What Are We, And Where Are We Going?
Don Paterson is a celebrated Scottish poet, writer and musician. The essay below comes from a new anthology of Scottish writers called Irish Pages: Scotland, and is reproduced with his permission.
Remember The Vow? Most of us have tried to forget it. This was Westminster’s Hail Mary as polling day approached in the 2014 referendum; a vote that Yessers – people tend to forget this part too – initially had no real expectation of winning, until an inspirationally positive campaign saw the polls draw neck-and-neck.
Then lo! There it was, splashed across the Daily Record: a fancy-font promise from Westminster party leaders that if Scotland voted to stay within the UK, we would enjoy new devolved powers. There was some other waffle about defence and opportunities and having an equal share in the UK’s prosperity. But the message was clear enough. We would be listened to.
Aye, right.
The emptiness of the promise was exposed the day after the vote; our own collapse of imagination, will and confidence took years, but the two are related. The full tortuous story will stand as a kind of cautionary tale for all small nations seeking their independence. My original title was “Notes upon Cancelling my SNP Membership”, but borrowing Gauguin’s famous title will lend it a little more allegorical drama. (It will also leave a vague stink of orientalism hanging over this essay; I hope a few readers will understand why.) The occasion may be local, but the conclusions are miserably broad.
But if we’re to figure out who we now are and where the hell we’re going, there should be some mundane rehearsal of how we got here.
A couple of years before the referendum, I recall thinking that Westminster was smart to let the rebranding of the Scottish Executive as “the Scottish Government” pass with an indulgent wink. Even though it didn’t have the fiscal independence of a real national government, Holyrood could now be blamed for the consequences of any Westminster-generated policy disaster that happened to wash up in Scotland. People blame their governments for everything.
But the bold adoption of “Scottish Government” was also a sign of a growing appetite for independence. The SNP had won a simple majority in Holyrood. This was supposed to be impossible: our part-PR D’Hondt-method electoral system was designed to force coalition.
(It is also designed not to be fair, but to appear fair: how clever to ask Scotland to hold itself to higher standards of electoral democracy while it remained nested within the rotten old Westminster FPTP system, with all its wasted votes, safe-seatery, bumps to the Lords and gerrymandered fix.)
A year after the referendum, in the Westminster elections, the ones that really mattered, the SNP won 56 out of 59 seats. A UK-wide party which had enjoyed the same popularity would have won 617 out of 650. This left them with what any other non-insane part of Western Europe would’ve acknowledged as an overwhelming democratic mandate.
And yet, it swiftly transpired, no will or courage to act upon it. Now was the moment to force the issue, to try something; to declare independence based on electoral mandate, then argue for its legitimacy under the UN charter; to unilaterally ignore the Reserved Matter rules, and dare Westminster to mothball Holyrood; to withdraw SNP MPs in protest, in acknowledgement of the impossibility of ever forcing a second referendum within the Westminster system; to call an unofficial second referendum without a section 30 order. None were great plans, true, and all carried huge risks. But now was the time to do something.
At this point, the old lullaby of “too wee, too poor and too stupid” seemed to whisper again in our ears. Covid, admittedly, meant that for a year or two the literal health of the nation had to be placed above that of its body politic. But for all many of us admired Sturgeon’s humane and reassuring performances at the daily Covid briefing, we suspected she was also deeply relieved to be off the hook. As the crisis abated, the old fear made itself known.
After its new policy of asking Westminster really, really nicely failed, our principal independence party declared that we required not just an electoral mandate to call a second vote, but a 60% pro-independence opinion poll. From a Unionist, such an absurd call would make perfect sense; but for the SNP to set this as the benchmark for “the settled will of the Scottish people” looked exactly like the terrified procrastination it was.
Nor, one belatedly realised, was this commitment to total stasis merely the consequence of the fear of acting without the permission of our Westminster overlords. Stuart Campbell, the notorious, hugely influential pro-independence gadfly better known as Wings Over Scotland (SNP MSPs are barred from following him; all do), began to expose the extent to which the status quo suited the SNP and its finances. Tales of careerist Westminster “troughers” and reports of Sturgeon locking herself in a steel bubble full of parrots and mirrors became harder to refute.
The SNP’s numerical majority in Holyrood was, of course, unsustainable, and it was soon forced into coalition with – and soon, ideological capture by – the Scottish Greens, a tiny pro-independence minority party with no constituency seats. Their eccentric and ill-conceived policy obsessions, many warned, would not survive a moment’s contact with proper media scrutiny, let alone the electorate.
But they, too, served an unconscious purpose for the SNP: allowing the culture and gender wars to consume so much political energy and airtime was an act of such colossal, self-defeating idiocy, it began to look like self-defeat was the point.
Then, finally understanding that the party was bleeding support from the very voters it was formed to represent, Sturgeon declared that a simple Westminster majority would represent a de facto referendum.
The desperation of that move – “de facto” is apparently Latin for “obviously not a” – need not be analysed here. The boat had been missed. There was no diem to carpe. Following one of the most badly timed political resignations in recent history, a dubiously shooed-in Sturgeon understudy, Humza Yousaf, briefly doubled down on her folly before he, too, was destroyed by the Scottish Green alliance.
In the meantime, self-loathing had begun to eat away at our sense of ourselves. As with an individual, a country’s sense of coherent identity is bound up in the strength of its public representation. Our many Unionists – half the country – had none in Westminster, which was dispiriting enough, but there was apparently nothing Indy supporters could do to advance their own cause either. “National pride” was being hollowed out by the very folk we’d voted in to bolster it.
It increasingly seemed to me that Creative Scotland, and the smaller arts and literature organisations it supports, were with the crisis in Scottish identity via a politics. “We don’t know who we are, so you tell us who you are. Oh, and make it interesting.”
Identitarianism encourages people to simplify themselves, which is one reason it will always be a favoured tool of the state. It generates tribal division, and – consciously or not – works as a strategy of divide-and-rule which leaves the real power in the hands of the bureaucratic overseers. These divisions soon began to undermine the “civic and joyous” come-all-ye universalism the independence movement had recently aspired to.
The sector employs many talented and conscientious individuals, and funds much good art; but the misplaced sense of self-importance that tends to dog the world of arts administration had led it to forget that its job was the nurturing and promotion of Scottish excellence and talent, not the defence of the culture’s ideological purity. Then again, these institutions are always downstream of legislative culture; the same disconnect had happened via Blairite, corporate-speak neo-managerialism 20 years before.
As for that culture, we will spend years pop-psychoanalysing what the hell went wrong. Often it seemed political capital was spent and exhausted in controversial and marginal causes as a neurotic proxy for the one big one the SNP had, suddenly, no inclination or courage to tackle.
Either way, the larger matters with which the general population was taken up (health, transport, education, sex equality, immigration, poverty, regional equality, sexual violence, drug addiction) went inadequately addressed, often – or at least so it appeared to the public – in favour of the SNP’s increasingly cosmetic, proxy or marginal preoccupations.
Elsewhere, the inherent flaws in popular SNP policies started to make themselves known. The SNP’s populist insistence that Scots must be supplied free university education, alas, came without the wherewithal to fund it. This led to the mere appearance of its availability. Universities cannot subsidise the policy without heavy reliance on fees from international students, meaning some are obliged to cap Scottish places.
At some universities, this means that Scottish students must meet higher bars for entry; ludicrously, Scottish applicants are at the same time used to fulfil admission targets for lower socioeconomic groups.
Result: discrimination against the Scottish middle class, and working-class Scots sometimes finding themselves the only Scots in their entire student cohort, just in case they didn’t already feel self-conscious enough. (The class- and xenophobic shaming of these students – particularly within a certain leading university in our own country – is now routinely reported.)
Elsewhere, The Cringe was back, and this time it’s got a gym membership. Many friends have commented on how many institutions, university programmes and arts events have started to shed their distinctively Scottish identities like a bad smell. In the literary arts, we can still, mercifully, manage to make the occasional exception for writers working in the minority languages of Scots and Gaelic, and indeed we celebrated the appointment of a Gael to the post of Makar, Peter Mackay.
Elsewhere, however, a young artist with no more intersectional interest to their name than “Scottish” is plainly – can anyone seriously continue to argue this is not the case – at a blatant disadvantage. Their merely having grown up in the distinct cultures of West Kilbride, Papa Westray or Wester Hailes can no longer be leveraged in the only place on earth that could possibly care about it.
Region and class (along with age, care-giving status, mental health, marital status, previous criminal record and a lot more besides) barely feature in our highly selective hierarchies of underrepresentation, suffering and disadvantage. Heigh ho; time to use what you’ve got, slap “lives with gluten intolerance” into your biography and pray it gains the sympathy of the awards panel. (I dearly wish I was making this example up.)
But our regional identities, too, shape the distinct pattern of diversity that makes Scotland’s unique. Besides, many regions suffer from terrible economic and cultural deprivation: folk are often more disadvantaged by their town of origin than by any other attribute. Why make so precious little of the fact?
(The reason, of course, is that “region” and “class” are not name brands in the luxury belief system, which is to say that strain of lifestyle politics furthest divorced from the world of capital and labour.)
