The Ultimate Joke
Fair play to The National, the use of the word “HIS” in this banner on their front page today might be the single funniest thing ever printed by a Scottish newspaper.
Because everyone and his dug in Scotland knows whose strategy it actually is, and how many years Pete Wishart spent traducing it as nonsense and furiously venting his overworked spleen at anyone who advocated it – right up to the point where Nicola Sturgeon adopted it in a desperate last attempt to keep the indy faithful pushing the SNP gravy bus, at which point it became the greatest masterplan of all time.
But today’s piece in the indy equivalent of the Daily Express (albeit with only a tenth of the sales) is so jawdropping that we doubt even Robert Oppenheimer would be up to the job of putting a scorchmark on Wishart’s brass neck, so let’s spend five minutes having a look at it before we go out for a bit of sunshine.
Well, duh. Most of us knew that in 2017, mate. The minute Theresa May said “Now is not the time”, despite the SNP having won a landslide victory the previous year on a clear manifesto commitment to a second referendum in the event that Scotland was to be dragged out of the EU against its will, it was as plain as day.
Brexit gave the Scottish Government an indisputable moral and political mandate to let the people of Scotland decide between two Unions they’d voted to stay in, but which were now mutually incompatible.
If the UK government wasn’t going to accept such an absolutely clear-cut argument, which was backed even by avowedly Unionist newspapers like the Daily Record and supported by a clear and substantial majority of Scottish voters as well as a vote of the Scottish Parliament, it was plainly never going to concede for any other reason.
But the SNP dithered and vacillated and performed poorly in the 2017 UK election, because a third of its own supporters had voted Leave and refused to support an SNP manifesto that disavowed independence – opening with the words “This election won’t decide whether or not Scotland will become independent” – and was widely seen as being about attempting to reverse the Brexit they themselves had just voted for.
(The party actually attempted to ride both horses, pledging to accept Brexit but “make sure that Scotland’s voice is heard” in the negotiations. Which it duly was, and then promptly told to shut up and ignored. Unlike Northern Ireland, Scotland secured absolutely no concessions whatsoever in the Brexit deal, despite being by a large margin the part of the UK which voted most strongly Remain.)
By early 2018, Wings had already identified the hopelessness of simply demanding a second indyref from Westminster and was calling on the SNP to take steps to force the issue. That same month, meanwhile, Pete Wishart was ironically saying “Now is not the time”.
In a counsel of unremitting doom, Wishart urged his party not to even TRY to secure a second referendum, on the grounds that it would be lost. He demanded that Scotland should wait until AFTER Brexit, when havoc had been wreaked on its economy and the golden opportunity to escape it entirely by winning the votes of Unionist Remainers had been lost.
Wishart knew full well that staying in the EU by securing independence before Brexit actually happened would have been a thousand times easier than rejoining it after being forced out, but he also knew that independence would end his 20-year career at the Westminster trough, so the decision was a no-brainer.
The National’s piece continues:
We know, of course, that that’s the precise policy first advocated by Wings in February 2023 and swiftly adopted the same month by SNP leadership contender Ash Regan, who Wishart opposed in favour of Humza Yousaf.
Yousaf, ironically, had actually distanced himself from Sturgeon’s plan (although he subsequently returned to a watered-down, half-hearted version of it because he couldn’t think of anything else), but that didn’t dissuade Wishart.
Which was weird, because when Wings had proposed – in 2020 – what Wishart called “Nicola’s de facto” strategy, which she eventually adopted more than two years later, Wishart had strenously, loudly and endlessly raged about what impossible, suicidal stupidity it was.
Wishart also rubbished the idea that the UK PM could simply keep saying no – the very thing he now solemnly informs us is the case.
In 2021 he’d rejoiced at the idea that the de-facto referendum strategy advocated by “anti SNP bad bloggers” (ie us) was a “dead end” that had received “short shrift” in favour of the laughable, long-forgotten “11-point plan” that had just been announced by Mike Russell:
It wasn’t just Wings, Ash Regan and Alba that Pete was blasting his blunderbuss at, though. He was also taking aim at those sitting next to him on the green benches of the Commons.
Angus MacNeil (along with councillor Chris McEleny, who by this point had left the SNP for Alba) had been at the forefront of those in the SNP fruitlessly calling for a “Plan B” to back up the useless idea of simply begging the UK government for another Section 30 that had been pursued by Nicola Sturgeon for almost her entire leadership.
The party had refused to let its members even discuss the idea – MacNeil was very recently expelled for continuing to suggest credible routes to holding an independence vote – and of course Wishart had dutifully decried it with all the venom he could muster.
The SNP winning the 2021 Holyrood election, he insisted, would deliver an indyref, which some alert viewers may have noted turned out not to be the case.
And now Wishart suddenly insists that Plan B was the answer all along, even though he’d previously been extremely specific about why is wasn’t.
Yet the belief Wishart was describing as “beyond naive” in June 2020 is the exact same one he wants us to all agree on now.
Still, at least he’s finally accepting that the calls for a Plan B were right, yes?
Oh. Apparently Pete Wishart was right when he was saying Plan B was a terrible, stupid, dangerous idea supported only by loonies and haters, AND when he was saying that the exact thing they’d all been calling for was now the only way forward. Clearly, the man’s playing seventh-dimensional intellectual chess at an elevated level us mere plebs can’t even hope to grasp.
Which presumably also explains this:
Blimey, we thought Humza Yousaf was throwing one into his own net yesterday, but this leaves that standing in the dust. What Wishart is saying here is that the UK government gets to choose the field and the time of battle. If at any point in the future they’re comfortably ahead in the polls, they can say “Okay, next goal’s the winner” and graciously accept that the next election is the de-facto indyref.
Under Wishart’s plan as outlined in his column today, if the Unionist parties then get more than 50% of the votes – which they have at every single election in Scottish history, incidentally – then the SNP are obliged to concede that that’s it forever, we’ve failed and it’s all over. They, not the SNP or the people of Scotland, get to pick which election counts.
If we were the UK government, we’d be pricking up our ears at that and doing something they’ve never done before in all his 22 years in Parliament – listening to Pete Wishart. Because there’s got to be an election soon, and as things stand the SNP are on just 36% of the vote – a staggering 21 points down since August 2020 – and falling fast.
In a UK election, as opposed to a Holyrood one, other pro-indy parties are very unlikely to fill in the gap between the SNP vote and 50%. The Scottish Greens stood in barely a third of Westminster constituencies in 2019, and it’s very doubtful that Alba could afford to contest all 57 seats either.
So the chances of securing 50%+1 specifically at the next Westminster election currently seem very remote indeed, over and above the reasons Wings has long pointed out that using Westminster elections for a de-facto indyref is a terrible idea.
In any event, Wishart is very specific about it being the SNP only, not pro-indy parties as a whole. The SNP didn’t even achieve 50%+1 in its legendary 2015 landslide with a fully united independence movement behind it in the aftermath of the euphoric indyref campaign, so it’s got absolutely zero hope of doing so any time soon.
The 2017 election demonstrated strikingly that there’s a limit to how hard indy supporters are willing to hold their noses, and a great many of the voters the party has shed in the last few years will never come back. People who feel not just let down but betrayed take a long time to even consider giving a party the benefit of the doubt again, and many of them will die before that moment comes.
So if the main UK parties had their wits about them and said “Okay, 2024 is your de facto indyref but we both have to agree to abide permanently by the outcome this time” – which is the bold new Pete Wishart Plan – we would lose, and losing would end the game for good.
(It’s entirely typical of the man that he proposes a plan which negates itself, claiming to want to make EVERY election a de-facto indyref while at the same time offering the UK government a gold-plated Get Out Of Jail Free card making it a one-off event.)
That is of course Pete Wishart’s main motivation – to secure his own delightful London lifestyle for another five years by blackmailing people into yet another hopeless, wasted vote for the SNP. Independence would be the end of all that, and he’s become a wealthy man over the last two decades by ensuring it never happens. (Although he’d still get to retire on a pension of £50,000+ in addition to a one-off “redundancy” package of tens of thousands of pounds.)
Either way Pete Wishart is laughing, and it’s you he’s laughing at.
Whenever anyone mentions something like “Theresa May said “Now is not the time””, it always worth a reminder that those quoted words in that specific order come directly from the letter Nicola Sturgeon sent the previous day.
Weet Pishfart realising he will be out of a job at the next General Election and won’t have us plebs paying for him to live in the manner he has become accustomed to at Westminster.
In fact we will be actively campaigning for his removal from the green benches!
Too little, too late from Pete.
Maybe a sign of which way the political wind is blowing and he’s belatedly trying to get ahead of the curve, but I’m sure the hard of thinking will fall for it.
It’s not even 50% + 1 of the vote. He is saying 50% vote SNP. Never going to happen in any future election.
“He has said that if more than 50% of Scots vote for an SNP manifesto, that will prove the country wants to leave the UK and the party should commence
negotiations to make this happen.
We are not getting another referendum.
We will never be allowed another referendum.
The reason we won’t be allowed another referendum is that the establishment is still very angry at the plebs for voting to leave the EU.
Our opinions do not matter to the Scottish or British governments. They’re replacing us as quickly as possible through immigration anyway.
He’s a dud at geometry as well.
“We are apparently invited to accept the notion that they will turn 360 degrees on their heads and say – …”
Joockanese @ 1.40.
Not just the hard of thinking, the ‘can’t be arsed thinking’ group will still vote SNP as a default position because of the word ‘Scottish’ in their name. It’s as simple as that unfortunately.
Wishart knows that a large percentage of the population will just do what they have done before, and as long as he gets his name in the papers now and then, that’s enough.
Readers of Wings know what an absolute charlatan he is. This latest article is further confirmation. If only more people could be bothered to think and read it things might change, but don’t hold your breath.
Another well researched piece from the Rev. As one of the gullible who went on believing that the SNP leadership simply had a cunning plan they just wanted to keep under wraps I feel I owe some form of apology to Stuart. I really thought he had just lost it and gone full conspiratory theorist. How wrong was I?
I think the excellent Phil Boswell summed up what I’m sure many returnees to this site must be feeling in a recent Prism show. Starting at about 32 minutes in where he acknowledges the prescience of Wings.
link to youtube.com
I preferred the old days when the headlines were far more believable like “World War two bomber found on moon” ?
Den – Well done; the funniest comment of the week by far.
All politicians, in or hoping to enter the Westminster legislated Wee Pretendy parliament sent to Scotland as a colonial branch are working to gratify their own careers pensions and pockets,
Pete Wishart and all those working for Westminster in Holyrood have the same self centred purpose, not to make Scotland independent or they personally lose so much money,
including ego and prestige.
We have the right to govern ourselves, is it not time we set up our own parliament here, being as our 1707 Scottish parliament is no longer in the treaty of union having been extinguished and dissolved.
Our Scottish Parliament of old has the provisions of being under Non- Use and neglected for a considerable period of time, over 300 years.
