oga
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    says:

    @Capella

    I understand that.

    Glasgow council is holding their celebration on Monday the 5th of November. If they were to have a traditional Samhain festival on 31st/1st more power to them. Its only on Monday night because thats Guy Fawkes Day. Rebranding is in order.

  81. galamcennalath
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    says:

    “Brexit is every Tory Christmas wish come at once …. Fuelled by the scarecrow elements of the English right-wing press and their stooges who occupy the Tory twilight zone there will be street parties and more Union Jacks than a royal jubilee. …. In Scotland it doesn’t need to be like this and there is a simple solution.”

    http://archive.is/syhji

    I am still adamant that Brexit Day should be marked by flags across Scotland flying at half mast!

    We didn’t ask for it and we don’t want it. It should be a day on national mourning.

  82. Welsh Sion
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    says:

    For those of you who tweet, here’s more on Mr Thow:

    https://twitter.com/w_thow

    Also: If you Google his name, there appears to be whole host of posts on genealogical websites where he discuss his ancestors from Kincardineshire.

    https://www.ancestry.co.uk/boards/surnames.thow/mb.ashx

    Plus: First Director of A & B Taxis Perth Limited which was founded on 12 Jan 2010, and is no dissolved.

    https://www.duedil.com/company/gb/SC371008/a-and-b-taxis-perth-limited

    _______

    PS Not mentioning the rugby. Have more important fish to fry! 😉

  83. ScotsRenewables
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    says:

    Donvt be such a miseryguts Davie – there will be a lot of disappointed weans.

  84. Robert Peffers
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    says:

    @Scottish Steve says: 3 November, 2018 at 3:31 pm:

    ” … What a shame Guy Fawkes failed in his plan. James VI’s reign over the three kingdoms of these isles was the first corrosive step towards union.”

    No, Steve, it began long before that. In the King of England defeated the last native Prince of Wales and in 1284 issued The Statute of Rhuddlan that imposed English law upon Wales. Effectively annexing Wales as part of the Kingdom of England.

    Then the Holy Roman See got upset at the Irish Christian Church that was straying a bit from the teachings of Rome so the Pope appointed the English King as Lord of Ireland and in 1442 the English King forced the Irish Parliament to pass, “The Crown of Ireland Act that placed the Irish Crown on the king of England’s head.

    All this was perfectly legal under the rule of law of, “Divine Right of Kings”, that prevailed throughout Christendom, (really that was Europe). However, due to the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 that rule of law did not apply in Scotland.

    However, there were other factors at work. In the Edinburgh-Northampton Treaty of 1328 Joanna, the six-year-old sister of Edward III, was promised in marriage to the four-year-old David, the son of Robert Bruce, and the marriage duly took place on 17 July the same year.

    This later in 1603 resulted in James VI inheriting the crowns of England, Wales & Ireland. However but the English Kingdom’s, “Glorious Revolution, in 1688, had change the English rule of law to make the English Kingdom a Constitutional Monarchy but had retained, in law, that the Monarch of England remains to this day legally sovereign, but when the English invited Mary of Orange, (descended from the Stewart line), she refused the crown of England because she did not want her husband William as her consort.

    Note:- William of Orange and as a protestant young man he married Mary (the daughter of King James II) and therefore secured his place as the successor to the throne.

    The English parliament then offered the crowns of England, Wlws and Ireland to them as a couple, “Willian & Mary”, but only if the pair delegated their legal sovereignty to the parliament of England. So they were landed with King Billy effectively being the King of the Three country Kingdom of England.

    So the English parliament did not accept King James VI of Scotland under the old Divine Right of Kings because he was not sovereign under Scottish Law. Which was what began the Jacobite uprisings that even today England calls the Jacobite rebellion but you cannot rebel against a monarch not your own so the Jacobites were fighting for their lawful monarch that the English parliament had deposed.

    Complicated but that’s how James I % VI could not form a United Kingdom in 1603 and why Westminster engineered the Treaty of Union of 1706/7 – why would they need a Treaty of Union if there was a legal Union of the Crowns in 1603? It was only a personal union for James – not an actual union of the Kingdoms.

  85. Welsh Sion
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    says:

    Capella @ 5.01 pm.

    Still cringe on listening to the Radio 4 “Thought for the Day” around a year ago when the bright spark referred to this part of the year as “Sam Hain”. GRRRRRRRRR!

    Happy New Year to you, and here’s a little bit of my country’s traditions, too. (Sorry for BBC link.)

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46019969

  86. yesindyref2
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    says:

    @Welsh Sion
    It’ll be a good drunken night anyway for those there, it always is, no matter who wins 🙂

  87. call me dave
    Ignored
    says:

    Just catching up been at football 🙁

    Good cartoon again!

    O/T
    Had a go at The National cryptic X-word as usual this morning and I saw there was a nod in the direction of a certain blogger.. 🙂

    13A, & 23D ‘Bird botherers… (6,7)

  88. Thepnr
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    says:

    @call me dave

    I saw there was a nod in the direction of a certain blogger. 🙂

    13A, & 23D ‘Bird botherers… (6,7)

    Hahaha, nice one from that certain crossword compiler 🙂

  89. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    call me dave says:

    Bird botherers

    Is that not was wee bit sexist and not exactly politically correct of them to refer to Rhea Wolfson as a bird ?

  90. Petra
    Ignored
    says:

    Great cartoon Chris. One of the best yet.

    Just waiting on Nicola lighting the fuse after someone digs out the “missing” Westminster paedophile ring files. Nana are you willing to go in there with me to take a look, lol?

    Time’s running out for them now and it’s clear that no one has been studying history that highlights that widespread corruption leads to the downfall of countries and Empires. That’s blind arrogance and a sense of entitlement combined with ignorance for you.

    …………………

    ‘The Sad, Dark End of the British Empire – Scottish Independence could be the final insult.”

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/the-sad-end-of-the-british-empire-110362

    ‘Empires (like the US) fall when corruption becomes rampant.’

    https://washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/empires-like-u-s-fall-corruption-becomes-rampant.html

  91. yesindyref2
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    says:

    @CMD
    I wonder who that was, huh, shocking, didn’t a outghta be allowed.

    On the other hand …

  92. Scotspatriot
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    says:

    Thank you Robert Peffers….really enjoyed that !
    That should be taught in Scottish Schools !

  93. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Welsh Sion – thx for the link. Nice article (for once from the BBC though I notice they are pushing pumpkins rather than neeps). The Welsh traditions are very similar to the Scottish Celtic ones.

    Since Valerie has mentioned books, an excellent one on Celtic traditions is F Marian McNeill’s “The Silver Bough” 4 vols.

  94. Welsh Sion
    Ignored
    says:

    A little follow up to Robert Peffers @ 5.27 pm.

    The Statute of Wales (erroneously known as the Statute of Rhuddlan, as it was promulgated there) did not impose English Law on the conquered Welsh nor did it annex Wales to England.

    Welsh CIVIL Law (the Law of King Hywel Dda/the Good, d.950) was maintained, as was the Law of Property (cyfran/gavelkind being the most common form of inheritance and not primogeniture.) The Marcher Lords for the most part administered English/Norman-French CRIMINAL Law as they saw fit.

    This situation came to an end with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 (under Henry VIII Tudur/Tudor), who annexed the whole country into England, wiping Wales off the map in what may be called an Anschuss, depriving 95%+ of the monoglot Welsh-speaking population work in public enterprises and the legal system, and for the first time Welsh MPs sat in the (English) Parliament. All references to “England” in legislation was deemed to include Wales too … a situation only reversed in 1967. (Similar circumstances applied following the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 – a significant date, and no Berwickian was allowed public office within the King’s Realm.)

    All this, with the 1535 and 1542 Acts being hypocritical nicknamed ‘Acts of Union’ – when there was no Welsh King, Parliament, politicians to sanction it and be ‘bought for English gold.’ Rather, it was a complete take over by one country by another – and its effects reverberate to this day in the political, linguistic and social fields.

  95. Welsh Sion
    Ignored
    says:

    Capella @ 6.39 pm

    As we are recommending books, may I suggest the following from your late countrywoman, Dr Anne Ross, who received much help from my late father in producing the following book?

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Folklore-Wales-Anne-Ross/dp/0752419358

  96. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    @Welsh Sion at 7.25
    Indeed.

    Wales was also asset and resource stripped more ruthlessly than Scotland, about the same as Cornwall. If there was ever a debt repayment, Wales would be fabulously wealthy, probably more so than Scotland, though we’d need to look at tonnages at today’s prices.

  97. Legerwood
    Ignored
    says:

    Robert Peffers @ 5.27pm and Scottishpatriot @ 6.26 pm

    “”However, due to the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 that rule of law [Divine Right of Kings] did not apply in Scotland.
    However, there were other factors at work. In the Edinburgh-Northampton Treaty of 1328 Joanna, the six-year-old sister of Edward III, was promised in marriage to the four-year-old David, the son of Robert Bruce, and the marriage duly took place on 17 July the same year.
    This later in 1603 resulted in James VI inheriting the crowns of England, Wales & Ireland””
    ……….
    I sincerely hope this is not taught in Scottish Schools.