Artists are always somewhere making good work; they are not, however, always the artists promoted by the state. Music is harder to spoil, as its means of production instantly reveals a certain stratification of talent; besides, the ear is almost impossible to gaslight. Literature and the visual arts are in very different positions, and have proven far more vulnerable to the corrective ambitions of our gatekeepers.
The result is not just that our institutions no longer defend the principle and further the cause of artistic excellence; they seem to have forgotten that their job was to showcase that excellence as our own distinct contribution to global culture.
You will also recall that The Vow was supposed to bring Scotland into the cultural and political heart of the nation. How did that shake out? In my own world of contemporary poetry, the two largest UK-wide awards, the Forward and TS Eliot prizes, have shortlisted twenty books over the last year. It’s just as well the American-Iranian poet Marjorie Lotfi has long been a Scot, because without her, not a single writer from the entire Celtic fringe would have featured.
(Then again, neither did a single UK white male, a mere 37% of the population.)
There is no devolved-nation member on the board of the Royal Society of Literature. We’ve had years of this stuff; it now feels less like slight and more like trolling. We are at the heart of very little.
Such thoughtless deletions are mainly proof of a narrow, entirely ideological definition of “diverse” – one derived from recent US political history, and currently aligned not with a UK but a London demographic. But it also shows that we need Scottish institutions to promote talent drawn from our boring majority identities with exactly the same enthusiasm it shows for our minorities, for which it prefers to advocate. Edinburgh author Chitra Ramaswamy is quite correct in her assertion that “diversity is the realisation of quality“.
Or at least it should be: diversity leads to cross-pollination and creative ferment – and real talent is too thinly spared in the arts for any minority group to be ignored. But to achieve this, we need a definition of diversity that reflects the entirety of our real-world Scottish identity, of every defining aspect of our lives in Scotland: not just of ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender – but of class, sex, region, age, disability, faith, dialect, language.
Excuse all the italics, but this seems poorly understood: the point of nationalism is that one place gets to be different from another. Without cultural distinction, there can be no diversity. Diversity is a justification for nationalism. Small countries dominated by larger imperial or pseudo-imperial powers should fight to retain their distinctive cultural identity as an act of resistance to the monocultures they seek to impose.
And yet our own gatekeepers continue to take their cultural lead from London – now not only deferred to as our real seat of government, but as a holy reservoir of liberal wisdom – and from America, for whom Scotland is rapidly becoming a little safe haven for an increasingly discredited politics of identity, whose cosiness with neoliberalism should alarm its followers. Scotland will be the last to get the memo, as usual.
But what else but a lack of national pride could explain, for example, our failure to arrest the infantile antics of Fossil Free Books, and their craven, entirely confected attack on three layers of soft underbelly – Scotland, book festivals, and one of the most ecologically responsible investors and major patrons of the arts, Baillie Gifford. Prominent among their “book worker” ringleaders were some overconfident, expensively educated English students, and several folk “currently living in Scotland”, whose first major cultural intervention was to trash beautiful things that others had spent decades building.
(At no point did the young authors involved bother to “follow the money” with regard to who sells their own books, or where the pension funds of their own publishers are invested.) Why did we not rally round our besieged festivals, and say “enough is enough”?
I’m afraid one has to conclude that some recent arrivals clearly see their role as culturally corrective, much like the Italian dance-masters shipped to Edinburgh in the early 19th century to fix our rustic fiddle-playing. Our low-ebb confidence currently offers far too little resistance, especially, to some smug yanksplanation.
In the light of what we will tactfully call “recent events over the pond”, I might gently request that our newer American arrivals firstly consider a period of quiet reflection, and secondly, check their privilege: as members of the planet’s leading cultural hegemon, it would behove them to cultivate a less American and Anglocentric understanding of the varieties of colonial, class and regional oppression.
Which brings us, almost exquisitely, to the campaign to erase David Hume from the building that until recently bore his name. Hume is generally regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern age and the most important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, that critical era in the tradition of thought that brought us everything from modern science to the human rights movement. He was a critical influence on Kant, Mill and Darwin; Einstein credited Hume with inspiring the approach which led to the general principle of relativity.
While he was alive, Hume’s debunking of religion and social prejudice meant he never gained the institutional status he deserved. He argued vehemently and at length against the idea that the character and potential of humans is determined by race. David Hume might be the Scot we should be most proud of.
He also penned a single footnote which was entirely typical of the ignorant racism of the age. It is so internally contradictory and out-of-step with his general view that some scholars believe it to be satirical; but no, it’s. a stinker. Nonetheless, the idea that Hume has nothing to offer in the way of mitigation, excuse and compensatory virtue is beyond insane.
The international student behind the successful petition candidly admitted she knew nothing of the most significant intellectual oeuvre ever produced by the city which had offered her an academic home, and suggested that his tower be renamed after Julius Nyerere, as several scholarships already are.
Nyerere was an important leader and thinker – one with, as an Edinburgh University alumnus, considerable debts to Hume. He also believed homosexuality to be un-African, and was the dictatorial leader of a one-party state who imprisoned its political opponents. But hey, at least he wasn’t Scottish.
(The student later withdrew this suggestion with a priceless “It has been brought to my attention”, after a completing a little of that activity indispensable to the naming of public buildings, “further research”.)
In kowtowing to this ignorant and childish demand, the university did grave damage to Scotland’s intellectual integrity. Presumably fearful of offending the wealthy international student body who now cough up the fees the SNP have left it chasing – it offered instead something like a national apology. Most of us agreed that Scotland’s postcolonial reckoning was long overdue, but the reckoning is also distinctly ours: complex, local, contextual and nuanced. Despite what you might think, guys: we have this one.
But the truth is, all you postgraduate lifestylers, all you gap-year activists, all you good folks “currently living in”: I love you, really. We need you to stay. We desperately need the immigration. We need your expertise, labour, taxes and children. We have much to offer in return, besides a home in the most beautiful country on earth.
I would have only a few things to request of every “New Scot” – whether student, academic, artist, doctor, joiner or asylum seeker. Lord knows, you don’t have to support Scottish independence. All I’d ask is that you notice you are in a place called Scotland, with its own history, culture and political balance; that you care about the present and the future of that country; that you are prepared to invest in its culture and society, rather than set yourself on destroying or denigrating it; and that you contribute to as well as draw on public funds.
We desperately want you to be proud of this place, and make the place your own. That’s all. As soon as you declare it so, you will find out that the Scots will fight for you exactly as we would our own; because that is how they now regard you.
However it’s perhaps time to admit that our perennial call to “work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation” has become something of an empty shibboleth. The petty, tribal, prescriptive, censorious, identity-obsessed and philistine culture the SNP have created has left centrist heids reluctant to speak up over matters of simple common sense and public concern, conceding many of them not just to the right (with whom they are now occasionally driven to make common cause), but more dangerously – to the self-declared racists, sexists, homophobes and fascists who should represent our common enemy.
The SNP are also, in their current incarnation, poor stewards of the independence dream. As we enter a pre-war era of economic uncertainty and shifting alliances, rediscovering it will be a far more sober and adult task than we have previously had to face. We first must decide what it is we mean by “better nation”. It will have to be one with considerably more courage, genuine inclusivity and stomach for honest and civil debate than we currently demonstrate.
It will require us to tackle the kinds of broad disadvantage that animate the electorate, as well as those narrow causes which excite our political and institutional leaders. It will require an Enlightenment-style revival of an artistic and intellectual meritocracy, one which can actively connect and draw on the talents of an increasingly diverse but distinctively Scottish society.
It may also require a properly articulated constitution. For one thing, a great many older Scots – having seen quite enough in the way of sectarian hatred and violence to last us a lifetime – would far prefer that the First Minister be attended on by neither minister, priest nor imam while resident in Bute House.
We may have to bring along our Unionist friends by considering less radical, federal solutions on the longer road to full independence. The movement has been derailed by many other things besides identity politics: cowardice, personality cult, unwise alliances, middle-management overreach, a bureaucratic, form-obsessed culture of mutual distrust, self-imposed busywork, Holyrood bubbles and Westminster troughers.
It will be righted on its tracks as soon as we can remember that we can also build movements without the politicians and institutions that currently divide us through increasingly morbid and inward-looking agendas.
Until they can be trusted to represent us again, it may be time for artists to wean themselves off institutional support, at least where they can, through the direct engagement of audiences, readers and students that the digital age offers, and through private sponsorship and investment. It is certainly time to decouple the independence movement from the party who do not, at present, serve its interests well.
More than anything else, we should see our increasing diverse population first and foremost as an opportunity to celebrate all we have in common, without diminishing the enriching possibilities of our differences. We are all Jock Tamson’s bairns, and – Yesser or Yoon – patriotism should be nothing more than the means by which we extend our feeling of family to the limits of our borders, and through consciously exercising that faculty, the rest of humanity too.
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Ten years after the independence referendum, Irish Pages asked Scottish writers of distinction to take stock of the current state of Scotland’s culture and polity, language and literature, ecology and environment. How will Scotland fare in an era of momentous and unpredictable political change? Stands Scotland where it did?
