Unfinished sympathy
Posted on
December 30, 2023 by
Chris Cairns
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
-
About
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
-
Recent Posts
- 04-29
- 04-29
- 04-29
- 04-28
- 04-27
- 04-27
- 04-26
- 04-26
- 04-25
- 04-25
- 04-25
- 04-24
- 04-24
- 04-22
- 04-20
- 04-20
- 04-18
- 04-18
- 04-17
- 04-15
Wings Over ScotlandA tall tale
Wee Books
Video
Probably a robbery
Transphobia
Pure gold as usual. Happy New Year Chris.
Wowee, the best yet Chris! That poor baby! Hope it’s a happy new year for us all.
The fourth will soon be come to pass for it is prophesied. But on what fourth shoulder will they be called to judgement, so as to be cast into exile and damned for all eternity.
And nation will speak to nation to ask how it could be so. But it is because it is so.
Shame top of the list isn’t JAIL THE MURRELLS.
Happy New Year to all genuine indy supporters out there.
Stay safe, folks. Have a good one.
Hilarious. Great to see Chris back in form. All the best for 2024 everyone, even our resident trolls, know-it-alls and self-appointed guardians of the universe.
Aye the colonial dilemma: fowk cannae ser twa maisters, nor twa crouns, for thay aye luve ane an laith the ither.
The result is inequality, oppression, and under-development – a nation deceived by a mediocre meritocracy and an alien cultur servin anither croun, wha cannae build a wee boat nor a road; the colonized must not only be assumed inferior, but must be shown to be so.
A fowk hiv tae ken wha thay are. Are thay Scottish, or something else? Colonialism makes a ‘dependent’ people believe they are something else, and makes them want to be something else; in other words, they become “a manufactured being” (Albert Memmi).
Sad but true, great cartoon.
May I add to the excellent suggestion of “JAIL THE MURRELLS”, the proposal that we “remove all the nuSNP plotters and grifters from politics”. And, to my mind, that means every single nuSNP MSP and MP, they are aware of the corruption but still they stay and prop up the Murrell’s regime.
Jail the Murrels you say should be top of list Stoker.
Maybe the item just hasn’t reached the top of the list yet. But it might very well do.
Remember in a few days we are into election year.
Talking about lists-
Liz Truss, imbecile Tory PM who totally crashed the economy is given the privilege of giving Knighthoods to those who aided and abetted her in further extending record debt levels, rocketing inflation and 14 rapid mortgage rate rises.
Her supporters who helped lie about Brexit and the disastrous consequences also are to be Knighted.
My own connect to Truss is my wife’s personal pension that was invested in the lowest risk bonds and guilts lost 38% of it value just as she had looked toward retirement.
These pathetic honours must end and the Labour Party are in agreement but have done so for the last 100 years, but no need for them to rush in and make progress on condemning it into the history books.
Why is 2023 apologising for not jailing the greatest president America has had since Kennedy?
Great cartoon.
Everything on that list will still be on it in a year’s time.
Maybes a few more added.
Enjoy the Hogger, folks, 2024 is already shaping up to be a REALLY INNARESTIN YEAR.
Effigy, your wife losing 38% of her pension just as she approaches retirement is the fate of millions.
Huge unaffordable mortgages for the working and collapsing pension pots for the retiring.
Ah well the masses were promised a golden future under an unshackled Grande Britannia. Freed from Europe, and freed from pesky red tape, we were to soar to new heights.
Sure damn tooting hasn’t turned out that way. Well at least for the masses. And today, as the snow falls thick and cold I can at least sit in my house in the comfort of the warmth that comes to a country absolutely endowed with gas, oil, hydro and now wind.
Scotland, the country that found oil, gas, hydro, and wind and gave it all away. Turn up the heating folks, you know it makes sense.
Wonder if its warm though in Corton Vale or the Big Hoose at Barlinnie where a few of our great and good might well be headed
as next years election year approaches.
Good to see a New Year cracker after such a lacklustre Christmas.
We can only hope things start to improve after the General Election if it’s this year? We can but hope…..!
Greeting to all the sane BTL commenters no already on the X list.
At least he managed to send Nic some flowers.
Great cartoon to end the year Chris. I see that the SNP are making noises now about having representation in the House of Lords, the better to fight Scotland’s case. Sturgeon must be eager to get her ermine coat.
@willie says:30 December, 2023 at 11:20 am
My pension fund sailed relatively unscathed through Brexit.
It was the Chinese Flu, and now The War, that knocked it for six.