    The Divine Right of Kings was not a law but rather a vague political concept/theory of kingship that did not come to full fruition until after the Reformation and one of the foremost proponents of the Divine Right of Kings was James VI who literally wrote the book(s) on the subject. Henry VIII was not averse to the side either.

    James VI did not inherit the throne of England because of the marriage of Joanna, daughter of Edward III- a Plantagenet, to David, son of Robert the Bruce. David became King David II and died without an heir. His nephew Robert succeeded him and, as King Robert II, was the first of the Stuart kings.

    Therefore there was no direct link to the Plantagenet kings of England. And several Royal houses between Plantagenet and Tudor – see chronology below.

    It is the Stuart link to the Tudors that put James VI into the line of succession to Elizabeth Tudor.

    James VI was the great, great grandson of Henry VII. James IV married Margaret Tudor daughter of Henry VII and elder sister of Henry VIII. James VI mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and his father Lord Darnley, were great grandchildren of Henry VII of England. Thus James was doubly connected to the Tudors.

    Chronology
    1216-1399 Plantagenet
    1399-1461 House of Lancaster
    1461-1485 House of York
    1485-1603 The Tudors

  98. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Welsh Sion – you’re costing me a fortune this week!
    I can’t resist a folklore book and I think I have Anne Ross’ Pagan Celts but it’s too late on a Saturday night to go searching though the stacks!
    Manyana. 🙂

  99. schrodingers cat
    Ignored
    says:

    @Welsh Sion

    congrats, i phoned my mum, she is over the moon coming from Blaenau Ffestiniog as she does

    re the king of wales, the term used in wales was prince, from latin/roman times Principia, meaning principal, first, etc

    the word was subsumed into english to mean below a king, eg prince of wales (my mums maiden name is llewelyn :() but in truth, the term prince is not a lesser term than king. eg, the french never had kings but roi/roy (royal etc) but such terms are not considered subordinate to the term king.

  100. schrodingers cat
    Ignored
    says:

    coming from Blaenau Ffestiniog as she does

    thats what happens when you speak to welsh folk, everything comes out backwards

    nice day……..isnt it?

    going to the pub are we?

    lol

  101. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    I kind of vaguely remember writing a wee satire piece, about how the early Celts who were overlords in Germany, got kicked out for knuckle-hogging the brain soup and Spaetzle, dondered off down to Rome which they sacked, then got fed up with pizza and took to the sea, landing for some paella before heading north for some pate.

    Then heard about Cornish pasties, and from there went to Wales where they supped on Welsh Rarebit before heading over for a pint of Guiness. Suitably fortified they headed off again for the TT races, got kicked out for going too fast and winning all the races and then discovered haggis-shooting and have been here ever since.

    It’s probably not actual satire, of course.

  102. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    For those who don’t Twitter, here’s a question I put up last night:

    ‘Will you (by choice or design) be wearing a ‘poppy’ at any time between now and Monday November 12th?’

    Options were Yes, No and Don’t Know.

    Anyone fancy a guess what the breakdown is after 1,300 votes?

    Nae cheatin!

    😉

  103. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ian Brotherhood – I never wear a poppy so, being entirely solipsistic, I would guess the majority said No.

  104. Tinto Chiel
    Ignored
    says:

    @Capella: if you have Dr Ross’s magisterial “Pagan Celtic Britain”, you may also enjoy her “Folklore of the Scottish Highlands”, Stroud, 2011.

    Better still, buy the six volumes of Ortha nan Gaidheal/Carmina Gadelica by Carmichael (not that one, obvs) and boogie on down to the Gael sound.

    Watch your overdraft.

  105. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Tinto Chiel – I read Carmina Gadelica in George IV Bridge Scottish Library a million years ago.

    I remember him describe the Gaels of the West Coast, tearfully tossing their fiddles into the bonfires at the insistence of the Church (devil’s music). The children were belted for speaking Gaelic in the school playgrounds.

    But if there is a print edition out I will cast prudence and caution to the wind! Worth every penny I would say.

  106. Welsh Sion
    Ignored
    says:

    Many thanks for the congrats, Schrodinger’s Cat … and I agree that the use of placing the verb in initial position is a tendency carried over by “Celtic speakers” (for want of a better expression) into other languages such as English. What we linguists call “first language interference”.

    I do it myself if I’m not careful in that I will also “keep dishes” instead of “putting them away” and other such things which bemuse those who only know of “Anglo-Saxon.”

    But I’m not sure where you get the idea that Cymru never had kings. WE indeed did have – over various localities in the Age of Saints (and beyond) – I avoid the term “the Dark Ages”, as that is term used by the likes of Time Team to deny the existence of continuing Celtic civilisations after the Departure of the Romans and the incursions of the Germanic tribes. Rhodri Fawr (Roderick the Great) and his grandson Hywel Dda (Howel the Good – supra) were also Kings, in this case KIngs of the entire country of Cymru/Wales. What we never had were High Kings a la Ireland, and, yes, over time rulers became known as Tywysog (the same word as Irish ‘Taoseiach’ = Leader) i.e. Princeps/Prince.

    Maybe this had to do with the fact they were already (and sooner than the Scots) already playing second fiddle to the English (cf Athelstan and his pretentions of being Bretwala – “King of Britain” in the 10th century.)

    It is unfortunate that ignorant heralds in the employ of Queen Elizabeth I/II refused to acknowledge this kingly heritage and allow us to have our own national flag. It was only HM herself, in over-ruling them at her Coronation who ordained and officially recognised the Ddraig Goch/Red Dragon as our flag – and even then it was only given official sanction in 1959.

  107. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Capella –

    Cheers for response.

    I can confirm you are correct, but…

    Come on now, have a stab at the numbers!

    😉

  108. Proud Cybernat
    Ignored
    says:

    The Theresanous Plot

    Surely.

    Nice work Chris.

  109. Tinto Chiel
    Ignored
    says:

    @Capella: thought you might be acquaint.

    In 1979 I won a football prize draw for £50 and coincidentally soon (!) found myself in the Gairm bookshop in Waterloo Street, Glasgow. It was a Saturday, so the guy behind the till was Prof Derick Thomson himself, a fine Gaelic poet in his own right. Bang went my winnings on the six with a couple of quid left over for a refreshment.

    Dunno what they cost as a set now buy it may be steep.

  110. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    Any time I see the poppies being pushed I go home and listen to these pieces. WW1 did as much damage to Scotland as the clearances and left whole dying communities with no men. The families of the dead got nothing. The survivors came home to nothing. When did the UK ever pay the debt to that generation. You know where you can stick your poppies.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0tFv8yu7ow

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJdh1M5PGTg

  111. JGedd
    Ignored
    says:

    Legerwood@8.04pm

    Agree about the succession devolving from the Tudors to the Stuarts.

    Interesting that marriage negotiations for the marriage of Margaret Tudor to James 1V met with some criticism at the time due to misgivings about issue of the marriage having succession rights to both thrones.

    Apparently a young Thomas More opined dismissively that in such a case, then ” the greater would draw the lesser “. That is probably how English historians would see it even yet and certainly how James V1 later saw it when he removed with his court to England and didn’t return.

  112. geeo
    Ignored
    says:

    Breaking news on Sky News…

    Treeza is reported to have ‘won’ concessions from the EU to keep the WHOLE uk in the customs union.

    Pinch of salt time…

  113. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Dave McEwan Hill –

    Brilliant stuff, cheers indeed.

    Have just tweeted the link you provided to The Fureys track.

    Mu own and only son just happens to be nineteen years old right now so, as you can imagine, it hit a chord!

    More power to ye mister, as aye.

    😉

  114. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    Sorry. I just had to go and blow my nose. Every time the pipe band marches in in the second clip I put in my last post I start to greet
    I feel very very strongly about this issue. My father was orphaned at nine and went to school in Glasgow with no shoes because his dad got gassed in the trenches. Over 40,000 men from Glasgow regiments died. Inveraray (population then about 900) lost nearly 100 men (every able bodied man in fact).
    But what we get is the glorification of the First World War. And poppies. Every child in every school should be shown those clips and all the rest.
    And we have just murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent men,women and children in the Middle East.
    Oh to be out of this abomination. Oh to be Ireland that has an army but only does peacekeeping.

  115. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    I’ve seen in the background some of the TV programs on the first world war this week, and they’re talking about campaigns and decisions and brave efforts and reverses and victories.

    Quite simply nobody won and a lot of people died, and a lot of people were left maimed and mentally scarred for the rest of their lives.

    But I will wear my poppy, not till the end of this week, for them and only for them, whatever their nationality. Kings and Queens and Emperors should stick to chess draughts and croquet, not play it with real people.

  116. Thepnr
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ian Brotherhood

    I’d say 90% said No, no idea if that’s close to the mark but wouldn’t be surprised if it was. The poppy it seems is no longer about respect to the fallen. It has been hijacked by the far right.

    It is something else that those that fell wouldn’t have liked.

  117. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Re WW1. I posted this on WoS four years ago …

    My great uncle was John Murphy, a ploughman from Muirkirk. He volunteered and joined the Ayr battalion (1/5th) of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. They embarked for the Mediterranean from Liverpool on the Maurtania arriving at Mudros 29th May 1915. On 6th June they landed at Gallipoli. He survived a hellish battle of Achi Baba Nullah, 12-13 July.