Contributors include Neal Ascherson, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson, Dougie Strang, Kate Molleson, David Greig, Margaret Elphinstone, James Robertson, Peter Mackay, Rosemary Goring, Jenny Lindsay, Stuart Kelly, James Campbell, Catriona McAra, Amanda Thomson, Fraser MacDonald, David Wheatley, Niall Campbell and others, as well as a gathering of younger Scottish poets.
The book can be purchased direct from the publishers here.
It’s 4-5 years until Chairman Murray returns from the UN…
If I wasn’t already thoroughly depressed about the state of Scotland and its institutions, I certainly am now.
Well done SNP, well done…
“We may have to bring along our Unionist friends by considering less radical, federal solutions on the longer road to independence.”
OR we can treat the next 12 months as a campaign to alter the make-up of Holyrood MSPs by activating every Yes group to educate their patch about the Liberate Scotland umbrella.
For the 2014 referendum it was grassroots in their own areas who explained to and enthused the people. We need to do that again.
I would like to be educated about Liberate Scotland:
What is their step by step plan for restoring Scotland’s full self-government and returning Scotland’s independent statehood?
@ duncanio, the person to contact [per Barrhead Boy’s article] is Allan Petrie – Allan says contact him for more information on 07803725878.
You know, of course, that Liberate Scotland is the group putting up candidates for Holyrood in 2026 [not the UN Decolonisation people!].
Sarah – you are advocating for Liberate Scotland.
All I have heard from Alan Petrie, Roddy MacLeod and others is that we should vote for Liberate Scotland candidates at the next Holyrood Election.
What those who are pushing Liberate Scotland have not down is to lay out a credible process for re-establishing Scotland’s nation-state status.
Why should I support anyone if they do not have a plan to achieve this aim?
Sara Salyers, Alf Baird are the people to read.
Liberation Scotland is a completely different entity to Liberate Scotland, the latter being a political group with their eyes on Holyrood.
Complete and utter pish.
Well said, Don. Succinctly summed up the current malaise.
Under Salmond’s leadership, the SNP government could be viewed as a Can Do government.
Under Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney they are the very epitome of a Can’t Do government.
Virtue signalling, out of touch, aloof, incompetent; they encapsulate everything that is rotten in modern politics.
The word, ‘Independence’ has the same effect on the middle class political careerists that form today’s SNP as the word, ‘Socialism’ has on their Labour Party equivalents.
They stand for nothing, they believe in nothing. They want power but don’t know what to do with it. They are shameless.
The pro-indy vote had to be split by London, as the vast majority of our young folk are for independence. Hence the SNP had to be infiltrated and hollowed out from within. That’s pretty much completed now, as there is no party democracy and the SNP are still lead by the same tiny cabal who are happy to sit in a cul-de-sac whilst earning a very pretty penny.
The more you read of this, the less you want to. This is why writers need an editor.
Sounds “alright … but is actually, shite, … ” (to use another writer’s words)
When it’s not wrong it’s obvious and is full of “sounds okay” but is really not-so on a closer analysis.
We slag off Hassan – what put me off him was the phrase used on newsnight many years ago – “a national conversation about what it means to be scottish” (then we really go for it in 2030, or so). This sounds a bit like that, more navel gazing, like we haven’t done enough of that.
I know who I am, and know where I intend to go. It’s not real complicated, a Scotland owned by the Scots, governed by them and using its own resources for the good of its people. The rest you fill in yourself. If indy is not for the Scots, then who is it for? And Scotland doesn’t need immigrants, it just needs to get fucking.
The root of the problem is that the “indy movement” is a bunch of MIDDLE CLASS WANKERS over in Edinburgh, who despite the exploitations of the union, are doing quite nicely for themselves, and “trickle down”-economics works well enough inside the A720. People who believe in indy must be indy only, first, second and last and dispense with whatever grab bag of nonsense the dilettantes want to tagalong with it (- or the weird notion that scot nats must solve “every other problem in the world” before getting on with their own business; no one else does this.)
Once again I wholeheartedly agree with you Confused, the author goes hellbent on ridiculing the britnat elitism then introduces his own brand of Scottish elitism AWARDING every arsewipe from anywhere on the planet irrespective their reasoning to move here as the fabled NEW SCOT, breaking news,NAW THEY URNAE,they are INCOMERS or SeT***rs who have arrived here for THEIR benefit , once again you have the middle class virtue signaller MORE interested in encouraging and welcoming anyone from anywhere irrespective of reasoning for being here instead of the indigenous people who have languished in poverty through ALL political parties, IMO this is just another middle class person of the arts who is annoyed and irritated that what he feels is his rightful position has been given to others
The irony is that all the NEW SCOTS would still deny him his position because fellow virtue signallers look down on the indigenous people
Well said.
Until they can be trusted to represent us again, it may be time for artists to wean themselves off institutional support, at least where they can, through the direct engagement of audiences,
Very interesting idea!
Would this have to be done ‘underground’
Any art that wasn’t considered a ‘hate crime’ or phobic wouldn’t be worth seeing.
I’m sick of “diversity” as it currently stands. Scotland needs to offer something to Scots, to stay, to work, and to have families, not just invite neo Scots with, frankly, incompatible cultures
Well said, Susan. Scots are fast becoming a sideshow ethnic minority and our culture is rapidly being diluted and even in danger of extinction. Sure, we can welcome other people with their other cultures and that diversity can add to not only our culture but also our understanding and compassion for others, but there is a huge but that everyone seems to be too scared to admit to, that Scots languages, culture, history, values and all that makes Scots Scottish are being rapidly pushed towards extinction by the sheer numbers of non-Scots coming into our country while our own people are being pushed out. Maybe its just that I am old and tired, but all I see around me nowadays is a ‘brit’ identity which is completely foreign to me. I am actually glad that I wont see the concluding events of this extinction, although I am so sad that I will never hold a Scottish passport, or citizenship of my own country (not a county) that I,my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents going back as far as records can be traced,where I and they were born and grew up.
We need a band of thugs like Kneecap that thing in native Scots tongue. I laugh.
Let them play!
I’m glad you even manage to see a “Brit” identity. It is now routine to walk down High Street or South Street in Perth (Perth!) and realise that nobody within earshot is speaking English let alone Scots and, no, they aren’t tourists or foreign students.
Spot on, Susan. In order to do that, we need to create new and sustainable industries across the board, and, in order to do that, we need to have the levers of power, and, in order to have the levers of power, we need independence. Always, we come back to independence as the only solution.
To what extent are Scottish institutions actually Scottish? Our ancient universities aren’t.
In 1962 Dr. W. Douglas Simpson, librarian at Aberdeen University, “warned that the Scottishness of Aberdeen University might be submerged by surplus students from England and the Commonwealth.”
That has happened.
On a recent visit home I discovered that the academy now has a Head Teacher rather than a Rector. And my cousin is the only non-English member of the village hall committee.
Why is England allowed to discuss the issues of immigration but Scotland isn’t?
Remember the middle-class hysteria when Alasdair Gray tried to raise this issue?
We have Scottish institutions run by people who don’t know Scotland.
@Cuphook
Your comment reminds me of what Grousebeater, and more recently Alf Baird have been describing for years.
What you are describing has a name. It is called settler colonialism.
The majority of Scottish people don’t want independence. That is the crux of the matter.
When they do you will get another referendum and win. There are no tactics, no plans. Just convince your fellow Scots that they will be happier and go for it.
@ Steven: a referendum on the terms of the last one is pointless – it was “advisory”. As we know, some advisory referendums are more advisory than others. The Brexit one was binding because England voted for it.
The Union is false. It does not bind Scotland because it has no legal or democratic foundation. Why on earth do you think that Scotland should be subservient to England?
All we need is for the truth to be told and enough people in the right places to act on it.
I don’t think Scotland should be subservient to anyone. I just don’t believe your movement have the people on your side.
Steven…
The majority, 53%, of Scots voted Yes in 2014. It wasn’t them who needed convincing… It was the non-Scots who swung 53% Yes to 55% No, and many of those wouldn’t have voted Yes if you’d paid them.
@ Steven: I presume from your use of “you” to refer to Scots, you are not Scottish. You therefore have no business pontificating on what Scots want. Your statement that Scots don’t want independence is utter nonsense in any case. Prior to the 2014 referendum, support for Scotland remaining in the UK was conspicuous by its almost total absence. Where were the pro-UK demonstrations and marches? Do you not remember Creepy Jim standing on his soapbox shouting at nobody in towns and cities across Scotland? What about UKOK and the various astroturf anti-independence campaigns? They were created by unionist politicians to give the illusion of support for the UK where none existed.
Michael Laing:says….
(1)”Your statement that Scots don’t want independence is utter nonsense in any case”
18 September 2014
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Results
Choice Votes %
Yes 1,617,989 44.70%
No 2,001,926 55.30%
(2)”created by unionist politicians to give the illusion of support for the UK where none existed.”
September 2014
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Results
Choice Votes %
Yes 1,617,989 44.70%
No 2,001,926 55.30%
(3)”support for Scotland remaining in the UK was conspicuous by its almost total absence”
18 September 2014
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Results
Choice Votes %
Yes 1,617,989 44.70%
No 2,001,926 55.30%
What planet are you living on son ?