A contrary custom and practice of the Scottish parliament that had developed that is inconsistent with the laws of Scotland,
The ” name of the 1707 Scottish parliament ” is being used and abused by Englands Westminster parliament to make a supposed treaty of union,
And yet the ” Westminster parliament openly state ” there has been no Scottish parliament in the treaty of union since 1707.upon agreement to the terms,
And therefore contrary usage has been made of the “name” of the old Scottish parliament against Scots laws.
In England this law has a similar parallel it is Called ” Desuetude,”
Prediction: when Pete Wishart loses his seat next year, we won’t see him for dust.
Let me take you through the mists of time to the year 2027…
You’ll be on holiday in sunny Lanzarote, enjoying a well-earned rest, and you’ll hear this dreadful rendition of ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ emanating from some down-at-heel British bar and there he’ll be: oor Pete!
Look at that sonsie donnert wee face…bashing away on a cheap Casio leccy piano, face as red as a baboon’s erse, bedecked with a plastic Union Jack bowler hat, bemoaning the Albists inbetween numbers in a weird “see you Jimmy” fake accent, supremely and delusionally happy in his cups but completely oblivious to any faintly acceptable notion of musicality.
Struggling to make himself heard over a swelling cacophony of insults, strangely targeted at his ‘sweaty socks’…Pete announces to an expectant world…”Nikla’s sez shizh goany visit any day noo. I promised tae help her lug thon gigantic sack o’ autobiographies roon the pubs. 50% off if you’re buying for yer early-onset luvved yins”.
A life well lived indeed…
Red said
We are not getting another referendum.
We will never be allowed another referendum.
I think you are probably correct
However I think, for the first time since 2006, all the ducks are in a row where a complaint could be made to the UN that the UK Government is not complying with its obligation under treaty to specify SOME mechanism which Scots can use to exercise their right to self determination/independence and in a reasonable time frame.
Of course the authority of the UN has been greatly undermined, the UK G might not even respond.
But
If they say ‘This is the mechanism…’ fine, we all know what to work toward.
if they say ‘There is no mechanism.’ Then that would plunge them deeper into the Rogue State rabbit hole. (As would a no response)
Mind you they do have a ready made cast list for that.
John Redwood as the Mad Hatter(there are other candidates)
Suella Braverman as the Queen of Heartless ‘Off with their heads!’
Jacob Rees Mogg The Dormouse falling asleep at the table.
Boris Johnson as the Walrus (the King and cabbage he talks about are himself and Liz Truss)
Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber Grant Shapps and Dominic Raab?
The Cheshire Cat Rishi Sunak
The White Rabbit Nigel Farage
The March Hare Michael Fabricant
Alice the electorate
Despicable little man whose main prize is father of the house or a very little speaker
Why is it whenever I see Mr Wishart, or read his latest inanities, I always have a vision of him plonking away at a Casio electronic keyboard in Bayview Retirement Home whilst “Waiting for God”.
Quite possibly telling fellow residents, “I used to be somebody you know, can you help me remember who please ?”.
He’s just wan big Massey Ferguson.
Do ex SNP MPs apply for retention of their Westminster pass once they retire or get booted out?
@ PhilM
Lol . Permanently pissed-off he never gets any requests for Runrig or Big Country songs .
My imagined future for Pee Wee is something like the subject of the film The Terminal ; but rather than an airport , our hero spends 18 years wandering around his beloved HOC – despite not having been an MP for that duration .
WHEN he loses his seat he’ll claim political asylum , saying his life is in danger if he ever ventures outwith the confines of the Palace of Westminster .
One thing is sure , he’ll have to be dragged out of that place kicking n screaming . The screaming consisting of insane accusations that ALBA have infiltrated n subverted the UK Electoral Role , kidnapped and replaced all the Tellers at his constituency vote with ALBINIST agents and that ” Nicola shall rise again “
Vote “neverendum” for continual employment. No other country on the planet (even the ones that were never real countries) has made such a pig’s ear of obtaining their independence from their overlords.
If anyone thinks that a change of UK government, to Labour, to Lib/Dem or any other party will result in a more relaxed approach to Scottish independence, they have not been paying attention. The strings are not being pulled by the Westminster Cabinet but by the puppet-masters behind them.
(Arranging an independent independence plebiscite is not that difficult. The Swiss have one every month.)
”Nicola shall rise again“
Damn it, Robert. You just made me choke on a McVitie’s digestive and spill ma tea. Words have power, you know.
God knows what forces you might have inadvertently released with that evil incantation.
I’m off to dig out my books on the occult and see if I can find a counter-spell, and make a fresh cup of tea.
Had a die hard SNPmloval going round Luncarth with leaflets this morning.
Comfy slippers Pete and Swinney on front page and a headline about SNP for Indy.
I handed it back with the comment don’t deliver to this door any more from this dishonest party.
The one thing that must be achieved at the next GE, is that this b*stard Wishart MUST NOT get reelected to the Westminster gravy train.
Wishart brings shame on the indy movement he’s not part of it, he part of the problem not the solution, at the next GE he must lose his seat, the good people of Perth and North Perthshire need to stop voting for him.
Vote Alba, Join Alba, kick Wishart off the taxpayers gravy train.
Weak Pishart! Chief oxygen thief amongst a host of SNP oxygen thieves.
@ Northcode 🙂
Were you by any chance a reader of Dennis Wheatley’s * gothic * potboilers ? I read them when I was a young teenager n got a wee frisson of enjoyable fear from doing so .
* Electoral Roll * . DUH !
Good one Ronnie MacNeil describing Wishart as a big Red Masdey Fergusson.
Not a combine harvester I suspect but rather the Rev’s auto-correct that inserts ” Tractor Ed”
Too right Mr MacNeil. The guys a ("Tractor" - Ed).
“We need to now say clearly that if 50+1% of the Scottish people vote for an SNP manifesto …”
Worth pointing out that there is a big difference between “50+1%” and the much more usually expressed “50%+1”.
The latter is one more than half of the Scottish voters.
The former, as “clearly” expressed by Pete, is 1% more than half of the Scottish voters.
That’s a big difference and in a close contest, that 1% could really matter.
FFS look at what these Scottish Nonce Party members have done to a genuine desire for independence, i’m sorry I really don’t like to offend people but continuing to vote for these perverted deviant morons has created a situation that not only are we further away from independence than ever we ARE the laughing stock of sane people , that this utter clown could have been in WM for 22 years earning a fortune whilst he was supposed to be fighting for independence is not only tragic but unfathomable, and the most insulting bit is he BRAGS about his tenure
This party loyalty to political parties in Scotland is insane , previously it was scum liebour who ripped the pish out of Scottish people and did it for decades , now it is the snp’s turn they have had 16 years in power with 9 of them failing at everything they touched, no wonder proud Scots buts laugh at indy supporters, and as long as veritable brain dead scum like wishart continue to be elected and listened to by idiotic snp members the rot will continue
Your headline Stuart “the ultimate joke” should be about the people , because the jokes on us, this imbecile is paid vast amounts to insult our intelligence
Why don’t we use the regional list vote at every Scottish Parliament election as a defacto referendum using Scotland United or some equivalent vehicle? Worst case, we fail to achieve independence but depose a barrowload of unionist list MSPs and create an overwhelming majority of pro-independence MSPs. Best case, we win our independence. Repeat at every Scottish Parliament election until we’re free of Westminster control. What’s the downside?
Robert Hughes
I was indeed, Robert. “The Devil Rides Out” and others. I’d forgotten all about them. Just shows you how books you might have read decades ago stick in your sub-conscious.
Your poke at Wishart with the “Nicola shall rise again” comment must have conjured up some demonic image from one of those old Wheatley books. 🙂
By the way, you put a rare picture in ma heid of Wishart, wrapped in a straight-jacket, being dragged by a couple of asylum orderlies to a padded cell incessantly ranting about his glory days in the SNP, and how he was a favoured acolyte o the Deevil – Auld Nickla, I mean.
He wanted to tear down Perth City Hall.
I suggested that it could become the Scottish Traditional Music Centre. Scottish music of all kinds, Celtic Rock, Folk, Accordion and Fiddle, Bagpipes, all have a large following Worldwide. It could have been a major tourist attraction. Cultural tourism is a thing. It would be a definite stop and see for many coach tours and bring a lot of money into the city.
It would have had a museum area with various traditional instruments on display and AV of well known performers, how instruments were made, the history of the various genres etc. And of course the ubiquitous shop for selling music, books and albums as well as the usual nicknacks.
I also envisaged a small traditional music college, perhaps in the Lesser City Hall where students could learn instrument making, playing and composing.
I thought ‘That’s got to be a winner with Pete Wishart given his past career’ but no, he wasn’t having it. Pooh poohed the idea, ‘Where’s the money going to come from? We want to expand the cafe culture area out into a square’.
I tied to explain to him that the cafe culture that exists there is in the street on the leeward side of the building and only exists because of the building’s wind sheltering effect. I might as well have pissed into that wind.
So they were going to knock it down but a couple of weeks before they were due to start King Charles III (then the Prince of Wales of course) intervened and said he would rather some other purpose were found for it.
Somehow, someone who was aware of Charles’ liking for Edwardian and Victorian architecture must have informed him of the planned vandalism.
Anyway it is still there and is going to be a Museum and Cultural Center opening next year and housing, allegedly, the Scone cludgy stane.
How about selecting some of the most repetitive slogans posted on WoS day after day (frequently several times daily) and just having them popped up at the start of each thread, getting them over and out the way and saving the posters requiring to keep repeating them and the rest of us skimming over them ad nauseum.
I’d suggest commencing with, no particular order;
Post colonial theory suggests.
Vote Alba, join Alba.
Show me the money.
Anything involving claims of right.
Worth pointing out that there is a big difference between “50+1%” and the much more usually expressed “50%+1”.
There is also a great difference between
a) 50%+1 of the votes
b) 50%+1 of the VoteRS
c) 50%+1 of the Scottish People
To claim that 50%+1 of the Scottish people is needed implies you include babies, toddlers, teenagers and people who have a second, third, fourth etc home in Scotland despite living elsewhere. Such threshold means you automatically consider as part of “no” count all those people who do not vote because they either cannot vote or because they choose not to vote. That is completely unacceptable and I would consider such threshold as yet another attempt to cheat the people of Scotland.
To claim that you need 50%+1 of the voteRS implies you are potentially counting also people who has died since the last voter census update, those who moved to live elsewhere during that time therefore should no longer be entitled to vote, those who have a holiday home in Scotland but their main residence is elsewhere and those who are no longer capable to vote (people with advanced dementia, for example). That is not only a door open for the British state to rig the vote but it also means, at all practical effects, adding extra votes for free to the no side, because you would be automatically considering as “no” all those voters who choose not to vote or could not vote (illness, for example). That is also completely unacceptable. The only thing the British state via its useful idiots in Scotland (many in the SNP hierarchy of command) has to do is to inflate the “voters’ census” to ensure a yes vote does not win.