    To quote The History of the Royal scots Fusiliers by John Buchan, regarding Achi Baba Nullah:
    “The losses of the 52nd Division had been such that for the Scottish Lowlands it was a second Flodden. In large areas between Tweed and Forth scarcely a household but mourned a son. On the 3rd July [1915] the division numbered 10,900 of all ranks; by the 13th it had lost over 4,800 in killed and wounded.”

    In January 1916 the Royal Scots Fusiliers were evacuated from Gallipoli to Egypt. On 2 March they took over section of the Suez Canal defences along the edge of the Sinai.

    The small oasis of Dueidar was held by 156 men; 120 from the 1/5th Battalion. On the morning of 23th April 1916 the Turks attacked in force. The Scots held off the assault until relieved by Australian Light Horse at 13:30. This action was part of the wider Battle of Katia. They sustained 55 casualties and John Murphy died of wounds received in battle on 24th April.

    His grave…

    http://twgpp.org/information.php?id=2239616

  118. Thepnr
    Ignored
    says:

    @Dave McEwan Hill

    You need to stop that or you’ll hae us all greeting.

  119. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    Thepnr
    I can’t. I can’t.
    This is why George Square should be John Maclean Square.I feel for the dead innocent Germans as well. As Maclean said “a bayonnet is a weapon with a working man at either end of it”.
    I would like to think that I would have the strength to say “no” as he did. What really gets me on those clips which accompany the Passchendaele song is the sight of all those young men,marching off proudly in their new kilts and waving cheerily to the cameras as they hurry,many of them to almost immediate oblivion.

  120. Still Positive
    Ignored
    says:

    My grandfather, born in December 1892 volunteered for WW1 and was dishonourably discharged some 8/9 months later.

    However, I recently finished Kenny MacAskill’s biography of Jimmy
    Reid. In his foreword he outlined the political situation when Jimmy Reid was born. He mentioned the Red Clydesiders some of whom my grand father knew.

    Basically the ILP were against WW1 and my grandfather clearly was going with their intentions.

    Join up but get discharged.

  121. Chick McGregor
    Ignored
    says:

    Almost as many barrels as the SMSM have scraped for SNP BAD stories.

  122. Welsh Sion
    Ignored
    says:

    Leaving aside the national history lesson, I now share with you a more personal history lesson – as the theme has wandered towards World War 1 and remembrance.

    My great uncle was caught poaching pheasants on the (English) squire’s lands in the 1900’s. At that time, the squire owned all property and industry (i.e. slate quarrying) in that area of North West Wales and the farmsteads were rented off him. In order to sustain themselves, the peasantry (not a derogatory expression to the Welsh) farmed their meagre crops and would shoot the occasional game bird which came to eat it to avoid starvation. But woe betide you if the squire or his lackeys found you.

    Anyway, my great uncle was caught and was given the option of the hangman’s noose or seeing his family, including his widowed octogenarian mother being turfed out of their farm. Instead, he opted to self-exile in Patagonia (but did not remain among the Welsh community there.) He preferred the company of the gauchos, where, a few years hence he would be pursued by the Argentine Army seeking recruits.

    He managed to give his pursuers the slip, and via the Andes and Chile made his way to New South Wales, Australia, where he re-established himself as an (unsuccessful) farmer – the land was too dry and irrigation proved to be well-nigh impossible. (This would appear much later).

    You will appreciate that by this time World War I had broken out, and Dominions and other nations of ‘the Empire’ were being called upon to register men for active service. The fact that both the British Prime Minister (Lloyd George) and the Ozzie Prime Minister (Billy Hughes) could communicate with each other in Cymraeg/Welsh, probably … ahem … endeared themselves even more to those from their home countries who still spoke ‘the old language’ and how they would be fighting for ‘the little nations of the world’ (like Wales, like Scotland, like Belgium).

    Consequently, my great uncle enlisted with the Australian Imperial Forces and was quickly seconded to the Front in the North East of France.

    He lies there still – dead from a sniper’s bullet, one of only three Ozzies killed together on a cold April morning 100 years ago this year.

    My father and I contributed stories (in both languages) and research to a film about him a few years ago. His memory, like so many of those others who fought for a system which had initially repudiated him and banished him from his homeland, will never be forgotten.

    “At the going down of the sun:
    We shall remember them.”

  123. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    Ah well, we had an English teacher that took us through the works of Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves. That leaves a lasting effect.

  124. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Sorry, I totally forgot to post the poll stats…

    Right now it’s on 1,520 votes, 78% say No, they won’t be wearing a poppy between now and Monday Nov 12th…
    17% say they will…
    5 % Don’t Know.

    That’s almost the same as at 1,300 votes, where it was 78, 16, 6 respectively.

    Highest I saw ‘No’ at was 81%, but I didn’t note how many votes had been cast.

    So, make of that what ye will!

    It shuts tomorrow night.

    😉 Night all!

  125. Still Positive
    Ignored
    says:

    yesindyref2@ 12.07

    Indeed. My sons were subjected to that too.

  126. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    When I used to see a first world war movie, what some would see is the glorious advance on a machine gun nest, taking a hill, victory, the advance, perhaps a defeat to try again, the glorious heroism.

    What I saw in the words of those poets was the mud, the sickness, the gas, those with gas masks and those who didn’t get them in time and perhaps couldn’t even put one on for the choking, the deafness the shock the incomprehension the blood and the limbs, strewn over the fields of Flanders where the poppies grew.

    All to take a hill and lose it again the next week.

    I wear the red poppy for that, and I think that perhaps people who like the white poppy should wear both, but it’s a personal choice. What I despise is the breakfast TV presenters with their fancy designer poppies where 1p goes to the veterans, and the other £9.99 goes to the designer, manufacturer and profit. Rather than buy a poppy which is made by actual veterans with their own hands, in factories in Scotland and England, keeping them in some work, all year round by the way, after they have lost the ability to pursue a regular livelihood in civvy street, all for their country. And it’s still happening, to this day. The War to end all wars.

  127. Effijy
    Ignored
    says:

    One of the biggest NHS trusts is to stop providing chemotherapy at one of its hospitals because it has too few specialist cancer nurses to staff the unit.
    The Cedar Centre at King George hospital in Ilford, east London, will cease provision from 12 November because four of its nurses have quit and two others have gone on maternity leave.
    It is thought to be the first time the NHS’s widespread staffing problems have led to a specialist cancer unit no longer being able to offer a vital service such as chemotherapy.

    Can you just imagine if this happened in a Scottish Hospital?

    Vote for a Westminster Party and find this happening on your own door step just before the NHS is American Owned.

  128. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    @Still Positive
    It is a bit of an ordeal, you get nightmares. I didn’t like it at all, but I’m glad I had to suffer it. Didn’t put my kids through it though, with any luck it won’t be relevant. Teacher was the son of a prominent Labour politician, back in the days Labour were Labour.

  129. Molly
    Ignored
    says:

    Slightly ot and sorry if I’ve missed this but has anyone heard of CANZUK?

    I must admit I switch off at times with all the Brexit stuff because it changes every day but I have never heard of this but it seems the ‘U.K. has signed another agreement ( 3rd this year), allowing the Canada and the U.K. mutually beneficial civil nuclear cooperation when current Euroatom arrangements cease to apply in the UK’.

    Apparently CANZUK aims to increase the ties between Canada, Australia ,N Zealand and the U.K. as well as trade and mobility of people.

    Now call me cynical but was there not a bit of lobbying going on not so long ago to ensure Charles would still be the head of the Commonwealth ( in time) and with the same head of state, style of parliaments and reems of jaunty bunting to welcome Meghan and Harry, the Brexiteers really have been playing the long game.

    This really has been a long game for them hasn’t it

  130. Petra
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Dave McEwan Hill says at 10:42 pm …. ”Sorry. I just had to go and blow my nose. Every time the pipe band marches in the second clip I put in my last post I start to greet. I feel very very strongly about this issue. My father was orphaned at nine and went to school in Glasgow with no shoes because his dad got gassed in the trenches. Over 40,000 men from Glasgow regiments died. Inveraray (population then about 900) lost nearly 100 men (every able bodied man in fact). But what we get is the glorification of the First World War. And poppies. Every child in every school should be shown those clips and all the rest. And we have just murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children in the Middle East. Oh to be out of this abomination. Oh to be Ireland that has an army but only does peacekeeping.”

    Oh to be out of this warmongering abomination right enough Dave. Knowing what we know now would just break your heart and destroy your very soul. How bad is that when your soul is impacted upon? Thankfully not our Spirit. That indomitable Scottish spirit that they haven’t yet managed to destroy.

    Thank you for outlining your personal story on here Dave. We really need to hear what’s been going on. Hearing the everyday reality of Scots living, and being used, in this Union over decades / centuries, you know the ”Better to Together Union” that just cracks me up and has me crying too, Dave. How on earth can any Tory, Labour or Libdem politician in Scotland go along with this EVIL anymore? If they have any comprehension at all they must know how much the Scots (and MANY others Worldwide) have suffered, still suffer, under this Westminster regime. How much more does it take for them to see the light? Do something about it?

    WW1 was created by the so-called Royal family and World WW11 was an extension of their actions, meanwhile Tin Lizzie (of the Royal line? I don’t think so) still sits on the bl**dy throne. I for one, like you, can hardly stand it anymore.