@ Insider: I don’t believe the figures you’ve posted prove anything. There are numerous reasons to doubt the official result of the referendum; for example, the huge amount of postal votes with no proof of where they’d come from or whether they were genuine, the transporting of unsealed ballot boxes to counting stations with no oversight, the discovery of binned Yes votes after the event and the threatening with prosecution of those who found and reported them, video evidence of ballot papers being transferred between piles at counting stations, and the failure of the authorities to investigate any of the many reports of irregularities and cheating. Then there’s the utterly inexplicable ‘fact’ that turnouts were lowest in ‘Yes’-supporting areas, despite it being blatantly obvious that all the enthusiasm and momentum of the campaign was on the ‘Yes’ side. It simply defies belief that ‘Yes’ voters were the least-likely to turn out. Why would independence supporters campaign and march for independence but be unwilling to cast a vote for what they passionately believed in?
I read wings because of the brilliant journalism that Stuart produces. Surely your happy to have another view put across, its not good to live inside an echo chamber, you’ll never get to know what’s reality.
It has been pointed out numerous times on this website that the dial hasn’t moved since 2014. The SNP had it in the palm of their hands and have had all yes voters off whilst raking it in and building massive pension pots.
Deal with Holyrood first then worry about Westminster. (Is that pontificating?)
Well, Michael, you do seem to be remarkably ignorant about the uniquely Scottish personality traits that make up the Scottish psyche.
Such as our readiness to tell people what we think they want to hear in face-to-face situations.
And our innate suspicion of enthusiasm, to the extent that in historical times, Scots classed enthusiasm as one of the vices.
Some work on your education could sort all of this out for you, but I guess the peddling of wild conspiracy theories brings you greater personal satisfaction. Why not, as it plays straight to the niggling sense of “they’re all agin me” that blights so many Scots personally afflicted with the National Cringe.
“the discovery of binned Yes votes after the event and the threatening with prosecution of those who found and reported them”
Dear Gowd, spare us!
Steven,
The majority of Scottish people do want independence, if you don’t believe me, we could have a referendum to prove who’s right, no?
It’s anti-democratic not to have a referendum on the subject. But then again, perhaps democracy isn’t important to you?
Please don’t say we just had one.
You just had one.
Also, poll after poll shows a dead heat at best – more accurately a persistent (admittedly narrow) “no” lead.
I’m afraid objective, verifiable fact trumps “Breastplate” off the internet. Every time.
Captain Caveman,
“You just had one.” No, we didn’t.
“Also, poll after poll shows a dead heat at best – more accurately a persistent (admittedly narrow) “no” lead.”
Polls are not accurate, hence the call for an accurate measurement of the Will of the People, some people might recognise this as democracy, not you, obviously.
“I’m afraid objective, verifiable fact trumps “Breastplate” off the internet. Every time.”
Again, polls are not objective fact regarding peoples voting intentions, otherwise we would have no need to vote but they certainly can be verified, in this case, by a referendum.
So of course I’m right but I’m more than happy to be proved wrong, are you?
We had one 10 years ago. A political generation is seven years. It’s time for another one. NOTHING political is writ in stone. If ‘No’ people think they’ll win or their numbers are higher, why are they so terrified of having another one? Fact is – they are scared they lose. They KNOW SCOTS voted YES. It was itinerant incomers through a WM franchise that pauchled the IndyRef results. And ALL THE CHEATING that won for ‘no’. That is the ONLY reason not to have another one.
But to be honest, another WM Ref isn’t needed & isn’t wanted. We’re going to be De-colonised and then have a Ref under UN supervision, using UN rules such as UN franchise, overseen by UN overseers & in which Westminster CHEATS WILL PLAY NO PART IN IT. And then we will see who truly wins.
@Breastplate
Ah, so polls are “not accurate”, huh – and because of that we must have umpteen referenda to be “sure” of the result. Schrödinger’s Poll Booth indeed.
Leaving aside the sheer absurdity of this position, how often should these referenda be held?Once a year? Twice a year? Poor Scotland, the Sword of Damocles ever hanging over it. Yeah, sounds like a top idea mate, in terms of inward investment, stability, getting stuff done, social cohesion etc. Not disruptive at all.
I’m not Scottish but I’d wager many of your countrymen and women would object – especially those stakeholders with good jobs (especially within the public sector), homes, savings, pension pots? No doubt others, too, would recoil in horror at the current political class who would be the likely benefactors and would hold the levers of power. Read the content of this site for further details.
I would suggest a more mature outlook is required.
“When they do you will get another referendum and win”
I am sorry, but that, in a democratic context, is completely unacceptable. Such assertion comes across as colonially minded. An assertion that emerges from the distorted view that Scotland is subordinated to and the property of England MPs rather than the property of the people of Scotland.
Why exactly is Scotland under the heel of England MPs it never voted for and never endorsed? England MPs represent England constituencies, therefore they are not carrying any mandate whatsoever from the people of Scotland. It would be like France’s MP denying England the right to a referendum. In what universe would that be acceptable?
The people of Scotland delivered not one, not two, not three but FOUR democratic mandates for a referendum on Scotland’s independence. If the UK was really the democracy it claims to be, Scotland would not need to give four mandates for a referendum. One mandate would have been more than enough.
The UK is clearly not a democracy, but rather a dictatorship for Scotland where our democratic mandates are systematically and undemocratically ignored by the political class and brushed under their carpet of corruption an inconvenience.
The refusal by the SNP in control of the Scottish government and England’s representatives about acting on those mandates, means none of them can continue to claim they are democrats. They can no longer pretend they respect and uphold democracy after they have been deliberately and systematically pissing all over Scotland’s democratic rights and then doubled down on pissing on those rights mandate after mandate and after mandate. Who the hell do those undemocratic and arrogant wannabe dictators think they are?
For instance, when exactly was Scotland asked if we wanted a referendum on brexit? I do not remember ever being asked. So why is it that we are discriminated here? Why is it that Scotland has to jump through one hundred thousand hoops to get where it wants to be but England has to jump through none and simply gets whatever the hell it wants and whenever it wants?
“when exactly was Scotland asked if we wanted a referendum on brexit?”
Good point, Mia. We should have had a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on Brexit.
But haud oan!
Would we have been asked if we wanted a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on Brexit?
We deserved a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on Brexit.
But haud oan!
Would we have been asked if we wanted a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on whether we wanted a referendum on Brexit?
Seeing just what a bloody stupid post you made yet, Mia?
You need tae gie yer AI a dunt.
But enough of that. Please accept my sincere condolences on the loss of your beloved EU. Your continued sense of bereavement sits badly on somebody like yourself – ostensibly self-identifying as a stalwart of Scotland’s right and ability to stand free, proud and sovereign on the international stage.
But I guess that wracked by grief as you are, you’re not thinking straight.
If you have ever read (past tense) articles on this website you would understand that the Scottish parliament in its current talking shop, coocil form is no more than that. The Scottish parliament as it now stands was set up to end support for Scottish independence. It was created by unionists with that purpose. To shoot the nationalist fox as it was put by george robertson. So to say we should make the unionist cooncil talking shop work to prove we are big enough boys and girls to not be run by boys and girls from England (who have also proven over the last decade they maybe shouldn’t run a country either) is just the trap it was created for.
It seems that the SNP had always had two distinct groups within it, the fundamentalists and the gradualists. When Salmond resigned and Sturgeon took over, the latter had won. Not only won but wouldn’t tolerate opposition within their SNP. RIP SNP, arise NSNP. Without the political means to push for independence it became a mirage. Allowing the so called gradualists to take over the SNP was how independence got to be where it has now been since 2014.
Once the author of this essay understands – because I suspect he doesn’t yet – that the Scots have been subjugated and their country colonized and ransacked by a foreign power any confusion around ‘Scottish’ government lack of support for Scots artists and actors and sculptors and painters and musicians and writers and poets and…well, anything Scottish really will evaporate.
I suggest the author read Professor Alf Baird’s book, doun-hauden. It clearly explains why Scotland and the Scots are in such a sorry state and how the culture of the Scots is being systematically destroyed…along with their history, language and laws.
A colonised people are “out of the game”, Don (Memmi). So you first have to understand that you are colonised if you are to have any chance of finding the only remedy – liberation.
On the matter of culture and leeberation:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
PS whisper it, Scotland does now have a liberation movement:
link to liberation.scot
Alf, I noticed that the liberation.scot website has a ‘new’ press release dated 9th May re its submission to the UN, but it seems that was only ‘whispered’ too, and totally ignored. The National had nothing on it, and nobody on Wings appears to have mentioned it around that date. I only saw it myself this morning, and I check the site’s News page pretty regularly.
There are two downloadable PDF attachments with the names ‘Comparative Expert Memorandum – Scotland and New Caledonia’, and ‘Comparative Expert Memorandum – Scotland and French Polynesia’, and referred to as ‘comparative legal memoranda’.
They are to be submitted as ‘supplementary documentation in support of Scotland’s claim, and integrated into the Committee’s official working record for deliberation during the June 2025 substantive session.’
They make very interesting reading! Aidan will be aghast; there is no trace of any consideration for his obligatory ‘salt water’ rule in either of them.
