Under his hat
Posted on
April 09, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
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A tall tale
Wee Books
Video
Probably a robbery
Transphobia
Are the people in the rest of the UK beginning to get as angry as us? Are eyes slowly opening?
Brilliant as usual, your holiday did you good – got him in ONE. What else has he conveniently got rid before taking-up position of PM?
Auld Rock
Going to need a bigger hat……
I’ve just been prevented from posting this to facebook on the grounds that it could be spam?
Who’s at work here?
Made me laugh out loud. I’ve a feeling he might need that oversized Panama hat, I’m sure there is more hidden under it.
Will the elitist colonials who have feasted on the sweat of the masses for so long finally be consigned to the annals of history where they belong.
Can India, South Africa, Nigeria, America, Ireland, Scotland …….. To name but a few finally see the end of this disgusting creed.
Robert Roddick says:
9 April, 2016 at 7:44 am
I’ve just been prevented from posting this to facebook on the grounds that it could be spam?
Who’s at work here?
Copy and paste mate, job done 😉
An awful lot of folk vote for parties which encourage this sort of thing.Greed and selfishness.
Robert Roddick says:
9 April, 2016 at 7:44 am
I’ve just been prevented from posting this to facebook on the grounds that it could be spam?
Who’s at work here?
Copy and paste mate, job done
😉
Cameron has obviously pissed off somebody and is now being thrown to the wolves.
It also makes me wonder who is really being hidden from this so smokescreen using yesterday’s man.
@Robert Roddick
I’ve been blocked too. Facebook trying to save his ass?
Great cartoon Chris – so much better than last weeks
( ducks!)
Meanwhile, in his Scotland region, BBC led red and blue tory fury at no 50% rate. The rich and yoons are different from us.
The tax evader wants to sanction the vulnerable and starve them.
The HS2 and Hinkley Point the Tory slush fund. The biggest waste of public money. The deficit. £95Billion (double it). Borrowed.
The Tories have not protected the NHS or reduced the debt.
The Unionists want Scotland to pay more tax for Westminster corruption. Trident/illegal wars, tax evasion, banking fraud. Cost Scotland over £10Billion a year.
Vote SNP. Vote for Independence.
Westminster is full of liars, fraudsters, tax evaders, killers and child molesters. Cameron/Osbourne pay no tax but tax the Oil sector at 60/80%. Costing thousands of jobs in Scotland.
Phil Boswell was being hounded for not declaring accounts for a company legitimately dissolved in 2011.
Cameron was trying to over up his tax affairs and calling Scotland ‘bankrupt’. Claiming Scotland was £20Billion in the red when he caused it. Scotland lost over £4Billion a year for five years because of the Tory policies. £4Billion a year in debt repayments Scotland didn’t borrow or spend, £1Billion on Trident/illegal wars, £1Billion could have been saved with a tax on ‘loss leading’ drink, £4Billion in lost Oil revenues/jobs and £3Billion? in tax evasion. = £13Billion which could have been better spent.
Osbourne has just spent another £1/2Billion of Scottish taxpayers money on Trident, against the majority wishes and the public interest. £170Billion an appalling waste of money. A CCS project was reneged on twice. CAP payments to Scotland blocked. Access to EU renewable Grants blocked by Westminster indecision.
The ‘Vow’ FFA, Home Rule Federalism was reneged upon for EVEL. The Tory/Unionists are evil.
When can Scotland see ‘Outlander’ on BBC Scotland? Cameron blocked it.
Three weeks to go. 5 May can’t come soon enough. The anticipation. The excitement.
I see there’s rioting UN France over New Labour laws and Corsica have elected an Natonalist government. We’re changing the World people as well as Scotland. Second series of Outlander on TV in the States now, not on Amazon as yet.
How will this latest scandal affect the Tank Commander? My gut feeling is that it won’t make any difference, but perhaps it might make Labour unionists pause before switching Tory, and so give Davidson the honour of recording the Conservatives lowest ever vote share in Scotland?
It also makes the Scottish media look even lamer, for championing the Conservatives recently.
Got the sly toryboy smile spot on Chris. Could the Panamanian isthmus play a small part in the return of Scotland’s sovereignty..
The Conservativd Party require an inordinately large supply of big hats.
Hopefully the rest of the people in the UK will soon waken up to these parasites.
O/T Am I the only person who is not surprised that BBC Scotland did not mentioned that the Edinburgh school closures is a direct result of the Labour / Lib Dem PFI/PPP policy?
Imagine the days of negative headlines if this had happened as a result of SNP policies.
@Croompenstein
Wouldn’t that be nice. Going full circle.
At first glimpse I thought that was a drawing of JR Ewing. Do they still show “Dallas” in Scotland ? God I loved that show, but look at how much misery having oil brought the Ewings week after week … hammered home how bad it is to have oil !
Stumbled across this article on the steel industry by Paul Mason, seems to encapsulate the Tory attitude in a nutshell:
link to medium.com
I see there are cries of resignation and the strategy is to “investigate” if he paid the due tax. The real question is why there was a large investment made outside the uk in the first place, SNP x 2!!!
Hes got a ten gallon hat on a two pint head (ok , i know its a panama)
O/T
The total silence on the Blairite PFI/PPP schools disaster is shocking
Get it out there that Labour/LibDem are resposible.
Radio Scotland BBC is a total disgrace!
[…] Wings Over Scotland Under his hat […]
Spot on Chris and a nice touch with the inclusion of the Panama hat. With the British Virgin Islands also implicated it’s a shame you couldn’t include any reference to them as well. But wait…where would you find…???
It is hard to believe that Scotland voted to allow these people to rule and control our lives, and the lives of our children not yet born.
If we ever vote ‘No’ again in an Independence referendum, then we probably are too ‘stupid’.
No, I don’t think the people of England are angry enough yet. They’re too used to being told who to hate, who to marginalise and who to blame for all their ills by the media. As for those who do see the establishment for what it is? They have a problem.
The votes that count, those marginal seats that decide most elections? They’re filled with folk who think exactly the same way as Cameron. The regions don’t have the option we do. We can get out of this ever rightward, austerity driven madness, soon as enough of us want to.
England has exactly the government it voted for and its going to take something truly massive to turn their electorate away from the likes of Cameron and a still chaotic policy free Labour party that doesn’t give a shit about anyone that doesn’t get them elected.
Bizarrely, I believe the one thing that will encourage progressives throughout these islands, is Scotland dissolving the treaty of parliamentary union. Basically giving the state a huge kick in the haw maws and NOT turning into a Mad Max wasteland the very next day.
In one fell swoop it would damage the establishment’s state machinery and massively cripple the credibility of a media who have force fed them the Tartan (dictator of choice) MacMess narrative for decades. The state and the media would have nowhere to hide and no fallback position. I’m sure the English electorate would have a few pointed questions to ask both their media and their political class at that point.
The man wae the hat iza rat.
#filthylucre
On UsVsth3m there is a sight for sending messages from the greens.
How about ” EVEL wind in Panama “.
Ken and Petra,Y’LL BUST A BLOOD VESSEL, but yir right.
Security alert predicted for central London today. Gives police the opportunity to quietly mistreat protesters at Downing Street while the BBC reports on our brave forces foiling a terrorist attack.
Just saying like….
Great cartoon Chris. It says it all. Posted ok for me to Facebook.
Outlander starts again tomorrow on Amazon Prime Video. Really looking forward to second series.
There are supposed to be big protests outside Downing Street today and smaller ones all over the country. There is one in Glasgow. Will the State Broadcaster show us protesters?
O/t SKY is focusing on the Archbishops father but not father!
Great vision of the zeitgeist Chris.
Looks like Judgement day for Cameron,and the Panama list is quite extensive.
Interesting times for the world waking up to a new direction.
Many thanks to Iceland for starting the ball rolling.
And ….the sun’s coming out….lovely.
The schools falling down require urgent attention from Local Authorities,Scottish Government,UK Government and Police Scotland. Perhaps the latter could contact Mumbai and K alcotta to get guidance on arresting and prosecuting builder cheats.
I particularly mention the UK Government since it was their policy at the time and their branch factory Governments which implemented that policy. Labour and Lib/ dems are a disgrace.
The SNP Government should use all its rescue skills to get these schools open again and have it funded by the Treasury i.e. The responsible agency.
Another Union Dividend says:
O/T Am I the only person who is not surprised that BBC Scotland did not mentioned that the Edinburgh school closures is a direct result of the Labour / Lib Dem PFI/PPP policy?
I noticed this and I hope that the SNP really go on the attack on them for this scandal.Don’t forget it was the Tories who started it.
Rev how about doing an article on PFI/PPP.
Aye our man in ‘Panama’
Good likeness but his nose is too short. 🙂
PS:
I caught a long shot of Sturgeon near the flag pole when BBC shortbread showed a flash of the ceremony at the steel handover. But the Hootsman has a photo of her actually being there.
Offering advice to WM if they need help.
link to archive.is
Mr Gupta said the handover ceremony for the two Scottish works marked “the beginning of a new era for these plants, for Scottish steel and for British steel as a whole”.
‘Scottish steel’!
What’s Outlander?
Interesting! I tried posting the link on FB and got this:
##########################
It looks like a link you’re sharing might be unsafe. If you can, please remove this link:
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Note: The unsafe link might be on the page you’re linking to.
If you can’t remove this link and you still want to share it, please complete the security check below.
(with a Captcha image)
####################################
That means either this page has something dodgy running on it or as has been indicated above, it is being deliberately blocked.
Another Union Dividend 8.42am
Edinburgh schools PFI disaster.
I was in the car and listened to Radio Shortbread paper review when Bill Whiteford said, and I paraphrase, ” we have to be careful not to discuss such an issue at this time in an election campaign”. Aye right, that clearly only applies to their beloved Labour Party. What a utter disgrace, and to think it was one of the BBC’s own journos that broke the story. That guy will get doing from his boss.
Paul D.
It looks like its been deliberately blocked, but for some and not all.
If, like me, you have had run in’s with FB over security previously they tend to over scrutinise whats being posted, so, it could be only those on their agenda are blocked from sharing.
Doesn’t stop saving the snap and referencing WoS for it though.
Great cartoon Chris, hits the nail on the head.
Has no-one noticed apart from the Edinburgh schools balls-up, that Scotland has discovered another massive oil and gas field in the North sea, what a fucking disaster for us.
Also thank the lord for part of that school blowing down in that gale, or we may never have found the defective walls and a far bigger disaster may have happened.
Facebook blocking-77th brigade?
…how did you manage to get that sleekit look in a cartoon? Remarkable skill Chris
The main point of PFI was to hide true government expenditure, pushing it into the future, and so make the short term figures look good so Labour could get re-elected.
But wasnt the secondary point of PFI that while the private sector made profits at the taxpayers expense they would also carry the risks? So presumably the builders are contractually liable to repair and make good the schools. If not then Labour deserve all the kicking going.
Stu seemed to have no trouble in posting this to his Facebook page. Why not share from there to your own if you can’t copy paste it? Just click on Facebook button above
Cameron is hiding something and it will be revealed. Dark forces are working to undermine him. I was unavoidably exposed to TV News yesterday and his spin doctors are everywhere trying to kill this story.
Everything that happns between now and the EU referendum should be judged in terms of how it will affect that vote.
Of course, the real target is the EU. Certain elements want to destroy it.
American troops on a massive scale are being deployed along Russia’s western borders. Pilger said World War Three has already started.
We’re all doomed.
It will be interesting to see if/how Ligger Brillo presents these tax avoidance matters in his Sunday ‘show’.
May be a bit awkward for him!!
Great toon again Chris.
It is every more apparent that we live in a corrupt world, run by elites for elites.
Everything is geared to suit then, not their voters. Since the Tories were elected with a majority they have shown their true colours.Corrupt to the core.
Now others aspire to be the same as the Tories, all the Unionist parties have their level of corruption, not least Labour, who have long ago thrown their core principles out of the window.
It has always been this way, it always will be, unless we, do something about it. Independence being the only way we can free ourselves,that will not be easy, they are like a cancer to Scotland. Fortunately cancer is becoming more curable.
Brilliant Chris!
I’ve seen some great memes on FB too.
One petition for resignation has reached 40k! There is a FB page for the London demo with around 18k on it in 2 days. They set up a group for car shares too.
We will need to try RT for any coverage. Hope the water cannons are still mothballed!
This will damage Zac Goldsmith in the Mayoral race. It has to damage Ruth surely? Nicola has called on her to condemn off shore dealings, because Scotland is introducing internationally recognised high standards to avoid shit like this.
Bad news.
3 sailors missing off Mingulay, rescue in attendance. A fishing boat, I think. Just saw the Sky tickertape. 🙁
I know, I promised myself. On the basis that a scab will never heal until I stop picking at it, I swore (that didn’t take long: Mrs C.)that I’d no longer listen to or watch the mince/guff/ twaddle/ verbal excrement downright lies emanating from the BBC and other Unionist organs of New Rome, the London Town Establishment.
This morning, when I opened WoS and raged at the brilliant Under His Hat Chris Cairns drawing,I succumbed once more and accessed QT on iPlayer.
The advantage of watching it on a PC is that I can fast forward at will.
Anna Soubry is usually Fast Forward material.
However, after the usual tedious Home Counties Brexit/Remain chatter, Panama raised its ugly head.
She was right in there. The best form of defence is attack
Perfectly legal investment arrangements.
The top 1% of earners in the UK paid 28% of taxes collected.
Her Tory Government (that’s yours, Ruth.) plugged loopholes in the system, and collected an additional £2 billion in taxes during the five years of the last Coalition Parliament.( That’s yours too, Willie.)
So a quick calculation on the back of my Ritz Carlton lunchtime menu seems to suggest that Willie and Ruth have a lot of work to do to close the attainment gap.
£2,000,000 in extra taxes from the Filthy Rich Tax Dodgers over 5 years.
Let me see. That’s £400 mill per annum.
Divided between ,say 60 million of us, means that we have clawed back (roughly) £7.50 per head, every year, from the billionaires.
Gotcha !
That’ll teach ’em.
Soon I will be able to buy a second Porche at this rate.
The Top 1% pay 28% of the UK Tax Collect every year.Or put another way, 1% get 28% of the wages, while the other 99% get 72% to share out among them.
This trickle down, redistribution of wealth, close the education gap, stuff isn’t really working then?
We are locked in a UK neo-liberal cell of the New World Order. The rich control the planet.
The ‘1%’ referred to are the Custodians of the UK Branch of World Government.
They will get away with it. Nothing will change.
The future Queen is praised, worshipped, and lauded in the media for spending the equivalent of a pensioner’s income for 4 weeks on a dress. And we are supposed too gasp; ooh, , ah, at this wonderful news.
Time we got out of this corrupt little Union.
‘It’s the rich wot get the pleasure, the poor that get the blame.
3 weeks to go.
When I tried to share on FB it said it was coming from an unsafe source and I had to go through some anti spamming procedure, but it eventually shared. I don’t normally post political stuff on FB, but getting a bit fed up with all the UK is great and anti EU stuff from my English friends so time to give them some back!
Brilliant! It’s that smirky, smug little mug that gets me!
@ Davy says 9.45
“massive oil and gas field in the North sea”
Ochone! Ochone! what are we to do? Somebody went and invested £500 million in our tidal industry as well. Did anybody hear about that?
Phew, it is a Chris hat not a lampshade!
Glad to see you back, Chris.
Ok campers here’s a suggestion, save the image to your photostream, then post it in FB as a picture, but quick before they find it and block, ask folks to share to stay ahead of the wave ?
Not are the usual unionist media suspects not mentioning the red tories in the same breath as PFI school, they seem to be absent minded and not saying it was the SG that saved the remaining parts of Scotland’s steel industry.
“Has no-one noticed apart from the Edinburgh schools balls-up, that Scotland has discovered another massive oil and gas field in the North sea, what a fucking disaster for us.”
Which oil field Davy?
The ones I know of are Claire Ridge which is being commissioned right now, same as the Solan.
Mariner had the jacket placed a couple of days ago, the topsides are still in Korea and Culzean which still at the early stage.
I just finished work on the new Montrose BLP in Holland, a 10,500 ton bridge linked platform for the Montrose which has been in the north sea for 30 years, it is bigger than the original Montrose.
Needless to say 90-95% of the workforce came from south of the border and I’ve just been finished before it goes offshore to make way for more of them to work I presume.
Great Cartoon as usual Chris.
Tried posting on several F/Book sites, somebodys dont like your Toon Chris, D notice per chancety lol
Anybody on Twitter post this up ,they,ll get the message.
((((( YEEEEHAAAA, CHRIS IS BACK FOLKS )))))
Next time you decide to do a bit of skiving Chris make sure you lock the bloody studio door behind you. I can only imagine what kind of mess you returned to but last week we had some dude on here masquerading as an artist. I tried to contact the Rev but the lines were all jammed. Hope they didn’t break or take anything!
Like others had a problem sharing to fb, treated as potential spam, but managed to share with confirming it wasn’t.
Must be having an affect! Only prob I have with it, his eyes are smaller, closer together and even more sinister, in real life, but otherwise this is fab!
Great cartoon Chris, as always. I also had a “Security Check” dialogue pop up when posting to Facebook but it’s there now. There is something wrong with this page though as my browser (Firefox) doesn’t like it at all.
Can I also echo the request from someone further up for the Rev to do a piece on PFI? As far as I can tell none of the MSM are mentioning that PFI was implemented under a Labour/Liberal coalition. In fact, I can find no reference to ANY political party in any of the articles I’ve read thus far. This, perhaps even more than the obvious anti-SNP bile, is the real indicator of the MSM bias in Scotland. We all know what the headlines would have been if the SNP were implicated. One Party State indeed.
Do we think Jakey’s got a hat
Or is she already sorted
I’ll get my cloak
“Alexion”
Its the Culzean field, just heard about it a couple of days back, when the media announced it and that the first steel was being cut for it somewhere in Asia.
Why Asia ?
At risk of raining on the bonfire. Mr Cameron’s old man may have been a wide-oh but you canny really be held responsible for what your parents did. He says he paid and declared what was due.
Attacks on him and wild accusations which rent a quote Labour were at yesterday, are exactly the same as we get routinely flung at our MP’s. Who have not broken the law, nor are under investigation by the polis. Look at the present effort to undermine the First Minister viz the potential Chinese business investment.
Stewart Hosie was a paragon on the radio yesterday. He was accurate in what he said, and did not get drawn into wild speculations. Labour are really pathetic – calling on someone to resign for following the rules. The Icelandic situation is a bit different. It seems there that the wife of their PM was actively involved in some questionable business. If that was so here we would know already.
Labour could afford to be holier than thou if they asked how their two former leaders conduct themselves. And many others of their former leading lights indulge/ indulged in all manner of dodgy stuff. Some a lost worse than legally offshoring assets.
Well, Jack, I didn’t have you down as a David Icke fan.
Am I allowed to post links and sell tinfoil on here? You know, the sort of tinfoil one might fashion a hat from?
“We are locked in a UK neo-liberal cell of the New World Order. The rich control the planet.”
We should be so lucky.