    Using and killing Scots (fodder) is over. Their Empire is over. More than anything this Union is over and out. Time to get off of your knees Scots and end this Union. What Union? The one that never, ever existed. Only in your brainwashed minds.

  131. Craig Murray
    Ignored
    says:

    There is a really excellent article by Kevin McKenna in the Observer/Guardian today. Sorry don’t know how to do those archived link things.

    Please don’t anyone reply with “aah, but that idiot McKenna five years ago said this…” We have to forgive the pasts of those who are with us now. And that is one of the best articles I have read by anybody recently.

  132. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Craig ,went to look in the Observer and didn’t see the article to which you refer , sadly I caught the Gordon Brown one , re-titled Hypocrisy Thy Name is Brown.

  133. schrodingers cat
    Ignored
    says:

    from james kelly

    Alternative media sites ranked by unique visitors over the last month (source: TrafficEstimate)
    1) Craig Murray 298,200
    2) Wings Over Scotland 197,200
    3) CommonSpace 90,800
    4) Wee Ginger Dug 85,700
    5) Scot Goes Pop 70,800
    6) Talking Up Scotland 69,000
    7) Bella Caledonia 65,300

  134. Robert Louis
    Ignored
    says:

    Thinking of how the poppy has been turned into a propaganda tool, almost glorifying war – in relation to the Kevin McKenna article, it is interesting that not many in the media cover the original war poets – possibly because they do not glorify it enough.

    One of those, Wilfred Owen, has a link to Edinburgh, as he was treated up at the then craiglockhart hospital during the war. The national war poetry collection is now kept by Edinburgh Napier University at Craiglockhart.

    I remember the impact it had the very first time I read ‘Dolce et decorum est’ (how sweet and glorious it is to die for your country) The last verse says everything about how those who were sent to the war, actually depised every aspect of it. Nothing to glorify at all.

    Dolce et decorum est. By Wilfred Owen.

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
    And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
    Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
    And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
    Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
    He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
    Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    Pro patria mori.

    Wilfred Owen.

  135. Ken500
    Ignored
    says:

    The Russian Revolution 1917. The Balfour Agreement 1917 between Lord Balfour and Lord Rothchild. A secret agreement. Universal Suffrage in the UK 1928.

    The Arabs were promised the vote for fighting with the Allies in the 1WW. Reneged upon and still not honoured. Saudi Arabia etc. Lawrence of Arabia. Campaigned to give the Arabs the vote, Killed in a motor cycle accident.

    The British/French (US Sun Oil Co 1913) carved up the Middle East. They reneged upon all promises. 1WW/11WW. Betrayal. In the 1950’s Churchill took all Iran’s Oil. Kept it secret, CIA/M15 caused disruption and false rumour about the PM who wanted a share. Discredited him and put him in jail. Then re imposed the discredited Shah. Ruining democracy in Iran. (Persia)

    Israel and apartheid State is supported and armed by the US. Without this support Israel would not exist in it’s present State of discrimination and lack of emancipation. Internal religious pressures will lead to it’s demise. Conflicts of interest.

    There are reports UK politicians are being given £Milions (secretly not declared) to support Israel’s non democratic position. This interferes with Governance in the U.K./US/France. Causing misery and the worst migration crisis since the 11WW. A position which would not be accepted in the US or UK, A military base for the US in the Middle East. Millions have died in illegal wars because of US/UK French breaking International Law with impunity. An absolute disgrace. UN funded by the US compromises impartiality.

    Saudi Arabia spends pro rata) one of the most in the world on the military. $69Billion -40million pop. The UK (US/France) have been supplying illegal arms to Saudi Arabia. Bribing public officials, totally illegally, since the 1960’s.

    The U.K. Gov have been covering it up under the Official Secrets Act. Covering up the bribery and corruption going on. They benefit. Ruining the UK/World economy. Spending £Billions funding terrorism. Then spending £Billions on counter terrorism. Sanctioning starving and killing people, including their own citizens.

    The US (the highest spend pro rata) spend $611Billion. Pop 328million. A third of all world military spend. $Trillions in debt. Now this is unsustainable. The Saudis are now facing financial problems. They have sold off their Oil interests but retain overall control. A share. No universal Suffrage. An absolute depot monarchy of corruption and intrigue. Mucking up the world economy.

    The latest controversy, The killing in an Embassy of a foreign citizen journalist. A barbaric act of outrage, Israel illegally kills and assassinates people. Is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. For a patio and a barbecue in the desert. Often on someone else’s rightful land.

    China and Russia are not the warmongers. Chins (1.3Bn pop) spends $228Billion (1/3 of the US with 1/3+ bigger pop). Russia spends $66Billion (150Million pop). One of the least (pro rata) They would rather spend money building up their economy on the people. No universal Suffrage in China, ‘

    One child’ policy has reduced the population but now there is a surplus in men who will not find a wife/partner Or have children? Unless there is some changing around going on? Marx said marriage was prostitution.

    Since the 1990’s 150Million people have gained self determination and self governance.(USSR) aided by Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. The USSR pop has halved. It used to be on par with the US. Now it is half.

    Putin had been trying to improve the Russian economy and prosperity. The US/UK tries to put constant sanctions on Russia to try to destroy it. The US illegal wars have destroyed the world, Putin backed Scottish Independence and called out Cameron’s duplicity and lies.

    Brexit is a shambles. Complete and utter chaos. The eton mess. To make the Tories and their associates £Millions. Enough is never enough for them. Greedy sychophants. Everyone else is paying for it. There was never a case for austerity, The tax revenue take was rising.

    The Tories will have to lose a GE to get out of the situation. Clear off with their loot. Someone else will have to clean up their mess. Labour do not want the poisoned chalice. They keep on voting with the Tories. While trying to screw Scotland. What a shower,

  136. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    McKenna is on the right journey, but he’s not there yet.

    I concede, at some point on that journey, there might be a danger in confusing Scottish Nationalism’s great wee country philosophy and the exceptionalism of right wing doctrines, but for me, that point on the journey was passed so long ago I barely recognise it.

    Is it exceptionalism that I want to see Scotland as an environmental powerhouse? Cranking out the kilojoules from air, sea and land, with a new industrialism but harmonious and with zero emissions or detriment to the planet? I want freedom for Scotland to do this, because it is a wholesome venture which benefits every living thing on our planet. The Union we suffer makes this impossible.. I do not for a single moment expect a single species we save from extinction to thank us for it, but maybe our children will.

    I want to see an end to the exploitation of our people. Whenever I see videos of life in Scandinavia, I see people who are happy, and aren’t repressed about having fun without first downing a bucket of alcohol. Here in Scotland, we have political trolls who want to roll us back to the dark ages and bring back alcohol to the toxic sectarianism of our football. Is wanting something better exceptionalism? Because it feels like sanity versus insanity.

    I make no friends here because I am critical of the SNP and it’s attitude to Sovereignty, not because I want the Union crushed, but I feel such abject frustration that the Union only exists at all because Scotland confronts it’s own subjugation not with rebellion, but a bizarre self imposed riddle and conundrum about why “we cannot do this or cannot do that” which is dressed up as democracy. It’s rubbish. It is doublespeak. The “Sovereign” who cannot do what he likes, isn’t the Sovereign. We Scots have pondered this conundrum for much, much too long, and suffered grievously as a Nation because it has opened the door to our hollowing exploitation from the South. Enough already! It is time we passed the parcel, and gave Westminster the task of solving the insoluble Constitutional riddle of how they govern Scotland WITHOUT sovereignty. That isn’t exceptionalism. It’s is good Constitutional housekeeping married to a settled and comfortable appreciation of actual truth, not bending double beneath a tsunami of propaganda and media manipulation.

    With Independence, a great Euclidean wrong, for better or worse, will be righted, and a large proportion of that can only be for the better. And the risk of “for worse”? I will take it. The “for worse” doctrine seems rampant and at large for every moment we dawdle inside a decrepit and poisonous Union we can walk out of any time we like. “For worse” is already upon us.

    I do hear you Mr McKenna. Perhaps some of the fresh new recruits at the back of the Indy column are not quite sure of the path their on, like Private Connolly and his personal demons with Anglophobia, but such anxieties withered in me so long ago, I need to see them in somebody else’s head to be reminded they exist.

    That wonderful dream I have in my head, of a Scotland rich in wealth, rich in clean resource, blessed with bountiful seas and regenerating it’s once global ecosystem and forests, where our people from all walks of life are equal stakeholders,… where is the exceptionalism in that? We are all the richer for having Europeans, immigrants from everywhere, and having them everywhere amongst us helping us do this. By what twisted reasoning would you exclude them?

    Let Scotland re-write it’s own definition of exceptionalism just as it has written its own definition of Nationalism, and let us rejoice in a Scotland which inspires others to follow and join, – not kneel down before our might or flee our retribution. Show me a BritNat, or any other right wing protofascist with any of that on their bucket list.