I won’t be aghast, the failure to even address the fundamental ‘blue water’ requirement just continues to show that this submission isn’t serious, and will go nowhere. The June session of the UNCDC won’t be considering any of these documents, not just because of the failure to meet the blue sea requirement (fatal though that is), but because Scotland is not a recognised NSGT, and the UNCDC has no power to add it to this list. These two facts are indisputable, and if I know it then Alf and Sarah and all the others know it, which begs the question why this is carrying on. Ultimately I suppose it provides some entertainment in retirement.
But, Aidan, how can the ‘blue water’ requirement be “fundamental” when you made it clear to me that its purpose was to give certain countries, such as the USA, a get out of jail free card as they “did not want to empower distinct ethnic groups or regions in their own states to seek independence, and so went to great lengths to ensure that provisions on decolonisation did not apply in this situation. The way they did this is to codify the geographic requirement and to embed the principle of respect for the territorial integrity of states into international law.
“
Your words, Aidan.
In other words it was a protectionist scam, and not a matter of principle, and it doesn’t have the standing today that it did in the past.
The only legitimate criterion determining whether a territory is non-self governing or not is whether or not it ‘enjoys a full measure of self government’ and if not, whether it voluntarily chose that or had it imposed on it by a foreign Administering Power.
I asked two different AIs what the criteria were for determining if a territory should be listed as an NSGT, and neither of them mentioned the ‘blue water’ or ‘salt water’ one.
The ‘blue water’ requirement is only a hint that a territory may be an NSGT given the colonial history of empires of the likes of Britain’s, but it is obviously arbitrary and irrelevant to the actual determination of NSGT itself, and its absence has no business overturning any determination of actual non-self government based on sensible and directly relevant criteria.
Yes, that was the motivation behind the blue sea rule. The legal principles on decolonisation and NSGT’s were agreed by the members of the UN after the 2nd world war. One of the legal principles they agreed was the blue sea rule.
I don’t know why you would ask an AI when there is a wealth of detailed academic commentary freely available on the internet, but putting that aside, it is probably the most objective and definitive NSGT criteria. It explains why for example, the Falkland Islands which voted 99% in favour of staying part of the U.K. and enjoy an exceptionally generous settlement are nevertheless classified as an NSGT, whereas other peoples who suffer all manner of repression do not qualify for that status.
Creative people: writers, poets, artists, film makers, script writers, playwrights, etc. reflect our society back to us. That is their job, their place in any given era, age and society. If what they are reflecting back to us has no resonance with us, something has gone very wrong.
I am getting on, and I have to say that the Scotland I live in now is a very, very different Scotland to the one in which I was born. The Scotland in which I was born was Scottish to a large extent, albeit international influences filtered through, too, and were embraced.
A speaker of Scots, I also learned to be fluent in English, with some knowledge of other languages added to those. However, so few of our young people speak Scots anymore that they seem alien in their largely American patois, filtered through an English lens.
Even if we were independent tomorrow, so much of our heritage, culture and languages have become so diluted as to be no longer influential in our sense of ourselves as Scots. That call to tear down David Hume’s statue really made me feel like an alien in my own country where the Scottish Enlightenment was fundamental to our growing sense of self-worth and intellectual credibility as Scots.
Truth be told, although I remain a nationalist, and hope that my grandchildren will see an independent Scotland, I no longer recognize my own country and its institutions. It is an alien planet to me, and I cannot forgive the SNP of the past ten years for the desert it has created in the country of my birth where they were happy to deprive me of my basic rights and give them to others, many from a different country and culture. I am nothing to my the country of my birth, just a Scottish woman who will not bend the knee to any alien culture. I would weep if I thought it would make the slightest difference.
Lorn I find what you say here very moving. I am English and feel exactly the same about my country. Almost every sentence in every paragraph could be said down here too. Please don’t think I’m saying this to diminish what you are saying about Scotland: I’m really not. In fact sentiments like yours help me appreciate why you too wish to be independent. But since globalisation none of us are; neither we English nor you. I think the SNP were profoundly wrong to idealised the EU, because in terms of globalism, the EU is part of the problem: for England as well as Scotland. Hope you don’t mind me chipping in here but I value this site not only because it makes me think but the quality of the Rev’s journalism and research in the culture war inflicted on us all is second to none. BTW I’m getting on a bit too!
No, not at all, Ted. I have English relatives, and I know they are saying the same thing. I was a Remainer, but that ship has sailed and it would be ruinous to try and get back into Europe now. Even though I am a Scottish Nationalist (although no longer SNP), I have a fondness for the English, Welsh and NI, and for some British things. I would hope, in the event of independence, that we would all be co-operative as the Scandinavians are. Nevertheless, I do believe that independence for Scotland is now a necessity, and I suspect it may now be so for all parts of the UK. Our politicians, on both sides of the border, have failed us spectacularly in the past ten years, and even before that, things have been far from right. Best wishes.
Ted, Lorn, I could not agree more. I am also a Scottish nationalist who has witnessed my own country and just about every other country in Europe succumb to Western globalism through its adoption by our ruling classes(not just the politicians) and their parasites. Fake social justice theory, gender and race politics from the West coast of the USA has replaced national culture in our elites and our public organisations. Extreme economic and political liberalism favoured by those same elites has created public institutions that can’t do anything and economies in decline.
The superiority complex exhibited by the wealthy ‘currently living in’ brigade leads me to believe that we can’t live with them.They are incompatible and they can fuck off any time. Mass Immigration is a tactic of our elites but give us a poor, working class exile from the schemes of any foreign city, anytime rather than the wealthy, entitled children of globalism. Globalism is an elite Anglo American venture, the EU is its servant.
Ted,I despise politicians who LIE, that is every one of them , but I especially despise every one of them who devalues my nationality by giving it away to any Tom Dick or Harry
One thing I haven’t heard is politicians bestowing the term NEW ENGLISH on anyone who sets foot in their country for more than five minutes
But our Scots politicians and our progressive virtue signalling classes like to bestow incomers or set***rs to Scotland with the title NEW SCOTS irrespective of origin or nationality, downgrading our nationality to the value of a cheap watch or a packet of sweets
Don informs us that David Hume was a great Scotsman but at the same time he was reviled as a racist, he then tells us that a petition was started by an international student to tear down his statue, the petition was then stopped because the student didn’t realise who or what David Hume meant to Scotland and Scots
THIS IMO exemplifies the gross exceptionalism of VISITORS aka NEW SCOTS to our country WTF do they think they are DEMANDING the removal of our heritage and history, you may not like the person or what he stood for but our virtue signalling progressives propensity to bend over backwards to accommodate and prostrate themselves at the feet of these interlopers rather than telling them to FO is BOAK INDUCING
We have had big bird Tranadian and her lunatic sidekick from South Africa, recent incomers or as some would call them NEW SCOTS openly demonising and attempting to destroy Scots WOMENFOLK, eagerly assisted by the deviants and perverts who were supposedly elected to FIGHT for Scottish independence but instead decided that cocks in frocks were more important
Why do these supposed progressives flock to Scotland to impose their version of culture on an unsuspecting electorate why can’t they go to some third world country or closed religious country and bestow their wisdom and progressiveness on them
Don, like all of our politicians tries to convince us that we desperately need major immigration to alleviate and enhance the falling birthrate in Scotland (and the wider uk) but the REALITY is that every successive government in Scotland and the wider uk has PENALISED the working people from having larger families
So what’s going on with you then TH?
Are you finally starting to notice the “real” colonialism that is going on in the UK, in Wales, in Ireland, in England and in Scotland too?
Or are you assembling all of the pieces of the jigsaw into their allotted places and then still saying “Naw, I can’t see what it is yet”.
Other Scots have their jigsaws complete, TH, and they can see the picture very clearly indeed.
That’s why they will likely be voting Reform.
It’s gonna be tough for you, but then you had your 10+ years to sort some of this stuff out. And you blew it.
It is true, twathater, that our politicians have gone out of their way to penalize women who do not work outside the home as well as in it. Most women I know want to nurture their children to school age, at least, but the cost of living and the cost of housing is now so onerous that two wages/salaries have become a necessity rather than a luxury. Again, no woman should be forced to remain at the kitchen sink if she does not wish to do so, and men should be allowed to stay at home, without penalty, if they wish, if they decide that is the path they want to take. Mostly, though, it will be women who are affected.
Many women will not wish to have children at all, and it would be excessively authoritarian to force them to have them, especially if they are lesbian women. However, politicians do not seem willing to make life for child-bearing women easier by allowing substantial tax breaks or even a weekly or monthly allowance specifically for child-rearing women. Many would protest that they, without children, would have to pay, via their taxes, for this, but, if we want our population to rise, it is the only sensible answer: those willing to have children for everyone else should not be penalized for it.
I quite honestly cannot see how this would be more of a drain on national expenditure than paying billions to house and keep people, both legal and illegal, from other countries. Somewhere along the line, this social engineering experiment had to have been agreed in the powerhouses of the West. That does not mean that carefully controlled immigration is out of the window, but the kind we have been witnessing – and this is far, far greater in England – cannot, in either the short or longer term, be sustainable. If you say such, you are immediately deemed to be a racist. That nonsense is so ridiculous as to be beyond reason itself.