The only properly democratic option, in my view, is 50%+1 OF THE VOTES CAST and with plenty of witnesses during the casting of votes and count. Needless to say that the count must take place in situ and immediately reported to stop vote rigging and swapping of boxes. This option will include in the count only the people who are allowed to vote, can vote and want to vote. Just because somebody does not vote, you cannot immediately add them to the no side to inflate support for the union. That is cheating.
I am not quite sure if Mr Wishart was being ingenuous when saying 50%+1 of “The Scottish People” or was trying to be smart and preserve his seat on the gravy train by pulling a fast one on yes supporters, while being fully aware the yes vote would never win if you automatically include in the no side all babies, toddlers, dead people, people with impairing illnesses stopping them voting, etc. such an undemocratic context is not giving the people of Scotland opportunity to choose independence. It is cheating them of that opportunity. It has the same cheating whiff that the infamous 60% threshold that the political fraud and fakeminist to her fingertips Sturgeon and her minions were trying to peddle at several points during her exceptionally underwhelming, ridiculously unproductive and profoundly disappointing tenure as FM of Scotland.
I would rather not consider Pete Wishart as a force for Independence. But I am glad Stu named dropped Oppenheimer. A great movie that even tackled the moral dilemma of Truman. A roll call of physicists of the era. Heisenberg has a special place for me. That undergraduate joke, Heisenberg rules OK I think? sums up his uncertainty principle. We have to jettison the SNP eejits including Pete Wishart. A post SNP Holyrood. A new enlightenment period? I hope so. Scotland is better than this.
PhilM
I enjoy the thought of Pedro scraping a living in Lanzarote playing shit for the punters… but he’s been playing a tune for years & he’s sitting pretty.
MP’s pension- say £33k pa
State pension -£11.5k pa
Private Pension pot- I’d guess £500k plus
Parliamentary parachute £50k
Future media earnings -£50k plus pa- for a couple of years
And probably more than a few hundred thousand in his house & various savings- never mind the wife..
But to be honest I’d give him double that if he promised never to play any more rooty tooty Runrig shot.
To be honest I’d double
Sven @ 6:33 pm
“Post colonial theory suggests” that colonialism always uses “traditional collaborators – chiefs, caids and witch-doctors – (and) secures for itself the services of these confidential agents by pensioning them off at a ransom price” (Fanon).
Which helps explain the deceitful behaviour of native elites in a colonial society, and who, in siding with the oppressor, sacrifice their own people and nation.
Such a message needs to be constantly made until the standard of consciousness of the rank-and-file improves.
Portcullis Pete is a Commons man first and foremost. The last thing he wants is another indyref.
@Mia says:17 August, 2023 at 6:37 pm
You make lots of valid points about the precise meaning of “50+1%”, or “50%+1”, etc etc.
If it’s not nailed down beforehand, then such a referendum, should it ever be held, will be forever blighted by arguments about who really won.
Much like the referenda in 2014 and 2016.
@Sven says:17 August, 2023 at 6:33 pm
It’s “Show US the money”.
Afraid I am going to have to repeat it a few hundred more times – the message obviously isn’t getting through.
@Penvelope says:17 August, 2023 at 7:27 pm
Many thanks for showing us the money.
Pete Wishart’s money, that is.
I seem to remember that it was Pete Wishart and John Nicholson that had Stephen Daisley sacked from either STV, or the BBC. That set the seeds for the collapse of investigative journalism that we see in Scotland today. Stephen Daisley He was a big fan of Wings over Scotland. They would have had Stuart Campbell sacked long ago too, if they could. No doubt about that.
Look at this:
‘The NATO backed Atlantic Council declares the US and its allies must be “situated to fight a two-front limited nuclear war in East Asia”
An anon US intel official is quoted calling a Chinese or DPRK nuclear strike in response to US war “rational”’
twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1692202336301531307
@Ian Brotherhood says:17 August, 2023 at 9:45 pm
Does that mean you are now looking for two radioactive clouds heading your way?
Or have you given up on the first one? It’s been weeks after all, even if it was on foot, it would have arrived by now.
Says the pishfart who put his name to be Speaker
Rshole
I Brotherhood…
Very interesting I’m sure, but I think you’re posting on the wrong site… This is a Scottish political site where the farcical, the duplicitous, the dishonest and the corrupt within the Scottish body politic, and in particular the SNP, are exposed and discussed.
No idea where your last contribution fits into that billing…
I was amused at Pete Wishart’s “50+1%”. Either he’s rubbish at arithmetic, or doesn’t understand how simple majorities work.
Scots men and women – you may expect nothing from the Scottish Parliament.
Here’s what they swear on being elected
MSP’s must either make an oath of allegiance or a solemn affirmation.
The oath –
“I, [name of Member], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Her heirs and successors, according to Law, so help me God.”
!
The solemn affirmation –
“I, [name of Member], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Her heirs and successors, according to Law.”
Compare and contrast with what MLAs swear in the Stormont Assembly in Northern Ireland:
“everybody who is elected to Stormont signs the roll of membership.
They then designate their identity as nationalist, unionist or other: that is it.
However, Ministers are required to take a pledge of office. There is a great deal more to that. It covers good faith, non-violence, peaceful and democratic means, and serving the people of Northern Ireland equally. Ministers sign up to a catalogue of things, but there is nothing that equates to an oath for Members of the Assembly.
link to hansard.parliament.uk
Good Grief
“Kezia Dugdale says she has ‘certainly moved’ on Indy and may vote Yes”
link to archive.is
Red says @ 17 August 13:53pm
“Our opinions do not matter to the Scottish or British governments. They’re replacing us as quickly as possible through immigration anyway.”
If the Scottish political climate became more volatile with pro-Indy demos and activism, maybe this ploy might be obstructed. Many ‘immigrants’ would surely recall, as told by their grandparents, the events in their own countries regarding protests, decolonisation and independence and they would consequently be loath to migrate to such an unsettled country.
@ben madigan says:17 August, 2023 at 10:41 pm
I expect that when the day of Indy comes, the members of our assembly will swear an oath of fealty and allegiance to Humza Yousaf, and his heirs and successors.
Now haud oan, I hear you say (maybes).
But think about it. During the happy years when Nicla could do no wrong, if such an oath had been proposed for her subjects, most would have got down on their knees and so sworn, tears of joy and gratitude rolling down their cheeks.
It’s early in the day, so I won’t go into the “God” bit. But one thing’s for sure, iScotland’s gonna need a multi-faith ceremony.
@ben madigan says:17 August, 2023 at 10:41 pm
I expect that when the day of Indy comes, the members of our assembly will swear an oath of fealty and allegiance to Humza Yousaf, and his heirs and successors.
Now haud oan, I hear you say (maybes).
But think about it. During the happy years when Nicla could do no wrong, if such an oath had been proposed for her subjects, most would have got down on their knees and so sworn, tears of joy and gratitude rolling down their cheeks.
It’s early in the day, so I won’t go into the “God” bit. But one thing’s for sure, iScotland’s gonna need a multi-faith ceremony.
@Cameron Robson says:18 August, 2023 at 12:39 am
Hmmm.
I see where you are coming from – make Scotland into a worse shithole than the shitholes the immigrants are coming from and the flow will stop.
Looking at England, which is quite seriously worse than Scotland in sectors such as public services and law and order, that doesn’t seem to be working. Maybes they still need to make it even worse.
Graham Linehan quoted today in the Guardian after his history-making outdoors performance yesterday, adjacent to the wee, pretendy parliament, in Scotland’s pretendy capital city, Edinburgh:
“It’s just insane. I mean, I’ve been fighting this stuff for five years, and I’ve never seen anything as insane as [the] last few days.”
Now I know it’s the MSM and the Guardian, FFS, but they have a photo-shopped pic and everything, so maybes it is actually true.
Just think, Scotland making good claim for being the insanest, wee country in the world. Who says we can’t cut it on the big stage?
My posts on here are invariably critical of the current SNP leadership and former leadership.
Just for the record and for balance:
Anas Sarwar is an intellectual lightweight with zero gravitas or political acumen.
A Cole-Hamilton is an intellectual lightweight with zero gravitas or political acumen.
Douglas Ross is an intellectual lightweight with zero gravitas or political acumen.
Patrick Harvey is a c*nt.
“You know what, …, I don’t have a fucking clue.
…..
There’s a welter of contradictory claims, statistics and facts online. I don’t have the time to wade through them.”
John Main @10.54am 17 August 2023
Viscount Ennui
Perhaps you missed it, but, during the last football season Celtic FC’s Green Brigade” identified DRoss as being Patrick Harvie’s long-lost twin.
Scotsrenewables @12:19…
Didn’t a court find that Dippity Dug, whilst undoubtedly having the ability to communicate, was incapable of understanding what she was communicating? If so, is this not just another case in point?
I am not going to waste any real time on this odious little turd of a man other than to say his shameless theft of other peoples ‘high quality intellectual property’, which then gets recycled out as ‘cheap Wishart tat’, really shows up his core dishonesty as a human being and what a fraud he is and was.
Now his wee cushy number is on the line suddenly up is down and black is white in Wishart world as he scrambles to find anything to save his horrible diseased putrid arse.
I thought it impossible I could despise Wishart more but yet again he finds a way to show me that no, he is even more despicable.
If it was music Wishart was stealing instead of ideas he would owe a fortune in royalties as he has never had an original idea in his life.
I dare say he will plumb even greater depths of hypocrisy and dishonesty as he circles the political pan before disappearing out of lives forever like a small rancid turd, leaving behind only a transitory whiff of hypocrisy and excrement… someone who will be forgotten very quickly, almost instantly.
Reading the irrelevant pish of Wishart’s on independence, it clear that there are no Scottish independence parties at Holyrood, there will be some in the SNP who want independence but they have no real say on it, and are either keeping their powder dry for when the chance arises or they have realised that nothing’s going to happen on the indyfront and decided to keep their heads down and their snouts in the taxpayers gravy train.
Its kind of a mute point discussing routes out of this rancid union when every major political party at Holyrood is against it even though roughly half of the population of Scotland wants it.
Our focus must be on removing the blockages (people) at Holyrood, with the proper people in place I’m pretty confident that the 50+1% could be reached quite quickly.
“insanest, wee country in the world”
Insane pish not even the half of it but may yet be encouraging to discover that Scots only pretend to try and put former leaders in jail – unlike big boy organisations like France and America* (and maybe soon Canada, Australia and New Zealand)
Upside of military intelligence of any description being involved in domestic health/ police matters is that paying taxes to the regime authorizing the atrocity could be tantamount to conspiracy to high treason – and open the door to full civil asset recovery (including exploration licences 😉 ) from any entity guilty of having done so (downside might be enforcement capacity and convincing conspirators with robot armies as to the benefits of compliance, etc)
*Logic of which probably renders the failure to indict Gina Haspell (CIA director involved in Sidney Powell’s claims about election irregularities for which SHE is now being obliged to DEFEND) as as good a reason as any for all businesses exposed to US taxes to join the nettle tea party and demand reimbursement in full, ASAP – and in any event before Washington’s legal system is handed over, lock stock and two smoking craters, to the (instant) judgement of AI!
I always used to believe there is no such thing as bad publicity, but recently I hae had ma doots.