I have a question for left-leaning intellectuals who think that being nice might be the key to mankind’s future and success;
If everybody in the world had the same material wealth and standard of living that you have here in this neo-liberal cell, do you honestly think there would be one single stick of shit left growing anywhere on this planet? It would be a toxic wasteland and we all know it.
Ah the irony eh? The future of the planet in terms of global warming and the environment depends on the success of neo-liberalism in depriving people.
You know, all those Chinese, Indonesians, and South Americans want cars, leather couches, and burgers too. They really do. They’re getting impatient. Hear their footsteps? Soon they’ll be knocking…
Will one of you nice folks answer the door and explain to them why they can’t come in?
The world needs bad men sometimes, if only to keep the other bad men from the door.
Answers on a postcard.
“In your face!” as the prime minister said to miss piggy.
I think he’s telling more porkies. Oink oink!
But no US citizens were leaked in these papers and the German paper might have had this leak for over a year, something fishy?
@Davidb,
Cameron held these shares as an MP,and before he became PM.
The problem I think you will find is that he did not declare them. I agree his father opened the Trust,but somewhere along the line,little David was informed he was a beneficiary of that Trust. He was being evasive.
The tax avoider/evaders make the rules. It is despicable. The wealthy starving the vulnerable to death.
Tried posting the Cartoon from Rev,s F/B page blocked again,complaint to F/B for blocking Satire. Load the them up with complaints People.
Regards oil, there is masses of it left in Scottish waters, a bit more difficult to get to, but it’s there alright, you just have to look online at sites re oil companies etc.
Also Scotland has gold, and is rich in other very important minerals due to being so diverse geologically, only parts of UK rich in minerals of any significant use are in fact the 3 devolved countries, but Scotland tops them all.
N.I has gold, lots, so UKok are keeping them sweet at the moment.
Here’s a link to some info, though it may be a bit outdated, hard to find up to date stats etc.
link to bgs.ac.uk
Cameron benefited from his father’s tax arrangements. It paid for his privileged education. Cameron arranged his affairs to hide the arrangement because he wanted to become PM and ruin the UK economy. There was more to gain by plundering public finances for his associates. Non Dom tax evaders finance the Tory Party. So they can keep on tax evading. Cameron’s attitude to Scotland is appallng. A charlatan and a liar.
Boris Johnstone benefitted from EU membership/money to fund his privileged upbringing, but wants to leave the EU. Thatcher established tax havens to benefit elite fraudster bankers and Hedge Funds. They are hypocrites.
Have you seen this
Nice piece,fabulous music
youtu.be/982OZ-dWHpM
O/T Am I the only person who is not surprised that BBC Scotland did not mentioned that the Edinburgh school closures is a direct result of the Labour / Lib Dem PFI/PPP policy?
PFI is one more UKOK double whammy on their Scotland region. Crash Gordon sold them on the much higher build quality than public sector builders do do principle and also, PFI holder’s must pay for maintenance. School closures like this are the biggest test of Crash and his promises to date.
Its the first big test of the great PFI thingee, concept. Most of them are for 30 years so, will PFI contractors pay for repairs and loss of schools, or is it all just another mad legacy of the Gordon Brown years of UKOK greatness?
BBC vote SLab Scotland wont mention it because their giant Pacific Quay glass box of UKOK garbage is also a PFI build worth over two hundred million at least but its owners are unknown and its all stashed in tax havens.
But that’s OK though. Its all legal, perfectly UKOK legal.
Thankfully, the media are not going after Sarah Ferguson, Mark Thatcher, or Simon Cowel. Or making front page angst about a certain Rocket Man’s super injunction.
The state of the union and associated establishment is literally sickening
While 10% of Iceland’s population protested their PM, in the UK we appear to have a half hearted diversion against Dave which will fizzle. It was only a dead pig, it was only 30 grand, it was only a steelworks, it was only the disabled, it was only my carers allowance.
The David Cameron thing won’t make a huge difference. They are secure in the knowledge that much if the natural Tory support think he has done the sensible thing
UKOK press rushing around trying to protect Cameron, from Daily Heil to slightly less tory rancid The Graun-
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has described his “complete surprise” at discovering that his biological father is not Gavin Welby – as he had always believed – but the former private secretary to Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Montague Browne.”
Desperate times for toryboy world.
BBC r4 news hourly reportage makes tax fraudster Cammers last item in news and its “PM Cameron has disclosed tax arrangement and has paid all taxes on profit accrued from tax arrangement.”
That tax fraudster “discloses” show’s how desperate BBC freak show became since its full on monstering of Scottish democracy. Someone leaks tax evaders names world wide like UKOK PM Cameron, Cameron then “discloses.”
After independence, Scotland’s constitution has got to give the electorate the right to impeach. It can never happen UKOK but that doesn’t mean it cant happen for Scotland.
@MJack,
There is a phenomenal amount of data the journalists are having to wade through – 2.6 terabytes worth! A lot of it appears to be scanned copies of the original documents and the various journalists have supposedly had to have specialist software developed to read and catalogue everything.
The ICIJ website has a lot of info about it. They’ve said they expect to release a full list of all the companies involved at some point in May.
Schools out!
A wee bit of more information about PFI costs but you have to work back the dates until you get to the SG that was in at the time.
I know there have been checks going on in Fife. The article confirms that the story may have a long way to go yet.
link to archive.is
@ NeoconNat wrote:
“..in this neo-liberal cell,”
Ah ken whit yer gettin et bit kin ye refrain fae the insults?
Jeeeez, hope yiv no goat me doon as wan oh them things?
Av bin injoyin yer refreshin posts so dinny go spoilin it noo, ok!
Scott says:
9 April, 2016 at 9:22 am
Another Union Dividend says:
“O/T Am I the only person who is not surprised that BBC Scotland did not mentioned that the Edinburgh school closures is a direct result of the Labour / Lib Dem PFI/PPP policy”?
Yes Scott, but you know by NOT mentioning it and also highlighting the real culprits then it could potentially mean that those who are less politically aware would ASSUME this was down to the SNP.
That is how the media works, we all know this, they corrupt the politically ignorant to form their own (wrong) conclusions and thus pander to the yoons, the media are partners in this political corruption by suppressing news that reflects badly on yoon parties and broadcasting stories they think will reflect badly on SNP.
So considering all of this is it not AMAZING the position SNP are in politically .
Kezia promises that the Edinburgh schools will be rebuilt using the money saved from not abolishing APD.
Regarding the Edinburgh Schools PFI scandal, I wonder if any of our fearless journalists will mention the fact that Scottish council’s, and health boards, annual PFI / PPP repayments under the expensive Labour / Lib Dem method of finance are significantly greater than the 1% cut to their budgets that Labour are making a fuss about.
Just when you thought UKIP in their Scotland couldn’t get any dumber
link to m.heraldscotland.com
Re the Culzean field, currently being developed by Maersk.
It is expected it will provide enough gas to supply 20% of the U.K. requirements for at least thirteen years.
It will, off course, be quite useless for Scotland and is a total liability and we should be grateful that Westminster will take it off our hands, and only for a few billion pounds worth of tax too!
Thank god for broad shoulders.
Spot the difference:
A fault was found with the new bridge and like any responsible government-in-waiting the SNP assured there was swift action taken to rectify the situation, despite the weeks of deceitful excrement from the BUM and its chums.
Dodgy FibLab walls and buildings are crumbling around our children, some of Scotland’s future generations, and suddenly we are hit with a severe dose of OH LOOK, A SQUIRREL!
Every thing that is built now has a Planned or Built in Obsolescence,
link to tinyurl.com
from light bulbs to schools to bridges and cars,
manufacturers do not want their product lasting much longer than the end of a warranty,
the people/citizens are being swindled by big companies with complicit/corrupted media and Government.
@NeoconNat,
I have tried my best to find an instance of a Nations population suddenly rising up wjthout any input or provocation and demanding under pain of violence the resources of another ,but you know what?,It just doesn’t happen that way.
Behind every conflict there are leaders and political parties who agitate ,manipulate,and lie, to keep ,gain or expand their power and influence. The population is just a tool to achieve that aim.
Propoganda used on human frailty can be devastating
We do need bad men to guard that wall ( A few Good Men), but hopefully the day will come when no walls are needed. If the Berlin wall can come down,so can others.
For those of you not wanting to help Heedtrackers quest to support the BUM here is the archived version to the stinking Kippers piece.
link to archive.is
Cameron must go protest Bambuser links here
link to twitter.com
@Stoker
Good point made there where is the media outrage?
But maybe Radio shortbread ‘GMS’ will be asking questions on Monday with a follow on ‘your call’ guaranteed. 🙁 Ayr right!
OH!
Some team in claret & amber V green and white hoops playing here now.
link to myp2p.ec
The Panamanian pound will never be the UK’s pound: link to wp.me
Louis B. Argyll, Outlander is a tv series based on the books of Diana Gabaldon, set in Scotland in the period beginning just before 1745 and after. Made in Scotland shown all over the world but not here. Not favourable to our imperial masters may inflame nationalism, so you can see why. 1st series on Amazon Prime.
Stoker says:
9 April, 2016 at 12:32 pm
For those of you not wanting to help Heedtrackers quest to support the BUM here is the archived version to the stinking Kippers piece.
But archive.is only lets one photo show and no video, is why.
O/T
The next red tory leaflet circulated around Edinburgh is certain to blame the SNP for the sudden closure of 17 schools. I don’t know how they will spin it yet (I’m sure they are concocting something right now), but rest assured they will try and blame their own epic incompetence and the huge implications on the Scottish government. And as usual, the corporate media will back them to the hilt. Prepare your rebuttals!
Forewarned is forearmed. 🙂
What are the odds of the BBC remembering to mention that it was a Labour government that was directly involved in procuring and building those affected Edinburgh schools under their discredited PFI scheme? Before May 5th?
Aye, I thought so. 🙁
Downing Street Demo link to youtube.com
Luigi: What are the odds of the BBC mentioning it was a Labour government directly involved in procuring and building those affected Edinburgh schools
Ha! Nil: link to wp.me
link to thetimes.co.uk
“
British guns sold to terrorists in secret on Facebook
British weapons are being advertised for sale to terrorist gun traders on Facebook in Libya alongside portable anti-aircraft systems and grenade launchers
SAED SHALASH/REUTERS
British weapons are being offered for sale to terrorist gun traders on Facebook, The Times has learnt.
Revolvers, light machineguns, rifles and sub-machineguns that were built or designed in Britain have been put up for sale in secret arms-trading groups on the social network.
The weapons were advertised alongside anti-tank weapons, rocket launchers, heavy machineguns, portable anti-aircraft systems and grenade launchers manufactured in Europe, Russia and the United States.
The discovery of the weapons listings is embarrassing for Facebook, which claims to work with law enforcement authorities to counter arms sales and other illegal activity on its network.”
This might explain why Facebook are being hyper-vigilant and going after cartoonists!
Super dooper toryboy Fallon? on BBC r4 Question Time says Cammers did nothing wrong and its all private and privacy is all that matters. So UKOK rules the waves.
Panama leaks were leaked over 6 months ago, rich tax dodgers also use false names for their accounts, Harry Potter is one.
Brilliant as ever Chris, nae flies on the fly man.
PFI and collapsing schools.
As a general rule of thumb when newspapers and broadcasters don’t mention which political party is involved in a scandal like this then the political party is Labour or one of other Unionist parties.
If it was the SNP then they would be screaming that from the rooftops.
I think a lot of people have twigged this fact but the media have still to grasp they have been rumbled.
PFI was Gordon Brown’s clever wheeze to keep all that debt he was running up ‘off the books’. It was the EU who put a stop to this off the books nonsense and told him it had to be recorded properly as Government debt. The last figure I saw put the outstanding debt for all PFI in the UK at £222 billion.
So the BBC broke the Edinburgh schools Labour PFI scandal story yesterday and 18 hours later the story has been picked up by the Scotsman, the Herald and the Record, all fastidiously avoiding any reference to the labour party and it’s role and responsibility.
I am happy if anyone can find such a reference.
The guardian, who went to town on the forth bridge closure has yet to post an article on the story.
I have seen numerous references to the Scottish Government of course… It will be left to them to sort out this mess.
It’s why I hate the media team- not only are they so cripplingly, monstrously partisan but they are so predictable.
We should set up an award for journalists- we can award it to Yoon hacks when they actually do an even handed piece of work.
We can probably afford to make it quite lavish as it looks unlikely it will be awarded very often.
Honestly- we would be getting hourly updates and special correspondents would be on it like a car bonnet if there were a sniff of SNPBAD like the Chinese investment memo.
It sickens me. It tires me out. When something is so clearly corrupted it simply cannot continue.
Just a thought ! , who inspected these schools before passing them as “fit for purpose” ??? thats a lot of buildings to fail.
Some coverage of London demo on Sky, but huge police presence mean they keep them corralled in a narrow street, and that’s when folk get angry, at not having free movement on their streets.
Cameron is one slimeball.
‘Dont blame Downing street or faceless advisors, I will learn the lessons’
Subliminal messaging for the unwary, no one is blaming his advisors, in fact they no doubt told him to dump the shares when it looked like he would be PM.
The other bull emanating from his mouth – my Dad, I loved him so much.
This is the man who claimed Disability benefit for his late son, and used him for sympathy whilst the poor boy was alive, and since he died. He also left a child in the pub.
I detest Cameron almost more than any of them, although IDS and Bojo are close runners. Cameron is so measured and sly about his image etc., he makes my skin crawl.
You followed a link on facebook.com that redirects to another website: link to wingsoverscotland.com
You can now continue to this website or go back to the page that you were on before.
Please remember only to follow links from sources that you trust.
Where does Tony & Gordy hide their tax efficient investments and pots of loot?
Westminster System, ROTTEN TO THE CORE. TORY, LABOUR LIBDEMS, ROTTEN TO THE CORE. PFI back to haunt us.
Where are all the yoons to support these cretins? AYE BETTER THE GITHER!
Just a thought ! , who inspected these schools before passing them as “fit for purpose” ??? thats a lot of buildings to fail.
A lot depends on what kind of PFI construction contract SLabour chose. Holyrood is a nightmare example of a construction contract selection that went completely insane. Most big construction contracts spread risks like what’s happened in Edinburgh schools between the builder and us the taxpayer. Ideally PFI risk should all be with the contractor because they cost so much and the profits are huge but this the test now.
There were no PFI contractors for giant spends that carried huge political and national prestige and this might be why
link to building.co.uk
London Olympics were far more important than schools in their Scotland region, about £30 billion more important.
A link to the details of the bbc/pfi story from 2013.
link to newsnet.scot
The following quote makes me wonder whether local authorities have the same arrangement, and therefore will have to shoulder the school repair burden.
Fitch’s, one of the rating agencies, indicated in one of its rating reports, that the lease is a “fully repairing and insuring lease” i.e. the BBC is responsible for meeting all of the costs of the building in addition to paying the rent.
Also, public sector contract selection isnt that complicated
link to architectsjournal.co.uk
until you get job for lifers SLabour dudes like Aberdeen’s Wullie Young involved
link to marischalsquare.co.uk
Here, Wullie’s contract ensures that all risk is with the taxpayer in this latest Slabour yoon white elephant.
What’s happened already and before its even completed, major tenancy contracts have already been cancelled. That’s not a contractor problem, its all on the taxpayer and yoonsters like Wullie and co say, stop us and we will bankrupt you.
Familiar, UKOK style familiar?
link to archive.is
Its not quite the Edinburgh tram money pit but its ACC’s attempt at blowing as much money as possible, on fcuk all, very risky fcuk all.
What concerns me about this Cameron thingy is that there is a big demonstration in London against Cameron and none of the news agencies seem to be picking up on it.
Police boxing protesters into small spaces, bound to KO in my opinion.
RT had a live feed covering the London demo earlier. Images and video here.
link to rt.com
@Gullane
You need to watch Sky or RT. RT have a livestream too.
OT. Yesterday Dr John Robertson published his Media Watch 13:-“The BBC Bias story takes on a familiar shape.” 🙁
Dr Robertson this time covers the period Thursday 31st March to Wednesday 6th April.
It begins:-“The cumulative data showed heavy bias by BBC Scotland, from January 8th until the beginning of the Purdah period on Wednesday 16th March, Here are the data for this last week, with the running total from 8th January, in brackets:”
Here’s the link:
link to newsnet.scot
or we could use the Newsnet Scotland link near top of this page.
Did somebody not warn us that all our schools would fall down if we voted to leave the UK? No? Must have been a dream.
Building fall down in 3rd world countries usually because they have been shoddily built by corrupt builders. Sometimes it’s the result of a hurricane or other natural disaster. In Scotland they fall down after a winter “storm”. Buildings all around, even those built centuries ago, not a scratch.
The schools were built by Miller Construction which was bought by Galliford Try in 2014. It will be interesting to see who has the biggest sloping shoulders.
Schools built by the same consortium, although undamaged by the storm, have been closed as their safety cannot be guaranteed. There is a huge clue right there that these buildings have not been constructed properly. Maybe even illegally.
I’m shocked that we haven’t seen Willie Rennie all over the TV asking for an immediate enquiry. Questions must be answered, like, who built them, who inspected and signed them off, were the building ties (if used) made of Chinese steel, were any of the brickies card carrying members of the Essen P.
Of course nobody is really shocked at Willie’s or the media silence. If there was an SNP MP, MSP, or councillor anywhere near this scandal the media would be all over the story. The fact that they are not tell us all we already know.
Scandals are only scandals in the UK if the SNP were in the vicinity at the time.
link to constructionenquirer.com
Heed tracker @ 2:10
Agreed it is at best irresponsible,at worst corrupt.
‘It is unwise to pay too much,but it’s worse to pay too little.
When you pay too much ,you lose money that is all.When you pay too little,you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot,it can’t be done.
If you deal with the lowest bidder,it is as well to add something for the risk and if you do that you will have enough for something better’.
Yoon councils,kinightmare.
SNP x 2
Been watching the protest off and on. Also saw Cameron talking at conference. Don’t think protest is going to make any difference, he doesn’t know what a conscience or shame or guilt is.
O/T
@davy says 11.05
It’s Singapore. Saw a piece on telly last night but can’t find it. Apparently Singapore builds the vast majority of the worlds rigs.
However having had a look at where the Culzean field lies not sure that it’s in ‘Scottish’ waters. Remember westminster moved the marine boundary and stole 6000 sq ml of OUR water! Not that you hear anything about it now.
Greetings from Raleigh, North Carolina. I have to say that I suspect the cover-up may be worse than any alleged tax infractions by Dopey Dave. It is not illegal to have an offshore account. I have two. I didn’t have the time to close my building society accounts before I emigrated. As long as the income is reported, there is no offence and there is nothing shady. Rather than focusing on the sensational side, perhaps energies would be better directed towards why it was felt necessary to set the fund up overseas in the first place. Lighter regulation perhaps?
I see parallels here in NC when the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance to allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. The General Assembly was called into special session to pass a law with unseemly haste to reverse what many saw as a perverse law that allowed paedophiles and general sickos to ogle women in public bathrooms and locker rooms. The hysteria after the bill was passed has drowned out the removal of employment protections for disabled people.