Well said TH and Lorn also
Lorn you are right that many, eg bastard tax moan and his fellow greedy bastards would have a heart attack if they were asked by any competent government who were concerned about the falling birthrate to pay a little more tax to permit indigenous couples to afford larger families while one parent remains at home
We have seen the continuous misinformation by ALL governments and ALL political parties that we have desperately needed mass immigration to augment our workforce otherwise the country would come to a standstill, YET they simultaneously tell us that due to modernisation of processes and AI there is no need for a large workforce especially when there are over 1 million unemployed
The travesty is that this has been going on for decades with all governments doing the same thing with no one questioning the stupidity or financial penalties involved in housing mass immigration or the welfare, medical, educational and social costs
It is only now when the white indigenous residents are treated like second class citizens in their own country and all the minority groups are gaining power(egged on by Anas & Humza) and their racist comments whilst our politicians and media refuse to call it out and blatantly ignore it that parties like reform are becoming more electable, unfortunately just like the other parties they are liars
And then there’s the SQA. Another institution needing a guid auld Scottish slap oan the heid.
if you want a better read than this, try :
Leah Gunn Barnett writes decent, straightforward, articles – full of facts and positive ideas; notably she is different from most of the scot nat blogerati, with no navel gazing, innate pessimism and that other thing – “the cringe” – yes, that’s it, SHE HAS NO CRINGE. She does not understand – and the reason is simple : SHE IS AN AMERICAN – and to them “the english” are just some has-beens who flit about pretending to be important, unaware of the true nature of things. She sees them as – irrelevant, as must we.
but, while we fight to change our lives, we must not become -insular- and forget about the great struggles other peoples face
link to archive.ph
it’s hard all round
Isn’t that what he is saying? Being open to other influences is a sign that your own culture, heritage and languages are strong. I really don’t think ours are that strong anymore. It is not elitist to think that David Hume and there Scottish Enlightenment added much to the world. People like him brought enlightenment to the ‘dark, satanic mills’, to the streets of our cities and towns, to our education system, to our laws, so yes, ordinary people, the poorest of the poor, were not only offered enlightenment themselves, but measures were put in place to better their lot precisely because of people like Hume, and the Enlightenment.
Change does take a long time often, to filter through, but there is a big difference between positive change and social engineering – which has been hugely detrimental to our society, to families. Embrace change, but embrace it on your own terms, not on the terms of those who, themselves, are largely untouched by it, whilst benefiting massively from it.
click on the link
Don’t trust the Americans either. We’re a ‘security threat’ to them.
link to nationalinterest.org
link to youtube.com
FFS THAT is a liberty cutting back on 5 holidays WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE WEANS
In their analysis of Scotland no one mentions the biggest impact on Scottish society and culture.
That impact has been the elephant in the room for nearly a decade. It has touched or destroyed every level of our country. The money involved could buy countries.
This is Cocaine. No one wants to talk about Cocaine. From lawyers to beggars, school kids to pensioners. Cocaine.
And the heroin that’s coming in the two ports from Afghanistan/Pakistan/third world shitehole,
That the lawyers know all about and are paid off in my opinion. I’ve heard a few stories. The establishment know it’s coming in at two ports and they are part of the reason why it’s poisoning Glasgow.
I’d like to see a war on drugs. That would unite the country. But the SNP – they can’t do anything. They are so fake it’s amazing the government ever runs at all.
I believe it’s the establishment. Legal system. The police that are bringing the drugs in. Far from mastermind criminals. The criminals are within the bourgeoisie Edinburgh elite thugs.
All these gangs fighting right now. No one seems to getting charged. It’s all being swept under the rug or corruption.
The standard response by the police is that they know the high heid yins but if they arrest them and jail them some other arsewipe will just come along and take their place, then they will have to find out who that is which would mean them having to work, so they prefer to arrest the underlings and keep the current leaders in place for a quiet life, PLUS they can’t jail them cause there’s no room in the jails and they are busy letting other criminals oot, they much prefer arresting people who tell the TRUTH about cocks in frocks
I read this article twice. Did I care for anything that was said or for the examples given? – Not one jot and not one jot.
Did I understand and agree with what the writer was trying to say? – Most of it and no.
Would I file this under the usual elitist tiresome gobshittery talking to themselves folder? Probably. For example:
“It will require us to tackle the kinds of broad disadvantage that animate the electorate, as well as those narrow causes which excite our political and institutional leaders. It will require an Enlightenment-style revival of an artistic and intellectual meritocracy, one which can actively connect and draw on the talents of an increasingly diverse but distinctively Scottish society.”
– Really? That sure is a very rarified atmosphere you must live in Mr. Patterson. An almost unrecognisable one and certainly unbelievable, I’d say.
Will I buy the book? – No.
Or, will I just continue to avidly read WoS and listen to Shauny boy’s satirical commentary on Scotland and its politics for a far truer explanation of where we are – Yes
I completely concur
@ duncanio: I hadn’t realised that you were asking me personally!
I only know what anyone knows who listens to the people involved when they speak/write on Through a Scottish Prism and elsewhere. I accept that they are genuine and experienced campaigners. They are trying to get people with those qualities into Holyrood in order to extract Scotland from the Union. That is such an improvement on the people who have been in Holyrood for the last 10 years that whatever route is proposed by Liberate must be progress.
An actual step-by-step process has been laid out in the Manifesto for Independence. The ISP, who are part of Liberate Scotland, have adopted the Manifesto. This suggests that the other members will but I have no more knowledge to help answer your question.
@sarah said:
” The ISP, who are part of Liberate Scotland, have adopted the Manifesto”
You really got my hopes up there Sarah!
What a great step forward it would be if ANY of those who seek to be elected can answer this question IN ADVANCE OF THE ELECTION: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO GET US FROM WHERE WE ARE NOW TO LIBERATION?
That is it.
Answer that and literally hundreds of thousands of YESsers who have given up voting will flock back to the polling booths to vote for that person or party who tells us WHAT that process is.
I went to the ISP website and had another look around. [1]
Sadly my hopes were dashed.
[1] link to isp.scot
I thought that Peter A Bell has said several times that the ISP is the only party to have adopted the Manifesto for Independence but I had a quick look at his blog/NewSP facebook and can’t find confirmation. Perhaps you could ask Colette Walker direct enquiries@isp.scot is the email.
Thanks for that answer Sarah.
It seems likely what you are referring to would be the NSP [1], rather than the ISP
Taking a fresh look now at the New Scotland Party website, Peter Bell makes it clear that the petition that was up there has been removed [2], and a fresh one started over at a new address.
So this would seem like a good time for anyone who signed the old petition to go over to the new link and sign the petition there! [3]
[1] link to newscotlandparty.scot
[2] link to newscotlandparty.scot
[3] link to manifestoforindependence.scot
Sarah –
I asked you personally as you were promoting Liberate Scotland.
The Manifesto For Independence authored by Peter A Bell is indeed the only process published to date that lays out a clear step by step process for recovering Scotland’s nation-state status.
The Through A Scottish Prism regular show and the Barrhead Boy blog – the former hosted, and the latter owned, by Roddy McLeod – is certainly encouraging people to vote for Liberate Scotland umbrella group candidates at next year’s Holyrood election.
However I and others clarity on the Barrhead Boy website regarding the Liberate Scotland plan … and been given short shrift.
Among a number of exchanges regarding how Liberate Scotland proposes to go about liberating Scotland should their candidates get elected the blog’s author stated “I think it’s on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know”!
Given this hostility I am surprised to learn from you that the ISP have adopted the MFI.
Can you point be to where the ISP publicly endorse the MFI?
I thought I had seen Peter A Bell say so but I can’t find the reference. Try enquiries@isp.scot.
I do hope that ISP will confirm…
“I think it’s on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know”
Maybes they’re planning going down into tunnels for a couple of years, taking some English teenage lassies with them to help while away the time.
Would that work? I don’t know, but it would certainly gather some solid support from certain elements within the Indy movement.
Sarah –
From their website the ISP have endorsed the ‘Manifesto for Indy’ – this is referenced on page 17 of their 2023 manifesto (link to isp.scot).
This was developed by the SSRG around 2021 (link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com).
If you go to the SSRG website now (link to scotttishsovereigntyresearchgroup.org) and click on the ‘Manifesto For Indy’ under ‘Look Here’ options the page returns a blank.
My recollection is that Peter A Bell has stated explicitly that his ‘Manifesto For Independence’ is absolutely NOT the same as the SSRG ‘Manifesto For Indy’.
So there is no evidence that the ISP have adopted Peter A Bell’s Manifesto For Independence.
Please do read the exchanges on the Barrhead Boy website (link to barrheadboy.com) to see why this comes as no surprise to me.
And this is why I can definitely not support Liberate Scotland (or SNP, Alba Party etc) candidates as they do not have a plan, process or pathway to restoring our rightful and normal constitutional status.
I for one have surely had enough secret plans, independence fairies, magical thinking, finger-crossing and snake oil offerings these last 10 years.