Great cartoon Chris – have a Guid New Year when it comes
Why is the PM , whose only claim to fame is being that of the idiot in power for the shortest time, allowed to knight or bestow favours on anyone?
No Scottish national politician should ever set foot in the HoL.
Happy New Year to one and all – though I hae ma doots as to how happy it will be.
HOGGER Whit the fucks that when its at home .
HOGMANAY & That,s what im wishing all genuine WINGERS .
More power on your keyboard REV in 2024 .
Athanasius @11:08
Is that not part of the joke, 2024 scrolling down looking for the no ifs but indy ref, wondering who stole the real to-do list from last year, and maybe even questioning whether 2020 – 2023 were even remotely fit for purpose other than when viewed through the lens of Scottish football)
.or maybe the magic hat is the clue that all is not as first appears, and top of the list for Hamish is Germany 2024 and an incredibly
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all
John H. I don’t think it’s an ermine coat Nicola Sturgeon and her compatriots are going to be getting.
Big Hoose clobber but of a different kind.
But who knows. With an election coming in 2024 the landscape and enthusiasm for pursuing wrongdoers could accelerate. And if so who could be in the frame for being charged.
It’s an interesting question that someone will already know the answer to.
Jail Trump?
How about Joe & Hunter?!
TDS in full effect.
Top work Chris!
I wish 2024 didn’t fill me with a sense of foreboding: perhaps after the General Election things might look up?
Hopefully the “X for ignore” function will help improve both the quality and quantity of BTL discourse.
Even if the law protecting those criminal elements deemed to be working on behalf of British state-security hadn’t been enacted, it’s doubtful whether Police Scotland has either the leadership or the necessary autonomy to follow-through on Branchform.
As a colonial police-force caught-up in a transparently colonial-bind, Police Scotland gives every impression of lacking the will and the ability necessary to administer anything other than a colonial version of “justice” in Scotland.
Xaracen,
I have responded to your comments yesterday on previous thread so as not to gum up Stu’s post today.
Well done Chris. 2023 has been a poor year for Scotland and the Independence movement. I think more pain due in 2024 before things stabilise. I liked Alex Salmonds appraisal of the situation. Politically Scotland has gone backwards.
OT my Diddy team did well last evening. I am watching the top of the Scottish game and very little in the way of Scottish players. Helter-skelter fitba. Nobody can calm the game down and stand on the ba. I hope we do better in Germany.
The pension collapse was exactly in line with the actions of Liz Truss.
U.K. Bonds and Guilts fell through the floor due to her reckless budget.
No Chinese virus or military action had an effect at that time.
Thanks for suggestion from the Main man of counter intelligence.
Jeezo. Ye X one bunch of tossers only for the return of ane we all hoped was gone forever. Ellis duly ignored.
They must be desperate at HQ?
Good one Chris, alas it will most surely be ore of the same old same old.
@Effijy says:30 December, 2023 at 2:36 pm
The pension collapse was exactly in line with the actions of Liz Truss.
Here you go, a wee link:
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/truss-kwarteng-mini-budget-one-year
And a wee quote:
“One year on, what are the longer-term impacts of the Mini-Budget?
I’m not sure, to be honest, that there was that much permanent damage. As I said earlier, the risk premium on gilts yields fell back to where it was prior to the Mini-Budget. In terms of government finances, the decision to scrap the ‘Health and Social Care’ levy was retained, costing roughly £20 billion; all the other expansionary measures were scrapped. The rise in inflation in late 2022 and early 2023, together with the rise in interest rates we’ve seen over the past year, have worsened the government’s fiscal position, but that would have happened even without the Mini-Budget.”
I can’t recall if you’re writing about your own pension, Effijy, or your spouse’s, but regardless, if its poor performance is being blamed on Truss, they’re pulling the wool over your eyes.
@ Andy Ellis says:30 December, 2023 at 1:45 pm
Welcome back.
Things looking up on here for 2024.
Remember, Andy, deep breaths 🙂
@Andy Ellis 1:45pm
Welcome back Andy I haven’t seen you post since the Christmas Eve before last. Let’s concentrate on the facts in 2024. There is plenty to go at. The SNP have to be history before we can start again. I am still a member of Alba and will renew my membership in the New Year. I haven’t been to a branch meeting or conference. I have medical reasons for that. Just hope Alba is not a one man band. I might get a second wind and attend Alba meetings ye never know.