I am a federally authorized tax practitioner her in the USA and we have numerous clients who had investments held in the Caribbean. I say “had” because the damn things hardly ever made any money – certainly not when you add in the accounting fees to deal with the extra reporting. However, the point is that these investments get reported to the taxman almost all of the time. Are there cheats out there? Of course there are. Do offshore accounts make it easier to hide money? Yes, but not as much as you’d think, sensationalist headlines about Swiss banks notwithstanding. The bigger problem is, and will always be, the black economy. Please, lets not lose sight of the real issues here. I suggest that personal tax compliance is the least of our worries.
Council Leader Cllr Andrew Burns said: “Edinburgh Schools Partnership have today been unable to give the Council sufficient guarantee that the schools and other premises are safe to open on Monday.
“Clearly we have every right to expect these schools to have been built to a good standard and in accordance with industry practice. We now know this isn’t the case.
Sounds pretty scandalous to me. Hello! BBC! Anybody out there listening?
SNP x2
If you deal with the lowest bidder,it is as well to add something for the risk and if you do that you will have enough for something better
But in Aberdeen, well we need schools and hospitals etc, but likes of yoonsters like Wullie Young and co have gone into big business, construction, hotel, retail right the heart of Aberdeen.
There is opposition to Wullie’s next white elephant but why have ACC yoon councillors piled in to an already flat construction and retail market with such a massive project, whether you like the design or not?
Stop now before its too late, we beg you Wullie…
“But Labour’s Willie Young, the local authority’s finance convener, warned that cancelling the contract at this late stage would “bankrupt the city” and leave Aberdeen with “outrageous reputational damage” for future developments.”
Too big to fail, SLab rack up giant debts, all risk on tax payer, fcuk off all and any opposition, works every UKOK time.
The other end of SLabour lunatics too big to fail Aberdeen style was their expensive city wide referendum to build Sir Ian Wood’s monumental monument of Sir Ian Wood, Union Terrace garden’s destruction. Council couldnt make it mind up for Sir Ian, get Aberdonians to decide for them, we voted YES, cooncil said NO.
link to bbc.co.uk
Other local UKOK money pit news, cooncil closed Aberdeen’s beautiful art gallery for a £30+ million refit and for 3 years at least. No one wanted it, they could have bought art to bring in the people, fuck that, its SLabour’s world of WTF are they doing.
Coverage of protests. Didn’t archive because there are live updates.
link to mirror.co.uk
link to metro.co.uk
link to independent.co.uk
It’s a difficult one, the Cameron thing. On the one hand if he goes we have to think of Osborne or Boris handling things, when we go for Indy Ref 2 and the post-YES negotiations. Better the devil you know.
On the other hand as long as Cameron stays in place it id good bad publicity, including the 12 cabinet ministers who refused to answer if they had offshore funds.
Thinking of Sturgeon my first thought was she should ahve stayed out of it, as the de facto head of state of Scotland, and the head of state-in-waiting for a time after the YES vote until the next election.
But on the other hand again, that makes four hands, that’s handy, the Conservatives and Davidson are trying to show the SNP as Tory-like with the idea of why vote SNP when you can vote the real Tory. And Cameron as UK head of state forgetting about the Queen, has had a go at Sturgeon often enough.
So there you go, that’s my onshore 2p worth.
My problem with the protestors calling for ‘Tories Out Out Out’ is that the alternative doesn’t seem any better.
Perhaps they should be calling for ‘Westminster Rule Out Out Out’
re Schools PFI scandal –
SG should move NOW to impound (if that’s the right word?) every local authority archive relating to these contracts before the paper shredders start-up on Monday morning. Likewise all computerised records.
Okay, we’re all being entertainingly distracted by Cameron’s woes, but this PFI disgrace is huge and it must end with people in jail. They know who they are and they’ll be heading for the hills if they haven’t already long-since bolted.
This is a real chance for the SG to show what power it does have by making sure the investigation is swift and the punishment severe.
Dead right Ian – before the shredders start whining.
I expect arrests , court cases and prison sentences.
Almannysbunnet
Hello! BBC! Anybody out there listening?
We are listening and watching. Our job now is to hammer this for all it is worth for the next month to make sure the public remembers what a shambles the SNP inherited and why we can’t go backwards.
The media will have forgotten about it already- collective amnesia. Not much twitter action from the slab tribe, in fact the silence is deafening.
It is a great example of why slab and slib and the beeb and the press can’t be trusted.
I was waiting to read my bairn’s school on the list with all the turmoil that would cause next week but thankfully it has been refurbished post PFI. My sympathies go out to anyone affected.
My late great-uncle was a solid Labour man all his long life and wouldn’t hear a word said against Blair/Brown, even when the Iraq debacle was underway.
But the single misgiving he had, and whispered, was about the whole PFI/PPP ideology punted by New Labour – he forecast this kind of outrage, oooh, over a decade ago. Sounds a bit grim but I was very fond of the man and am genuinely glad that he didn’t live long enough to witness this – he would be genuinely mortified to see what’s happened to the party he spent so many years defending.
OT
Herald covers schools: “SNP: Councils must take action over school closures”
link to archive.is
Some info here re Gordon Brown PFI. Mentions the snp doing things differently. I don’t have time right now to further search, hoping someone can have a look.
I typed into google
EU warns Gordon Brown on PFI spending
link to archive.is
Living in the Yoon UK is like being trapped in a never ending nightmare that becomes more and more surreal the longer it goes on.
Can you imagine you were asleep for 20 years and you woke up to this media manipulated shit country, you would think you were still sleeping.
Totally O/T
Grand National
Le Reve 2 bob each way for the name alone 😉
(The Dream)
@Nana
A line from that Speccie report from 2008 springs out:
“The institute’s findings suggest that, were this PFI lump-sum added to officially acknowledged government debt, the total figure would represent 45 per cent of gross domestic product — making a mockery of Mr Brown’s ‘sustainable investment’ rule, by which government debt is not meant to exceed 40 per cent of GDP.”
The UK’s debt to GDP ratio is now double that, at nearly 90%. So it’s “Labour bad” and “Tories bad”.
The Bastards o’ darkness
Keep their monkey in a cage
and feed it Nuts for Assuage
The Condemned beast
Thrashes and Grunts
Yet:where would it be, if its Keeper set it Free?
Creature comforts without the Dignity of freedom.
And Yes Liberty’s hand entwined with risk and danger
But life and love not then an unknown stranger.
Move Left, Move Right, the direction yours
without Fear or Fright.
Climb High to see the farthest sights
Face your enemy, prepare to fight
Somewhere a Glory awaits unseen
and enterprise embraces the Free.
Independence fulfilled, no longer a dream
and my country belongs to me.
Hopefully the SG have their advocates working flat out on the original contracts.
Clearly the buildings are not fit for purpose and it should be possible to void the contracts and offer the owners a deal that is much better for the taxpayers. The owners of the contract don’t really have anywhere else to go, not a big market for collapsing schools.
Weird how if you try and share this from a certain blog, a certain social media site has blocked it. Even trying to C&P the address is no good. I wonder why?
It DOES work if you download the picture then post that.
@Nana
Good catch re Gordon and PFI
My late great-uncle was a solid Labour man all his long life and wouldn’t hear a word said against Blair/Brown, even when the Iraq debacle was underway.
Me too, until they went to war. It just got worse and worse as red toryboy power clearly had no intention of being a Labour party in power. Yes I know, the clue’s in the New Labour name, just like the clue’s in the British Broadcasting Corp.
Does toryboy world really think their current brand of vote anyone but SNP bullshit is actually working?
Jamie Ross ?@JamieRoss7 3h3 hours ago
An SNP voter tells Kezia Dugdale “I am a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn and now you after that speech”. Labour press officers must be euphoric.
Is anyone other than me suspicious that ONLY Cameron has been named?
Could it be that not a single other member of the Westminster elite or Square Mile Biggies is implicated? The MSM is pro Brexit, and hammering Cameron hammers the Remain campaign. Then too, many of the MSM Moguls are up to their necks in Tax avoidance. That goes for most of the major companies – especially the multinationals.
Why would they want out? Well there are rumblings in Europe doing something about Tax Havens and Multinationals. Westminster and the City are fighting it tooth and nail. Do you know what Country-by-country reporting is?
I notice there is a scarcity of European leaders begging us to stay in. I wonder why. Could it be that they are fed up with the Westminster Government always on the side of the Square Mile, wanting opt-outs, special treatments etc. etc.
Regarding the PFI thing.
I was working in local government at the time. I asked a meeting of senior managers, including some smart accountants, to explain PFI.
They outlined the financing of a planned school. I asked about who owned the asset – the company. My response – that’s fcking madness! Cue lots of looking at shoes, the ceiling etc.
Authorities and Chief Executives were under orders to make it happen, and stop asking awkward questions.
I think now it’s obvious they were all under orders, there is no other explanation for such widespread madness.
Council accountants, internal and external audit are rigorous people. It’s literally more than their job on the line.
clapper57 said at 11:53am:-” O/T Am I the only person who is not surprised that BBC Scotland did not mentioned that the Edinburgh school closures is a direct result of the Labour / Lib Dem PFI/PPP policy”? ……………………… ”
They finally,sort of, get round to it:-
“Signed in 2001, Edinburgh’s Public Private Partnership deal for schools was worth £360m.”
Very near the bottom of the News report.
link to archive.is
NeoConNat @ 11.10
Just caught up with your ‘the poor will always be with us’ rant.
Check out Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Noam Chomsky, for starters.
I’ll expect your homework on my desk Monday nine sharp.
I have never had a burger from these outlets. I believe they are made of a mash of mechanically recovered meat, like, cows’ lips, arseholes, and eyelids.
If you are a fan, since you argue that the Third World natives are gagging for them, it would explain many of your posts.
We are ruled by an unaccountable elite.
Only an idiot would think otherwise; or a spider from Mars.
Away and do something useful this fine afternoon; like play tig with the ‘busses.
@Valerie –
It’s fucking outrageous.
The more I think about this the angrier I’m getting – the school my weans attend was built in the 70’s. It’s a muckle ugly thing but it’s survived Ayrshire coastal weather for almost four decades.
If cops turned up at my door to tell me that my son or daughter was under a pile of bricks along with some of their classmates I’d be looking for someone’s heid. The fact that it hasn’t happened is no excuse for the sloppy corrupt immoral fuckers who participated in this outrage.
Fuming. Totally fuming.
Got a security check on this. Who has decided WoS is a security risk? Surprised they waited till so long after the indyref to do this, tbh
Even in that report the L word is still not mentioned and so the unknowing could still think the present snp govt had something to do with it, I have now put in 3 complaints to the BBC regarding this 2 about misreporting scotland and one about radio, I have now heard reports at least 4 times and at no time has Labour been mentioned but Edinburgh Council has reported findings to the Scottish Govt. I wonder who that is – kind of smearing without smearing. I also complained about the steel hand over when the Scottish Govt was not mentioned and NS was only seen in a very long shot and I only recognised the outfit but could not see the face. Someone on Radio Scotland this morning said they had to be careful because it was during an election period I dont remember them being careful last week when the BBC was doing its best to smear NS over the Chinese MOU. I do hope that everyone who thinks the reporting is biased has put in a complaint.
Groovy toon.
Here’s Van Halen’s take on it. I didnae play anything from this album before IndyRef1, due to the album being called ‘the best of both worlds.’
Will maybe roll out a few more of their appropriately named songs from that album as the EU referendum approaches, because by that point, we will be in. Anyways..
Panama ~ by Van Halen
link to youtube.com
bjsalba,
Yes, more will come out but lots will be buried unless any of the involved journalists do a wikileaks dump.
Don’t forget that this is all from just ONE law firm, others are available. So even with everything published it would still only be the tip of the iceberg.
So has anyone looked for the personal connections between this Miller Construction outfit and the contracting councils?
Famous15 says:
9 April, 2016 at 8:55 am
O/T
The total silence on the Blairite PFI/PPP schools disaster is shocking
Get it out there that Labour/LibDem are resposible.
Radio Scotland BBC is a total disgrace!
why dont the snp call for an enquiry like the other parties did for the forth road bridge
that would get it out in the media
Ian Brotherhood, i am like yourself , totally outraged at whats came to light regarding unsafe construction methods , cheap materials , blatant cost cutting in the building of these PFI schools. Now if slab / lib parties really wanted to invest in our childrens future they wouldnt / shouldnt have been allowed any child anywhere near these buildings. Would be intresting to find the source of materials , China perhaps or knowing Labour tge USSR due to their old fondnest of a red flag. Oh , and just to rub faces right in the shite ,our children will be paying for these until they retire. Fucking crooks and liars. The SNP need to savage them over this , the perfect example if why these money grabing liars should never again be trusted by us. SNP x 2.
@ Ian Brotherhood
Agree entirely.
The Edinburgh council school which I attended (Boroughmuir) in the 1950s was already 50 years old then and recently celebrated its centenary.
Never a problem with construction and the building would be good for another hundred years but for the changes required for a modern school and need for enlargement.
It will be sold to a developer who will, no doubt, build flats in the fine stone building and the new owners will be delighted with the quality.
It is an utter disgrace that a school building can start to collapse in such a short time and I agree that this is an opportunity to re-write the PFI contract to the benefit of the tax payers.
The contractors must have bribed the building inspectors , and somewhere there will be signed off reports on the construction which must be examined in detail for evidence of short cuts and cheating.
Jail awaits the guilty I hope.
If you want to read about Gordon Brown’s PFI you get pages & pages of results in Newsquest here are a few headlines. Most of these articles are dated 2000-2003
Treasury claims that PFI offers value for money are based on data that is non-existent or false
The Guardian
Gordon Brown’s poisoned PFI legacy:
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Brown accused of hiding full scale of PFI liabilities: Dozens of hospital deals excluded from figures Public sector debt rises as schemes increase
The Guardian
PFI billions remain off Government’s books
The Daily Telegraph
Brown ‘using PFI to hide high borrowing’ Chancellor’s figurework ‘avoids breach of prudence rule’
The Daily Telegraph
Privately financed revolution: The chancellor says using the PFI is a fiscal imperative. But even the Treasury doesn’t think that’s all there is to it
The Guardian
Gordon Brown raising pounds 30bn from a ‘disposals’ auction is way off mark when PFI means there’s a lot that has disappeared from the accountants’ radar screen
The Guardian
Brown told to come clean on pounds 73bn PFI debt:
Heather Tomlinson and Clayton Hirst.
The Independent on Sunday
Fattened up on the public purse As Gordon Brown peels the lid off the PFI can, a new generation of fat cats is already purring at his feet.
The Daily Telegraph
Private finance Idiocy?; Gordon Brown may have some doubts about PFI but he still believes it is the best solution to problems such as crumbling schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Sunday Herald
Brown poised to break key fiscal rule Counting PFI deals in national debt will breach pledge on level of ‘sustainable investment’
The Sunday Telegraph
Trust me on funding, says Brown: No retreat on PFI, unions are warned: No retreat on PFI funding, says Brown
The Guardian
Brown’s hidden PFI liabilities soar by 11%
The Business
Brown set for showdown with unions; Revolt over PFI policy could give chancellor a bloody nose.
The Herald
Brown calls down union wrath after standing by PFI
The Guardian
Clawing back the PFI cash: Working with industry, we must ease the burden of contracts awarded by Balls and Brown
The Guardian
It’s all right for some, as Brown’s enthusiasm for PFI is undimmed
The Times
Brown acts as PFI threatens to stall
The Daily Telegraph
NHS trusts and the crippling burden of PFI
The Guardian
Bail-out for PFI building projects
The Daily Telegraph
Labour braced for showdown on Brown’s PFI
Blitz, James. FT.com
Brown’s U-turn as PFI computer scheme crashes
Evening Standard
Private finance looks for public help: PFI, one of No 10’s most divisive policies, is being bailed out by taxpayers
The Guardian
Gordon Has Got Them By The Privates ; Battling Brown to ignore PFI defeat
Daily Record
PFI ‘costs each family Pounds 400 a year’
The Daily Telegraph
cearc says:
9 April, 2016 at 4:27 pm
So has anyone looked for the personal connections between this Miller Construction outfit and the contracting councils?
Ruby replies
Would it surprise you to find out there was some dirty dealing going on between Miller Construction & Glasgow City Council?
Herald 11 July 2014
Job fears after Miller Construction is sold
Ruby says:
Its how red tory Crash Gordon ended boom and bust, then the world (bankers), then their UKOK union.
PFI is a massive cash cow. Most are owned by the great private pension funds in the City. Its how we do it.
Frann Leach says:
9 April, 2016 at 4:11 pm
Got a security check on this. Who has decided WoS is a security risk? Surprised they waited till so long after the indyref to do this, tbh
Ruby replies
They may have tighten up since it was discover that British guns were being sold to ISIS on Facebook.
link to thetimes.co.uk
Today’s Establish well known phrase or saying.
David Cameron – The Arch Bishop of Canterbury.
Ian Brotherhood says:
9 April, 2016 at 3:05 pm
re Schools PFI scandal –
SG should move NOW to impound (if that’s the right word?) every local authority archive relating to these contracts before the paper shredders start-up on Monday morning. Likewise all computerised records.
Ruby replies
These contracts might be similar to the Trams contracts!
bjsalba says:
9 April, 2016 at 3:52 pm
Is anyone other than me suspicious that ONLY Cameron has been named?
Sarah Ferguson, Mark Thatcher, Simon Cowal have also been named but as these people are respectable, the UK media are ignoring them…
Now, to check for a new definition of respectable!
OT
A guy at the door from Ipsos-Mori with a survey about radio. Radio? I hardly listen apart from West FM and Clyde for music. 10 minutes? No thanks. Poor guy.
At the door though unannounced. I didn’t know they still did that.
I was going to suggest that it was weird that there were no ‘whistle blowers’ amongst the constuction workers at these schools but then I remembered this story.
link to archive.is
I am a 78year old and my primary school is still standing and in use work has been done in the inside but the building still looks great no PFI in that times and the best of workmanship.
@Ruby.
Have a look at James Miller & Partners, Edinburgh founded in 1934 and take it from there.
It is my understanding that West Lothian College in Livingston was built on land bequeathed by a local philanthropist.
The Building itself was one of Labour/Gordon Brown’s absurd PFI deals, whereat the end of 25 years the developer has the right to evict everyone and keeps both Prime site Land and the buildings.
My contact there estimated that government borrowing option to build the college would have been less than one third of what they will have to pay?
A complete and utter rip off from every angle you look at it.
I’m very curious to know if the developer had any relationship with Brown Gravy Train’s Banker Brother, and if they were one of the mystery backers who put funds of £3 Million into Gordo’s own charity, a charity that sees him spend an average £10,000 per week on his expenses??? was
Good point Cearc.
Now let’s multiply the number of firms that have on their books Tory red, blue and yellow and then add the number of pies they have their fingers in…they are a cabal of shysters.
This is massive, no amount of assorted analogies involving surfaces and icebergs can convey the gangesterism at work that has allowed the ‘upper echelons’ to shaft the ‘lower echelons’.
Applying their own accounting rules when found out: to cry ‘legal!’. They own PR companies (newspapers/broadcasting) employed to ‘finger’ the ‘lower echelons’ as the ‘culprits’. Top it all off wi their cheap rhetoric of ‘we’re aw innit the gether’ tae prepare the ground for the recouping of the ‘upper echelons’ losses.