The hated DM Online headlining with the Graham Linehan national embarrassment.
From Edinburgh Fringe to Edinburgh Cringe, it’s going viral.
Extraordinary to think where Sturgeon, the SNP and Indy support more widely might have been today, if they had had the smeddum to stand up to and defy the reality deniers.
Ian Brotherhood.
Nato has no remit to be in East Asia, its a warmongering bully boy, that’s using Australia to pick a fight with China at the expense of Australia’s economy, China buy many materials from Australia.
At this moment the RF and NK are forging closer ties because they know what’s coming, maybe Orwell was right all along.
Incidentally Mi6 has had the SAS train one-hundred Yuk-ies to join them on an assassination and sabotage sortie in Africa to remove unfriendly to the West leaders of African nations, and replace them with friendly ones and to cause turmoil in the relationships between the RF and African nations.
Their entry point is Sudan at the end of the month. I’d imagine unfriendly Sahel leaders such as in Niger and Mali will be first to be assassinated. The largest US drone strike base in Africa is situated in Niger.
Fantastic story Chic McGregor. You’ve saved your town hall. You’re a local hero.
Classic Pete Self Preservation Society.
Cant be long before the argument that SNP should be represented at House of Lords, “for the sakes of balance” gets going.
Pete would be right up for that no doubt!
@ben madigan says:17 August, 2023 at 10:41 pm
This has concerned me for a while, and has made me believe that our pro independence voices and leaders must come from outside the parliaments, preferably outside political parties too. That way thoughts, words and actions are not controlled by anachronistic royal oaths, party rhetoric and policy or the personal requirement to be (re)elected. Wishart is the opposite of what we need.
@Republicofscotland says:18 August, 2023 at 9:50 am
And you have no remit to be discussing your Student Grant theories on this site.
Re your other post at 9:33. It’s 50%+1. Maybes it’s time you paid more attention to the subject at hand.
The Soros Foundation has decided to limit their European funding.
Are the Trannie/ immigrant/ BLM / colour revolutions being wound down?
@ ben madigan @ 10.41 p.m. MSPs swear “that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty..” whereas NI Assembly members swear nothing. Ministers pledge “good faith, non-violence…serve the people equally..”.
How refreshing – the NI politicians had, and have, a far more dangerous situation to deal with and they are managing to do so. Whereas MSPs cravenly swear to an alien crown rather than to the sovereign people of Scotland.
Scottish «devolved» FM meets Icelandic «sovereign» PM
link to thenational.scot
Note the body language in photo.
Her party webpage link to vg.is
Notice anything?
Desimond @ 10.09
Oh dearie me, I so wish that there wasn’t a terrible, inexorable logic attached to that thought, Desimond.
Everybody, except the most boneheaded, knew that Britain wanted to get out of the EU when we in Scotland voted in the entirely separate “once in a lifetime” referendum in Scotland.
IndyRef was never about the EU. The outcome was never conditional upon whether Dumfriesshire or Banff&Buchan or Shetland or Freuchie or Auchtermuchty voted for or against membership of the EU.
The electorate of The United Kingdom of Great Britain Northern Ireland (+ Gibraltar), for that is who was the member of that wretched and unasked-for Union, voted to separate from the EU.
The Gibraltarians were not asked whether they simultaneously wanted to separate from the UK, nor were the Shetlanders, separately. That was never what it was about.
The Brexit vote was never connected to the Scottish IndyRef, nor vice versa.
It is idiotic to try to connect the two quite separate issues.
Both issues were settled democratically. That’s just the way it is; and should be.
Democracy can be a bitch y’know, especially for the losers.
£16.99 for entry to Glasgow Green for the World Pipe Band Championships…
Scotland in chains. It’s time our polticians were put behind a fence. Preferably a barbed wire one.
@TURABDIN says:18 August, 2023 at 11:32 am
building upon existing areas of collaboration in areas such as renewable energy, biodiversity and sustainable marine economy
Innarestin that stuff like that is going on in Scotland. I didn’t know – thought we were just a colony where others rip off our assets for peanuts.
Strange that HY failed to mention the one thing we excel at though – tranny bollocks. Surely we should be aiming to maximise the export potential of that kind of advanced woowoo stuff to unsophisticated, innocent, wee, remote places like Iceland. Wind and woowoo – the foundations for a strong, successful iScotland economy.
Does anybody know if Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir was elected via a flawed and fraudulent process? Any high profile resignations during the process? Polis involved at any point?
Much as I don’t want to malign either Ms Jakobsdóttir or Iceland, I am stymied as to why she would want to waste time on somebody against whom all of these allegations can be leveled.
Maybes she needs to sack some of her advisory staff. Get a decent briefing prior to her next visit.
Sure hope she didn’t want to take in the Fringe whilst she was here – just imagine if she had tickets for Graham Linehan’s show!
Maybes HY could reimburse her on the ScotGov credit card.
Brexit results were a 52-48 split so I don’t know how Scrote knew that Britain wanted out.
A large part of the Indyref revolved around Scotland being allowed to remain, or to reapply for EU membership.
Remember, Jose Barroso being wheeled out the BBC every week?
Northern Ireland still trades in the EU.
It’s complicated.
Next time you’re in Glasgow. Have a look at the filth.
You’ll not see a window washer anywhere like other cities.
There’s vandalism on the duke of Wellington statue.
Shit on all the statues in George Square. Vandalism everywhere.
I nearly tripped up on a slab.
Theirs trees growing outside buildings.
Homeless people sleeping outside former stores.
Pigeons that need to be poisoned.
The city to Let.
While Susan Aitken does nothing about it.
She’s too busy eating all the pies isn’t she? She really is a remarkably ugly woman. As ugly as her soul. I tell you what I wouldn’t like to go round to hers for dinner. Her house must be filthy.
I’d love it if you could write about Susan Aitken. She’s killing our city.
I can’t am counting down the days until the SNP are out of office.
Uhmmm – “We are apparently invited to accept the notion that they will turn 360 degrees on their heads and say – ‘OK…” – wouldn’t that mean they ended up where they started so are unlikely to change their minds?
…LOLs…
BTW did Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister, get her “360 degree turn” stupidity from comfy slippers Pete? Would never have pegged her as a reader of Pete’s blog. Although she does seem to be 3 years behind on her reading.
@David Hannah
That’s quite a horrid picture your painting there, of yourself.
Attack policy by all means but not a persons looks. Grow up.
One thing Susan Aitken has done is actually paid all those Council employed women conned out of millions by folk like Richard Leonard in the past. Funny how the very recent second payment got next to zero coverage anywhere in the Media.
Glasgow might be on its arse but at least the current administration got that one wrong put right.
Sigh. Old Slippers slithers out of the woodwork again eh? He must be getting really worried about losing his seat at the next election. Not that it would affect his comfy standard of living too badly methinks. Maybe he just enjoys the public attention lol. How frustrated is he about having no feasible route to the HoL? Surely he deserves it eh? My heart bleeds, Lord Slippers, my heart bleeds. 🙂
Johnlm says:
18 August, 2023 at 10:25 am
The Soros Foundation has decided to limit their European funding.
Are the Trannie/ immigrant/ BLM / colour revolutions being wound down?
Soros has embedded so many of his placemen in parliaments, governments, civil service, NGOs and media that he no longer needs to fund it himself. The tax payer has taken over.
That of course should be placepersons unless some of them self identify as animals, minerals, fantasy creatures this afternoon.
JOHN MAIN 1:09
The Icelanders, which has a far worse climate than Scotland, max the potential of their country. They do that equality, diversity thing too and I understand can be weirdly «eccentric» and individualist but they have a pioneer type sense of independence.
I believe they fought three «wars» with the UK over fishing grounds and won. The complacent fishing industry in the UK was seriously damaged as a result.
Another result was a 200-nautical-mile/370-kilometre exclusive economic zone under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Small country, huge impact.
Bit O\T here but I read that Stonewall and a few other charities are being given the chance to present evidence to the court of session where the SG are challenging the UK gov over turning the GRA bill. Im not sure why is this being allowed ? is it not about a point of law about the legality of the block rather than the social impact?
I managed to Nail Labour’s Richard Leonard on the radio.
He stated that Labour were the party of equality and the party that you can trust to look after the NHS.
I reminded him that Labour had been in power at Glasgow City Council for 70 years.
They spent 10 years and £hundreds of thousands fighting to stop equal pay for women council workers.
He said he was against that move.
I said that you for again confirming that there is no Scottish Labour Party and that you have no autonomy at all over Labour Westminster.
On the NHS he was reminded that the Welsh NHS was the worst performing service in the U.K. performing behind even second place NHS England.
It had been run by a Labour Administration since the Devolved Welsh parliament opened.
Was he suggesting we should try for a Labour Devolved Government that has no experience
and risk our NHS dropping from first to third place for efficiency.
In jumps the BBC host to stop any negative contributions that reflect badly on the union.
@ Luigi on 18 August 2023 at 2:44 pm
I think Old Pishfart is one of the rats deserting the sinking ship. I think he’s one of several standing down at the next election, or is he just taking a back seat? Not 100% sure though.
BTW, apologies to all rats for the comparison with Pete Wishart.
__________
“BBC’s Stephen Nolan accused of planting staff in TV show audience”
link to archive.is
OH MY! The BBC rigging audiences? Now where have we heard that one before? Welcome to Scotland’s world (and probably Wales’ too).
__________
“My view on Scottish independence has ‘moved’, says Kezia Dugdale”
link to archive.is
Diz she? Aye? I’ll now sleep better knowing that. It’s OK folks, indy’s in the bag, Dippy Dugdale now supports indy. Or mibbees aye, mibbees naw? Or maybe she’s just still trying to promote the old lame Labour duck of Super-Nano-Devo-Mork-&-Mindy diatribe.
I think the clues in her line: “.. we have to keep talking about some of these big issues in the country, but not just purely through that yes/no lens.” So that’ll be “more devo” then? The same Devo Super Max you, Brown and all the other Dirty Redcoats lied about in 2014? That old lens?
Or maybe it’s just another pile of shite from ‘The Dug’ to get herself back in the limelight. In less than a week we’ve had Brown slithering out from his swamp and now Dippy Dug. How long before it’s Douglas Alexander’s turn? Just shows how injured the SNP beast is when the weakest vultures in the flock start fancying their chances.
Den says on 18 August 2023 at 3:06 pm:
“I read that Stonewall and a few other charities are being given the chance to present evidence to the court of session where the SG are challenging the UK gov overturning the GRA bill. I’m not sure why is this being allowed? Is it not about a point of law about the legality of the block rather than the social impact?”
Good point, Den, that’s my take on it too.
Pudgycheeks was lying through his teeth, not for the first or last time, when he falsely claimed that a Cubanised Scotland would somehow be able to jump the queue past Serbia to apply for membership of the EU.
Even if such a supplication were to be considered by the Commissioners, it was always going to be inevitable that such an application would be vetoed by Spain.