Professor Jeffery Sachs, who outed that Covid-19 was made in a Great Satan (US) funded biolab, tells us the the Great Satan is becoming more and more isolated on its backing of the genocide in Gaza by the Zionists.
In 2006, on this day Saddam Hussein was executed for crimes against humanity, the Zionist leaders and their Western backers are complicit in the ethnic cleansing-Genocide of the Palestinian people they MUST also stand trial for crimes against humanity.
https://nitter.net/upholdreality/status/1740630238307201479#m
We talk about democracy or the lack of it in say for instance in some BRICS nations, but really we should be looking closer to home, such as in the honours system, where the likes of PMs such as Lizz Truss and Boris Johnson can elevate cronies and Tory donors to the unelected and democratic House of Lords, who then have a say on laws and legislation that we must abide by.
In the UK this process has already be accepted and seen as natural politics at work, even when the current PM Rishi Sunak elevated David Cameron to the House of Lords the outcry was weak at best, Cameron wasn’t even a MP at the time and his reputation was marred by the Greensill scandal, yet he now hold the high office of Foreign secretary, which has been meekly accepted by the media and most of the public as the norm.
PM’s have been stuffing the House of Lords with cronies and donors to their parties for decades now, of course its not just the HoL that’s rife with kind of elevation which in reality is a form of corruption. The HoC’s politicians don’t fair much better, from the Al-Yamamah Deal to the grand theft from the public purse via the huge wads of cash given to firms for PPE, the HoC has shown that its is just as corrupt if not more than any BRICS nation and we know it.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Al-Yamamah_arms_deal
https://www.itv.com/news/2023-12-29/truss-honours-tory-donors-despite-calls-for-pm-to-block-resignation-list
Here in a letter the ICJ acknowledges South Africa’s triggering of the Genocide Convention against the Zionists, enlarge it to read it by clicking on it, well done South Africa, it goes some way to repairing your own credibility especially with the murdering of UN Assistant Secretary General Brent Carlsson over Lockerbie.
https://nitter.net/CIJ_ICJ/status/1740785561961398765#m
I am struggling to ascertain the number of Scottish indigenous players in the Old Firm match today out of the 22 starting players. I am thinking 4. But stand to be corrected. An alert reader award waiting.
RoS
The spirit of Mandela lives on.
Great cartoon Chris..
We’re all feeling it. 2024 needs a rocket up its arse to shake us all fae our duldrums. Let’s hope the GE boots the SNP & Dumbza, having lost 40+ their jobs in WM, is forced to step down. Career over – do not pass go, do not collect free mutilations & haud the heat pumps!
OT – I have a new puppy.. wooohooo! Picked her up today. A Christmas present..yay! Bloody snowing..brrr – puppy training will be fun..
Happy New Year to everyone if I don’t manage back on before the bells.
Peace, prosperity & gid health to you & yours xx
George, if it’s Rangers, it’ll be 4 57s lol
*Gets coat*
George Ferguson @ 4:44 pm
“I am struggling to ascertain the number of Scottish indigenous players in the Old Firm match today out of the 22 starting players. I am thinking 4.”
Almost the same as the supposedly ‘warld cless’ academics employed in Scotland’s ancient universities, where the ratio is approx 1:10.
@Alf Baird 5:45pm
I know I counted 4 but I didn’t include Cantwells 4 day visit to Grannies Hieland hame in Dornoch. If I can get an Irish passport on the back of my granny leaving Ireland when she was 3. Then surely Cantwell can get a Scottish passport on the back of a 4 day visit to the Highlands. We are World Class in everything didn’t you know.
Chic @5.09pm.
Yes chic, with Glasgow getting the ball rolling all those years ago, with 56 countries calling for his release later, and the added backing of the United Nations in New York.
At the age of 71, Mandela was freed on 11 February 1990 after 27 years in prison. The rest as they say is history.
“In 1986, Glasgow brought more attention to the jailed freedom fighter by changing the name of St George’s Place in the city centre to Nelson Mandela Place.
The name change was made more significant by the fact that the South African consulate-general was based on the fifth floor of the Stock Exchange building, at an address which now bore the name of the country’s most famous political prisoner.”
@Republic of Scotland 6:40pm
Glasgow has a commendable human rights record. Just a pity nobody North of Perth is included in your deliberations.
Wonder how much money the BBC paid in outside broadcast fees, sitting outside Mandela’s house for months, waiting for him to die?
A revolutionary become the darling of the West.