When something like these leaked papers find their way tae the public domain on the back of the biggest swindle in this century so far: ‘Austerity’. Being applied to the ‘lower echelons’ as the price we’ve tae pay for ‘their’ greed. Then they know we know what’s really going on.
How ‘can’ it be that the public are being blamed for the mess that the wealthy gangsters have made?
When you realise the amount of billions that are being transferred away from countries that are being battered economically and being told ‘yous brought it oan yersel’s.’ Away tae tax havens that provide safe havens for their ‘ill gotten gains’, and come to understand the ‘deliberate’ manipulation of the public’s perceptions so that this can continue unabated. You are ‘right’ to be angry about this.
This is the cause of our economic plight.
Not the poor. Not the disabled. Not the ‘working classes’. Not the Immigrants. Not anything you’ve ever been led tae believe by any paper or ‘news’ in the ‘mainstream’.
Damn right they’re trying to ‘bury’ this and those that are saying ‘nothin’ tae see hear… Aye right!
Cynical hat back on…the SNP had better make the most of this. There will never ever be a better opportunity to show-up SLab and the LibDems for what they’ve done to this country.
A lot of us, even non-SNP, have bitten our tongues so often when senior SNP figures had good reason to get ripped right into them, especially SLab, but didn’t. No excuses any more – heads have to roll over this and the Scottish Government must take on the job of axeman whether it likes it or not.
link to archive.is
Workers were primarily on the blacklist because of their trade union membership, their political beliefs or because they had raised health and safety issues.”
The full list of companies that supported and used The Consulting Association includes
Miller Construction Limited
Roughian says:
9 April, 2016 at 5:09 pm
@Ruby.
Have a look at James Miller & Partners, Edinburgh founded in 1934 and take it from there.
Ruby replies
You are confusing me! Why do I need to look at James Miller & Partners?
Labour health minister McCabe tried to close Monklands Hospital to further enrich PPI at Wishaw gen Hosp,nobody in their right mind would committ to pay those exorbitant fees for building & services.
@fireproojim, 4.37
“such a short time and I agree that this is an opportunity to re-write the PFI contract to the benefit of the tax payers.”
Not re-write, terminate after repairs carried out.
Somebody told me about these so called “Scottish Unionist Party” and a despicable Facebook account likening the SNP with the Nazis. I nearly threw up.
A disgrace by any stretch of the imagination.
link to facebook.co.uk
Stephen.
Maybe Oor Wullie will be asking for “just another penny” to pay for his Party’s errors over PFI contracts?
Surely we have plenty ammunition to sink Slab/Libdums next month – even without media help it must be possible for us to spread the word.
That nasty facebook address again.
link to facebook.com
Stephen.
A few years ago Channel Dispatches did a programme on PFI projects mainly schools and mainly in England but you can bet your bottom dollar the same thing was going on here.
Some of the things to come out of the programme were:
1. The PFI consortium would take out a loan to build the school/hospital or whatever. Once the local councils signed the deal when the school was finished, a deal based on the repayments of the loan, with the PFI group and were contracted to pay say for illustration £100 per month then the PFI would renegotiate the terms of the loan with the banks (who may well have been part of the consortium) so that they were paying back £80 thus an immediate £20 per month profit.
2. The PFI group would set up subsidiaries to provide janitorial services which the Councils were contracted to use. Any changes of use of the buildings meant renegotiating the contract. In one example cited in the programme the school was no longer required but the Council was still having to pay for it.
There were other examples quoted but the whole thing ammounted to a cash cow for the consortium.
On the matter of the media glossing over or just plain omitting the fact that Labour were in charge at the time, if things run true to form expect a blitzkrieg against the SNP by Monday on some issue or other either real or imagined. This is usually the pattern adopted when there is bad news involving Labour especially if it shows the SNP in a good light.
Ruby
It would have been useful if all those links on Brown’s PFIs were in one file with a single link. Unfortunately I don’t know how to do that right now. Must look into it.
Useful for twitter ‘discussions’!
OFF Topic : Stu, can you clarify your position on homeopathy? Reason I ask is this reply I got from a Labour voter on The Courier’s facebook page.
“Christine McLevy : Oh dear me Barry, you have cleary been through the brainwashing of the wee blue book process. Please do not quote any links by that disgusting homeophobic, racist liar that is Rev Stuart Campbell. To quote even been to admit to believing anything that man produces confirms to me that you are a complete crazy person. Sorry go engage will someone with the same mindset as you.”
The self awareness of a poorly made spoon.
Alan Moir @Cllr_Alan_Moir (Labour Councillor)
SNPs alternative “inward investment” policy, kilted PPP & ditched land reform @BrianWilson1967 @voteNeilFindlay scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Alex Gallagher @alexgallagher2 (Labour Councillor)
“Pass me a Saltire and a sick-bag” Brilliant from Brian Wilson. scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Stephen McCabe @CllrSMcCabe (Labour Councillor)
Brian Wilson: In search of cleaner investment cash
scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Mark Macmillan @markmacmillan12 (Labour Councillor)
Brian Wilson: In search of cleaner investment cash scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Roy Kilpatrick @RoyKilpatrick1
As @theSNP woo Qatar & China, quest for foreign investment is shown for what it is scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 … @voteNeilFindlay #BothVotesLabour
Neil Findlay @voteNeilFindlay (arse)
Our research being highlighted by Brian Wilson scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Brian McGinley @mcginleyforayr (Labour candidate for Ayr)
Brian Wilson: In search of cleaner investment cash – Better ways of than deals with China and Qatar scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Bob Chicken @MullingKintyre (Labour activist)
THERE ARE better ways to raise funds for Scots projects than doing deals with China and Qatar. SNP progressive? scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
maggie vaughan @maggivaughan (“the f*cking c*nts are trying to stitch up Alistair!”)
“Pass me a Saltire and a sick bag”. Brian Wilson: In search of cleaner investment cash scotsman.com/news/brian-wilson-in-search-of-cleaner-investment-cash-1-4095158 …
Brian Wilson: In search of cleaner investment cash
The Scotsman, 08/04/2016
“In the case of Labour, PPP was a necessity to catch up on decades of under-investment in schools and hospitals, and many Scottish communities now enjoy excellent facilities because of it.”
BBC News, 08/04/2016
Seventeen schools in Edinburgh are to be closed indefinitely from Monday amid safety concerns about their construction. The schools were all built as part of the city’s private finance programme around a decade ago. Signed in 2001, Edinburgh’s Public Private Partnership deal for schools was worth £360m. In return for 30 years of fixed payments from the council, a private consortium designed, built and managed the schools.
@Ruby.
Sorry I thought it was you referring to them as Miller Construction outfit, it was Cearc.
James Miller was the founding company of Miller Construction. Sir James Miller was Lord Provost of Edinburgh and Lord Mayor of London.
There were other examples quoted but the whole thing ammounted to a cash cow for the consortium.
PFI was introduced by John Major gov early 90’s. They argued that there was no public money to build public services like schools. So they had no choice.
Brown as Chancellor went massive on them and says that PFI’s are better value for money, better private sector quality and although the state became in effect a giant tenant.
States can and do ofcourse borrow money for very cheap. States tend to not go bust or default. Crash Gordon ofcourse went borrow apeshit throughout his long rein but he decided that although PFI borrowing costs were much higher, it was still better than the public sector. Why public sector unions still pay Labour subs is just another teamGB mystery.
Edinburgh schools falling apart, are the first big value for money PFI test in Scotland.
BBC uses giant PFI contracts but who cares, whats £5+bn in new construction costs if the licence fee will always be paid. Too big to fail.
There is no greater evidence, which everybody can see, of the financial incompetence of the Labour party than PFI. If ever there was a clear example of wanton waste of taxpayers money, then PFI was it. Thanks goodness we elected the SNP in 2007 to put a stop to it. Sadly, however we are now living with the legacy of possibly one of the biggest scandals of recent decades.
There needs to be a full enquiry into these deals, especially those for Edinburgh schools, and if possible criminal charges need to be brought. Those who signed these deals in Labour, AND THE BUILDERS, need held to account.
With PFI, Labour tried to have their cake and eat it. Building new hospitals and schools, whilst burdening future generations of Scots, councils and health boards with ridiculously overpriced, shoddy contracts.
It is a disgrace, and the Scots Parliament needs to act to end those contracts where defects have been found, and ensure criminal charges are brought.
No wonder the Labour party is so hated in Scotland now. A scurrilous, incompetent wasteful bunch of crooks, if ever there was one.
First comment here asks if the people in the rest of the UK are beginning to get as angry as us. The answer, in Lambeth at least, is YES.
Google Carnegie Library to see how angry the people of Lambeth and beyond are about the closure of their beloved library — built in 1906 with money from Scots philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, a man who believed that the purpose of acquiring money was to give it away.
After 10 days the protestors occupying the library have been evicted today and there has been a massive protest.
At the start, Red Tory Councillors, who propose to turn the place into a gym with a few books on unattended shelves, demonstrated their customary sense of entitlement and contempt for the public, and one tweeted pictures of cats yawning and walking on a treadmill in response to constituents’ legitimate outrage.
See Artist Taxi Driver on You Tube for more. Great line from the Chairman of the Friends of the Library: “Mr and Mrs Decent Have Had Enough.”
Brian Powell says:
9 April, 2016 at 5:32 pm
Ruby
It would have been useful if all those links on Brown’s PFIs were in one file with a single link. Unfortunately I don’t know how to do that right now. Must look into it.
Useful for twitter ‘discussions’!
Ruby replies
I got all these headlines by going here
link to search.proquest.com
entering my Edinburgh libary card no and then doing a search for Gordon Brown PFI.
Glasgow Libraries have a similar scheme and I would imagine most libraries do.
I’m trying to figure out what you mean when you say a single file. Would you like a pdf containing all the article about Brown’s PFI? Somthing similar to the Wee Black Book?
You would create a pdf with all the various articles. I think you might need Adobe Acrobat Pro to do this but I’m not 100% sure. There might be some other pdf creating software that you could use that might even be FOC.
Once you have created your PDF of Brown/PFI articles you would optimise the pdf for the internet.
Upload the file to the internet. Dropbox, your website/blog. Perhaps you could put it on Twitter and link it from there. I’ve never used Twitter so I have no idea how that works I would imagine you should be able to post a pdf. The only thing I’ve done is create this link to a Twitter video
link to tinyurl.com
Keith Miller – Miller Construction
Lots of nice gongs etc. 2010 link to archive.is
Lots of nice money 2013 link to archive.is
Lots of nice retirement? 2015 link to archive.is
Bob Mack: “I have tried my best to find an instance of a Nations population suddenly rising up wjthout any input or provocation and demanding under pain of violence the resources of another ,but you know what?,It just doesn’t happen that way.”
Hilarious. Where do you think all our buildings and infrastructure came from? All the money in our banks, your cars, toasters, abundance of food, etc? Every material thing you have and ever had was all “taken” — apart from the turnips, we are well suited to growing our own turnips in the UK.
Actually, the last 500 years of history really represents 500 years of us turnip growers stealing stuff off the fellas south of the equator. We even stole the people themselves in Africa, not to mention land all over the world.
It’s funny, I’m a neo-realist with a neo-conservative bias, and on issues of history and international affairs I more or less agree with the Marxist-Leninists. We diverge the instant they start talking about the future, rather than the past.
Cameron has two options: he can go quietly or he can get slapped around first. My guess is the knives will come out tomorrow, on the day or our Lord; that’s the tradition with these things. Powerful dark forces are out to get him but isn’t personal; they want to dismantle the EU.
Time to short the FTSE and the pound. We go into free-fall on Monday.
re my 2.03 regarding
“fully repairing and insuring lease”
anybody know yet if this applies to the Edinburgh School buildings?
You can watch Outlander here:
link to watchepisodes1.tv
@ NeoconNat 6:29pm
…feel better now?
In the world of Treacle down economics dont buy fresh bread,buy ready to bake & freeze it lol.
Ruby@4.56
The shredders will be running all weekend never mind Monday morning.
Labour GUILTY of wasting tax payers money to feather the nests of their labour funding pals.
Dig deep enough and you will unearth the facts.
The SNP should highlight and publish the contracts with a FOI.
Lets see Reporting Shortbread reporting this one.
No doubt it will be all the SNPs fault.
Sassenach@5.24
You forgot to mention the “Pupils Premium” and Alistair said sorry”
Here’s the pr blurb for the company involved in the running of the schools.
link to amey.co.uk
No mention of who foots any repair bills!
“Scottish democracy is a pile of piss”..
If you can get through this pish from #McTernanPredicts I promise you the reply from oor Peter A Bell is worth reading…
link to prospectmagazine.co.uk
Got to hand it to NeoconNat, he has a neck of purest brass, coming back on here after what we’ve been discussing today.
Utterly shameless.
@Neocon Nat,
So your idea is that the population of Britain awoke one morning and decided to conquer the world on their own initiative?
Nobody else was needed to lead them ,to give an excuse for conquest. They just set off by themselves to invade Africa,India,China.
Or perhaps there was someone in power orchestrating the whole thing
What do you think?.
Driving along Portobello High Street today I noticed the queue outside the town hall to get into Dugdale’s constituency rally that Corbyn was addressing.
We used to get longer queues waiting to get into our Scout Group jumble sale at the same venue.
@ Croompenstein (McTernan) Peters on top form with his reply.
Oops forgot to say, Another classic Chris.
Mike Cassidy@6.33
As this was signed off by a labour/Lib Dem coalition I doubt very much if it will have thoroughly scrutinised before the signatures were put to paper. Remember the Tram fiasco?
We are talking about the Slab/Libs here!!!!
Look at the history of Slab/Libs, they have mismanaged everything they have been involved in.
Slabs game was up when they lost the control of running the country, no more hiding the facts regarding the way they did it, they were found out when the SNP got control of the books.
Just think if Slab get back into power PFI will finance everything.
SNPx2
Croompenstein 6.49
Still find it hard to believe people take McTernan seriously.
But loved the response.
However, I suspect Mr Ball might find himself suffering from hammer-related injuries if he tried to post like that on this site!
Croopenstein,
I saw that this morning and started screaming, paragraph breaks, paragraph breaks!
Thank goodness Peter Bell didn’t write that comment on WoS. I doubt there would be enough hammers!
OT
I despair. No wonder the UK is screwed.
Britian’s Got Talent, they tell us it started in June 2007, and this is the 10th Anniversary.
What?
Help!
Tardis!
Ler me in!
No, Let Me Out!
Vote YES!
From memory, I believe that the Glasgow schools PFI was Miller, too.
Might this story grow?
Again from memory, I remember one secondary school which was warned by the Fire Service that it would be charged£ if there were any more false alarms.
Staff ordered not to use electric toaster.
Problem solved !
There’s an election coming up in a month. Between the Panama papers, PFI and the schools literally falling down none of the UKOK parties should be remotely electable in Scotland. Even on the list. Their only hope is if the media keep schtum about these scandals and divert the more gullable elsewhere, which is exactly what will happen.
For those wondering how they are going to “SNP bad” the schools falling down, it’s easy and fairly predictable. There will be no mention of who is responsible for the sub standard construction or the financing which Wonga would have been proud of. The full media focus will be on “what are the SNP doing about it, why are the SNP failing our children.” “It’s been X weeks and our poor wee kids are still without schooling etc etc ad infinitum.
In labour areas we need to be hammering home the truth about the scandal of PFI and the schools in Edinburgh.
There is hardly a mention of the conservatives on any election pamphlets because Ruthie wants to be seen as the face of the tories in Scotland. Fine she has chosen this tactic now Ruth needs to be hammered for her support of the Panama kid.
Let’s clear these rogues from Scotland once and for all!
SNP X 2
@ cearc We sneak Peter A Bell intae Wings via linkage & the chain his never slipped yit ( he dosent do paragraph breaks)lol
Come on NeoconNat, ye’ve gone awfy quiet!
Let’s have some more pearls of wisdom, eh?
Tell you what, mysterious Tory wind-up merchant, you may piss-off some people here, but you can’t deal with us all, and some of us will keep calling you out.
You think your cod-history lesson makes you sound smart? Nah. It just exposes you as a shallow narcissist, full of self-importance and bluster.
If there is any substance to your witterings, let’s hear your take on the PFI scandal. Wasn’t that all about the free-market, competition etc? Or was it all just Labour’s fault?
It’s a straight question NCN – did you support PFI, and if so, what’s your defence of it now?
Before replying you might want to watch this:
‘No Man Can Eat Fifty Eggs’ –
link to youtube.com
I wonder how much of “our” hard-earned PFI money has already made its way to Panama. One thing’s for sure – we won’t ever see it again.
Take the money and run, it’s the corporate way.
@ Ian Brotherhood You,ll hiv NCN busting his gut aw week & we hiv tae suffer the smell, hiv some mercy man on your fellow Wingers.
Re;Arthurs Seat@7pm
Ah that makes sense, we were having a sandwich in a cafe in Porty this after. Sat down next to window, looked out and saw a couple of familiar faces, one being Kez. My bag was well placed at the window endowed with huge YES badge. Anyway it was tempting to be a fly on the table…it was quite amusing, us talking politics while they were chatting away, shame wish I could lip read!
But spare a thought, they looked quite downhearted, now we know why! I did hear K say she was cancelling something when paying, so maybe they were all due to have a slap up party!
Anyway apparently the SNP stall just near the town hall was very busy…
Yes Indy ref 2,
I am black listing Britain got talent, due to corruption allegations involving duplicated dogs, and switching.
Cameron says “I could have handled the tax row better” well duh!
“Don’t blame Number 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me.” Interpretation “I didn’t think I’d get caught”.
“I was obviously very angry about what people were saying about my dad. I loved my dad, I miss him every day.” Interpretation “I’m feeling sorry for myself that I got caught.”
“I will be the first prime minister, the first leader of a major political party, to publish his tax returns, and I think it is the right thing to do.” Interpretation I’m doing this because I got caught.”
“I sold those shares. In fact, I sold all the shares that I owned, on becoming prime minister.” Interpretation “I’ve sold all the shares I have admitted to owning and I’ll try not to get caught the next time.”
Ian Brotherhood, neocon must have been given the weekend off. No overtime, like many these days.
@Andrew Mclean
Prove it!
@-)
Actually I thought the cartoon was of creepy Hamish McDonell.
The Panama papers are a reminder that the £6bn oil fund that the UK should have amassed from Scottish oil is very likely residing in the offshore funds of the UK so called ‘elite’.
@ArtyHetty
No overtime, like many these days
There will always be arse sookers who fuck it up for their comrades…
link to youtube.com
Bob Mack, you’re asking us to distinguish in some way between a population and its government, over hundreds of years too, as if their interests didn’t ever converge. But the armies of soldiers and seamen, not to mention the traders, administrators, and white settlers generally, were not members of the government. They were ordinary people who willingly took part because they deemed it to be in their interests to do so.
Scotland is no different. History shows that when times were good the Scottish were more than willing partners in the Empire. Before anyone on here takes issue with that inconvenient truth, you should consider that denying the truth of something always puts you in the wrong.