  137. Fireproofjim
    Ignored
    says:

    My Grandfather, George Milne, was a gamekeeper on the Blairmore estate in the parish of Glass in Aberdeenshire. In 1916 he was called up to the Royal Garrison Artillery Regiment and in the same week his boss, the “laird” of Blairmore estate, Ewen Cameron, was called up, coincidentally to the same regiment.
    In 1917 they were both severely wounded in the leg, my Grandfather being the only survivor of his gun crew when it was hit by a German shell, and Ewen Cameron being hit by shrapnel. Both recovered but were invalided out in 1918 and my grandfather used to joke they would limp around the estate with only one good pair of legs between them. They were out shooting rabbits exactly a hundred years ago this week when they heard the church bells being rung to mark the Armistice. The bell ringer was the Glass minister, Mr Guthrie, who had lost both his sons in the war.
    If you go to Glass pause at the war memorial. You will see thirty names on it. Almost every young man of military age in that small parish. I wear a poppy, not to glorify war, but in sad remembrance of these young men.
    P.S. Ewen Cameron was David Cameron’s Great-Grandfather and a life-long friend of my Grandfather. They both hated the Great War with a passion.

  138. Cactus
    Ignored
    says:

    Good day y’all, dunno if anybuddy itemised all of dem barrels above, so ah’ll have a go at it…

    Welcome to Westminster, on today’s menu:
    – Dark money
    – Unionism (that barrel is open to debate)
    – Voter apathy
    – Henry VIII powers
    – Russian interference
    – E.V.E.L.
    – F.P.T.P.
    – Lobbying
    – BREXIT
    – Bullying
    – Unelected peers
    – Press irons
    – Gerrymandering
    – Cambridge Analytica
    – Intimidation
    – Sewel Schmewel
    – Misogyny

    Count the number of barrels above and many more…

    Enjoy the tour!

  139. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    The following discuss the Sunday times splash, the spin and the actuality

    https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1058868489480531969

    Thread on the Sunday times front page
    https://twitter.com/KeohaneDan/status/1058853533204836352

    As predicted, a political declaration that leaves open all possible future relationships (so therefore locks in nothing) is now being sold as a win.
    https://twitter.com/SamuelMarcLowe/status/1058848503387119617

    The “exit clause” is not yet agreed; The CU in WA is not yet drafted or signed off by MS The NI-only backstop is not yet dropped: The EU27 still yet to properly debate final U.K. proposal The deal is not yet done.
    https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1058872825036111872

  140. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    Theresa May’s spokesman says a report in the Sunday Times which claims the Prime Minister has achieved concessions from the EU to keep the UK in a customs union to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland after Brexit is “speculation”
    https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1058849978016243714

    Brexit: the pivoting May
    http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87044

    https://sluggerotoole.com/2018/11/04/breakthrough-on-the-backstop-claims-the-sunday-times/

    European law should trump the British Parliament, says the alleged money-man behind Brexit – at least when it comes to taxes on his UKIP donations
    https://www.byline.com/column/68/article/2334

    It is, I fear, time to address some legal questions surrounding the referendum – and say a couple of things none of the two #Brexit sides want to hear (thread)
    https://twitter.com/hhesterm/status/1058984464590823425

    Time to stockpile?

  141. Robert Peffers
    Ignored
    says:

    @Legerwood says: 3 November, 2018 at 8:04 pm:

    … Therefore there was no direct link to the Plantagenet kings of England. And several Royal houses between Plantagenet and Tudor – see chronology below.
    It is the Stuart link to the Tudors that put James VI into the line of succession to Elizabeth Tudor.”

    Your problem with that is that the English Kingdom’s line of succession was not based on direct bloodline. In fact the sitting Monarch had to name who was to succeed them.

    Elizabeth I never did so and that was a problem for England.

    I’m rather busy just now and don’t have time to look our the more relevant legal references but there is something briefly mentioned here:-

    http://www.sath.org.uk/edscot/www.educationscotland.gov.uk/higherscottishhistory/ageofreformation/jamesandthekirk/englishsuccession.html

    There is a more legally based article somewhere on-line.

  142. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    Can someone let me know if the four links posted at 8.45am can be seen?

    I’m seeing them but has ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’ attached

    I can’t see any banned words and the articles are worth a read so perhaps check back later to see if they appear.

    I don’t want to repost in case I get hammered.

  143. Giving Goose
    Ignored
    says:

    Nana

    Thanks for the links.
    Keep the Brexit info coming, please.
    It’s often difficult to see with clarity what is happening.
    You’re shining a light on it.
    Cheers.

  144. Fireproofjim
    Ignored
    says:

    Nana
    8.45 links are up.
    Thanks

  145. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    Morning Giving Goose

    I posted some info yesterday on the previous thread, check back if you missed them. However the information is constantly changing and I’m trying where possible to post what the ‘experts’ say rather than what the media spin.

    just in from rte
    https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2018/1104/1008533-brexit/

  146. auld highlander
    Ignored
    says:

    all 8.45 links ok Nana.

  147. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    @Fireproofjim

    Are you seeing the Slugger O’toole link and Richard North’s blogview ?

  148. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    Thanks auld highlander.

  149. Hamish100
    Ignored
    says:

    ot

    New Caledonia voting today for Independence from France.

  150. Welsh Sion
    Ignored
    says:

    Hamish100 says:
    4 November, 2018 at 9:41 am

    ot New Caledonia voting today for Independence from France.

    ______

    Old Caledonia voting soon for Independence from the Disunited Kingdumb.

  151. manandboy
    Ignored
    says:

    https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2018/nov/03/threats-bullying-and-vindictiveness-how-arron-banks-repels-charges-against-him

    While I fully acknowledge her excellent, and continuing, work on electoral fraud, I was struck by this sentence by Carol Cadwalladr :-
    “In Britain, where our national identity rests on our ability not to take things too seriously,…”

    A case, I think, of British Nationalist self-awareness as complete mis-perception, bordering on delusion. Has Westminster not engaged in ‘threats, bullying and vindictiveness’, and more, much more, toward Scotland for the past 300 years and unceasingly since 2012?

    England is being promoted extensively and continously in the psychological war with the EU, as the ‘Victim’, both in the EU Referendum Vote Leave.UK campaign, as well as in the Leave negotiations between England and the EU.

    But hey, we’re British, we don’t take things too seriously. It’s just a bit of banter.

  152. Legerwood
    Ignored
    says:

    Robert Peffers @ 8.50 am
    Your original post at 5.27pm yesterday stated:
    “”In the Edinburgh-Northampton Treaty of 1328 Joanna, the six-year-old sister of Edward III, was promised in marriage to the four-year-old David, the son of Robert Bruce, and the marriage duly took place on 17 July the same year.
    This later in 1603 resulted in James VI inheriting the crowns of England, Wales & Ireland””
    …………………..

    In my reply at 8.04pm I showed quite clearly that your statement, copied above, that the claim of James VI to the English crown did NOT come from the marriage of Joanna, (Joan) Plantagenet and David Bruce, later King David II of Scotland.

    They did not have any children therefore the connection to the Plantagenet monarchs of England ended there in the 14th century as indeed did the Plantagenet occupancy of the English throne.

    I notice in your response at 8.50 am you did not acknowledge this but rather clumsily attempted to suggest that my statement : “”It is the Stuart link to the Tudors that put James VI into the line of succession to Elizabeth Tudor.”” was in someway incorrect. It was not.

    I said it put him James VI “into the line of succession”. I did not say it guaranteed his succession to Elizabeth Tudor. It did, however, make him a contender – and not because of any 14th century marriage between Plantagenet and Bruce

    The history of succession to the English throne came about as often as not as the result of battle as of primogeniture or by bequest (dying monarch names successor) or, indeed on occasion, by Parliament. Therefore being in the line of succession, as James VI was because of his Tudor connections, did not guarantee actually ascending the throne.

    But James VI was clever enough to manoeuvre himself into a position whereby he did actually succeed.

  153. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    one more on that media yarn

    https://twitter.com/garvanwalshe/status/1058989901549629440

    Re the actual ‘people’s vote’
    https://twitter.com/IndyrefTWO/status/1059017963548917760

    On The Full Scottish this week, Lindi Harrison is joined by our good friends Pilar “Aymara” Fernandez from Galicia and James Dornan MSP for Glasgow Cathcart to talk about the big stories in this week’s news.
    https://www.broadcastingscotland.scot/full-scottish-04-11-2018/

    That’s all for now

  154. manandboy
    Ignored
    says:

    For more on the Vote Leave.UK election fraud:-

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/03/arron-banks-faces-new-claims-of-misleading-mps-over-brexit

    I can’t decide which it is, but UK/Westminster politics is either a cess-pool or a swamp. But one thing is for sure – it’s neither democratic nor subject to the laws of the land.

  155. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    BBC …. “New Caledonia has large deposits of nickel, a vital component in manufacturing electronics, and is seen by France as a strategic political and economic asset in the region. …. French nationalism is strong among the territory’s ethnic Europeans – constituting 27.1% of the population. “

    Why does the BBC report this honestly, and yet wouldn’t dare use the same language in regard to Scotland?

    Why is Scotland never referred to …. “as a strategic political and economic asset”?

    Or, why do they never point out “British nationalism is strong” in Scotland?