@ Duncanio, I have had run ins with Roddy and Peter Bell, Roddy when he, just like Stuart Campbell denigrated SALVO and SSRG but Roddy has accepted that SALVO and SSRG are serious independence partners and TBQH we have very few options on the table at present, IMO Roddy and the members of Liberate deserve support from the indy movement I4I are standing in constituency and list seats ISP are doing the same, SOVEREIGNTY the political party are standing mostly in the highlands area
I argued with Peter repeatedly when he was a sturgeon apologist and snp sycophant, it took him forever to see the truth, I have signed up to the manifesto for indy but his propensity for argument that his is the only way forward antagonises a lot of people, he has complained that he was left out of the recent talks which has made him more critical of other avenues but all Sarah has been doing is showing support for ANY avenue that moves us forward which I personally agree with, there are too many prima donnas within the movement
@ twathater
SSRG, Salvo and Liberation Scotland genuinely deserve our backing because in addition to their obvious passion they have a credible process and set of arguments to attain non-self-governing territory (NSGT) status at the United Nations.
What we need to compliment the international dimension is a domestic pathway to expressing the will of the Scottish people.
With respect to the personalities you refer to there is sometimes very little to choose between people in terms of their individual foibles. Both Rody McLeod and Peter A Bell can adopt a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude.
The difference is that the Manifesto For Independence lays out a logical plan while Liberate Scotland has not. I have little doubt that Liberate Scotland may mean well but without a plan for restoring independence there is little point in voting for them.
Certainly there have been plenty of ‘plans’ backed by TASP/Barrhead Boy in the last 4 or 5 years: The Alba Party, the “super-majority” approach to the 2021 Holyrood Election and the I4I candidature at the 2024 Westminster Election were all touted as the ‘way forward’.
However, it was never explained how any ‘success’ would transform itself into Independence. (And these projects did not end well despite the hyperbole at the time).
My faith, hope and charity has been exhausted during the last 10 years.
link to thenational.scot
“Police were seen on video removing three pro-trans protesters after they scaled a building on West George Street, where the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) offices are located, at around 10.15 am on Monday.
The protesters could be seen on a balcony of the building, holding a sign reading: “End segregation, trans liberation.”
Campaign group Trans Kids Deserve Better said they were behind the action and described it as a direct response to the EHRC interim guidance that banned trans people from using toilets and single-sex spaces of their acquired gender.”
————————————————-
Campaign group “Trans Kids Deserve Better” – what the hell is a trans kid??????
A “trans-kid” is a poor unfortunate child, too young to have capacity, whose deranged, mentally-ill and/or perverted parent or guardian has decided to mutilate, chemically castrate (boy) or masculinise (girl) him/her for some misguided motive or reasons of sexual gratification, often following propagandising by the pervert organisations frequently mentioned here, whose own motives are themselves highly suspect.
To even moot such a cruelty should be subject to prosecution for child cruelty.
This matter is only tangentially related to the subject of this post, which is the pseudo -intellectual masturbatory musings of one of our ‘artistic’ brethren who apparently cannot see that what Scotland really, really needs is urgent action to liberate us from the clutches of a foreign power, and their planted colonists RIGHT NOW.
Round of applause!
@ Steven and Insider
Do the English [or any other nation] want to be subservient to another country?
Of course they don’t.
So of course the Scots don’t.
sarah:
What on earth is this “English nation” you talk about ?
Please define……
What do see in your mind’s eye when you talk about the “English” ?
Yorkshiremen?, Geordies ?, Cornishmen ? Asians ? Caribbean?
Liverpool Irish ? Brummies ? Cockneys ? Old Etonians ? Muslims ? Londoners ? Jewish ?……..?????
I am white, working/underclass involved in the visual Arts. I was blatantly excluded from promotion because I did not tie a self loathing political theme to my work and embrace the oncoming destruction of my country, people and culture.
I am one of the people labelled “racists, sexists, homophobes and fascists who should represent our common enemy.” for stating that it is neither natural nor normal to walk a mile in any direction in the area I am from and live in without hearing English being spoken or seeing anyone who looks like me.
The circles I move(d) in are very active in the promotion of this and the sums of money being awarded are eye watering, possibly hundreds of millions annually in a small part of the Glasgow art scene alone to organisations which have charitable status but are extremely political and which do not have to apply for their annual funding, it is granted automatically by Creative Scotland with the money being awarded to and by people who look like members of the same family.
In my own experience the people who are making careers in the Arts out of ‘generational trauma’, events which did not happen to them and which were carried out by people who are long dead, are people who have had a private education via their parents being diplomats or successful business owners, but I digress.
Re all Jock Tamsons Bairns, if and when Glasgow and Edinburgh look like London and Birmingham will they still be Scottish cities and will the inhabitants be Scots? In my circles this is seen as a sure bet already and they are targeting rural and Northern Scotland for “Decolonisation” which is a polite term for ethnic cleansing.
If the SNP membership and including The National wasn’t so interested in defending Sturgeon instead of opening there ears and eyes about her nasty nature, thing might have been different and Salmond just might have been alive today. I really do question the people who joined and stayed with the SNP after before and after 2014 because it wasn’t because of Independence or good governance because Sturgeon and the morons who followed her haven’t done either.
How can a membership be so blind to what the SNP leadership is actively doing to the party and Scotland where is the voices in the party.
Not one of us would have thought after the 2014 Referendum sturgeon would have brought about the rotten politics we now have in Scotland.
Did nobody else notice in the list of contributors (at the bottom) that Stuart Kelly and James Campbell were sitting next to each other looking like butter wouldn’t melt?
Some coincidences are perfect.
Yes – I had to think a moment as it’s not quite an exact coincidence!
I used to identity as Scottish working class but the lanyard fannies and the SNP have destroyed my culture. I now despise this lot. Good article. Include him again Rev.
Indeed, George. Me too. The Scottish working-class was a powerful influence on Scottish politics, culture, heritage, languages, music, etc. No more. It was always liberal (small ‘l’) and conservative (small ‘c’) and protected its interests and its people, who were the real nannies and protectors of Scottish culture, heritage and languages, through the unions and other working-class institutions.
Working-class Scots who, through hard work and/or education, moved up into the lower middle-class. never forgot their origins. They remained on the left, not the insane hard left that seeks to destroy everything decent and solid, but the left that sought to look after people who were unable to look after themselves. That continuity has been destroyed quite deliberately in social engineering experiment after social engineering experiment, from Thatcherism to ‘wokism’.
Lorn
These are also my sentiments.
Folk born in Scotland to Scottish parents who raised them as Scots know full well the Scots are a genuinely stoical people and are generally unmoved by self-pitying rhetoric designed to illicit sympathy…or indeed de-motivate.
It just isn’t that easy to eradicate a people as ancient as the Scots and who have been so influential in the development of the modern world.
Even after three centuries and more of brutal subjugation the Scots are still around and are renowned across the planet for their generosity of spirit and inventiveness.
It’s almost a miracle when it’s considered what the Scots have endured as a colonised people that there’s any sense of a Scottish identity left alive at all in the world today
And yet ‘Scottish’ is one of the most easily recognisable cultural identities anywhere in the world (even to some of Earth’s remotest peoples) despite the many previous and ongoing attempts to eradicate it.
Granted the past three hundred years have been tough on the Scots – we’ve had the stuffing knocked out of us there’s no doubt about that.
We’ve been kicked a wee bit senseless, true; but I believe we’re starting to recover our senses.
What’s happening in Scotland now is the smelling salts guaranteed to wake the people of Scotland. A people currently down but who are definitely not out.
No. the world hasn’t seen the last of the Scots and Scotland; not by a long way yet.
Hello again Northcode.
Genetic studies of the Scots identify how little change there has been within Scots. We are much the same genetic material now as in the times of the ancient kingdoms.
That’s because most did not move far and married those near them
That is to say, Gaelic (Ireland and Wales) Pictish, Norse and Norwegian, bits of Cumbria and Northumbria.
It is important to know this because genetic make up determines cultural values.
Hello, Sam. Good to know you’re still about this place.
“We are much the same genetic material now as in the times of the ancient kingdoms.”
Aye, Sam. It’s important for a people to know their own history and where they came from. We Scots have been around for a long long time even before we all got together and called ourselves Scots.
That unique blend of ancient peoples has produced a culture found nowhere else on Earth.
Wonderful assay and a real pleasure to read.
The author writes “Covid, admittedly, meant that for a year or two the literal health of the nation had to be placed above that of its body politic”, which is very true. But the author is being far too generous and gentle towards the SNP and the political fraud acting as its leader at the time.
The 56 majority was won in May 2015. The second MP majority was won in 2017 and the third one in 2019. The Covid lockdowns did not start until later on in 2020. By then, Nicola Sturgeon and her defanged SNP version had already subjected us to almost five years of disgraceful inaction despite having been given not one, not two but three MP majorities and control over another pro-independence majority in Holyrood. She of course completely wasted the absolute MSP majority that she inherited from Mr Salmond as well.
Incidentally, the lockdowns started also AFTER the political fraud Sturgeon’s capitulation speech. She capitulated to brexit despite being given three absolute majorities of anti-union MPs, and the largest share of the seats in Holyrood, which of course she completely wasted.
Sturgeon’s capitulation speech had nothing to do with COVID and all to do with the fact that either she is a complete and utter coward, she is beyond incompetent as a party leader, she was being blackmailed by the forces of the deep state, or she simply never had any intention to use her tenure for Scotland to finally follow a path different to that of England.