Ian, there are people on here who have a much better understanding of PFI than I do. It isn’t an area that interests me but I’d be willing to bet it didn’t involve a failure of the free market. More like a failure of corrupt Labour politicians.
Generally speaking, the free market is only applicable to the poor, both here at home and abroad. The middle classes who manage all the various institutions of state, from health to education, the law, and everything else, there’s no way they are ever going to let the free market near their livelihoods. I wish it was otherwise.
PFI is a good example, then. Corrupt politicians signed the country up to deals that nobody in the free market or their right mind would ever sign up to. I’m sure it was very lucrative for them. The innocent and largely poor taxpayers will pick up the tab, as they always do.
Alex was the perfect mentor for Nicola but now here is the new master and apprentice.. I predict big things for the apprentice 🙂
link to twitter.com
@NeoconNat –
Oh FFS, you actually did it! You trotted out the ‘Labour’s fault’ line – I shouldn’t have handed you that in my comment!
*SLAPS AIN HEID*
Er, right, okay, so, we’re a bit but nearer to understanding your world-view, I think, maybe…you’re one of those ‘caring Conservatives’?
Is that it?
Slightly O/T
Just watched last nights 2016.
The Heralds David Leask mentioned something about Scotland promoting itself as a tax haven.
Anyone know what this is about? as I was thinking about spending my pension on whisky and drambers, so if I can hide it in Scotch-shire that would be a bonus.(just kidding)
SNPx2
Catching up with the Yoon comments on twitter last night. Some deluded comments – I note batshit Jill made an apperance. The Rev keeps a calm heed, given their comments.
Nothing much happening this evening news wise, so watching Django. Hope it’s good.
@Neocon Nat,
What a load of bovine excrement.
Lets have a look at that.
Name me one conflict over the past three hundred years where the public instigated or demanded military or colonial action from the Government? You can’t.
You can cite business interests like the East India Co. Cecil Rhodes. Gold mining and diamond mining companies. All fronts for government action.by being agent provocateurs. Create a scenario where you are threatened ,then call in the militart and take over. Standard UK tactics for nigh on three hundred years.
Issue propaganda, arouse public indignity ,act on it.
@NeconNat –
I’ve just read your 8.05 comment again, thrice, and if it isn’t the single most raving bonkers comment ever to appear on this site then it’ll certainly do until something even weirder crops up.
Having said that, please keep ’em coming – great entertainment!
PFI contracts is the reason that England NHS is in such serious trouble. They can’t afford the massive costs on the hospital contracts & that has pushed most areas into deficit.
Philippa should win… 😀
link to twitter.com
@Gary45%
He’s had 4 or 5 articles in the Herald about it. Apparently the Russians have shown an interest in Scottish Limited Liability Partnerships because the law is a bit different here to register tham as tax evasion or avoidance (I forget) mechanisms. But he failed every time to point out that the same goes for LLPs in the rest of the UK, and though the problem might be a bit worse in Scotland, it’s the same problem in the rUK, and there’s nothing the Scottish Government can do about it apart from protest to Westminster, as company law is reserved to Westminster.
He’s posted below the line to “trash” objections to his distorted point of view, and when he’s told he’s wrong, he just gets more obstinate. Him journalist, us stupid punters who should read and swallow what we’re told.
Weird guy, because I don’t think he’s a “Britnat”.
Bascially though there’s a rather large well known law firm Brodies Edinburgh who market them, as do others. Being Scottish they are of course better and more successful than their rUK equivalent! Yet another Scottish success, but not perhaps one we’d want.
There were requests to close the loophole in I think the Company’s Act 2008 or thereabouts, but they were rejected.
Ian, are you denying that the scandalous PFI arrangements were largely caused by Labour?
The issue is more complex than it seems. I’d attribute blame to the middle classes who on one hand want the good jobs in the public sector but on the other don’t want to pay higher taxes for silly things like hospitals and schools for poor people.
99% of the problems we face in this country, in my opinion, can probably be attributed to the Middle Class. PFI is good example.
Remember, Blair’s Labour got elected on the promise that they wouldn’t raise taxes; that’s why the middle class voted for him and why Labour won the election. At the same time, a sizeable number of working class people (in newspeak they call them “traditional Labour supporters”) wanted stuff like jobs, schools, hospitals, and happiness.
It was a classic capabilities-expectations gap. PFI filled the gap.
Oh, it could lead to the UK being declared a Tax Haven by I forget, the World Bank or IMF or something like that. Previous posting off the top of my head also, subject to errors.
@Neoconat –
Before you come back to lay yet another dog-egg, could you please have a gander at this and tell us what you think of this dude and what he has to say?
He’s perhaps like you insofar as he’s a ‘kind of’ Tory but has the most beastly difficulty explaining precisely what it is he stands for.
And do try to enjoy it!
David Coburn –
link to youtube.com
This would appear to be a good starting point for the Scotland-as-tax-haven story.
link to nakedcapitalism.com
Don’t have time now to do it justice, but note that it was not only Scottish entities involved.
The awareness of a particularly Scottish dimension of the problem is reflected here.
link to scottishlegal.com
@NeoconNat –
‘…are you denying that the scandalous PFI arrangements were largely caused by Labour?’
Yes. They were facilitated by ‘New Labour’.
And what, pray tell, ’caused’ New Labour?
Eh?
@neoconNat,
In other words the public were manipulated by the Government yet again. (This time Blair)
They were also led into war by the same government, and yes ,on the basis of another lie about the danger of doing nothing. You get the point yet.
@Gary45% – Maybe referring to the previously proposed drop in corp. tax?
DC is in a real fix now. If attention on this doesn’t subside (and it doesn’t look like it will soon) the tory EU exit camp only have to accuse his personal affairs of deflecting attention from such an important decision, and regardless of the outcome, DC could go down as the man who lost the tory party. He won’t risk that as a legacy. Neither can he risk the guilt of a protest vote against him resulting in an exit. This would be serious long term damage for his party.
This would be a struggle for him to weather with full party support behind him, but with the tories such as they are at the moment, there will doubtless be tory knives out for him over the weekend.
After all, there are many within his party that would quite gladly sacrifice DC’s premiership for EU exit. Initially looked as if they would leave the wound to fester and damage the IN campaign. The issue is trying to find someone financially clean enough to take his place who is on the right line of the precedent that this would set.
The only reason there hasn’t been a tory head above the trench to take a real shot at Cameron yet is because the tory party is a big glass house, and someone just leaked 32 trillion stones.
joe public is an arsehole
i doubt 99% know what pfi is or means
people vote for parties for a variety of reasons, some because they like the colour!!!
Im less interested in the past than what we are going to do in the future.
capitalism versus socialism is last century politics
Thanks to the right wing media spent a bad tea time drinks session with a couple of yoons who seriously believe that the SNP government is the mots secretive administration in the world due to the China deal and most big brother institution over the named persons legislation.
Wait with bated breath for some expose of the Edinburgh schools PFI fiasco.
Under the terms of the PFI contract, signed in August 1998 and approved by the Labour government of the day, the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary will pay Consort Healthcare, £47.8 million in Unitary Charge payments this year alone, for a hospital that cost £180 million to build. The hospital will cost the taxpayer £1.4 billion by 2034, allowing Consort Healthcare to make profits of £12-16 million per year in spite of the serious contractual failings in the past.
Why is this not exposed by the Scottish media?
Bob Mack, your latest question and your line of questioning generally puts everything back to front.
You ask me to name one conflict that arose by popular demand. It’s an interesting thing to ask but back to front. It’s worth remembering that since about 1832, you could reasonably argue that the various governments who conducted policy had democratic credentials, but let’s leave that issue for now.
The obvious measure of how willing the population was in a given war would rest on a two obvious things: 1) expressions of opposition to the war, and 2) involvement.
Only very recently and rarely have we witnessed any serious protests against wars. Before say 1960, my guess is you’d struggle to find an example of one in this country.
Worth bearing in mind that even in the First World War they depended on volunteers; conscription wasn’t brought in until the war was almost over. All wars previous to World War One, including all the imperialist wars, involved soldiers and ordinary people taking part voluntarily.
I see that it would suit you to pin all the blame for the evils of the world on various governments and leaders. They definitely played a part. Hume discusses this sort of thing in the cold light of day and I’d recommend looking at what he said.
But the harrowing truth is that the most atrocious acts of cruelty in history were perpetrated by ordinary people, not governments, and even if they were “just following orders” it wouldn’t excuse it or alter the truth of the historical record.
@Mike Cassidy
That article does seem to take its material from the Herald. As Justice Secretary Michael Matheson (SNP) said: “I am very open to looking at whether there is a need to improve the legislation and, if necessary, to make representations to UK ministers.” which is all he can do.
Personally I think it’s not going to happen. Apart from the disruption to perfectly legitimate LLPs and SLPs (not SLLP as I said), operating totally in the UK, my own feeling is that tax avaoidance probably represents, one way or another to 10% or more of the UK GDP. Cut that 10% of GDP, and the debt to GDP ratio rises 11%, making it 100%. The UK would on the way down the slope, meet Greece on the way up. And no EU or Central Bank to bail out the UK, it’d be cap in hand to the IMF.
Again.
Re=PFI School’s Liability Insurance for defects.
Miller Construction would have to have been insured through Public Liability or some such insurance.
What will be happening now is the determination of fault and/or blame,i.e.who is responsible.
From the Oxgang photos it looks like wall ties to the internal structure either didn’t hold or were possibly not installed.
No wall ties-wall falls down after damage or disturbance- and it is a ton of bricks.
If Miller used subcontractors they will be billed through their liability insurance.
This is hypothetical but that’s what it looks like to a humble bricklayer.
Way to go British Labour Party…
link to twitter.com
capitalism versus socialism is last century politics
Crash Gordon and Tony Blair were fantastic tories though. If you look at their wonder years of power, they created stuff like the UK becoming the biggest buy to let property market in the world.
It’s another Crash Gordon legacy that makes it hard to listen to SLabour goons waffling away SNP Scots.gov not building social housing.
Crash Gordon flat out refused to build any at all. He could find billions for the UKOK war machine but not housing and toryboy world loved him for it, until they got sick of the “most unpopular prime minister ever” and “one eyed Scottish idiot,” which was pretty mean of tory England. They warmed up a bit to Crash after he saved teamGB though.
@Croompenstein
🙄 😮
I like the bar chart (graph). Perhaps kevin could give us one, it goes something like this
😯 😳
McTernanesque prediction – Gordon Brown will intervene in the PFI scandal to sort it all out and explain his thinking way back then…
Or, he may just bolt.
‘Get that fucking engine started, we’re outta here…’
(Can’t find that image – sure it appeared here. Anyone have it handy?)
Croompenstein says:
9 April, 2016 at 9:08 pm
Way to go British Labour Party…
link to twitter.com
The SNP have to take the opportunity to ensure that everyone knows exactly what a gigantic financial mess the last Labour government made with PPI/PFI, a mess that will take decades to clear. The SNP have to act quickly while the iron is hot, otherwise the media will bury it before you can blink. And before you know it, it was the fault of the SNP.
re;Sinky@8.48pm
Yep, that is what the ppl are thinking, well some are.
The Scotgov have a thing now, having ditched PFI as soon as, it’s called, NPD. ‘Non profit distribution’ for new hospitals etc.
Just tell your pals to do their homework.
thomaspotter2014 says:
9 April, 2016 at 9:04 pm
Re=PFI School’s Liability Insurance for defects.
Miller Construction would have to have been insured through Public Liability or some such insurance.
Don’t be too surprised if it turns out that someone screwed up and that certain, crucial papers were not signed properly. Labour politicians were involved, after all.
All this about Dave puts me in mind of when Davie pays a wee quick solo flight to the Islands to check oot his investments.
link to facebook.com
Bob Sinclair via twitter McConnells £1.2 billion handed back to the Treasury as he could,nt find a use for it FFS,he should be held to account.
There are shades of T Dan Smith and Poulson about this. That all kicked of with public buildings like swimmimg pools falling apart due to dodgy cement.
The Poulson scandal resulted in jail sentences due to bribery and corruption whereas PFI might well be no more than incompetence and poor due diligence and quality control.
All this is rather ironic given Labour are bumping their gums about due diligence in relation to Chinese companies. It is particularly ironic in relation to steel and the claim that the SNP should have used British steel for the Queensferry crossing when Tata are under Serious Fraud Office investigation for falsifying quality control documents. Imagine what Labour would be saying if there was question marks over the quality of steel in the nearly finished bridge….probably that the SNP should have bought Chinese steel. 😉
link to theguardian.com
All SNP branches should be at the Printers getting this out to the people of Edinburgh.
Swinney should call all those PPF/PPI company,s in & tell them One Time offer take it or leave it,taking into account monies already paid.
yesindyref2 says:
Perhaps Kevin will produce a chart that shows how a £280 million hospital costs a hard pressed Health board £1.5 billion to finance.
yesindyref2 – If X FACTOR started in 2007 (never watch it) this will be the tenth one. Do the finger count.
Despite BBC Good Morning Scotland’s assertions that we shouldn’t look too deeply into the Edinburgh schools PFI shambles due to fact that it might damage Labour in the middle of an election campaign, all wingers need to make sure the media don’t bury this bad news for Labour.
@Thomaspoter (9.04)
‘From the Oxgang photos it looks like wall ties to the internal structure either didn’t hold or were possibly not installed.
No wall ties-wall falls down after damage or disturbance- and it is a ton of bricks.’
Radio North Britain News at 10.00 just reported that initial inspections have revealed that ‘wall-ties’ are missing in Oxgangs and St. Peter’s Primary schools.
Hey mister, for a ‘humble bricklayer’ that was pretty good shout, eh?!
🙂
Is the report that was submitted to the council re oxgangs in the public domain ? – I can’t find it.
Despite BBC Good Morning Scotland’s assertions that we shouldn’t look too deeply into the Edinburgh schools PFI shambles due to fact that it might damage Labour in the middle of an election campaign, all wingers need to make sure the media don’t bury this bad news for Labour.
I am sure that Torcuil is busy penning a 4 page special for the Record on how far we can trust Labour’s PFI legacy
or maybe not
@ Thomaspoter No wall ties + exceding the amount of course,s, they were on bonus work in all areas,snaging was rife,painters are still filling in cracks to this day.
Kinda curious about the links people are drawing with PFI and structural failure of the building. Corruption, fiddling the books, and lining each other pockets is a white collar matter, but experiencing an actual structural failure opens up a whole different can of worms. If PFI has led to a compromise of specification and building standards, then that’s when people will start going to jail.
Personally, instinct suggests to me that this particular method of construction was perhaps not unique to PFI contracts, but there is a real possibility it was potentially considered reasonable practice in other buildings too. I don’t see why a contractor would compromise standards on a PFI contract. Any compromise in standards would logically occur more generally as a wider poor practice.
I’ve commented before on modern construction method, it’s weaknesses and the potential for catastrophic failures. Sadly nobody wants to listen. It’s never the method that’s at fault.
Blame PFI if you like, I thoroughly detest the insanity like everybody else, but don’t be too surprised if this turns out to be the tip of an even larger iceberg, and PFI is just a superficial layer of complexity over and above an already thoroughly ugly situation.
I seen a list of PFI schools somewhere but I can’t remember if Liberton was on it, I remember this at the time and they tried to make this an SNP Baaad, shame on them..
link to bbc.co.uk
Interesting the BBC running with ‘hundreds’ on their micro-piece on the protests in London. The Telegraph and RT were both talking ‘thousands’ and I have to say that from the footage I watched earlier it definitely looking like ‘thousands’ rather than ‘hundreds’.
I suppose thousands are simply large numbers of hundreds.
You don’t think… no. The BBC wouldn’t, would they? They wouldn’t downplay the number of protesters for their own nefarious propaganda ends would they? Because that would breach their own charter on impartiality and integrity and telling the truth?
@Breeks –
‘Blame PFI if you like, I thoroughly detest the insanity like everybody else, but don’t be too surprised if this turns out to be the tip of an even larger iceberg, and PFI is just a superficial layer of complexity over and above an already thoroughly ugly situation.’
Precisely so, and this is what the likes of NeoconNat don’t seem to understand, or choose to ignore because it’s just too grim.
It is farcical to pretend that ‘real’ stuff can be done with ‘unreal’ money, while those in charge of making allegedly ‘democratic’ decisions line their own pockets with ‘real’ dosh whilst mortgaging the future incomes of entire generations of the people they were elected to represent.
The only thing more sickening than the sheer gall of those implementing these schemes is the lethargy and acquiescence of the obvious victims i.e. us.
The ‘iceberg’ you refer to is, imo, real, and it’s called Global Capitalism.
Ian Brotherhood,
“Cynical hat back on…the SNP had better make the most of this. There will never ever be a better opportunity to show-up SLab and the LibDems for what they’ve done to this country.
A lot of us, even non-SNP, have bitten our tongues so often when senior SNP figures had good reason to get ripped right into them, especially SLab, but didn’t. No excuses any more – heads have to roll over this and the Scottish Government must take on the job of axeman whether it likes it or not.”
Have you finally decided to give your list vote to the SNP?
Luigi@9.34 if the wall ties weren’t installed at the time of building the bricks that would be incompetent and possibly criminal neglect and that’s a real get out for the insurance company/ies implicated.
Whoever was responsible for overseeing the brickwork integrity is in deep shit.
Ian Brotherhood@10.09
Cheers Ian.
It actually looks like approx.20 tons of bricks in Oxgang photo.
Hope no one killed or injured.
Ronnie anderson@10.24
Somebody knows who built these walls.Site agent,contractors,subcontractors,Clerk of works,Building Control.
They will find a culprit and they will be in serious trouble.
Why did McConnell under spend?
Simples,
To keep Scotland begging to the UK treasury.
After all we are too wee and too stupid to look after ourselves.!?!?
Oh dear looks like Slab Fucked up (AGAIN)
SNPx2
@Rock (11.03) –
I’m voting SNPx2, and I’m still a member of the SSP.
Not that it’s any of your fucking business, of course.
Another wee thought.
Miller were the contractors, they have now been taken over, any guesses the maintenance contracts will be handed over to the tax payer, as the new company will have a get out clause that nobody noticed.
We can’t let this one disappear, SNP time to put the boot in.
SNPx2
Ian Brotherhood,
“@Rock (11.03) –
I’m voting SNPx2, and I’m still a member of the SSP.
Not that it’s any of your fucking business, of course.”
Good to hear. I trust other SSP activists are doing the same.
I am very concerned that some Greens (and “ex Greens”) might be duping SNP supporters to give their list vote to the Greens.
Vote SNP+SNP.
Valerie,
“I detest Cameron almost more than any of them, although IDS and Bojo are close runners. Cameron is so measured and sly about his image etc., he makes my skin crawl.”
But he is nothing compared to Blair.
@Rock –
You’re a star.
Keep on ‘keepin’ it real’ comrade…
Scotlands talk in 10am-1pm tomorrow, Northsound Nicola will be on around 11.40
0333 20 20 401
im voting snp1 and solidarity2
link to caltonjock.com
@harry mcaye
Yes, the 10th show, but the 9th anniversary, not the 10th.