    Hypocrisy, as always.

    http://archive.is/pjm5W

  156. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    Och, one more just because I liked what he had to say

    https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1058341895515004928

    and one more because our FM retweeted
    https://twitter.com/Sime0nStylites/status/1058720505316945921

  157. Ken500
    Ignored
    says:

    People in Scotland just want the rights of others under universal suffrage and self determination, to have a democratic society denied since 1928. Recognised under International standards. Denied since 1928 by Westminster lying unionist parties and unionists lying politicians. To Scotland’s demise. Westminster politicians and their sychophants just lie and lie and lie. To line their own pockets. Secretly and illegally taking Scotland’s wealth and resources. Chronic misappropriation and mismanagement. Trying to cover up by lies and propaganda by the Westminster controlled Press. and the Officials Secret Act. ‘D’ notices cover up Westminster corruption. Iraq, Dunblabe, Lockerbie kept secret for 100 years.

    Thank goodness for the internet.

  158. Scot Finlayson
    Ignored
    says:

    @Nana,

    Looks like Grousebeater has got himself in trouble again,

    there is a complaint to Police Scotland from lickspittle smearing turds,

    they are infuriated of being compared to British Labour`s Neil Findlay,

    even turds have some principles.

  159. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Nana says:

    and one more because our FM retweeted
    https://twitter.com/Sime0nStylites/status/1058720505316945921

    Yes, spot on. Total clarity about the situation in a series of short tweets, and yet the totally inept MSM can’t do it with 1000s of articles.

  160. Douglas
    Ignored
    says:

    My grandfather was a stretcher-bearer during WW1, and probably witnessed gruesome sights. One recollection of the horrors were the Scottish soldiers who wore kilts. The mud from the trenches would cake along the hem of the kilts which would rub against the skin of their legs. This would result in deep painful cuts in their legs which then became infected and in some case causing gangrene. In addition, the warm, damp and dark conditions between the pleats on the kilts would become home to infestations of lice. Can you even being to imagine the horrors of being trapped in such conditions. My grandfather, and many of his comtempories, refused to wear their medals after the war. When the onset on WW2 was announced, which was by a intimation by the minister at a church service at Kirkcaldy parish church, he was so affected by the announcement that he literally had to be held back form commiting suicide by jumping into the sea at Kirkcaldy prom. @Fireproofjim, as you have connections with Glass, you will probably be aware of the how the slaughter of the men during WW1 from the Cabrach left the area desolate. Apparently, the Cabrach lost the highest proportion of men from the local population of any area in the UK. If you visit the area now, you will see that it is like a ghost-land with many of the houses and crofts abandoned and much of the farmland lost to gorse and heather as the remaining people (mostly women) struggled to tend the land.

  161. Ken500
    Ignored
    says:

    Leave Grouse beater alone. One of the best writers in Scotland. He has a massive support. Any false claims will be dealt with. If he needs a crowdfunder just set one up. It is just terrible what is going on. It will rebound on Labour+unionists at the Ballot Box. They are total useless, incompetent failures. Trying to stir up trouble. Their raisin d’etre. Trying to stop free speech. They were elected to protect.Bullies and abusers of women. No wonder Findley’s face is red, He should be black affronted. Or being on the drink again.

    Fifty years of corrupt Labour/unionists. To keep the Tories out. The LibDems/unionists enablers. They have tried to ruined the Scottish economy. Stagnation until 2000 and SNP governance.

  162. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    A fair amount of wallowing about in history on here. A reality check, a future thought regarding a possible UK general election in after Brexit 2019. An election most likely drenched in coast to coast BritNat sentimentality churned out by media high on jingoism. The result could be toast for the SNP and Labour. Salmonds court case and more anti-Semitic allegations could conveniently hit the headlines ‘just in time’ to smother the opposition.
    We’re a long way from the goal and we’re not in control even of our half of the field.
    With that thought, Have a nice day guys!
    Nice day too to the snoopers at GCHQ….the beating heart of BritState.

  163. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    The French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the Pacific is voting today on whether to become independent from France.

    President Macron has said France ‘will be less beautiful’ without New Caledonia and will make a TV address after the result https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46087053

  164. Sharny Dubs
    Ignored
    says:

    @Dave McEwan Hill

    The skurrle!! Hud tae blow my nab an all.

    I had the honor of sharing a hospital ward with a WW1 survivor for a few weeks when I was younger, the things he told me about man!!!

    Shelling patterns that were in 5 kilometer squares. When you hear the first line go down, at 90 degrees to the tranches either right or left of your position, you listened for the next line to see if it went to the side or behind you.

    If it went behind, you were dead. The pattern went in ever degreasing squares getting smaller and smaller, nothing in the square would be left alive.

    Forget your strategies, victories or defeats, that’s the kind of thing these guys lived through.

    Sadly the old mucker died in hospital ten days after I left (I went back to check) riddled with cancer but I will never forget the nightmares he recounted to me.

  165. manandboy
    Ignored
    says:

    To re-cap for a moment.

    With the decision to have the EU referendum, David Cameron, figuratively speaking, poured a cup of cold water into a chip pan of boiling oil, thinking he would cool it. The resulting reaction instantly became as dangerous for the UK as it is irreversible.

    Brexit is the result of a grossly irresponsible and foolish act of a Conservative Prime Minister. The Conservatives are wholly responsible for it.

    But the Westminster propaganda machine has already successfully shifted the blame to the ‘intransigent’EU. In the eyes of the 17.4 million Leave voters, ‘it’s all their fault’.
    In an exercise in calculated brainwashing, Theresa May is the cheerleader. She never accepts responsibility for any part of the Brexit story; never refers to Cameron’s wreckless folly, and never admits to any of her own mistakes.

    The Tories’ strategy is the ‘blame game’, which, in the end, will be presented as, ‘We had little choice but to leave, the EU’s demands were impossible to meet’.

    It’ll be the Battle of Britain all over again, with the Brits as ‘the good guys’ versus the hostile ‘Johnny Foreigner’.

    Lest we forget.

  166. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    manandboy says:

    Brexit is the result of a grossly irresponsible and foolish act of a Conservative Prime Minister. The Conservatives are wholly responsible for it.

    Indeed. Utter stupidity.

    A referendum should always be a choice between a clear prospectus for change and an unchanged status quo.

    Cameron screwed up twice.

    In both IndyRef1 and EURef(1) he allowed situations to develop where the choice was planned change versus unplanned undocumented undefined change.

    In both cases the nebulous option won, nothing was clear, nothing could be readily settled. Two huge constitutional issues totally f’cked by complete incompetence.

    Moral … no referendum should ever take place again where the offer being put to the voter isn’t crystal clear.

    I fear any People’s Vote / EURef might also be a mess. If there is an option to scrap Brexit that should be fair enough. But what of the option to Leave? The plan presented will be for a Blind Brexit where the final trading arrangements will be completely unknown. That could take years to negotiate and could be anything from WTO to ‘Norway’.

  167. Cubby
    Ignored
    says:

    The British Nationalist HYUFD is kindly on to impart some knowledge that he thinks we will not be aware of.

    The Britnats are so very kind to us. Patronising diddy.

    HYUFD – just pissof

  168. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    New Caledonia rejects independence with 56% voting to remain part of France on an 80% turnout

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46087053

  169. gus1940
    Ignored
    says:

    For several years I have been aware of what at best can be considered a very cosy relationship between the Gambling Industry and at worst something far more serious.

    Gone are the days at the time of legalising Fruit machines when the rules were very strictly applied where even the largest casinos were only allowed 2 machines and where the stake was very low – in pubs and clubs it was only 6 Old Pence a spin.

    This was gradually relaxed until pub machines operated at £1 a spin.

    Then out of the blue without any campaign or pressure from the public or any mention in any election manifesto we had Blair’s proposals for a Super Casino and multiple new casinos throughout the land.

    Fortunately when Gordon Brown became PM he knocked that on the head – about the only good thing he ever did.

    Over and above that and without any legislation and debate that that I can remember on-line gambling became legal together with the disgraceful and evil Betting Machines in Bookmaking premises.

    Having announced that the stakes on the latter would be reduced from £100 a spin to £2 the government have decided to delay that for a year.

    In the meantime the Bookies have been moaning about the loss of countless jobs if the machines were banned or stakes restricted which gives rise to the question of just how many staff does it require to operate said machines when they are installed in Bookies – probably a few engineers scattered around the country to fix and maintain them.

    The stink of corruption is overpowering.

  170. gus1940
    Ignored
    says:

    For several years I have been aware of what at best can be considered a very cosy relationship between the Gambling Industry and government and at worst something far more serious.

    Gone are the days at the time of legalising Fruit machines when the rules were very strictly applied where even the largest casinos were only allowed 2 machines and where the stake was very low – in pubs and clubs it was only 6 Old Pence a spin.

    This was gradually relaxed until pub machines operated at £1 a spin.

    Then out of the blue without any campaign or pressure from the public or any mention in any election manifesto we had Blair’s proposals for a Super Casino and multiple new casinos throughout the land.

    Fortunately when Gordon Brown became PM he knocked that on the head – about the only good thing he ever did.

    Over and above that and without any legislation and debate that that I can remember on-line gambling became legal together with the disgraceful and evil Betting Machines in Bookmaking premises.

    Having announced that the stakes on the latter would be reduced from £100 a spin to £2 the government have decided to delay that for a year.