Scotland would have zero chance of meeting the fiscal criteria anyway. The EU has learned the lesson of taking on Greece. Goldman Sachs cooked the books to get Greece into the EU. SNP needs no lessons in how to cook the books, but their figures would never be believed by any reasonable person.
Scotland would forever have been a deeply indebted basket case, alongside the worst of South America and central Africa.
Sure, the First Minister would spend £4,000 a night in a hotel just a handful of miles, a ten minute taxi ride, from her privately owned lovenest. Sure, the hangers-on would run up bills of £14M personal expenditure on the country’s credit card. That wouldn’t change a jot.
What would change would be the credit rating of iScotland: from D- to fuckall.
In a referendum a majority is a majority and a minority is a minority.
It’s not complicated.
Winners on one side: losers on the other side.
There are no fifty shades of grey in a referendum, unlike in an election.
The next Westminster GE will probably result in a near 50% reduction in SNP MP’s, maybe more. They will be replaced in the main by Labour MP’s and the new Secretary of State for Scotland will be someone like Ian Murray. Will this result in an improvement – yes it will. The Labour MP’s that replace the SNP MP’s will be given opportunities to get things done and they will appear to be far better than they probably are, byt we Scots will lap it up.
The year after will be Holyrood election time and we Scots will vote Labour thinking the same will happen at Holyrood. It won’t. It will pass from a coalition of SNP/Green to a coalition of Labour and someone else, but everything else will stay the same. Are Labour any more honest than the SNP? They may be made to look so, but they are not.
The only solution in my opinion is to dump the D’Hondt voting system, dump half of the MSP’s and elect, as they do at Westminster, first past the post. That dispenses with Patrick Harvie and a myriad of other unpleasant characters from out lives, in a stroke.
Well Desmond I’ll take your point on the looks.
Politically. She’s got no redeeming features..
According to Lloyd Quinan on the Through a Scottish Prism show.
She’s an ex Labour Councillor herself…
Susan Aitke is also married to ex Labour Councillor Gordon Archer.
According to Loyd, on the Prism show. He says she arranged for a property developer to give her husband a shop front for a £1 per year.
For the company later to go into administration owing 7 figures a year later.
She learned how to plunder the public purse in the Labour Party, according to Lloyd.
Now she’s plundering the public purse in the SNP.
Our city is a disaster. No one listening. The GOMA is green with moss stains. The vandalism is like nothing you’ve ever seen. Every building is crumbling. There’s vandalism everywhere you look. There’s not a window cleaner in sight… It’s deliberate. I’m telling you.
Now the night bus is to be cancelled…
She’s let it go like this.
Does not employ cleaners? There’s no benches to sit on. It’s a shitehole.
Susan Aitken. She let the people’s palace wilt and die.
Glasgow. The only city in the World where fountains don’t flow…
Look at thestate of the fountain in Kelivingrove park…
The SNP are doing nothing about it?
Why the fuck not? They have no pride in their fucking city. It’s unbelievable.
@captain Y, happy to go along with any plan that sees the pretendy greens Slater, Harvie and the fud that is Useless along with a few others (you know the ones who pretend disabilities) on the dole forever.
The Morris dancers on here don’t want to see Scotland in the EU. I wonder why?
Lord Ismay the 1st Sec. Gen. of NATO is credited with saying that NATO’s job was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”
By Germans did he mean Europe?
By America did he mean AngloAmerica?
De Gaulle certainly understood: He took France out of NATO in 1966 (the Anglos were trying to assassinated him, after all) and opposed England’s entry to the Common Market.
Does Scottish/EU membership have a Cold War aspect to it?
Scottish Independence would be good for Scotland.
Europe (and Russia) would be happy to see the Anglo group reduced.
The Anglos need Scotland for our resources and a seat on the UN Security Council.
The Anglos, with Brexit, seem to have abandoned subverting Europe as a plan, and since the flu nonsense are ruining French and German economies.
The Anglos seem to be building up the Poles and the Balts now.
The M4cKinder World Island.
Northern Ireland still trades in the EU, Scrote.
It’s called realpolitik.
The world is not as 2 dimensional as you imagine.
Our homeless should he cleaning up Glasgow.
There’s an idea.
They sleep in the shop windows. They deserve a roof over their head.
With compulsory buy. The empty shop unit can be transformed into a hostel. Security can be employed. Health visitors on station. Meals provided by charity.
We give the homeless, a living wage job as a street cleaner, window cleaner. Plasterer. Painter. We pay them the living wage. We give them a sense of pride of worth. This is their city. They are important.
Chequered past? That’s okay you’re forgiven. You matter.
What happened to Glasgow? We need to fix it.
We get the homeless. To spray off the vandalism. We get them to paint the shop fronts. We get them to clean the steets. To pave the broken slabs. To maintain Glasgow green. To plant flowers. To feel valued. We give them jobs.
Never mind the big issue… What a lot pish. Give them a job to clean up our city. To make it beautiful again. They learn the new skills.
They are proud to be who they are again.
Anyone know the national’s current readership at the moment? Seriously who still buys it?
Not had a good Pishy Wishy laugh for a while and that was sorely needed. The decline (admittedly from a not very great height to begin with) is absolutely jaw dropping.
David Hannah,
You’ve seen the extent to which the SNuPmties have fucked up your local park.
Can you imagine what the fuckers would do to an entire country without adult supervision?
Postcolonial theory reminds us that a compromised national party elite which ‘becomes part of the racket’ should be anticipated during a peoples quest for independence. As Aime Cesaire put it, in regard to the numerous pensioned off native elites and functionaries who conspire with the colonial oppressor to hold back liberation of the people:
“…do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen (or women) are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally – that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul(a) – they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism.”
I doubt Spain would object to to an independent Scotland or it joining the EU. Their prize would be the return of Gibraltar to Spanish ownership and a rather pathetic, weak little England being able to do zilch about it. And of course Argentina would follow on over the Falklands. They’d get screwed, and they know it!
@ Scotsrenewables WHY does anyone care what this nonentity thinks about ANYTHING,that this incompetent brain addled clown was head of brit liebour in Scotland shows how far politics has plunged into the gutter , Her , Whatsisname Lamport or lamppost something or other, and Arsehole sarwar, is this really the best liebour in Scotland can produce
IMO kes is tentatively embracing independence because she believes that Scotland could be turned into a competitor for Thailand with all the pervertions and deviancy currently being promoted by her husband/wife’s party, as was previously heralded the gayest parliament in the world , what’s not to like sex tourism and Gary glitter drag artists parading in the fringe in edinburg with a WEEKLY pride parade with S&M freaks frightening the weans
Ebenezer. I used to be a proud Glaswegian. Not anymore. We’re walking around in our own filth. I’m humiliated for the tourists that came today, walking up to the Royal Pipe Band Championships. To find everything closed. Everything vandalised. Filth everywhere and then being forced pay £16.99 to get into a public park…
Or which the people’s palace is shut down.
Of which the Irish famine memorial is damaged, needing painted.
I don’t believe that the SNP live in Glasgow. Otherwise they’d have done something about it.
World Pipe Band Championships.* fenced off Glasgow Green. It never used to be like that.
We pay our council tax. They can’t get the fountain working.
Glasgow is already dead. The SNP killed it. I’ll never vote for them again. Never in my life.
The town I loved so well. The places I used to go. Closed down and left to rot.
Susan Aitken and the SNP have destroyed it. And destroyed my way of life.
Johnim @17th Aug 2:01pm and Kat @18th Aug 2:05pm
I missed this. Well spotted:
Which means we are invited to accept the notion that the UK Government’s stance on refusing to allow Scotland another referendum on independence remains unchanged – even though poor old Pete, bless him, thinks it means the opposite.
Pete’s only out by by 180 degrees, though; so pretty accurate for him.
Of course, there’s always the remote possibility that Wishart might have been referring to the break-dancing skills of UK government ministers.
Hard to tell what he means by what he writes.
Also, I’ve heard that Wishart thinks it’s impossible to square a square or circle a circle or parallelogram a parallelogram or…
It seems that geometry is not Pete’s strong-point or, for that matter, navigation. He’s certainly proven himself incapable of navigating Scotland toward independence.
It may well be that Wishart really does support independence for Scotland and he’s just confused over which direction to take in achieving that objective.
David Hannah – It’s called “managed decline”. I remember back in the 80’s and 90’s Glasgow looked just about as good as Edinburgh; there really wasn’t much difference but it has declined unbelievably in the last 20-years, the last 10-years especially.
Anthem.
The Malvinas Islands weren’t that important to the English at one point, now with oil and gas in the waters around them and god only knows which and how many military flights from whatever countries arrive and depart from them its a different story.
“Between 1966 and 1968, the UK government had been engaged in secret negotiations with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falklands.
The BBC revealed in the late 1990s that the two countries signed an agreement in 1968 stating the UK “will recognise Argentina’s sovereignty over the Islands from a date to be agreed” while “duly taking into account the interests of the population of the Islands”.
During the Cabinet meeting of 24 September 1968, ministers privately noted that the Falkland Islands were “no longer of any strategic or commercial value to us”, and worried that the UK government would soon be required to provide “budgetary aid” to the territory.
Ministers also anticipated the threat of military conflict with Argentina over the Falklands, noting that “we can no longer defend the Falkland Islands, except by a force ridiculously large in relation to the population and our resources”.”
Its also worth noting that nuclear weapons and nuclear depth charges were taken to the Malvinas Island by England during the conflict in 1982.
David Hannah.
Yeah Glasgow is in right state, Sauchiehall street is like a boarded up ghost town with homeless folk sleeping everywhere, I recall in 2014 (Labour ran the council) that the police would physically round up (roughly) homeless folk and chase them from the doorways because the bloody XX Commonwealth Games were coming to the city, at the same time many homeless buildings such as Peter McCann House were closed and the homeless were given a f*ckin bus ticket to ride around on the night buses.
Almost a decade later and the city is a run down shithole, as Aitken attempts to cover this up with events such as the UCI and Pipe Band Championships. I never thought the SNP would be as bad as a Labour held GCC but they are, one wonders if Aitken and her fellow SNP councillor Jacqueline McLaren, the latter now Glasgow’s Lord Provost, are still being chauffeured around in the Bentley that they used for a while.
I’m tempted to a video vlog about it for youtube. I might have to.
Susan Aitken should hang her head in shame. So should Allison Thewlis.
£14 million on the cycling. And they couldn’t clean up the city. Manky bastards the two of them.
I might just have to interview the homeless myself. Want a job? Want a hostel to stay in while you save?
Here’s a jet blaster. He’s a pot of paint.
Glasgow belongs to you. Restore your pride in your city and fix it up.
It’s unbelievable what’s going on. And no one can get fucking house.
That’s even worse. No rent controls at all.
The average 1 bedroom flat in Glasgow now £820.
Absolutely sickening what’s going on.
Holyrood has called for Employment Law to be devolved but Labour, (no not the (OIM) Optional Image Mark which the Electoral Commission has called Scottish Labour with regards to London Labour being the real Labour party) said if they get into power that it WON’T be devolved.
“Labour would not devolve employment law to the Scottish Parliament if the party wins the next general election, its deputy leader has said.”