Cuts to local councils leads to shoddy building practices Are these the kind of Chinese deals we can look forward to in Sturgeons Scotland
Still unanswered questions over the Forth Bridge
Overcrowding in schools caused by SNP maintenance cuts leads to structural damage
What are the SNP Scottish government going to do about failing structures in our childrens schools
SNP fail to protect our childrens education how long have they known about this
I wonder which of these the Scottish media have agreed with each other to use in their simultaneous attack
im voting snp1 and solidarity2
Twa recruitin’ sairgants cam frae the black watch,
To markets and fairs some recruits for to catch,
An’ a’ that they listed was for forty an’ twa,
So list my bonnie laddie an’ come come awa
“For if we trample over the hopes and the dreams of the young,they will hold us ever in contempt”.
On building/construction standards. My brother who just happens to be a site manager/clerk of works told me that one of the first things the Blair Red Tory Govt did when it got into power was to legislate to reduce building standards just as they were plotting the introduction of PFI.
But hey UKOK is corrupt to the core and just like Blair wont be dragged before any War Crimes Tribunal then Cameron wont be brought down over his dishonesty about benefiting from the proceeds of offshore accounts!
When of when are the SNP going to take the effin gloves off?
Oh and I will be voting SNP 1 and Jean Urquhart RISE 2. It is a personal vote for Jean.
UKOK must be one of the most corrupt States on the planet. There is nothing that any Banana Republic or Banana Monarchy could teach the Brits!
Blame PFI if you like……
i will do, we are in an election campaign and the libdems and slab are responsable for these contracts
do you really think that if the shoe were on the other foot the bbc would not have wall to wall snp bad?
the schools falling down and the panama papers are a god send for us. these are the only questions we should be asking rennie,dugdale and ruthie about
eg
kez, did you or any of your collegues personally benefit from these pfi deals?
ruth, do you or any of the scottish tories have offshore accounts?
rennie, does the rowentree foundation who give you large amounts of money have any interests in panama or the pfi schools?
I’ve not been feeling very good today and so I have been watching the tv…if I see one more subliminal yoonion flag I will actually scream! Is this all they have now…putting THAT flag with products will not MAKE ME TURN F#*¿*+# BRITISH it only raises my blood pressure then I change the channel.
Right I feel better now 😉
SNP X 2 EU IN
Well, so much for the Sunday Herald.
Article 1 – “SNP: UK Government ministers must declare tax haven links”, but with a quote “However, a senior SNP insider said the Panama Papers affair was damaging for all political parties: “Politicians are being asked to declare their links to tax havens, but then it will be donors and high-profile supporters. Nobody will come out well.” (non-aligned but dig at SNP)
Art 2 – “Revealed: Over 60,000 acres of land in Scotland owned by Panama companies” (Pro Green)
Art 3 – “Dugdale first to publish her return as tax debate heats up” (pro Lab)
Art 4 – “Scottish councils told to check school building safety after shock Edinburgh closures” without mentioning it was Labour / Lab + LibDem who signed up to them. (avoids being anti-Lab or LibDem)
Art 6 – “Police Scotland confirms 13 spy rule breaches by Counter Corruption Unit” (basically anti-SNP)
Art 8 – “Election interview: Scottish Green co-convener Patrick Harvie” (Pro Green)
Art 9 – “Revealed: the top-secret tax sweetener for £7.2m Cairngorm land deal” (anti-SNP)
Art 10 – “Corruption report author “surprised” at Scottish Government deal with blacklisted Chinese firm” (anti-SNP)
Art 11 – “Revealed: not enough secondary schools are inspected to assess improvement” (anti-SNP)
So basically the Sunday Herald is now more anti-SNP than the Herald.
Oh, I won’t be bothering posting there today.
Peter Piper.
Not sure if this has been mentioned as I’ve just come in and not had time to read all the comments but ‘ Broadcasting Scotland’ is being launched tomorrow from the Yes bar according to Twitter at 12.30
So, the world’s two most famous
surviving royal families, selling
weapons (to lesser tribes) through each others governments.
Making sure their hegemony outlasts democracy.
Up to their eyes in hellbound shit.
Spreading wars around the planet with their patronised, inept, complicit, media stooges for accomplices.
It took many years, of
very poor UK governance,
from the end of WWII,
until Devolution,
for this country’s assests
to be run into the ground.
The SNP only have a foot
in the door…
They can’t be expected to
forsee problems, caused by
misguided construction managers,
within local authority and
infrastructure projects.
Where were the surveyors,
architects, engineers,
the Clerk of Works,
when obviously cheap
methods of construction
were creating such
dangerous buildings?
The SNP cannot,
in two terms,
create entire new regimes
for every single facet
of their responsibility.
It’s not just politicians
who take the gravy train.
@ boris 12.12 am
That is truly scary. Could this really happen? Hope the SNP are doing something about it.
I also agree they have to ‘go on the attack'(PFI, tax havens etc) but it’s difficult when your fighting the whole media to get your voice heard.
O/T Just noticed this am. Cameron has published his returns. Telegraph saying mummy gave him another £200,000, which if she lasts another 2 years, he avoids paying £80,000 in inheritance tax. There’s also questions on ANOTHER £72,000 shares.
Way O/T Anybody notice the BBC reporting on the demo yesterday, actually showed the rather rude placard – something to do with doing to us what he did to pigs!
Cameron finds another £200,000 behind the sofa, but will wait till he leaves Office for the back handers. Boris Johnstone was brought up on EU money but doesn’t want anyone else to benefit. The Tories want out of the EU so they can tax evade. Especially the Press owning Non Doms who pay no tax.
Hinkley Point, a disaster and HS2 which will make journey’s longer. The Tory slush fund. A total waste of taxpayers money £95Billion (double it). The deficit.
The Greens are complaining about the Scottish Gov buying land. An ancient forest.
Still no mention by BBC / MSM of fact that Edinburgh schools construction failures were part of Labour / Lib Dem’s flawed and expensive PFI / PPP projects.
Some weekend reading:
Scottish politics: link to wp.me
Car politics: link to wp.me
That British protected Western Isles campaign didn’t go too well. LibDems/Labour (MP’s)got wiped out. Carmichael disgrace is facing a £100,000 (+ £50K slush fund) legal bill. There is the Holyrood election to go. Ah well. The best laid plans etc?
No mention of Edinburgh schools scandal in Edinburgh’s Scotland on Sunday.
No investigative articles in any Sunday paper on the cost of PFI / PPP debt / repayments to taxpayers and cash strapped local authorities / health boards.
Under PFI deals the risk of damage due to latent or inherent defects ( present but undetected ) will be passed on to the occupier. Normally the owner of the ” investment ” has only a limited interest in such matters having insured the risk of disruption to income stream and given the occupier a right to take action directly against the building contractor and their professional team for any failures on their part. It looks like it’s the occupier’s problem with remedy dependent on proving fault.
Yesterday’s Daily Hail covers the Edinburgh School fiasco
and managed lengthy piece without ever mentioning those responsible for it.
All missing in action are Gordon Brown, the Lib-Lab Scottish Government of the day, Labour controlled Edinburgh Council.
They could not employ the letters SNP as this party will now have to find another major fix for Corrupt UK Inc.
Unimaginably, the did seek comment from someone “in” politics, Andy Weightman of the Green Party!
Kim Jong-Un wasn’t available but would have had as much involvement in this story as Weightman.
BUM Journalism is just so pathetically biased that it
astonishes me how many people buy their useless pamphlets
O/T links
link to indyref2.scot
Old bbc article re PFI and McConnell accused of bribery
link to archive.is
PFI and contruction companies mentioned here
link to twitter.com
Another old article re PFI
link to newsnet.scot?
scottish-government-should-address-pfi-contracts-to-help-nhs-claims-academic
O/T links
Watch today…
link to broadcastingscotland.net
link to disabilitynewsservice.com
First time I have lined to this rag…
Peter Oborne asks is this the end of the Cameron era
link to archive.is
No shortage of rain in Scotland…
link to science.slashdot.org
Interesting article in the Sunday Post entitled
How far does PFI scandal go?
‘The ESP the private consortium formed by Miller which built, manages & operates the schools of behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council told councillors last week the school were safe.’
Surely the checks are not left to this private consortium! If they are financially responsible for all repairs they are not going to be looking for faults too carefully!
link to tinyurl.com
Sunday Post front page
PFI Panic
O/T links
Kez should be asked if she is still proud of labour’s record
link to archive.is
link to news.scotland.gov.uk
Pulitzer/ victims of offshore
link to youtube.com
link to thecanary.co
If the school buildings are compromised then so are the contracts our councils signed up to.
@ Schrodingers Cat…12.56am
Don’t misunderstand SC, I’m not an apologist excusing PFI or the imbeciles who didn’t have the wits to see what it would mean.
PFI is however a consequence unregulated greed and immoral leadership on a witheringly epic scale. There seems to be no limit on either the number or the girth of the bloated blood sucking parasites sucking the wealth and life force from our country.
Go ahead. Scorch PFI for all you are worth, but You might even scuff the paint on a thoroughly formidable battle tank.
You could hang, draw and quarter each one responsible for PFI from gibbets all along the Royal Mile but the NeoCon serpent would merely shed another skin and carry on as before.
A school falls down, it’s a disaster. Our building industry is systematically destroyed with the loss of centuries of tradesmanship and learning and everybody is calling it progress. It is the same monster who is responsible; criminal greed.
PFI is no less repugnant to me than a local Council say abusing Framework Agreement Protocols to circumvent tendering and procurement protocols so they can still favour their “chums”. And even once a works contract enters the tendering stage for competition between chums, it’s been many years since competent construction and value for money were relevant criteria. It’s all about cheapness, and of course having a face that fits.
Ask yourself why it Scottish Enterprise are such regular cast members in so many hair brained white elephant schemes? Their economics are fundamentally unsound, yet they have a virtual monopoly on the distribution of support. Why do we tolerate such incompetence?
Look at the tools for sale in your DIY warehouse. Cheap crap that makes it impossible for decent tool manufacturers to survive. Consequence? You cannot buy a decent tool, and are forced to buy a shitty tool again, and again, and again even though it’s shitty from day one and falls to bits, because that is all there is left. Nobody wins except those who make the shitty tools in the first place.
May we never be forgiven for our attitudes towards honesty, quality, and workmanship. We shall reap what we sow. It is the extinction event for centuries of our time served heritage.
I forget what TV drama it was in, but Kevin Spacey once said a great line of dialogue….
“Such a waste; he chose money over power. Money is the Sarrasota McMansion that falls to pieces after ten years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect you if you don’t know the difference”.
Amen to that.
As a card carrying member of the SNP I will be very disappointed and dismayed if the government does not hold a full public enquirey into the PFI debacle. This has been a disaster waiting to happen on the financial front as well as a potential disaster on the construction front.
I am sure that if this goes ahead the government will get full backing from SLAB in general and Jackie Bailey in particular as she always want’s full transparency on EVERYTHING !
Cameron is toast, as predicted. Staying now could impact badly on the EU vote. The question is who replaces him — who is the deputy PM? Anyone know?
A leadership challenge looks unavoidable and that means chaos in the run up to the EU vote; instability and uncertainty if they wait until afterwards.
On the bright side, a devalued pound might help exports…
Nana, Ruby, others..
Thank-you for these, and all the links..
My local PFI..
New school cost £7 million.
Contracted for £1 million for 25 years.
No way for councils to reclaim assests or jobs.
I was curious as to the procedure of selecting another Prime Miinister if DC resigns.
Page 7 Of this document explains it all:
link to jameswjbowden.files.wordpress.com
It is not just the building costs. It is the maintenance costs. Yearly maintenance costs are covered, 30 years contract after thirty years the building is handed back as new (?)
Some school last thirty years are knocked down and a new one build. Older building have higher maintenance charges – higher heating costs etc. Many schools now have solar panels.
Cutting temperature a degree on public/private building would save a lot.
Good podcast with James Scott [scotgoespop] and Michael Gray [commonspace] hosted by Derek Bateman
link to newsnet.scot
Westminster Law covers tax havens. Thatcher established tax havens. The London establishment try to blame International Law. It is UK Law that established tax havens backed by UK taxpayers resources. Bank bailouts etc, happened when leverage reserve capital was reduce from 25% to 13%. Breaking established World Banking Laws by Thatcher/Reagan/Clinton/Blair. UK/US are world bankers because worldwide banks can be unstable.
@Cherry
Shop in Aldi, loads of Scottish products and Saltires on the labels,
Makes you proud not to be that word that you don’t want to say
Worst offenders Morrisons, that flag you don’t want to mention is everywhere on bloody everything, all that’s missing are portraits of Queenie
You wouldn’t even know you were in Scotland
Listening to the review of the papers this morning and it sounds like Scotland on Sunday have found a bigger shark to jump than their previous attempts.
As Andrew Tickell noted, it will do little to dissuade SNP and Yes supporters that the SoS is on an agenda which bears little relation to reporting news.
Neocon
The pound has already fallen by quite a bit over the last few weeks.
Further falls won’t help exports because we do not make that much stuff for export. Furthermore it makes imports, including raw materials we use to make stuff to export, much more expensive. This makes the cost of living more expensive for everyone.
Breeks: “Our building industry is systematically destroyed with the loss of centuries of tradesmanship and learning and everybody is calling it progress.”
You poor, confused fish. If there’s one industry that has survived the denationalisation process that started back in the 1980s, it’s building. The reason it has survived is down to the fact that it didn’t depend on government involvement in the same way others did.
The industries that died and are suffering now are the ones that were insulated from market forces. As soon as the public subsidy rug is pulled from under their feet, they fall like old boxers as soon as reality lays a glove on them.
Where is the uproar in the papers about the collapsing schools built under a labour pfi scheme; chilling to think children could have been killed due to this.
Day upon day we had to suffer the utter pish printed in the papers and on the tv about the Forth road bridge.
Collapsing schools; nothing to see here please move along!
I haven’t heard kezia’s apology for endangering the lives of hundreds of school children, after all the press went bat shit crazy over the fourth road bridge, so where is the rigorous investigation into the awarding of contracts to construct these schools, the appointment of architects and engineers, and labours responsibility as the client as required under the constitution design and management act?
Strange the corruption of the Scottish press, and journalists has allowed them to turn a blind eye.
As low in the gutter I placed Scottish journalism, their protection of labour in this affair is utterly immoral and contemptible.
If you are interested you can look at Edinburgh planing portal, I can’t post a link. But all records are there on the school projects
Yeah, Ledgerwood, I get it. But you could argue we don’t export that much because the pound has been so strong. Tourism is essentially an export too and a devalued pound ought to stimulate it.
I am involved in importing and exporting, mostly vis a vis the Continent and East Asia. I also have interests in the tourism industry here in Scotland. Tourism is struggling more than ever, I’d say, and there are a few factors involved in that, including the strength of the pound.
The industries that died and are suffering now are the ones that were insulated from market forces. As soon as the public subsidy rug is pulled from under their feet, they fall like old boxers as soon as reality lays a glove on them.”
So how come these insulated industries are booming in countries like Germany and Norway? Norway has almost zero teenage unemployment, most if not all in professional and apprenticeship work.
I know I’ll regret even pointing this out though.
@Neocon Nat,
Sorry pal but you are wrong. Some brickies hired for construction work have only done vocational training courses to qualify. Years ago they would have served an apprenticeship and learned all the skills to do a proper job.
This also applies to all the trades involved in construction.
Bottom line is that companies have cut costs to build quickly and maximise profits.
I think that Miller construction is not a subsidised Company. Only thing is that the walls it builds fall like an old boxer. Some advert for private business eh?
The industries that died and are suffering now are the ones that were insulated from market forces.
This is simply not the case. Ship building, coal, steel, were brought low by competition certainly but is state subsided steel and ship building in the Far East and Eastern Europe fair competition? These are hard industries to move quickly in and out of. Once you have removed the competition we will only be left with Chinese and Indian steel. The same with coal. Yes coal mined by child labour in Colombia and the like was cheaper than UK coal but it was hardly ethical to buy it.
The market place is twisted and corrupted. It was not a level playing field and people knew that at the time but were happy to go along with it. Others like Germany protected their industries far more diligently than we did.
We, WoS, seem to have caught the EBC issue of not being able to deal with numbers accurately.
This Schools Swindle is affecting THOUSANDS of lives.
School Children, Teachers, Admin Staff, Janitors, and what do you think it will do to parents who have to stay off
work to look after the children while the schools are closed?
Vote Labour for easy money schemes for the Rich.
Endanger your child today, and leave the on-going bill
for their school with them!
Seventeen schools…
That’s an awful lot of pupils, parents, carers, support workers, taxi drivers and so on…
If even a fraction of them get organised and kick up hell about this then they won’t be easily ignored.
On the one hand I think, I dont know what I would do without having the Rev making me aware of how corrupt, David Cameron, Westminster, the Yoon State and media really is, but on the other it makes me more and more dejected that we are still part of this corrupt union.
We really do need to let them know in May that we have had enough, if not, we can have no complaint.
Andrew Mclean:
… after all the press went bat shit crazy over the fourth road bridge …
I was going to hold forth on your use of ‘fourth’, but on reflection, I think you are correct. The Kincardine Bridge was first, the FRB was second and the Clackmannan one was third.
If you count the Rail Bridge, then the one currently under construction is the Fifth Forth Bridge, and that would have been my choice of name.
What? The Fifth Forth Bridge?
😉
BBC Politics with Ligger Neil right the noo, special guests, the Times political twit, the Daily Heil political twit and two other tory twits, with one explaining how tax evasion and Cameron is unifying the tory party.
BBC tory propaganda at 110% this week.
James Kay @ 11.12
I think you might want to do a recount of the number of bridges over the Forth. There are at least 6 in and around Stirling. Kincardine Bridge was not first by any means. Have you forgotten Wallace and the Battle of Stirling Bridge for starters?
When you think about the psychological motivations for Tory voters this may damage Cameron quite a lot. Conservative voters don’t like freeloaders in the form of welfare claimants, so surely the same psychology applies to freeloaders in the form of tax dodgers?
Just switched on to Brillo programme No suprises there our UK ALLies dont want us to leave EU, let them pay the UKs Membership & be dictated to by a Corrupt Bunch of MEPs & Commissioners.
Like Ian Brotherhood and Rock and others, i’d like Scotland to be run by a Government a bit more to the left. Let me make one thing absolutely clear to those who will split their vote. We will get NO government of our choice until we get out of this foul union. The only party capable of delivering independence is the SNP. So please, to all of you considering giving your 2nd vote to another party, give it a lot of thought. Any decrease in votes for the SNP and consequent loss of seats will have the unionists all over us again and set back our cause for decades. Ideals are marvellous but we need to use politics to get our independence to achieve those ideals accompanied by real democracy – not the façade of democracy promoted by unionism and lukewarm supporters of Independence!
Cherry
I’ve just received my driving licence back after changing address. I expect somewhere in gchq someone will be working on the genetic code so that our bairns will be
born with the butchers apron on their backside.
Question is, do I cover ‘ that’ flag with a wee saltire or just cut the effin thing out?