    In the meantime the Bookies have been moaning about the loss of countless jobs if the machines were banned or stakes restricted which gives rise to the question of just how many staff does it require to operate said machines when they are installed in Bookies – probably a few engineers scattered around the country to fix and maintain them.

    The stink of corruption is overpowering.

  171. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Media full of rumours of a Brexit deal involving the UK staying in customs union.

    CU is a long way short of the single market. It means imported goods can then be re-exported without tariffs being applied and solves rules of origin issues.

    CU does not deal with non tariff barriers such as mutual compliance on packaging and standards.

    CU is a hard Brexit. The establishment media will try to paint it otherwise.

  172. gus1940
    Ignored
    says:

    Re Brexit Deal – what about the EU’s 4 Freedoms which are absolutely sacrosanct and indivisible?

    I haven’t seen them mentioned recently.

  173. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    In other news: “Epping teenagers arrested after ‘throwing fireworks at people and shops’“.

  174. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    gus1940 says:

    what about the EU’s 4 Freedoms which are absolutely sacrosanct and indivisible?

    We probably hear little of this because the UK is (currently) saying it wants to be outside the single market. With a ‘Norway’ solution the UK would have to accept the indivisible setup, and pay for it.

    I am certain the EU will stick by all its red lines, including a permanent Irish border backstop. It simply can’t tear up its established rule book. Exceptions for the UK won’t happen.

  175. Fireproofjim
    Ignored
    says:

    Douglas@10.45
    Yes I know about the losses in the Cabrach. That remote, high glen and it’s abandoned crofts has been described as the biggest war memorial in Scotland. So few returned from WW1 that there were not enough men to work the land and,from end to end of the glen, the ruins of their homes are a stark reminder of the folly of that war.
    Most of them were volunteers in the Gordon Highlanders, who suffered unbelievable losses at the Somme and Paschendaele.
    My great uncle, George Duncan was a Gordon and was killed on the Somme in 1916.
    I try to remember them.

  176. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    Just catching up with thread
    @ Ian Brotherhood – thx for the update on your poll. I would have guessed over 90% would vote NO so am surprised it’s only 78%.

    @ Tinto Chiel – £50 well spent I would say. I ordered the English only edition from Mr Amazon which is described as all 6 volumes for £20. I also got the Kindle edition of the bi-lingual Vols 1 and 2 for 99p. So will see what arrives.

  177. Dr Jim
    Ignored
    says:

    Internet full of people declaring Scottish Independence today by shouting at Scotlands First Minister to stay out of UK politics and to stick to Scottish business

    Nice to know they’ve accepted the idea that we’re not acknowledged by the UK of England Great Britain land

  178. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Breeks – the Sovereign people of Scotland voted to stay in the UK in 2014. That was their sovereign will expressed in a referendum.

    The Sovereign people of Scotland voted to REMAIN in the EU in 2016. That was their sovereign will expressed in a referendum.

    It is not now possible to do both. So the Sovereign people will have to decide which union to remain in.

    The SNPs task is to persuade them that staying in the EU and leaving the UK is the better choice. Hence the stress on the benefits of the single market and customs union.

    Not everyone is persuaded. But they soon will be.

  179. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    Can anybody exactly explain to me by which democratic principle the SNP would legitimately oppose any referendum.

    Lot of silly shite being bandied about (started by a MP that doesn’t want us to have indyref2 till 2050 or something).

    The best thing that can happen to the UK and Scotland is that Brexit is cancelled. But just watch English politics dissolve into chaos if a second callis stay.

  180. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    Capella Of course over a third of SNP voters voted Leave as they correctly realised that if Scotland votes to leave the UK only to then rejoin the full EU then Scotland is not really voting for independence at all.

  181. Col
    Ignored
    says:

    Surely one of the best arguments to Scotland gaining its independence is to save our healthcare system from being completely privatised at the hands of the tories in London and aided of course by the US government which uses and abuses its power to aid its corporations throughout the world? In plain terms, Scotland will lose its health services to profiteers. We really should be hammering this home just now and hopefully would see a shift in the polls because of it. I’m not sure Scots really understand at this point what is at stake here. Brexit will be the worst thing to happen to Scotland in our lifetimes unless we grow a pair and seek to protect what we hold dear.

  182. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    Col Most European healthcare is mainly provided through an insurance system and the Tories have just put £20 billion a year extra into the NHS

  183. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    ‘Will you (by choice or design) be wearing a ‘poppy’ at any time between now and Monday November 12th?’

    Update, with 3006 votes cast –

    No 76%
    Yes 18%
    Don’t Know 6%

    Closes midnight.

  184. Col
    Ignored
    says:

    Am sorry HYUFD, but what’s your f*cking point? Scotland isn’t most other European nations and the tories have been starving the English NHS whilst selling off it off bit by bit. The speed of which is increasing. The whole point of being independent is that we get to decide and not a bunch of crooks in London who will definitely do what we don’t want because they can.

  185. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    @Me @11:05pm

    Royal Scots Fusiliers ….took over section of the Suez Canal defences along the edge of the Sinai. The small oasis of Dueidar …. April 1916 the Turks attacked in force … John Murphy died of wounds received in battle on 24th April.

    I really do wonder what my Great Uncle died for.

    As far as I am concerned, WW1 was a turf war between large scale criminal enterprises.

    John’s father and brothers were miners. What was he fighting for? So that they could be treated like shit in the 1920s?

    Did John’s untimate sacrifice and contribute to the fall of the Ottoman Empire result in 100 years of peace in the Middle East? Like Hell!

    World War 1 needs to be remembered, but not in the way the jingoistic right do.

  186. Tatu3
    Ignored
    says:

    There’s a tv series called The Resident. Set in a hospital in America. A good number of the episodes show how awful it would be if Scotland’s NHS ends up privatised like the American system. It’s all about profit and making money for the board members.
    Very scary stuff.

  187. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    Col EU competition rules mean there has to be competition to win healthcare provision contracts

  188. galamcennalath
    Ignored
    says:

    Tatu3 Says

    hospital in America

    As a result of family history research I exchanged a number of emails with a US woman.

    She seemed to have a good job. Working a big hospital in the department where they add up all the costs, make estimates on the price of certain treatments, add costs for every item used, bill for time, food, accommodation, etc etc.. Then deal with insurance company. A massive undertaking and significant part of the hospital’s ‘business’ activity.

    She really did find it hard to believe there was no equivalent in the Scottish Health Service. And found it harder to believe that we get excellent world class treatment as we need it.

    We must never ever lose what we have. Healthcare must not be privatised.

  189. Grouse Beater
    Ignored
    says:

    Chris, I’m posting this from a bunker somewhere in Perthshire.

    My last essay criticising a certain worker’s union and a few officials was both greatly praised and a little criticised, so I’ve published another.

    Fascist Us and Them: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-n5A

  190. Golfnut
    Ignored
    says:

    We all pay health insurance, its called National insurance. The contract between Government and people to provide healthcare and social security and funded from payments deducted from your salary. Yep, that would be the NI payments that the UK gov have decided to increase. In 2012 the UK gov rather sneakily in the small print absolved itself from the responsibility of providing that healthcare, which is a bit strange, since I don’t remember the electorate giving them permission to break the social contract.

  191. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    galamcennalath at 4.02

    Exactly. It has to be remembered as the utter abomination it was.

    All our children should be shown it in its fullest disgrace to show them how a man dies in war,to show them (as I once saw)a kilt with a leg sticking out of it as the remains of some innocent young man, to show them it is impossible to have glory in war. To let them know what we (the UK) has done all round the world and to persuade them that we need to be out of the UK/US/Russia violent pantomime. To show them that a young Scots lad dismembered by a shell is not a lot different to a young Iraqi girl (and her mother) suffering the same end.

    There was no glory in WW1 and don’t let poppies persuade you there was.

    What WW1 ands WW2 proved (if anybody looked sensibly at it ) was that this world would be a lot happier and safer if we had no big countries,no empires, just several hundred little community countries cooperating, as an absolute necessity, with everybody else.

  192. Cubby
    Ignored
    says:

    HYUFD – why don’t you pissof you patronising ignorant British Nationalist diddy.

  193. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    Dave McEwan Hill Civil wars to create smaller independent nations from larger unions from the US civil war to the former Yugoslavia to the Sudan and Ethiopia and Eritrea have often been the bloodiest wars of all. The US and China and the EU hold most global economic power, making up 50% of global GDP combined, followed by Japan, India and post Brexit UK and that is unlikely to change.

  194. gus1940
    Ignored
    says:

    D McE H

    I agree – I have always felt uncomfortable with the phrase ‘The Glorious Dead’ seen on war memorials.

    There was nothing glorious about being blown to smithereens.

  195. HYUFD
    Ignored
    says:

    Russia is also strong militarily hence small Baltic states like Estonia and Latvia need NATO to protrct them. Longer term of course humanity may need to start colonies on other planets having learnt how to journey into space in the last century but that is a longer term goal

  196. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Grouse Beater – glad to see you come out fighting in spite of the media hysteria. Fascism is on the rise in Europe and the US – congratulations on pointing it out. You have put yourself in the firing line but there are many of us on Wings who support your right to freedom of expression.

  197. Cubby
    Ignored
    says:

    HYUFD – you are such a patronising diddy.

    Just pissoff – no one needs your crap.