Of course Holyrood is full to the gunnels with useless MSPs who constantly beg towards Westminster, whilst appeasing the foreign country that Westminster resides in.
Alf Baird says:
18 August, 2023 at 5:12 pm
“Postcolonial theory reminds us that a compromised national party elite which ‘becomes part of the racket’ should be anticipated during a peoples quest for independence.”
Alf. I have logged this and respect the opinion. It is probably true.
HOWEVER, it poses the dilemma that if independence were to be secured, power would go to that elite.
That is where I am having problems because I believe and know the current elite to be incompetent and corrupt.
What you have not explained is how to attain independence whilst in the thrall of our imported colonial masters who would simply sustain under a difeerent brand what has gone on before.
If you are suggesting that there has to be a coup of the SNP first, then I am with you.
If you are suggesting that we should vote ALBA, then I am with you.
But the only way of toppling the Sturgeonistas is probably, and ironically, through the ballot box and a set of disastrous results in an election.
The reason for raising this is that the Re and others have put forward pragmatic solutions to setting the stage for another referendum but not, how that would be won, and how on earth would we deal with the aftermath of Massey Fergusons in a supposedly independent Scotland.
David Hannah.
They are such a bunch of dirty b*stards at the GCC that the guy who was/is feeding the homeless under the Hielanmans Umbrella, aka Central Station Bridge at Argyle street was threatened that his van Could be seized because it doesn’t meet LEZ conditions.
The b*stards at Tammany Hall all of them, don’t give a toss about the city or its people, if they did it wouldn’t be in the state its in. I fully expect Aitken and McLaren to roll out the tried and tested shite of redesigning George Square to take Glasweigans minds off the state the city’s in.
Anthem
The accession rules have been changed. No veto. It is a qualified majority now. From memory its a double thing, something like more than half the countries provided they ammount 2/3 the EU population is enough.
You would need more than Spain to vote against now to stop a new country.
Also vote was thought to be going to vote against Croatia but if I remember they only abstained.
The above is all from memory so best check.
How strange that RoS wants the Falkland Islands handed over to Argentina.
Alert readers might expect all pro-Indy posters to wish fervently for the Falkland Islands to be independent. After all, what an exemplar for Scotland that would be; a sea-girt self-governing nation, independent and prosperous from the resources of its surrounding seas.
But naw. Get them handed over to Argentina, where speakers of a foreign language, 1900 km distant, will tell them what to do.
How very strange.
Anthem
The Malvinas are on the Argentinian Continental Shelf so are only entitled to a 12 mile limit.
“watchdogs of colonialism”
Back in the day, it used to be “lickspittle running dogs of capitalism”.
5 words down to 3, showing the reducing attention span and forced brevity of the texting generation.
But as an animal lover myself (please, no jokes), why does it always have to be dogs?
John Main @ 19.19
Now, there’s an interesting thought, originally discovered by a French Navigator I believe,later occupied by Argentina, presently British by choice, what would “post colonial theory suggest their “ain mither tongue” may be when it is introduced.
@David Hannah/Republicofscotland –
The current state of Glasgow can be traced back directly to the masterplan drawn up in the mid-80s. The city centre would be gentrified, cafe culture would be encouraged, tourists would come in their millions, there had to be plenty of hotel beds available and the guests would expect fine dining and an elite shopping experience etc etc.
Remember the Garden Festival, and then the whole Year of Culture pish? The rammies between Jim Kelman, Alasdair Gray (Workers’ City) and folk like Ruth Wishart? (She called the former ‘saloon-bar Trotskyists and a lot of people have never forgiven her for that).
Maybe it worked! Perhaps the shops and hotels and restaurants have prospered like never before? Who knows? But has it had any trickle-down effect on the Glaswegians who are made to feel excluded?
It’s like when you were wee and your Mum had ‘the good room’. We weren’t allowed in there. The sofa was never used unless we had guests (in-laws were classed as guests, we didn’t see much of them). The nice curtains were kept drawn so that the sunlight didn’t discolour the carpet. Even the cat wasn’t allowed in there.
That’s what Glasgow reminds me of now, and that’s how it was planned – a big ‘good room’, up Suchie, doon Buchie an alang Argyle and the rest of the city i.e. where Glaswegians actually live, can look after itself.
‘People Make Glasgow’, aye, especially the ones who have money to burn.
We’ve come a long way from ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’. Or have we? Feels like the same old same old.
Weekend before last I met with friends in a Merchant City pub for a few drinks. It ended up being an impromptu college reunion. Must’ve been about 15-20 of us. If we hadn’t still been there at 10pm the place would’ve been dead. And that was on the first Saturday on the month when folk should have a bit to spend.
Mind you, a pint of cider was £5.60. My lass asked me to get her a ‘French Martini’. That was a tenner. I’m assured these prices are quite normal for that part of town.
So far as blame goes, how far back would we have to go? Pat Lally? Further?
Or is it all the Tories fault?
Or is it Alba’s?!
😉
SVEN
Technically I believe they are self Governing except for Defense and Foreign Policy.
They can remain however ‘British’ that is for as long as they like.
But under UNCLOS rules, because they reside on the Argentine Continental Shelf they are either treated as an enclave of another country or if going full independent, too small to have their own Continental Shelf.
Either way, 12 mile limit = little UK interest in retaining them.
Chic.mcgregor @ 19.52
Thanks for that info, Chic.
I was in a wine bar in Prague recently and a group of Danish tourists made it their local for their visit staying at the nearby hotel on the corner.
They got talking with some Czechs and were effusing about the wine bar and how wonderful it was to be able to go there and socialize. Due to the prices being affordable like they used to be at home.
They said at home it was prohibitively expensive and they would never be able to to do what they were doing in Prague. It was like marvelous to them.
This is what is really all about. Making it so expensive you cannot socialize. That is what the goal is.
(Make no mistake Prague especially will go exactly the same way.)
Ian Brotherhood.
Council corruption is endemic around the globe, even more so in colonial setting as Glasgow and Scotland are.
The city fathers have just about always lined their own pockets first and foremost, much of Glasgow’s old excellent building were demolished (Charing Cross for instance grand Hotel, St Enoch Hotel etc) so that a profit could be made, what other city has a ruddy great ugly motorway built through it heart, or has seen ugly Corbusier styled glass shopping centres such as (St Enoch centre) built at the expense of fabulous building being torn down.
When I was much younger there were beautiful old styled public toilets all over the city with free drinking fountains on many corners and parks, they have all but gone, as have many of the public baths, and if it wasn’t for Andrew Carnegie, we probably wouldn’t have as many libraries (open ones that is) as there are.
Who’s to blame you ask, in my opinion its countless city councillors lining their own pockets first and foremost in cahoots with businessmen over the centuries.
Our country is being led by fools and carpet baggers. The only way out of this is to make sure every SNP unionist is removed and start again. This is going to take at least 15 years.
The question is, can anyone be bothered. I feel like Scotland is simply not worthy of independence. Not because of people like us. But because of the brainwashed majority who just let bad things happen to them. Then blame the bad things on themselves for being inferior to the English.
Scots have now turned against themselves. It seems to be a pattern repeated over a 1000 years.
Viscount Ennui @ 6:58 pm
“That is where I am having problems because I believe and know the current elite to be incompetent and corrupt.”
Colonies are generally run by a ‘mediocre meritocracy’ and this is not merely just the political class but throughout most institutions, reflecting the ‘narrow stream’ from which the elite is drawn.
Assuming via some accident the SNP were to secure independence, it might be expected that little would change and the economic plunder would continue, more or less. Indeed this has been their ‘policy’: keep the pound, monarchy, business as per, not much change etc.
However, as the established national party chooses ‘neutrality’ (i.e. status quo, continuity) it is more likely that a new national party(s) will be necessary to secure independence. This is the reason new national parties are created.
Corruption does not vanish post independence, it will still be with us in some shape or form, as it is in all countries. The transition process for Scotland will also be interesting given the close proximity of the ‘mother country’, extent of cultural assimilation, economic domination, and the large number of ‘bad actors’.
Inequality in a colonial society is largely due to cultural and linguistic domination which means that native culture must come to the fore (‘self-recovery’) post independence in order to properly address this aspect. This is another of the areas the SNP is unlikely to fix, were it to secure independence.
Which means two key areas to focus on were Scotland to become independent are (a) ending the colonial plunder and (b) ending colonial assimilation processes and with that the cultural domination which facilitates exploitation.
Why can I buy a soft drink or a hard drink in a supermarket for pennies on the pound for what I pay in a pub where I can meet and talk with people.
How much is lukewarm measly serving of coke in a pub versus a chilled mega litre bottle in a supermarket. Same for beer, wine, every pub beverage.
Pubs were hubs. And the don’t like that.
You think of the tens (and tens) of thousands of pubs up an down the country that have been forced to close, each an ‘adult social centre’ for their community, priced and taxed out the game while supermarkets get to give it away, because no one goes there to socialize, to knit, to be a community.
Pubs were the heart of communities and that is why they hate them.
Lets, get some “colonial” bullshit over here, right now.
The Falkland islands were colonised by the Brits. There were no indigineous people thereto.
The islands had a few people, one group of fishermen from St Malo (Maloein or Malvinas, depending on your language), each group of which were probably unaware of the other.
There were two families of Gaoupos, both of whom had been hired by an American entrepreneur to look after his cattle. He had promised to pay them in silver (their country’s name derives from the abundance of that wealth) but he reneged on the deal and paid the in scrip which could only be transacted in his Company store.
They got pissed off and did a deal with a visiting HM Warship and asked to be taken back to Argentina.
No force or co-ertion was involved.
The UN General Council is against “colonialism”. That’s in their DNA. Of course they hate the fact that the Falklands (or what ever anyone wants to call them) belong to the UK. That’s just the way it is.
Britain was never “colonialised”. Not by the Normans or the Romans or the Noggies. Not even by the swarthies sitting on the puffy bits of rubber boats nowadays.
We are aa Jock Tamson’s bairns, most of us, onyhoo.
Ebenezer Scroggie says:
18 August, 2023 at 8:57 pm
Lets, get some “colonial” bullshit over here, right now.
Fucking state of you.
Clown
@IB 7.46: the GF and YoC were remarketing bullshit based on “I ‘Heart’ NY”, concentrating on the Square Mile of Culture crapola, weren’t they?
Café culture really depends on a strong retail base but Amazon (which bribed its way to creating an almost tax-free business model everywhere it trades) has ensured that most businesses have been placed in a position where they simply can’t compete in the long term and this has accelerated since lockdown.
Da Yoof don’t care because it’s all so convenient, like the cashless society and all those lovely apps. which track everything they do. No nasty pathogenic bugs and viruses on digital currency, innit? And we don’t need shops ‘cos we can send cheap, shoddy goods back to ASOS, etc. if they don’t fit or appeal to us.
All banks have been withdrawing access to their branches and have been encouraging us to do on-line, cashless banking where access to human contact is reduced, when they can claim there is no desire for such services.