Sod the schools and PFI, focus on the real stories who’s a clergyman’s daddy and did David Cameron hide his finances, quick let’s see Kezia and Ruth’s tax returns, what about migrants killing us all in our beds and sneaking in through Ireland, Nicola Sturgeon must come clean on tax avoidance
Forgotten about PFI yet? Too complicated for us ordinary folk to understand anyway so best not print much about it or put it on the telly Sshhh, Wheesht
These and others are the main stories to distract anyone from talking about the actual thing that does affect us
Aah, North Kore…I mean Scotland what a place to live
Bill McLean at 11.27
Exactly. Very well put
When talking about PFI/PPP I would suggest inserting ‘Labour’ as a prefix.
Dr Jim
Or in the SoS case some bizarre front page splash on how evil Nats are killing Scottish culture or some such pish.
Thanks Dave McEwan Hill. I’d just read Mike Small’s article on Bella and that set me off. We are a disputatious race and in many ways that’s commendable but we are in danger again of losing sight of our main aim. I wish people would put aside their personal wants just this one time to achieve our Independence. That’s what is at stake folks our Independence – or decades more of the crap dished out by Westminster to us and the world!
Bob Mack & Handandshrimp, you both argue from the same “when I wir a lad” standpoint but the truth is that the hey day of British and Scottish Industry, when build quality and standards were at their highest, was prior to 1945. To be clear, that means prior to nationalisation when market forces prevailed.
After 1945 everything went potty; huge sections of the economy came to depend on public ownership, management, and subsidy. But what politicians give, politicians may take away.
The free market can be violent, like natural selection, but it also drives improvement and progress. When Thatcher removed protection for heavy industry it was like sending a fat, 2 packs a day smoker into the ring with Muhammed Ali.
In this country the middle classes have built a system that basically excludes them from all that. Only the poor and the weak are subject to market forces so that certain industries and sectors have been earmarked for protection and others haven’t.
This is where the oxymoronic “Free Market Socialism” gets its roots and it’s why the middle class vote for it every time: it protects their public-subsidised lifestyles in the suburbs, with high paying jobs in health, education, law, government, etc., etc.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle, the waiters, cleaners, shop workers and all else are forced to compete in what they call a free market. The biggest welfare queens the world has ever seen are working in the UK public sector.
The answer isn’t to nationalise everything any more than it is to denationalise everything. But I’m sick of watching working class people fall for it when people like Blair come along promising to protect the middle class at the expense of the working class under the banner of socialism.
It’s my hope that an independent Scotland would embrace the free market and become a world leader again in industry and manufacturing. We actually don’t even have industrial policy in this country (the UK). In short, we need to cut welfare and public spending and build a real economy — not overnight, I don’t want to punish or hurt people, but over a couple of decades.
Labour!
Took the family cow to market and came back with magic beans. Wouldn’t trust them with a child’s piggy bank.
Just thought. Does Cameron use a piggy bank.
NeoconNat@11:54am
I may not agree with much of the content but that was a good quality post putting forward some thought provoking arguments.
This type of contribution is welcome in my view. We need to hear ALL the arguments not just the views we align on.
I respect your views and hope you continue to post.
Nana said at 9:01am:-
link to broadcastingscotland.net
Thanks—It’s starting about now. 🙂
Neoconnat
My issue with market forces is that all too frequently they are skewed by moves like the Chinese dumping steel. It is very hard to plan and to build an economic strategy when key players form cartels or deliberately try to remove competition through subsidies and unfair or unethical practices.
I believe we have the infrastructure, skills and knowledge to be competitive if the playing field is level but we can’t plan on a devil take the hindmost basis. There has to be better World Trade agreements than currently prevail.
@ NeocoNat, anent the British Army & volunteers, the Militia Acts of 200 years ago forced men into uniform and led to widespread rioting.
For many in the forces it was a case of sign-up or starve. You’ve obviously never heard of the forcible pressing of men into the navy? or that RN sailors had their pay docked to pay for famine relief doled out to their parents in 1840’s Shetland.
Clootie wrote:
“This type of contribution is welcome in my view. We need to hear ALL the arguments not just the views we align on. I respect your views and hope you continue to post.”
And i’ll second that Clootie. I value all opinions expressed by whoever is expressing them whether or not i agree with them. Especially if they are articulately written without descending into a load of gobbledegook!
Fresh opinions and well articulated arguments are always welcome in my book, they can be a fresh addition to the debate just as long as they’re not hijacking threads away from the main subject matter. It helps to further educate us all and to form opinions.
@NeoconNat,
Oh well then. Next time a building falls on schoolkids,lets just tell the parents they were the victims of free market economy. Victims of progress.Martyrs to the market.
Some things may be outdated to you,but as a Grandparent I want my grandchildren safe at any cost.Get it.
Fred, of course I have heard of pressing, taking the King’s Shilling etc. And, of course, I have heard of poverty and contemplated how it motivates people into doing things they would probably not otherwise do. None of that excuses ordinary people for their role in history’s dark chapters.
Blaming governments, leaders, and poverty simply doesn’t wash. As I said, the most heinous large scale acts of criminality were committed by ordinary people — their governments and leaders played a part for sure but the “just following orders” defence was basically and rightfully dismissed at Nuremberg. It was never a valid defence.
I’m happy to go through examples but it’s Sunday and it will most likely depress us all.
The history of war and conflict is a good example though. It’s more or less true that up until the First World War, conscription was unheard of; Switzerland, as I recall, was one of the only countries that compelled involvement for peculiar historical reasons and I believe it still does that.
Paying for wars, then, was down to governments and leaders raising funds and ordinary people voluntarily signing up. Warfare was essentially in the private sector until the First World War.
Once warfare was nationalised and democracy took hold things got worse, not better. All of a sudden attacking cities full of innocent people or “total war” became the norm where before it was extremely unusual for an army to do that sort of thing.
It’s hard to see how increased democracy and nationalised warfare in countries like Britain excuses ordinary people when through democracy they have more of a say in these things and the atrocities got worse. Wars waged by democracies have unquestioningly been the most vicious in all history.
Remember, Hitler was democratically elected by ordinary people and he was extremely popular in every respect. The United States was a democracy when it dropped atomic bombs on Japan.
The Milgram experiments should be required reading in schools and people should accept responsibility for the things they do. If we haven’t learned that, we came out of the 20th century with nothing.
@NeoconNat
That’s much more like it, making a sensible argument.
In my view the Second World War caused much of British industry to be converted to service the war economy. There was a promise not to insist on reparations from Germany afterwards because of the large part that played via the Treaty of Versailles, in creating the breeding ground for WWII.
But the French and the British took large amounts of industrial machinery from Germany, to rebuild our industry and economies. On the other hand the Marshall Plan helped Germany rebuild with new kit, new designs, new more efficient processes, and they took full advantage, as they had to. Japan did the same. Marshall was of course primarily focussed against the Russian then USSR threat.
Marshall was also available to the UK and France, but Britain declined, as it always does with the offer of help from “abroad” – we can look after ourselves.
So the UK had German kit which predated even the First World War – I’ve seen it all over the place, some still even in the 90s, wouldn’t surprise me if there’s still some with that German nameplate on it. Still working, slowly and inefficiently, well, it is 100 years old.
Which put the UK at a disadvantage because we were slow, inefficient in comparison, labour-intensive, unable to adapt to new processes, and very expensive.
…war war war..
It’s everywhere, no surprise.
Aggressors still rule throughout
our educated planet.
Their economies
are index linked within the global
system.
Even in the UK, hidden by our
media circus culture, certain types
have political power because
they are professional bullies.
No one has the right to fight for privilege.
Re plundering of machinery from Germany post WW2 I have a distict memory of the following.
In 1958 in my 6th year sfter the Highers were out of the way we were taken on a series of industrial visits one of which was to Babcock 7 Wilcox at Renfrew.
On being shown a large piece of equipment, which if my memory is correct, was a Milling Machine the guy who was showing us around stated proudly that it had been liberated from Germany.
War in the East
War in the West
War up North
War down South
And it’s a war and a war and the rumour of war.
BoB Marley R.I.P.
The biggest welfare queens the world has ever seen are working in the UK public sector.
Which is a direct contradiction to the notion that the ‘welfare queens’ are those who are on the ‘lower rungs’:
All those people out there who are caught in what they call the poverty trap would be better off, happier, and have greater self respect, if they worked for the money they needed to get by. I’ll be upfront and clear here; if you are on benefits and earning say £180 per week, I think you’d be better off working for £180 week even if on paper it made you no better off. Instead of daytime TV and Atos, they’d have cars and iPhones and — crucially — useful skills.
Society too would benefit, as would their famillies and the local community. After a year or two, I expect many of this new workforce would win promotion and earn more money, many would go on to start their own businesses, and overall productivity and consumer spending would rise dramatically. Spending on welfare would fall too, allowing us to spend more on those who really do need help and other things. All good.
It’s my contention that the scenario I have outlined above, crudely put as it may be, is actually more compassionate and caring towards the disadvantaged than your blanket judgement that they are incapable victims of the evil system. I believe you mean well, but when you look at outcomes we need to face the truth and admit that this permanent underclass of welfare queens is good for nobody, especially those on the receiving end.
Y’mean many would go on to become ‘middle class’? Working in the public or ‘private’ sector where they would become ‘welfare queens’?
You are not ‘adapting’ fast enough Torynat. Must. Try. Harder.
You’ve ‘altered’ your ‘attacking and denigrating’ technique because you know and have been told it’s not on, and now you are ‘altering’ yer ‘politics’ too.
Your’e good. 😉
Continue…it is very entertaining.
Hand & shrimp 11:40
Yes but kudos for her sartorial elegance, the return of the cod piece. This time liberated by the modern unionist woman.
I do apologise for ‘interrupting’ the more ‘high brow’ and ‘nuanced’ discussion that you deem more in keeping with your lofty place in the world. I know it’s ‘beneath’ you and that having ‘weeded’ out who you ‘think’ are ‘lefties’ that you ‘eat for breakfast’ you are now attracting who you ‘believe’ to be more in alignment with your worldview, that you are ‘now’ beginning to ‘feel’ more able to expand on your ‘neo realist’ position.
I’m sure everyone is going to learn so much from your generous input here. Wouldn’t want it to be perceived that I am somehow ‘raining on parades’.
**backs away facing you, whilst gently bowing…out**
I’m done.
Ok I spelled forth wrong! Neoconservative was right you’re posh, all bastads! Sob , bloody bullying shits, boh ho, sob, a bet you lot have even got a English “O” level, and my god don’t you let anyone forget it, fencing intellectuals, come the revolution you lot are first against the wall! Or is that fourth!
🙁
K1 says:
10 April, 2016 at 2:41 pm
I’ll be upfront and clear here; if you are on benefits and earning say £180 per week
Ruby replies
What benefit would give you £180 per week?
Indeed Ruby, indeed. Ukipian rhetoric gleaned entirely from reading the Telegraph and Daily Mail.
The only way you would be on those kind of ‘benefits’ is if you were getting ‘disability benefits’, but y’know ‘they’ brought it oan themsels’, fucking poor and their fucking health problems ruining the economy!
Looks a size or twa ower muckle fur aze heid.
Brings Boy George tae mine.
Naw, no yon ‘Giddy Aunt’ yin, the Chancer o the Exchequer, the ither yin, fae ‘The Voice’.
Knackie though.
I don’t have any problem with a free market, except there is no such thing.
What do mean by free market? Cheapest price wins? Your trade is based upon the lowest common denominators, and your standards set to “whatever you can get away with”? But wait! If you set minimum standards, then suddenly you don’t have a free market. It’s a myth.
There is an interesting comparison between Doctors and Architects. In a free market, anybody can call themselves a doctor, but if you try to practice medicine in a free market you will find yourself in deep, deep trouble. In contrast, nobody can call themselves an architect unless they are qualified as an architect, but in a free market, any man and his dog can have a go designing buildings and doing absolutely anything and everything that an architect would. The Architects protected the title, but not their profession.
When people talk about free markets, what they really mean is deregulation, and securing licence to do what they like, cut corners, cut whatever standards they like, and manipulate their customers for their own ends. You need only look at the banking sector to see how clever that is.
A free market is just one extreme on a spectrum which has a socialist utopia at the other extreme. Where we really want to be is somewhere in the middle in a more comfortable state of relaxed equilibrium where principles of left or right can co-exist and be governed by common sense.
Clootie says:
10 April, 2016 at 12:25 pm
NeoconNat@11:54am
I may not agree with much of the content but that was a good quality post putting forward some thought provoking arguments.
This type of contribution is welcome in my view. We need to hear ALL the arguments not just the views we align on.
I respect your views and hope you continue to post.
Ruby replies
I’m not sure if I agree with you!
If you want to attract new readers surely you need to take care that you don’t bore them to death!
K1, there’s no contradiction: the people who depend most on welfare are the middle classes. They basically manage the whole public sector and most of them wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the free market. They know it too and that’s why they claim to be socialists — it’s socialism for them and the free market for the rest of us.
Nobody is denying though that a lot of poor people also depend on welfare. I’d prefer to see them work and take part in a free market, just as I’d like to see the middle classes play by the same rules on an even playing field. As it stands, the game is rigged in favour of middle class people and when you try and do anything about that they scream about socialism.
If you look at aspects of society where you have an even playing field, and there are very few, you find that working class people succeed and do well. Sport is a good example; in most sports it doesn’t help if your dad is vice chancellor or deputy head, all that matters is your performance and ability. That’s why poor people, in America coloured people, compete successfully in sport: it isn’t because they are genetically better suited or something, it’s because they get a fair chance.
What’s going on with Steel is a good example. Steel workers are mostly working class. Apply the logic of my argument and what can we expect: steel workers will be told they need to compete in the free market. Tough love.
No free market for dentists or the vast armies of middle class people that work in the public sector though. For them it’s socialism. A similar thing happened with banks. Those are completely arbitrary decisions though; society could just as easily decide that steel is important and we should protect those jobs.
The difference is the steel workers are defenceless working class people and dentists and bankers are middle class people who more or less run the country.
If there’s one thing that runs through my views it’s individual responsibility. The working classes should take responsibility for their lives and stop falling for what politicians say. It’s suits them to have hundreds of thousands of people on welfare because they get jobs managing welfare and housing and health and all else. Tell them to stick it. Own the free market, like sport it offers an even playing field.
Tackety Beets says:
10 April, 2016 at 3:39 pm
I’m not defending Lab , but there are tradesmen in our midst who were involved and no self respecting bricky would build without wall ties ……. Unless there were other circumstances . TBH wall ties do not add much to cost so why ?
Ruby replies
Perhaps all the builders who may have raised health & safety issues had been blacklisted!
Would a biased press have printed a story had one of the builders gone to them with a story?
I posted this yesterday:
I was going to suggest that it was weird that there were no ‘whistle blowers’ amongst the constuction workers at these schools but then I remembered this story.
link to archive.is
link to archive.is
Workers were primarily on the blacklist because of their trade union membership, their political beliefs or because they had raised health and safety issues.”
The full list of companies that supported and used The Consulting Association includes
Miller Construction Limited
Ooops last post in wrong thread
Just read Kevin Hages shit piece in the daily redcoat,
The main thrust is that bad SNP Nicola was rude to Kezia, therefore an affront to democracy?
Ok Kevin I’ll make this easy for you, and I know you lurk here, Kezia is thick!
Yes I know labour used to be able to put a monkey on a cart and it would be elected, so I’ll make this easy for you too, those days are past!
For anyone looking for a labour revival, you are wasting your time, when the thousands of people are put out as their kids have no school, when the parents realise the risk of death the Labour Party exposed their children too, then the silence of the scum press will be equated with the silence over institutional child abuse.
The scum press in Scotland are the affront to democracy, let us not forget last year a 12 year old girl was killed when a wal collapsed, parents would have been devastated and concerned for their own children and expected that the council would have inspected the construction, and the contractor working would be competent.
NeoconNat: the people who depend most on welfare are the middle classes.
If that was true, what’s the point being made?
NeoConNat:“The free market can be violent, like natural selection, but it also drives improvement and progress.”
Ah, now I understand – DippyDave with a new moniker.
Here’s ah word for NeoconNat to conjecture with TWADDLE
Now Torynat, even you have enough ‘nous’ to note the entirely different ‘tone’ in your reply to me? No?
Whilst of course I can wade through some of your arguments and understand a ‘little’ of where you are coming from. If you go back to our original exchanges you are spouting some of the most snobbish and downright denigrating views of who you consider to be ‘less than’ worthy of assistance.
You utilise this term ‘benefits’ as a catchall for those who have been deliberately and systematically impoverished by the very dynamics that you are now outlining as the ‘structural’ cause of said dynamics.
You termed people who have drug or alcohol or obese problems as losers, morons, fat…as having ‘chose’ these predicaments and therefore were not your ‘priority’ when it comes to ‘state’ assistance.
I argue that these sections of our society, through years of systematic destruction of their industries were left to rot for generations on the ‘dole’, deliberately.
That this in turn fuelled some of these behaviours that you claim as ‘choice’ is undisputed. People who are engaged in what can be termed ‘gainful employment’ perhaps have ‘less’ of these ‘social’ issues. But I would dispute that too, ergo why I repeatedly asked you to ‘square’ the same ‘social issues’ that are prevalent across all the ‘classes’, but precisely indulged in for ‘leisure’ in the ‘upper echelons’? These ‘stereotypes’ and ‘myths’ of the ‘lower rungs’ as the ‘main’ contributors to ‘social unease’ are in fact just that. The other mythology created by the media ‘class’ is that these ‘benefit scroungers’ are the real culprits ‘feeding off’ the taxes and should be hounded relentlessly by HMRC, whilst the tax evasion by those who are really ‘skimming’ billions off the exchequer are not being held to account…at all?
Those who have been marginalised are now ‘blamed’, ‘scapegoated’ by the right wing press as ‘benefit scroungers’, their problems drug/alacohol/obesity et al, are in fact denigrated and spoken of in exactly the ways you have spoken of them.
They were in reality, because of the asset stripping process: ‘privatisation’, de relegated from human beings who had their livelihoods and therefore their ‘culture’ destroyed by those very forces you outline, to ‘benefit’ scroungers’, layabouts, drug addicts et al and have been ‘used’ to deflect from the reality of what oor ‘maisters’ true agenda has been.
You can say this is ‘the past’, but I say we are dealing with the consequences of the past at all times, generations that had nothing put in place when their livelihoods were asset stripped, with children to feed and no prospects…and you wonder why drugs and alcohol ‘abuse’ became endemic? But no, you said it was ‘choice’ and that these people don’t deserve ‘benefits’. I say, they are the people that need the most assistance, note the difference, I do not view it as a ‘benefit’ to assist those who have found themselves ‘falling through the pavement cracks’ which is just another euphemism for ‘this is just the way things are without addressing the systemic causes of ‘why’ this has happened’.
Some of us have had enough of this
I think you are disingenuous Torynat. You use language to ‘couch’ your own prejudices which can only have been developed from a ‘right wing’ perspective. You are merely ‘altering’ your terms of reference when discussing the ‘poor’ but our previous exchanges belie this ‘change’ of tack.
@Andrew Mclean
I think Kevin Hague is one of our greatest assets, but his time has not yet come.