  198. Thepnr
    Ignored
    says:

    @Grouse Beater

    I’ll second what Capella says.

  199. Tinto Chiel
    Ignored
    says:

    @Capella 1.24: I would say those are very wise purchases, particularly with the Kindle option. Reading the volumes just reinforces to me how much we have been cut off from our common Scottish heritage.

    Ian B’s poll is encouraging. I no longer wear a poppy because the Britnats have made it political, so I place a cross in my local garden of remembrance for my RAF uncle in particular, my great uncles who died within days of each other at Loos in 1915 and all the other men and women who died in other theatres of war. Most Scottish families will have had similar, or worse, experiences. Galamcennalath’s earlier post was touching.

    My uncle survived 30 missions as a Lancaster pilot so could have walked away permanently but eventually died “filling in” for his squadron during the bombing of Hamburg in the summer of 1943.

    When you read accounts of Bomber Harris’s euphemistically called “area bombing” of the city, when 54000 citizens of Hamburg were incinerated in the appalling firestorms over a few days and about the same number were wounded/injured, your emotions are complicated, particularly when you reflect that Bomber Command in total lost about 56000 dead in the entire course of WW2.

    War stinks and everyone should be free to remember the dead in their own way.

  200. Jason Smoothpiece
    Ignored
    says:

    Grouse Beater

    Dont ever let them grind you down old boy.

    Long may your lum reek.

  201. Legerwood
    Ignored
    says:

    HYUFD says:
    4 November, 2018 at 3:35 pm
    “”Col Most European healthcare is mainly provided through an insurance system and the Tories have just put £20 billion a year extra into the NHS””
    …………..

    In 2016 the Tory Government told NHS England to make £23 billion of cuts by 2020.

    In 2018 the Tory Government said they would give NHS England
    A total of £20 Billion by 2023.

    In short, they have robbed Peter and paid Peter back with SOME of his own money.

    Not a good look.

  202. Capella
    Ignored
    says:

    One year, a long time ago, the BBC played Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen while showing the ceremony at the Cenotaph. He wrote the piece on seeing the destruction of Dresden in 1945. It was a very powerful theme for the marching veterans.

    Strauss said:

    The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany’s 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom?

    In the modern xenophobic UK the BBC would never play piece by a German composer to mark the tragedy of war.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glMeg3hm_hg

  203. Nana
    Ignored
    says:

    @Legerwood

    Saw this last week

    A Budget for the NHS?

    Health services cut by £1 billion next year

    No new money for overstretched, overcrowded hospitals this winter

    No plan to bring down waiting lists of 4.3 million

    No plan to recruit the 40,000 nurses & midwives needed or thousands of doctors
    https://twitter.com/JonAshworth/status/1057937843060903937

    and

    https://fullfact.org/health/whos-paying-20-billion-nhs/

    and a couple from earlier this year re the Naylor review

    https://keepournhspublic.com/need-to-know/naylor_sell-off/

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/jessica-ormerod/great-nhs-property-sell-off-gathers-pace

    Hope your hubby is feeling better.

  204. Dave McEwan Hill
    Ignored
    says:

    HYUFD at 5.08
    Completely missing the point – or should I say,making it for me. We have a word in Scots – eejit!

  205. Phronesis
    Ignored
    says:

    Too late in the Brexit debacle. Do tell, how will anyone be travelling with confidence never mind accessing reciprocal healthcare in Europe.

    ‘Lord James O’Shaughnessy said: “Whether on holiday, working or retiring abroad, British people want to know they can access the same high-quality healthcare that they enjoy in the NHS.

    “This Bill will allow us to implement new healthcare arrangements with other countries – in the EU and elsewhere – so that UK citizens can travel with confidence.”

    http://www.onmedica.com/newsArticle.aspx

    More Brexit bad news- an investment freeze from pharma giants Atra- Zeneca;
    ‘The pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest and most dynamic industries in the UK, meaning that any long-term freeze in investment within the UK from AstraZeneca could result in significant harm to the UK drug sector, warned GlobalData.

    Thomas Moore, senior pharma analyst at GlobalData, said: “Although the investment freeze could be regarded as a sign of poor health in the short-term for the UK pharmaceutical industry, the UK government will be hoping to be able to restore the faith of pharmaceutical companies once a deal has been reached with the EU over the UK’s exit.”

    http://www.onmedica.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=c5b8a728-d2f7-4906-b951-ebf11020cfe5

    The Conservatives are not to be trusted with the NHS with particular reference to the budget flimflam. Smoke and mirrors to obfuscate, divert, distract from their own agenda.

    ‘Independent think-tanks including analysis from the BMA has already stated that the NHS needs a funding increase for the NHS of at least 4% a year – not the 3.4% announced by the Prime Minister; the £20bn that’s been promised over the next five years is not enough to make the NHS sustainable and so far no thought has been given to the additional financial drain to NHS resources that Brexit may bring’

    https://www.bma.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/2018/october/bma-response-to-government-budget

    ‘a government playing to the gallery, desperately hoping to distract from its role in creating what promises to be the worse winter crisis since records began…Through underfunding, cuts, spending squeezes and austerity we are seeing patient safety imperilled. The Government will, as usual, seek to find scapegoats, ranging from blaming NHS staff for safety failings that are actually system failings, to blaming patients. They’ll probably end up blaming winter itself, too…Although he won headlines for “scrapping PFI”, the Chancellor pledged that he wouldn’t scrap existing PFI contracts, which the health service is locked into paying for til 2050. And he said he remained “committed to the use of public-private partnership…Now more than ever, we need to let the public know, that the Tories are a danger to their and our safety’

    https://nhaparty.org/the-budget-offers-the-nhs-scraps-and-fails-to-see-off-the-privatisers/

  206. Cubby
    Ignored
    says:

    Grousebeater

    Read your post re the crappy GMB for a second time today. Still didn’t see anything anti Semitic.

    The GMB obviously got upset at you telling the truth about them. Keep up your good work and tell the Britnat labour/GMB Union to get stuffed. They do not deserve any respect.

    Sue the b………ds.

    SNP reinstate this man – now (assuming he still wants to be a member). I don’t like injustice. If Mr Peffers wants to have a go at me for being anti SNP then fire away. I’m not anti SNP just asking them to do the right thing

  207. Cubby
    Ignored
    says:

    HYUFD is a British Nationalist diddy and eejit.

  208. robert galloway
    Ignored
    says:

    Some great comments of to bed,more like “War and PEACE” Could they not resurrect Guy Fawkes. “Will he naw come back again.The House of Correction or Corruption.

  209. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    Dear Grousebeater,

    If there is to be a fundraiser, I will contribute. I also completely understand if such a legal undertaking is not doable for you – for whatever your reasons. They don’t make it easy.

    Some talk about poppies, I’ve said my bit earlier, more than once… I long for the day when this mark of respect becomes redundant, almost 45 years now I’ve been buying them and wearing them.

    I agree and sympathise whole heartedly with the white poppies, but for me that does not address the hijacking of the red poppy – to glorify War! It just moves the attention to somewhere else.

    So, I remember!

    26:13 – the percentage of deaths in Scottish regiments compared to rUK Regiments.

    And out of respect for ALL the fallen.

    I Wear Twa Poppies

    And at the going down of the sun
    And With Our Votes
    We remember

    Kind regards to all.

  210. Grouse Beater
    Ignored
    says:

    From that troublemaker

    A brief thanks of gratitude to all who sent support. To those who have not … there’s still time not to appear a smuck.

    The shock of seeing support pouring in, thousands of tweets when I assumed I had 23 readers and a short-sighted goldfish, is humbling. (Maybe it’s expressions of support from the same blogger using different accounts.)

    Don’t worry, I’m suing the Daily Flagellate. That’s a given.

    You can’t trash an individual for something he didn’t write.

    No idea what SNP will do. Can’t imagine how they can sanction a voice who pays only an annual subscription. They reacted too fast, fearful of Brit-Nat screams of ‘Ebola!’.

    Will keep folk informed of legal progress on Twitter site.

    Meanwhile here’s the follow up article to upset the GMB:

    Fascism – Us and Them: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-n5A
    And ‘Peterloo’ review: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-n5w

    Grouse Beater

  211. Legerwood
    Ignored
    says:

    Nana @ 8.53 pm

    Thank you for the links. The ‘who pays’ one is interesting especially the bit on taxation where they suggest the Gov need to freeze personal allowance and raise or freeze existing tax thresholds. So what do the Tories do? Bring forward the increase in the personal allowance and raise the threshold for the highest rate! They really have no intention of funding the NHS properly. Their announcements are smoke and mirrors.

    I knew about the propert sell off. They would sell their grannies if they thought there was a buck in it.

    My husband is OK at the moment. Going through pre-op tests but no definite date for the op. Thank you for asking.

    Hope you are taking care of yourself too.

  212. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    @Grouse Beater
    Support from me too (dadsarmy from Cif)

  213. yesindyref2
    Ignored
    says:

    @Grouse Beater
    By the way, if you are suing, be careful of what you tweet, don’t go too far “criticising” anyone who might be taking to court.

  214. Cactus
    Ignored
    says:

    BREXIT is E.V.E.L.

    Cheers to ye Mr Beater.

    Going furra ship of fools laters, many doors to open.

    Swearing is imminent…



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