As a revolutionary act, I intend to demand a new cheque-book from my bank next week. I can hear the excuses already. And, no doubt, in the interests of inclusion, old Luddite folk like me can just GTF (my opinion as an ageing Jock honky matters to the banks, NOT!).
Once cash is dead and we move towards a central digital bank and a digital ID, everything we do will be trackable and access to our income can stopped at the flick of a switch should we commit any poltical Wrongthink or spend too much on fags, booze or sugary drinks (let The Rev take note).
Already creepy Trudeau in Canada didn’t even wait for a CDB to punish Canadian truckers for their opposition to his lockdown and mandatory vaccines: he simply told the banks to shut their accounts.
Once we’re in this digital trap, we’re screwed, and almost no MP or MSP, (including Alba’s) has said a word about it.
We don’t have long to wake up, folks. Our independence pales into insignificance compared to that of the rest of the world as the Globalists/WEF move in for the kill.
Have a nice day.
Alf
Indeed corruption will not vanish with Scottish independence.
However it will be far easier to control, detect and minimise.
That is not because of any greater detection acumen, or superior ideology or superior cultural prediction but simply because Scotland is a country of 5.5 million people versus the UK 67 million.
It is many decades ago now that I read an article from Herman Kahn, the founder of the Hudson Institute, where he laid out how in his view the ideal size for a country was around 5 million people.
Since then there have been many studies saying pretty much the same thing.
The Welsh Assembly commissioned one such a few years ago.
The phenomena has even been given its own acronym – SANs.
Smallness confers many advantages, speed of adaption to change being a key one.
However specifically on the subject of corruption.
Corruption, the bulk of it at least, relies on mainly two things.
First bureaucratic obfuscation. A suitably large miasma of bureaucratic complexity is a distinct advantage when it comes to aiding the corrupt. Loopholes abound and ordinary folk are mesmerised by an impenetrable morass which is only really amenable to highly paid legal teams and accountants to exploit for their patrons.
Bureaucracy is built by the legislature and civil service. To justify their existence/salary they feel the need to produce a new piece of crap. The bigger the country, the bigger the legislature and civil service, the more crap they produce. Easily getting to critical mass for full on corruption practices.
Second, the larger the country, the more people will populate that corrupt class. Making it far easier for them to avoid detection by hiding, covering and or finger pointing/passing the buck and the strain put on what would still be one detecting agency means their relative success is bound to be far less. Indeed beyond a certain size, they seem to almost give up.
In a small country, both of those are greatly reduced making the task of those who fight the corruption much easier and much more successful.
Sorry I’m going to have to go and listen to Nick Abbot but here is one link on SANs
link to weforum.org
Alf Baird says:
18 August, 2023 at 8:48 pm
“Which means two key areas to focus on were Scotland to become independent are (a) ending the colonial plunder and (b) ending colonial assimilation processes and with that the cultural domination which facilitates exploitation.”
Good post and much appreciated.
I disagree.
The focus must be on wresting control first from those who have betrayed us because, in their hands, the levers of colonial oppression will remain.
In other words, we have to destroy the SNP to gain independence.
Blunt but true.
Ferget the Australian clown’s crap.
Scotland was never, ever, taken overned as some kind of colony.
That simply did not happen, in Reality.
The movie was bullshit. Nothing else than fabulous ticket sales, with added profit of popcorn.
John Main says:
18 August, 2023 at 7:25 am
“Hmmm.
I see where you are coming from – make Scotland into a worse shithole than the shitholes the immigrants are coming from and the flow will stop.”
I fail to see how carefully planned Indy protests and a strategically applied Gandhi style practice of’Satyagraha’ (non-violent, non-cooperation) would reduce Scotland to any more a ‘shithole’ than it presently is under the current wokey/SNP government.
The important thing is favourable publicity. More effort and planning needed here (especially to avoid events like the recent technologically disappointing Salvo announcement – But lessons learned).
@Tinto Chiel (10.12) –
You have been sounding the alarm on CBDC longer than most.
For the benefit of those who have no idea where the idea came from and why it’s so appalling, this blog features a jaw-dropping lecture by German economist Richard Werner.
We’ve been well warned.
link to offtopicscotland.com
I wonder how big the branch meetings are in his area. In mine there has not been more than 8 people attending in the last 3 years.
I am astonished how they still believe their own propaganda. it as bad as the BBC
“Tinto Chiel says:
18 August, 2023 at 10:12 pm
As a revolutionary act, I intend to demand a new cheque-book from my bank next week.”
I still have one. The bank still automatically sends a replacement once the current one gets 3/4 through or thereabouts.
@ Ian B: “We’ve been well warned.”
Yes but I doubt many people are listening, frankly, me old haricot. A lot of younger folk are more concerned about their social media profiles, virtue signalling, pronouns und so weiter and the wrinklies about mainstream soaps and Gogglebox to see the writing on the wall. Most folk are basically honest so they simply can’t envisage the dreadful truth about e.g. JFK, 9/11 and The War on Terror and its consequences, just for starters.
As George Bush Senior was once reputedly overheard to say: “If they knew what we’d done, we’d be hanging from lamp-posts”.
“I still have one. The bank still automatically sends a replacement once the current one gets 3/4 through or thereabouts.”
Perhaps in your case: my bank hasn’t automatically resupplied for ages. They shut down the always-busy branch in my home town because the landlord “hadn’t extended the lease”. The premises are still empty.
Viscount Ennui @ 10:43 pm
As I said: “it is more likely that a new national party(s) will be necessary to secure independence.”
When James the Sixth rode South, to what became known as Scotland and the United Kingdom, it was never a colonoliasation.
Neither one of us colonisied were every going to be subjugated again.
We ‘invaded’ them.
I see Twitter, now called X. Is to remove the blocking feature.
How will Pete Wishart be able to avoid his constituents perfectly reasonable and valid questions now from Albists on his Indy strategy?
He must be having night sweats.
Pete Wishart hates freedom doesn’t he? He’s a freedom hater. Like the rest of the SNP.
I think the Alba Party should offer Elon Musk a membership.
It’ll annoy the freedom of speech haters in the SNP.
For some reason, in my heid, I pronounce colony to rhyme with baloney.
Maybes time to start saying it out loud like that too.
Why do SNP-voting most apes open bananas down from the ‘top’ end, while most other apes do the opposite?
We must be told!
Cleverer monkeys do it the other way around.
Go to Corstorphine and watch. They really do way have a way than most of us do of dealing with a banana. Sadly, we can’t vote for any one of them.
It’s more fun than watching the animals who have opposing thumbs in the fugly building which used to be a good brewery at the foot of the Canongate.
Tinto Chiel
A truly revolutionary act will be to start writing cheques for all your High Street and supermarket purchases.
After all, a cheque book is no more than some pre-printed standard format pieces of paper. Any piece of paper you write from scratch containing the necessary information is equally valid. It doesn’t even have to be paper: cheques have been written on hardboard, plywood, and even a cow.
My guess is that you can wave your new cheque book as much as you like, but few will accept a cheque as payment.
Report on here how you get on.
Scroggie. Still no comment about a weak little England losing Gibraltar, or are you just accepting that?
Humza Yousaf now confirmed as a liar as well as a racist.
link to archive.is
“Mr Yousaf’s claims he had not heard from his former party leader about electoral proposals during an Edinburgh Festival Fringe appearance.”
“Mr Salmond said he first wrote to the First Minister on May 13 before making contact privately through his staff to request a meeting.”
chic.mcgregor says:
18 August, 2023 at 10:14 pm
Alf
Indeed corruption will not vanish with Scottish independence.
However it will be far easier to control, detect and minimise.
That is not because of any greater detection acumen, or superior ideology or superior cultural prediction but simply because Scotland is a country of 5.5 million people versus the UK 67 m
Scotland’s Corruption has a huge partner in crime in Unionism, which is utterly terrified by the prospect of a flourishing Scotland.
Get rid of one, and it will serve as a crippling body blow to the other.
Get rid of both, and watch our nation thrive.
Scotland’s corruption will then be normalised to be driven by ordinary greed, not the more insidious and orchestrated subversion, indoctrination and colonial exploitation which the Union routinely suffers upon Scotland.
“Drop in people buying TV licences ‘disappointing but not surprising’ – minister”
link to archive.is
The BBC was discredited long before the story at RTE broke. And licence figures started dropping massively after the lies and deceptions broadcast about Scottish independence and Brexit.
“Former Covid medical officer Van-Tam takes role at vaccine maker Moderna”
link to archive.is
Surprise! Surprise!
Ebenezer Scroggie says:
18 August, 2023 at 11:29 pm
“When James the Sixth rode South, to what became known as Scotland and the United Kingdom, it was never a colonoliasation.”
Condidering he walked into a ‘honey trap’ with all his Scot’s ‘courtiers’and the later anglicised Stuarts used their Royal position to infiltrate the Scot’s Parliament with their placemen (whit’s new?) it was downright colonisation. As Henry Vll had assured the English over concerns over an earlier union issue, “The greater will attract the lesser.”
The Elizabethan group succeeded in colonial conquest where the Plantagenets had failed.
Ian B
You’ll recall that the Glasgow ” City of Culture ” & ” Glasgow Smiles Better ” campaigns were hailed as great successes . To some degree , rightly .
The idea of re-calibrating the city’s image from – crudely – No Mean hard-as-fuck City cliche to ” Check out those fabulous Rennie Mackintosh works ( the loss of his GSA is an architectural/aesthetic tragedy , a wound that won’t heal ) then have a cappuccino in our Continental – aspiring ” Cafe Culture ” ( sorry about the pissing rain ) ” – was a good one .
Too bad it left out one crucial ingredient . Yea , those citizens who allegedly ” smiled better ” .
Things never really improved for them . They got ” Ice Cream Wars ” , massive increases in heroin/morphine n all their synthetic surrogates’ use , motorways ploughed through their beloved public spaces ( Pollok Estate was one of my mates n I’s favourite places for , let’s say , * recreational activities * and ongoing degradation of the ” New Gold Dream ” Post-War ” housing Schemes accelerated by Thatcherite socio/political Neo Brutalism .
The road from the Burrell Collection to the Murrell Connection has been paved with bad intentions .
To think about how Alex Salmond’s SNP was able to shift the city’s instinctive , decades long support for Labour to a sense that things could REALLY improve with an actual Scottish Party in Government and the vision of a prosperous , genuinely caring , forward-looking Independent country inspiring hope for the future has been obliterated by the stumbling , bumbling idiocy and ideological fuckery of the Sturgeon-poisoned SNP is to gasp in horror and rage at the scale of the treachery .
@ Tinto 10.12 pm
Excellent post , mon brave ; yip , the auld Cog Diss presents a formidable defence against * unpleasant * truths . One reason why the catch-all slur of ” Conspiracy Theory ” is the go-to response of every lying , manipulating , blood-sucking socially/politically prominent ratbag in our wunnerful Demuckracies .
The Stuarts took over from the Tudors; and the German crowd took over from them. And so it goes on.
Thank gawd those Californian twits are out of the picture. Bastard and cunt, quite literally.