I get the impression that the ANC didn’t strike a very good political deal
Paying the pensions of the entire shadow white government, and leaving Corporate interests unaffected, left them financially unable to help the poor.
But, maybe I need to walk in their shoes, to understand.
@John Main 3.05pm
A guid new year to you and yours when it comes too.
Thought I’d look in now the Rev has graciously un-modded me: I’m hoping for great things from the zingy new “X for ignore” function.
Apparently when it’s fully functional those you choose to ignore disapparate in to the aether: one of the few things to look forward to in 2024 perhaps?
Good effort, Chris – sad, of course. However you missed off “Asserting Scotland’s independence”. Easily done, I know – the SNP high heid yins have been missing it off their To Do list since November 2014.
Haven’t the current crop of South African multi-millionaire crims shat on poor old Mandela’s legacy?
And pissed and puked on it too.
I always thought the greatness in Nelson Mandela was that he wanted justice.
The racist toe rags that hijacked his legacy will kid you on they want justice too. But what they really want is revenge, with a side order of filthy rich. Maybes not in that order.
They still have a few useful idiots fooled though.
RoS 3:30
So is it ethnic cleansing or genocide?
What about Mahmoud Abbas and his claim that it’s worse than genocide? What’s the word for that?
You seem to be constantly picking at this scab, for reasons not entirely clear to me, as the subject has nowt to do with either Scotland or Indy. But as the self-appointed expert, help us out with some clarifications.
BTW, good try at claiming Wuhan is in the good ol USA. There’s maybe 6 Scots in the entire country with you on that one, but keep going, you may yet uncover another one.
Oh goody, we’re going to be given John Main’s, Ladybird book version of African politics now.
Mr Main,
We consulted the pension company and we consulted our qualified financial advisor and both blamed Truss throwing the U.K. economy off a Cliff.
U.K. bonds were deemed to be high risk with her strategy.
Thanks for the interest in my own pension.
I had one lost money each year for a couple of years and the pension company took fees for mismanaging the money.
In the next good year it grew by 1% and then they took their fees.
I took out the lot.
I have some money in tax free cash ISAs that grow every year and I can’t loose out.
Pension in the public sector were once good.
Labour killed off final salary pensions that were good value.
Pensions are for the well off, pension companies and the tax man as soon as you take money out.
With millions using Foodbanks, millions in mortgage and rent arrears, millions who can’t heat their homes and millions maxed out on credit, do you really think they have money for pensions.
And the latest adjustment to the pension rules, you can now put more than £1,000,000 in to the pot and the poorer tax payers who don’t have a pension can give them a 40% top up tax break for everything they put in to avoid paying tax.
“George Ferguson says:
30 December, 2023 at 4:44 pm
I am struggling to ascertain the number of Scottish indigenous players in the Old Firm match today…”
Can’t help you there; from radio on to radio off only took a few seconds once I’d discovered its content.
Football story of the day seems to be Arbroath’s sub keeper scoring a cracker when subbed on as a forward.
Glad to see my high crimes and misdemeanours committed along with my degenerate son made neither list. My butt needs wiped , God save the Queen man.
O/T Britain’s dirty past in Kenya !
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/06/kenya.topstories3
Considering that nearly 100,000 Kenyans signed up for the British Crown in WW2 !
Happy birthday to Alex Salmond…69 and still 100% committed to his lifelong dream.
A happy birthday to Mr Salmond! Let’s clear out the SNP/Green corrupt britnat supporters in 2024!
Quite the article.
https://caltonjock.com/2023/12/30/revealing-the-maleficence-of-the-snp-government-the-dangers-inherent-in-nepotism-and-the-influence-of-senior-civil-servant-mum-mary-mcallan-and-her-daughter-mairi/
John Main @ 8:42 pm
“So is it ethnic cleansing or genocide?”
Yes, the removal of perhaps 4 million Scots via clearances, evictions, transportations, indentured labour, and mass re-settlement state subsidies, as well as through their disproportionate military deployment in England’s (still) constant imperial wars, combined with partial replacement by some 2 million Brits over the past couple of centuries, was quite an achievement. Indeed, this remains possibly the largest out-migration of any European country of similar population size.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect was to keep all this wretched history relatively obscured from the Scots, even today, and to re-write the authoritative Anglo narrative as merely being our subaltern ‘contribution’ to sustaining England’s former colonial empire.
The reality for an oppressed people is, as Albert Memmi explained, that: “the colonized… feels neither responsible nor guilty nor skeptical, for he is out of the game. He is in no way a subject of history any more. Of course, he carries its burden, often more cruelly than others, but always as an object. He has forgotten how to participate actively in history and no longer even asks to do so.”