K1, let me start by saying that I respect your viewpoint. I used to harbour similar views myself.
According to what you say, though, nobody can really be held responsible for the bad decisions they make. This philosophy cropped up in an earlier discussion about war when it was argued that ordinary people were essentially innocent in all the crimes and atrocities of history.
Try applying your same, forgiving understanding to say bankers. Or maybe you don’t tolerate that? Maybe bankers and politicians and war criminals aren’t allowed to subscribe to your philosophy. Yet they too will most likely be guilty of succumbing to human weakness and pressures just like these junkies, fat people, and alcohilcs you keep mentioning.
I’m definitely guilty of arguing that we are all as individuals responsible the things we do. I’m happy to apply this to all people though, not just those you deem to be deserving of sympathy.
Let me repeat myself and say something I think is important; you don’t wake up one day and discover you are obese, an alcoholic, or a drug addict. It takes time and effort. By the same token, you don’t wake up and discover you are a corrupt banker or a war criminal. There’s decision making and responsibility involved in all of the above.
You say you “argue that these sections of our society, through years of systematic destruction of their industries were left to rot for generations on the ‘dole’, deliberately.”
I partly agree, the industries they depended upon were definitely left to wither and die. How do you respond to that? Imagine your children were in one of those industries, would your advice be something along the lines of “oh, don’t worry, you have a great excuse to sit on benefits now”? Would you tell them they had a great excuse for turning to alcohol, drugs, and over-eating?
No.
And so my advice to people on the dole and thrown on the scrapheap is the same as I’d give to my own children: Fight. Go out and own the free market. Develop your skills, take part, and get involved. Before you know it something else, better than the job you had before, will be within your grasp. If it doesn’t pan out would they be any worse off than they would be if they lay down and died?
Ruby and others, including you, misunderstand me. My motivation isn’t to hammer anyone or belittle them. I genuinely believe that the long term unemployed would have better lives if they were actively involved in all aspects of society.
Look at the opportunities we have through the eyes of someone who has really had a shit deal, someone from say Biafra, and all of a sudden the glass is more than half full. Look at what nascent technologies like the web offer, international trade, and the computing power we take for granted and stuff it into our pockets.
I’m sorry, but I just see incredible opportunities. I don’t see victims of capitalism or refugees from a heavy industry that was destroyed, I see people with a million options. Allow me to dream that one day they could all play a fruitful and rewarding part in a future independent Scotland that in turn benefits from their involvement and contributions. The tired and tried dogma of victimhood and welfare does nothing to inspire me and has clearly failed us all.
That is not where my argument leads Torynat…it does not inevitably lead to people not ‘making’ their own decisions.
I ‘keep’ mentioning ‘junkies, fat people, morons, losers Torynat, because those were the ‘terms’ you used in our exchange…let’s not shift the ’emphasis’ Torynat…they are your terms. Not mine.
It is precisely because ‘you’ selected ‘these’ people Torynat as less than ‘priority’, remember? It is you who is ‘selecting’ who is worthy and who is not. I’m doing no such thing and I am not espousing a ‘philosophy’ here. I am challenging your terminology and pointing out that is it straight out of the ‘daily mail’ ‘branding’ of sections of society as the ‘scapegoat’ for ‘our’ economic woes.
You keep attempting to ‘potray’ what I have said in terms of ‘ideology’, when it is me who is challenging ‘your’ ideology Torynat.
‘I’m definitely guilty of arguing that we are all as individuals responsible the things we do. I’m happy to apply this to all people though, not just those you deem to be deserving of sympathy.’
Torynat, your’e the one who ‘selected’ those ‘people’ as undeserving of ‘your’ pity, or not your ‘priority’.
If ‘we are all as individuals responsible the things we do’, does this apply to the those employed in the sectors you mention above, to the bankers/politiciana et al? Why haven’t they altered their conduct then? If what they have done is ‘detrimental’ to society? But that was not what you were ‘driving’ at, you were ‘citing’ drug/alcohol/obesity, and those who ‘chose’ this as the ‘detriment’ and ‘therefore’ were not ‘worthy’ of your ‘sympathy.
‘Let me repeat myself and say something I think is important; you don’t wake up one day and discover you are obese, an alcoholic, or a drug addict. It takes time and effort. By the same token, you don’t wake up and discover you are a corrupt banker or a war criminal. There’s decision making and responsibility involved in all of the above.
I think you are ‘grasping’ at straws here Torynat. The nature of ‘addiction’ is an altogether different set of ’causes’ than those who are in employment in a sector which is very much deliberately in the business of profiting for their ‘shareholders’ by any means and tae heck wi the consequences. And to even suggest there is a like for like comparison between a ‘war criminal’ and someone who has had the misfortune to become addicted to any substance Is just fucking laughable.
‘I partly agree, the industries they depended upon were definitely left to wither and die. How do you respond to that? Imagine your children were in one of those industries, would your advice be something along the lines of “oh, don’t worry, you have a great excuse to sit on benefits now”? Would you tell them they had a great excuse for turning to alcohol, drugs, and over-eating?’
Are you seriously suggesting that mothers and fathers have sat down wi their youngsters and ‘talked’ to them in this way? What universe of absurdity do you live in where you imagine that this is presented as a ‘choice’…you are stretching the bounds of credulity if this is how you imagine ‘addiction’ comes about. Do you have other ‘grotesque’ stereotypes that you would like to share here?
I’m actually stunned by that paragraph Torynat.
‘And so my advice to people on the dole and thrown on the scrapheap is the same as I’d give to my own children: Fight. Go out and own the free market. Develop your skills, take part, and get involved. Before you know it something else, better than the job you had before, will be within your grasp. If it doesn’t pan out would they be any worse off than they would be if they lay down and died?
Don’t you think that all mothers and father want what is best for their offspring, you seems to be inferring a difference between a ‘section’ of society as you are defining it, with drug/alcohol/obese issues as having different ‘aspirations’ for their children Torynat. Which is exactly what I am driving at in terms of your ‘worldview’. There are not two ‘distinct’ types of ‘peoples’ Torynat, there are only human beings.
If you concur (partially) with the ‘destruction of industries’, then you have to see that over a long period of years, there really wasn’t anything in terms of ‘jobs’ for hundreds and thousands of ‘people’. In fact the discovery of oil off Scotland’s shores combined with a Tory government that systematically stripped Scotland of its industrial base, then used that oil money to ‘fund’ unemployment as a means shifting the assets south.
This doesn’t need your ‘partial’ agreement Torynat. This happened. Fact.
Many thousands left Torynat, my brother was one of them, couldn’t get a job as an electrician in Scotland after his apprenticeship, but hundreds of thousands couldn’t re skin, there were few opportunities, far less than today, I’ll give you that. Nonetheless, to suggest that people just ‘gave up’ and ‘chose’ drugs/alcohol is beyond simplistic. What you don’t seem to ‘factor’ in is, the glut of ‘drugs’ that seem to suddenly sweep into this country in the early 80’s, suddenly there was more heroin on the streets than there had ever been. A lot of young people got ‘caught’ in that Torynat, they didn’t ‘wake up one day’ and ‘decide’ to become’ ‘junkies’/ ‘alcoholics’.
Unhappiness leads to many forms of ‘abuse’, my point regarding the upper echelons, (another of your terms), substance abuses is that it was not ‘squaring’ with your narrative of those who are ‘successful’ and have the ‘trappings’ of what you ‘espouse’ as ‘success’. It wasn’t difficult to understand what I was gettin’ at Torynat.
Some get ‘caught’, addicted. Ye cannot compare addiction with (corrupt) bankers and war criminals.
‘Ruby and others, including you, misunderstand me. My motivation isn’t to hammer anyone or belittle them. I genuinely believe that the long term unemployed would have better lives if they were actively involved in all aspects of society.
But you have done (hammered and belittled). Repeatedly. Everyone ‘believes’ that (ergo FM rolling out Nursery eduction wi meals etc, childcare, named person) .
What you were saying was that they were ‘losers’, ‘morons’, ‘fat’, ‘junkies’ and all where undeserving of yer pity. And certainly not yer ‘priority. And certainly not deserving of what you term ‘benefits’, go tell that to the SG Torynat…go on, way tell them they’re wasting their fucking money on those undeserving people who ‘chose’ their ain ‘fate’.
D’ye want me to paste what you said? Do you really think naebdy but me witnessed this Torynat?
What I am saying is in line wi what the Scottish Government is rolling out as a means of tackling the generations of destruction and impoverishment at the hands of those who you put in power wi yer vote for the Tories.
The SG is picking up the pieces, cause they understand what has taken place, and they know there has to be intervention to turn it around.
No one said anything about ‘victims of Capitalism’, that’s your terminology and interpretation, stop making out people have said things that they have not.
Stop making yersel out as a ‘victim’ of other people’s misunderstanding of you.
And put that mail doon.
For clarification,
I have never bought or read a Daily Mail in my life,
I have voted once and it wasn’t for a Conservative (wasn’t for anybody, it was a referendum on devolution),
I don’t use terms like worthy and not worthy because they are value-laden, not helpful,
The point you repeatedly make about drug abuse in the upper classes is insignificant as it doesn’t impact society as a whole in any obvious or major way.
For a guy with all the answers, you don’t seem to offer any solutions. Maybe you think a few government funded agencies with uplifting names will help — “Springboard to Life”? A few dozen middle class people will get good jobs out of it, the usual types, and between their perfect teeth and positive mental attitudes some new definition of sympathy will be discovered.
I’ve lost confidence in governmental solutions like that. Maybe I’m a victim of circumstance and experience too, in which case you might forgive me.
Neo-Con: The tired and tried dogma of victimhood and welfare does nothing to inspire me and has clearly failed us all.
Pious crapology. Wasted time reading it. Down side of chat sites: sooner or later some blowhard or other will appear to tell everyone they have it all wrong. And his posts are crammed with the first person singular.
For clarification,
I have never bought or read a Daily Mail in my life: Tongue in cheek comment at end of what I said.
I have voted once and it wasn’t for a Conservative (wasn’t for anybody, it was a referendum on devolution). Yet your moniker and your outlook is positively ‘Tory’.
I don’t use terms like worthy and not worthy because they are value-laden, not helpful,
Yet you do use terms like ‘wrong’ and ‘assign’ value by the use of ‘upper’ or ‘lower’ ‘classes’. You may not have ‘specifically’ used the terms Torynat, but you have assigned value by the use of what is and is not ‘worthy’ of your ‘pity’, which in itself denotes what has ‘value’ or no ‘value’ for you. Just another way of expressing what is ‘important’ to us. Why be defensive about this?
The point you repeatedly make about drug abuse in the upper classes is insignificant as it doesn’t impact society as a whole in any obvious or major way. How do you know whether the impact on our society by substance abuse in the upper classes has ‘not’ impacted us all in any obvious or major way? You don’t. You are aware of the amount of bars that the House of Commons has?
For a guy with all the answers, you don’t seem to offer any solutions. Maybe you think a few government funded agencies with uplifting names will help — “Springboard to Life”? A few dozen middle class people will get good jobs out of it, the usual types, and between their perfect teeth and positive mental attitudes some new definition of sympathy will be discovered. Actually I pointed exactly to our own government in Scotland rolling out policies that directly address these issues. If you feed and clothe and ‘educate’ our children, from backgrounds where grinding poverty and low life expectation, and low employment has been ‘generational’ and those that have come from those backgrounds have been ‘caught’ in the cycle of ‘poverty’. You are providing solutions. Real impactful solutions that alter the outcomes for coming generations.
What you don’t do is condemn those whom you do not understand, and talk about them in the terms you have.
I’ve lost confidence in governmental solutions like that. Maybe I’m a victim of circumstance and experience too, in which case you might forgive me. I’m not here to salve your ‘misunderstandings’ Torynat. You have to be an adult and ‘take responsibility’ for Your Outlook. Because more than anything how we as individuals can change our world, is by changing our attitudes when they are found ‘wanting’.
Forgive yourself…and I have to wonder if as you say you have lost confidence in ‘governmental solutions like that’. What the fuck are you interested in us, i.e: Scotland becoming Independent for? Because this very situation of asymmetrical governing from a cold and distant Westminster has failed our polity, we want our own government taking the decisions that reflect our worldview. That is why we want out.
Why do you support Independence if you have become so cynical about any changes that government can make in positively altering the standard of living for All of us in Scotland?
Sounds like you’ve ‘given up’ Torynat, I haven’t and truly believe that we can all make a difference as individuals irrespective of background. What I can’t thole is snobbery and condescension and citing tired old ‘tropes’ along class lines and the ‘defining’ of those who have suffered the most, as the ‘reason’ we are in the mess we are in economically.
Because it’s factually not true.
yesindyref2,
“So basically the Sunday Herald is now more anti-SNP than the Herald.”
Who would have thought that?
Grouse Beater, when someone launches continuous attacks on you as an individual and makes all sorts of mistaken and baseless claims against you, rather than addressing the substance of your arguments, you have every right to respond singularly in the first person. Actually you are required to.
But I’ve given up trying to to be reasonable with K1 et al. It’s like arguing with a brick wall built by fundamentalist muslims; they represent Allah, they’re right, you’re wrong, Alluha Akbar, get over it.
It’s interesting that K1 and others characterised me as rekindling the politics of old in terms of definitions of class etc. The truth of it is we have been listening to the mantra of left-leaning intellectuals for almost 100 years now. When their parties get elected they do nothing.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating; the poorest areas in the UK are the ones that consistently fell for for those left wing marketing lines. The masses they represent are the first ones they shaft, over and over, decade after decade, until we all get too old to remember and die.
These same people often glorify te pre-Thatcher years, as if back then everything and everyone flourished. I remember those years. Everybody I knew was in dire poverty and women couldn’t have been more marginalised — to be clear, when I say marginalised, they were marginalised by the unions who openly defined women in the workplace as a threat to the working man.
Where we are now is much better. With independence where we are going could be better still. I don’t think resurrecting the economics and dogmas of the 1970s is the way to go though.
You can’t distinguish between someone questioning some rather questionable attitudes that you have openly stated on this forum from ‘someone launches continuous attacks on you as an individual and makes all sorts of mistaken and baseless claims against you, rather than addressing the substance of your arguments…’
Really? You’ve seriously gone for the ‘victim’ card?
Well then, nothing much to add to that scurrilously false claim.
Ah rest ma case.
It’s like arguing with a born again Christian. You’re not here to debate, you’re here to preach.
Genuinely laugh out loud funny.
First: It’s like arguing with a brick wall built by fundamentalist muslims; they represent Allah, they’re right, you’re wrong, Alluha Akbar, get over it.
And now: ‘It’s like arguing with a born again Christian. You’re not here to debate, you’re here to preach.’
Do you seriously not see how absurd your viewpoint has become? Is that it? Projection is all you have left?
Don’t let ‘me’ get to you so much…it’s your point of view regarding the terms you used to describe those with ‘addictions’ etc, that I was debating with you.
I could not have been any more explicit Torynat.
It’s a bit sad that you have sunk so low as to attempt to undermine perfectly valid arguments against the use of those terms, by accusing someone in this deliberately provocative manner.
Just because I’m not ‘buying’ what your ‘selling’ doesn’t invalidate your pov Torynat. Just means I disagree with it. It’s okay for someone to disagree with you, no?
Your choice of ‘language’ in describing those who you have no pity for was questioned, which led to you becoming more defensive about it, and imo conflating my challenge as a sign of ‘undermining’ ‘you’.
I wasn’t, I was undermining the entire basis of your argument, which amounted to: the poor and by extension those who are addicts are a drain on taxes and should have no ‘benefits’ as they ‘chose’ this.
All I really said is: Crap. And here’s why. That’s it.
You have reacted by attempting a couple of different ‘tacts’, you started insulting initially, but having seen others also taking you to task about this, you then softened yer language, you even told me you ‘respected’ my view. That was a lie.
When you didn’t get the ‘back down’ from me, you have resorted to what you attempted a couple of days ago with Mr Sutherland: ‘Hauners’, you utilised another posters name and on the back of that ‘accused’ me of something that was not true.
Now yer fuming…and back to ‘insulting’.
Told you, you’re a bad loser. 😉
NeoCon: “rather than addressing the substance of your arguments”
You flatter yourself. There’s no substance to your posts. That’s the point. All you post is garbled opinion.
You know absolutely nothing about economics, which somehow you feel qualifies you to pontificate about the subject, and tells others they are slow learners.
You talk down to people.
Here’s an example: “For a guy with all the answers, you don’t seem to offer any solutions.”
The laugh is, you’ve no answers to offer on anything.
Go read some books on economics, for god’s sake.
Grouse, don’t overdo it, I’ve read one of your blog articles. Actually I remember the grammar above all else was terrible, but can’t remember sense of viewpoint or personality. I’ll defer to the majority here, though, and refrain from applying normal standards to the random ramblings of an harmless old man.
You’re quite mistaken, of course, about my knowledge of economics. I’m happy to go into economics; especially economic history, which as I’m sure you’re aware requires a good understanding of the various theoretical frameworks as well as historical details.
I’m under the impression that this exchange is nearly at an end though, having descended into the usual ad hominem attacks. It seems that any deviation from the doctrine of the left, no matter how civilly put, will not be tolerated in the independence movement.
And that’s a pity because we all know it’s just rhetoric and, like all the others, from Ramsay Macdonald to Tony Blair, the history of the left in power is the history of ordinary people being shafted, disregarded, and let down by those who spout this nonsense.
NeoCon: “Actually I remember the grammar above all else was terrible”
No you didn’t – the false grammar failure and assumed ‘old age’ abuse proves you’re trolling. Insults and fabrications litter your crapology.
I repeat, your posts are models of Internet narcissism, and you have absolutely no economic erudition to impart, nor any historical knowledge of ‘the left’ as you lump it.
Any post now you’ll tell us we should run our economy as we do a family budget, and Marx was a closet capitalist.
‘Neo-Con Nat’ my ass. Take a hike.
Grouse.
As I said, “the usual ad hominem attacks”. And to complete the circle of fundamentalist lunacy, any response to the personal insults “proves you’re trolling”.
Like Marx, the problem you have is that nothing you say is falsifiable. It’s impossible to prove or argue that anything you say might be wrong because anyone who attempts to do that, by definition, is a troll.
It’s like you are saying all swans are white, I show you a black swan and, instead of even acknowledging it, you say I must be a troll because only a troll would dispute that all swans are white.
The left generally has this problem. I noticed it earlier with Ruby. Everything is securely tied down with sentiment and emotion — we are self-evidently nice people who mean well — and any attempt to discuss the subject as an adult might results in you being labelled an evil right-wing troll.
But for any theory to be taken seriously it must be at least possible to prove it wrong. That’s the keystone of science, an essential precondition. Worth remembering.
So much for the impact of mind upon mind and exchanging ideas, eh…
Neo-Con “So much for the impact of mind upon mind and exchanging ideas”
“Ad hominem attacks” are your entire arsenal of weapons.
You’re not here to ‘exchange’ ideas.
You’re here to tell us we’re all fools and imbeciles, emotionally driven. And you’ll keep doing it because it flatters your self-perception of being a superior intellect.
You’re busted. Go hug a relative.