The real EBENEZER SCROGGIE
Scroggie was a vintner and corn merchant in Edinburgh who won the first whisky supply contract for the Royal Navy and the catering contract for the visit of George IV to Edninburgh in 1822, the first British monarch to visit the city since the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Through his mother, Scroggie was the great-nephew of the 18th century political economist and philosopher Adam Smith. In his diaries, Charles Dickens states that the Scrooge character of his 1843 novel “A Christmas Carol” stemmed from Scroggie’s grave marker which he saw on an evening walk in the Canongate Churchyard in 1841. Dickens, however mistook the inscription of “meal man” (corn merchant) for “mean man” and centered his story around the miserly character.
Much more interesting character than the flakey fake posting here.
Regarding those islands in the South Atlantic, whom might you consider has the greater claim?
#/media/Archivo:Falklands,_Campaign,_(Distances_to_bases)_1982_(es).png)
Likewise Gibraltar in relation to Spain and England.
All those dying embers of imperial delusion fogging the British mind.
Ebenezer Scroggie @ 10:46 pm
“Scotland was never, ever, taken overned as some kind of colony.”
You have to consider how colonialism ‘works, Ebenezer.
Political theory tells us that the way a people vote is determined by their ‘values’; our values inform us what is significant and what is not and is influenced by our ‘environmental conditioning’.
Postcolonial theory tells us that colonialism results in a ‘psychological condition’, i.e. a ‘colonial mindset’. Some refer to this condition for Scots as ‘the Scottish Cultural Cringe’, however it is also known as ‘Internalized Racism’, or ‘Appropriated Racial Oppression’.
Postcolonial theory also tells us that, in a colonial society, it is the values of the colonizer that are sovereign; and included among these values is ‘the crushing of the colonized’.
This means the reason why a colonized people may reject their own liberation is because they are suffering from the psychological effects of colonial oppression, giving them a ‘dependency complex’.
Alf – “This means the reason why a colonized people may reject their own liberation is because they are suffering from the psychological effects of colonial oppression, giving them a ‘dependency complex’.”
The other alternative explanation is that we are all looking at the performance of our MSP’s and we are saying to each other: “This is crap, isn’t it?”
Alf Baird @9:36am
I’ve posted this text written by J. Derrick McClure, author of Scots and Its Literature, in a comment I made previously on a different thread. But I think it’s worth repeating.
From what I understand about colonialism from reading your book, Doun-Hauden, you’re saying that the decolonisation process is about recalibrating the psychological condition of colonised minds to a more ‘normal’ state.
This being the case, it would seem that the attainment of Scottish independence is as much a psychological battle, within the minds of Scots, as it is political or constitutional.
Well Captain Yossarian our MPS’s are indeed crap. You got that right.
If ever there was a group of individuals suffering from a dependency complex it is our MSPs – especially the SNP who are in thrall to their colonial Westminster masters.
Captain Yossarian says: “The other alternative explanation is that we are all looking at the performance of our MSP’s and we are saying to each other: “This is crap, isn’t it?”
Or put another way, in colloquial terms, fuck voting for that lot.
I was reading on Unherd about life in Singapore, a truly post-colonial country.
Arguably not a nation though, due to the ethnic groupings that happily co-exist.
Anyhoo, Singapore has an enviable quality of life for its citizens, despite having no natural resources to speak of. Its resources are the hard work and educational attainments of its people, and these stem from the universal commitment of its people to bettering themselves.
Its health system is widely ranked as one of the finest in the world, and was originally designed with reference to our own NHS. Singapore’s health care system designer set out to do the polar opposite of what we do, as he could clearly see how our NHS was destined to end up as the cripplingly expensive clusterfuck delivering third-world outcomes we all see today.
And that brings me to my point. Whether independent or not, Scotland won’t be successful until a number of our sacred cows are slaughtered. If we can’t or won’t butcher them, then managed decline is our lot.
Breeks
Classic example of Big Corruption
The same old Red Tory Blue Tory tag team act they pulled with Tory Plan B (Blair)
The UR cabal which really runs the UK are more than happy to put Starmer in, he is one of them. Plus the Red Tories can usefully get away with reforms the Blue Tories would struggle with.
In Blair’s case it was Union reform, workers rights, Clause 28.
Tory plan C’s main job will be to sell off the NHS.
You only need to take a look at the amount of money key Labour figures are receiving in donations from those with a vested interest in private health care.
Streeting has at every opportunity been punting ‘We need to use more private health care companies’ – before he has even got in.
The NHS is GONE as soon as they get in.
Check the EveryDoctor NHS Privatisation Map.
everydoctor.org.uk/…/privatisation-and-mps…/
@TURABDIN 8:54
If geographical distance is your metric, then like I posted yesterday, the obvious owners of the Falkland Islands are the Falkland Islanders themselves.
This being a pro-Indy site, then it should be the automatic case that posters like yourself should be calling for Falkland Islands Independence.
The fact that you and others constantly call instead for colonialist assimilation into the Argentine colonial empire (an entirely artificial country founded via guns, flu and syphilis on the ruins of ancient indigenous Amerindian nations) tells the alert readers your trouble-stirring true intentions.
chic.mcgregor
For most of us, the cost of our end of life health care represents by far the biggest call each of us makes on the NHS.
Demographics means that the ever increasing sums needed for the ever increasing non-productive geriatric proportion of the population can’t be met from the taxes of the shrinking pool of indigenous younger productive workers.
So the only solution is to import more workers. But then we run up against the problem that these workers are reluctant to pay eye-watering levels of tax to keep our indigenous geriatrics comfortable.
And why should they? Immigrants have their own grandparents to pay for.
Every serious politician sees that this circle can’t be squared. The day we voters are prepared to get serious too, we will get politicians who will tell us the uncomfortable truth.
The problem that I see is that the banking crash doubled our National debt from 1Trillion to 2Trillion. 1Trillion was bad enough but new hospitals could still be built and all the rest of it, whilst still servicing the debt. Once you double that at short notice, that becomes impossible to do. By the way, I understand that oil revenues, right back to the 1980’s, total about 300Billion and Fred Goodwin and Co more tripled that within a fortnight and so it’s goodnight Vienna as they say and there are no magic solutions to this.
Very interesting replies to this tweet.
Someone last night (perhaps in the same thread) mentioned that a private prosecution of alphabetty perjurers could only be raised by Alex Salmond himself and that would require him ‘asking permission’ of the Lord Advocate.
They seem to have covered all the bases, don’t they?
Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this develops.
link to twitter.com
John Main @ 11:10 am
“Singapore has an enviable quality of life for its citizens”
Aye, tho I suspect it may have passed you by that this is largely based on two fundamentals: independence and a national maritime (i.e. trade) policy.
After studying, teaching and advising on maritime transport policy globally for the last 50 years, it seems obvious to me that Scotland could easily at least double its current constrained level of international trade after independence. Singapore and most other former colonies did a lot better than that after they were no longer forced only to serve the imperial oppressors narrow self interest.
We only need look across the Irish Sea. Scotland has no direct ferry service to the continent, whilst Ireland has a dozen or more. Ireland’s publicly owned ports have had €billions invested in them; meantime the Tories sold Scotland’s cityports in 1991/2 to offshore equity funds resulting in no investment in new port infrastructure, just profit extraction. No new ports = constrained shipping/trade.
Wee Singapore today handles more trade by value than its former imperial ‘mother country’, now empire rump, does. One of the first things Singaporeans did was develop their port, as did most other ex colonies, Ireland included, and re-orientated the bulk of their trade activity away from the British colonial noose.
That’s what liberation does, it enables a people and nation to develop by themselves, for themselves, and to internationalize themselves, to become part of the global game. But if colonialism continues, the exploited colonized people and territory will remain under-developed, as Scots clearly are and have been for a very long time, ‘a people’ and culture ultimately perishing.
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
Alf,
Do you genuinely believe that the SNumPties could be trusted to own and run a ferry service?
They were gifted one, subbed out to some Greek pricks who called themselves Half-Fast or somesuch, and they snuffed it.
Ferfuxake, they can’t be trusted to work a whelk stall at Portybelly!
Hopefully this link comes out better
everydoctor.org.uk/campaigns/privatisation-and-mps-interests/
Singapore and Taiwan have equally unique relationships with their paths to independence.
Singapore did not want independence but was turfed out by Malaysia. The parting row from what I have read was that Singapore did not want to share its greater wealth with the poorer mainland areas.
Taiwan, perhaps many do not realise, while clearly being defacto independent, do not regard themselves so technically. They believe the rest of China belongs to them.
Northcode @ 10:15 am
“it would seem that the attainment of Scottish independence is as much a psychological battle, within the minds of Scots, as it is political or constitutional.”
Yes Northcode, there is little doubt that colonial oppression leads to a people having a ‘colonial mindset’, which is a psychological condition resulting from colonialism. The only remedy for this condition is ‘liberation’ which is of course ‘liberation of the mind’ or as Memmi put it, ‘self-recovery’. Culture and language are central features.
Few of our ‘nationalist’ leaders know or understand this, yet, far less have a strategy to counter it.
Ebenezer Scroggie @ 1:01 pm
“they snuffed it”
I had a close involvement in the delivery of the Superfast ferry service between Rosyth-Zeebrugge, which commenced on May 17 2002 using two brand new state of the art 30-knot ferries each costing €100m.
The service ended several years later (after reaching its projected traffic levels) in large part because the private offshore equity fund owned port on the Forth (1) kept raising its port charges and (2) refused to invest in expanding the terminal area to cater for growth in freight traffic and new cars/vehicles.
There were no similar problems at the Zeebrugge end where the state is ultimate owner of the port and is more focused on growing trade through ensuring more competitive port charges and investing in terminals, rather than exploiting shipping lines.
Hence it was essentially what passes for a highly irregular UK port ‘policy’ (i.e. selling-off state ports to profit seeking offshore equity funds who also self-regulate estuaries as monopoly private port ‘authorities’) that chased the Superfast service away, and others since.
The UK Government and its rather extreme privatisation model was therefore to blame.
link to tandfonline.com
Excellent post again Stu!!
Cant help thinking wee pishart has been caught in a honey trap with his pants down and his brit nat handlers are now pulling his strings!
Or he is addicted to the gravy.
either way, it is beginning to dawn on him and the other comfy crew that their names will be historically linked to national betrayal!
now theres a lagacy they dont want!
Trying to post this link for chic.mcgregor: link to everydoctor.org.uk
And just in case that link for Chic didn’t work, this will: link to archive.is
Stoker
Thanks. first link works fine
Second one takes you t a non active map.
My last link works if folk highlight, rightclick and select goto
@stoker
I see Lucy Letby’s former employer is on that list, wonder if that helps explain why a fragile young nurse got all the blame for their own harvesting operations*, cover ups, and apparent absence of pts counselling for their staff (particularly in the premature deliveries unit, FFS!)
*of course not, but the apparent absence of post mortems on people dying in hospital (coupled with the absolute scandal of coughid) demonstrates the ease with which such horrors can occur