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/determinants-of-independence-demographics/
I saw this article in the Herald about health services for mental health issues are becoming overwhelmed by referrals concerning people with “normal negative human emotions”
https://archive.is/RV9KM
We live in a society now that mental health is put to the forefront especially in the media but from the article it points out that normal emotional states are being mistaken for genuine mental health issues.
The SNP have made a lot of mental health. I heard the adverts about it on the radio all day long when I’m WFH and they even have a minister for it.
https://www.snp.org/our-action-on-mental-health/
We are also living in a society where our politicians are judged on statistics based on the services and departments performances and make no doubt about it, they use it to their advantage when these statistics are good.
This isn’t unique to the SNP or Scottish politics but the world over. However, with the SNP’s policies of using the state to get more involved in people’s life, they run the risk like the aforementioned article on mental health, that they are getting involved in things that either shouldn’t be the responsibility of the state or is just isn’t the solution required that will backfire on them politically.
I know the SNP are finished in the short term but if they are serious about being the dominant political force in Scottish politics, they need to seriously rethink their strategy not only on independence but their general political aims on how to run the devolved administration.
Alf Baird 10:34
Threads crossed methinks.
But I see you are back in your comfort zone, the nineteenth century and earlier. To me at least, anything that happened back then is all in the category of the Ancient Guff. Wise men and women make a conscious decision to move on and deal with the issues that are pressing us now.
And the Hogger is an excellent time to resolve to do that. WM GE next year (probably) and here in Scotland we have an ineffectual party representing Scotland, and a risible, pretendy incompetent funnelling our money down the kazi at HR.
I favour a plebiscitary election policy at both WM and HR going forwards, and crucially, this doesn’t have to be a one-off if it fails the first time it is tried. So how do we get this policy adopted and up and running for 2024? Who’s going to adopt it?
How do we educate the Scottish voting electorate about what this policy means, why they should support it, and how they must change their voting patterns going forwards, if there is going to be a democratic majority delivered for Indy this decade?
James barr gardner
Who was the governor of kenya at this point and what is his connection to the current uk government?
Prize anyone?
Imagine the glorious and righteous uk crown running concentration camps that tortured and killed hundreds of thousands and in recent times!!!
PacMan
I agree on the mental health & normal negative feelings.
It started with Lib Dumbs. Wullie Rennie forever banging on about young people’s mental health issues as he bounced around in a bouncy castle or a swing park for the cameras FFS Every single FMQs he’d raise it. You could take bets on it.
UK is moving towards becoming more American by the day. A push to have everyone rattling around on 50 pills a day regardless if they need them or not or what age they are. Not getting a date isn’t a mental or even a health issue. Nor is being socially awkward – step away fae the playstation & learn to interact a while.
We see this with the GRR nonsense too at the moment. Typical teenage angst of feelings *not fitting in* now seems to land people into Frankenstein’s lab for a spot of reproductive adjustment & it’s open season to be a dealer to get their mitts on hormones.
During indyref TTIP was just round the corner. A stark warning of big pharma & corporations getting in to our health service. I think it’s slipping in rather quietly & politicians are taking up bungs to force it through. I’ve read the Greens have already cashed in over the GRR bullshit.
@ Geri
I had that rant about mental health because it is sort of policies that mostly left leaning administrations use to produce tractor-stats that they use as spin to try and convince the electorate of success but it eventually comes back to bite them.
It was naive of me to use the issue of mental health as the current process, like GRR is being pushed by big pharma who have the smell of enormous profits at the expense of Scottish taxpayer.
I did clock Rennie continuously banging on about this. Considering his party took a hefty donation from a puberty-blocking company, you don’t need to be daft to see that his party has got donations from other companies which has resulted in his more than usual hyper-excitability on the subject.
The SNP in government could have taken a stand against the big pharma companies and listened to professionals like mentioned in the article so they could have taken a more sane approach that genuinely benefited patients.
It would have been a genuine example of Holyrood doing something different from Westminster and showed that Scottish politics is mature and sane compared to the madness of Westminster.
It would also have been used as another example of why independence is the answer where we Scots can elect responsible administrations to run the big and small things that is the norm for every other successful independent country throughout the world.
However, the SNP haven’t done that and it is yet another wasted opportunity of the Sturgeon years.
“Award a league penalty against Rangers”.
How did you make that happen?!