So, in my eyes, COVID can never be seen as an excuse for the disgraceful inaction and mismanagement of our democratic mandates and anti-union majorities by the SNP useless leadership in the last ten years.
COVID was a convenient shield for the political fraud Sturgeon to hide behind and deflect from the embarrassment of having to acknowledge how she disgracefully sold her country.
Sorry this guy Don Paterson – like most of the population is clueless about what is going on re the “immigration”. Starmer has just practically reversed Brexit with his recent signing of that EU agreement that is restarting Free Movement of EU and UK citizens that is also going to bring in hordes of cheap labour from the East European countries again with all of this as part of the agenda to get RID of countries altogether and bring down everyone in the western countries wages and conditions etc and get RID of the middle class and where everyone is going to own NOTHING and be happy as per The World Economic Forum and UK Agenda 21/UN Agenda 2030. Here is Paisley alone it is spot the white man now and even when you do they are speaking in a foreign language.
The totally FAKE COVID was part of that to scare the dumb masses into going out and taking the jabs that are full of the TOXIC Graphene Oxide that is clotting the veins and caused millions to drop dead of Strokes, Heart Attacks and Turbo Cancers and many other serious illnesses and this is all designed as part of that agenda to get the world’s population to under 500 million by 2050. Sturgeon and all politicians who voted for these COVID measures should be in prison AT LEAST for what they have done.
Universities and Colleges are being grouped into West of Scotland etc groups as part of the agenda to get rid of countries in readiness for Scotland becoming a REGION of the United States of Europe that the EU is going to morph into where England is going to be split into 9 REGIONS etc and the same is going to happen to Germany, France etc being split up into smaller REGIONS. The same things that are happening in the UK are happening in every Western country and people blame Brexit for what is happening here while in Germany etc they are kicking off about all of their industry being moved to the cheaper countries as well.
Anyone who thinks that it is the English or Westminster that is the problem has NOT or does NOT want to use their brains. The entire system is a massive SCAM including WORTHLESS created out of thin air money where the corrupt controlled banks lend our corrupt controlled governments £trillions of NOTHING plus interest creating massive inflation while they do so and they rob the people of all of the taxes that pay for NOTHING. Everything is PREPAID out of the Trusts that they do not tell us we have all had since the day they conned our mothers into registering us and they started to trade us all on the Stock Exchange – University fees are also paid out of these Trusts and then they con the people into paying them back in the countries they con them into doing that just like they con the people who take out mortgages into paying back at least three times the price of the house over the term of the mortgage even though they paid off the house in FULL from that Trust the minute they signed the documents and they still NEVER own the house even after they have paid it off – there is a reason that there is an all caps name on the deed and everything else you have registered.
Unless the people want to understand all of this and get people with PRINCIPLES into power who want REAL independence where they will bring in a single national bank on behalf of the people where they will print our own debt and interest and inflation FREE money with NO taxes as they will NOT be needed the way things used to be and with two term limits for politicians with NO pensions etc then nothing will change and these mafias behind everything will as usual get away with their agenda.
This will also expose the corrupt puppets of these mafias as who would want to be ruled and controlled from another country when your own government can print their own debt and interest and inflation FREE money to do everything that is needed for their own people and the people also would be far better off with no scam taxes being robbed off them going to these mafias for their wars etc. Very few people would vote against this and they could NOT stop Scotland with a majority after this from walking off to independence plus it would encourage the English people and people of other countries as well into their own debt and interest and inflation FREE money and independence for themselves.
Billy,
Where can we find out about our “trusts” which you say we all have (and will pay for everything) ?
How much did you get out of your “trust” ?
thanks,
Insider 26 May 2025 at 7.17 pm
You use your brain and go and do some simple research – you can start with my video The Democracy Illusion on my William Woods Youtube channel.
I have just paid the last fours years of council tax that I have not paid by just signing the “bills” they sent with my signature via my Trust under The Bills of Exchange Act 1882 and Uniform Commercial Code Section 3 – I and others are waiting to see what they do with this as LAWFULLY I have paid in full what they are claiming and I have given them my terms to contract – £1 million per day – if they refuse my payment. Many others have paid council tax etc via the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 such as Richard Vobes on his Youtube channel. Of course they do not want people knowing this as it totally exposes their scam system.
@ Billy Carlin says:27 May, 2025 at 11:31 am
So what you’re saying is that we don’t actually need Indy to get the filthy moolah we deserve from the stolen oil & gas, the stolen wind, and the stolen fisheries.
Plus we need never stint ourselves on our morning rolls again.
Sign me up!
“part of that agenda to get the world’s population to under 500 million by 2050”
Have you noticed? All graphs of the world’s population to date are showing what experts call a monotonic increase. So if Covid, or the vaccines, are supposed to reverse that, then they have yet to kick in.
Plus, many hundreds of millions of penniless peons in the third world never got any anti-Covid measures whatsoever. No hand sanitiser, no masks, no jabs, no distancing, no year off on full pay. The survivors all have herd immunity now, so if any of what you write about Covid or the vaccines is true, in evolutionary terms, third-world people are in much better shape than we are.
But you do claim that Covid just plays a part. The vast bulk of the world’s depopulation (8 to 10 billion) will have to be winnowed out by something else.
They can’t all be going to Mars with Elon, so what is going to do the heavy lifting needed to kill billions?
Hatey McHateface
Oh Dear! One of those who do not want to use their own brains. First off there was NO such thing as covid and there are NO such things as viruses.
Covid was CREATED to scare the dumb masses into being herded into doing what the corrupt puppet governments wanted them to do. They used the COMMON COLD what they call coronavirus symptoms along with FLU symptoms to con them into thinking that covid was real. Colds and flu are NATURAL just simply the body kicking in at certain times of the year into DETOXING any poisons etc that the people put into themselves and not everyone in a family or office or factory gets colds or flu if they have nothing to detox – you CANNOT catch a cold or flu from anyone or anything else and they have tried many times in many experiments to infect healthy people with colds and flu and totally failed as books such as “Can You Catch A Cold by Daniel Roytas” has exposed. There are NO such things as viruses as has been totally exposed by many doctors etc and the VIROLOGIST Dr Stefan Lanka who proved this by using the Measles “virus” as an example showing that there is NOT one single bit of EVIDENCE anywhere on this planet that measles (or any virus) exists and the Two INDEPENDENT Laboratories and three INDEPENDENT experts appointed by the German Supreme Court confirmed this FACT.
The 2007 book “Virus Mania How The Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics Making Billion Dollar Profits At Our Expense” by various doctors also exposes the virus and vaccine SCAM and how the vaccines cause massive amounts of serious diseases including cancer etc. The book “What Really Makes You Ill – Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong” also totally exposes the Heath System SCAM which keeps people permanently sick with TOXIC drugs and vaccines etc for profit and also to kill off people quicker. Dr Sam Bailey and her husband Dr Mark Bailey have both given up their doctors salaries and are exposing the SCAM health system and viruses etc and you will get excellent downloads from her website of her name and books of their totally exposing the covid etc SCAM.
Dr Tom Cowan is another doctor over on Rumble who has been exposing it all as well including the FACT that there is NO such thing as herd immunity – if you CANNOT catch anything from anyone else then there CANNOT be herd immunity. The body heals ITSELF such as when you cut yourself, when you break a bone and when you put toxins into your body it detoxes them out via colds and flu but if you keep on pumping yourself with toxins it eventually gets overwhelmed and starts storing these toxins all over the body in the joints, organs etc in the body creating the different so called diseases and this will eventually lead to cancer as well. The people cause their own diseases by what they put into their body or allow the corrupt medical system put into them.
These so called elites think that the world is getting over populated with humans and they want rid of most of us – go google what the Georgia Guidestones said about getting the worlds population to under 500 million – that is UN Agenda 21/UN Agenda 2030 and you have people thinking that they can go to the UN to get independence for Scotland when the UN is going to be the One World Communist Social Credit Government if they get away with their agenda that includes NO countries. The laugh is if you take every man woman and child on this planet they can all stand on the Isle of Wight no problem and if you take them all to the State of Texas in the US you can give them all a house with garden each and there would still be plenty of space left in that State.
These so called Elites just do not want what they call useless eaters to have to feed etc any more especially as they do not need many workers these days and they will need even less soon so they are going to come out with a new “pandemic” soon – our corrupt governments have handed over power to the corrupt World Health Organisation to call future pandemics and all of our governments have put through legislation that allows them to lock up and force everyone who refuses to take the many vaccines that everyone is going to be forced into taking – why do you think that they have been conning people into taking these covid jabs and boosters for a FAKE virus and the highly TOXIC Graphene Oxide that is in them are in every “normal” vaccine now and also the dental local anesthetic and diabetes jabs etc as well because they have this population reduction agenda hence why millions of people worldwide have been dropping dead from strokes, heart attacks and turbo cancers etc – plenty of people online exposing the massive spike in excess deaths all over the world including Dr John Campbell on Youtube.
How do you think that they will get away with their agenda without the people realizing what is going on when they can blame the imaginary FAKE virus for people dropping dead. They want rid of pets and farm animals as well hence all the reports all the time about bird flu etc and they are all going to be found to be “infected” with a virus in this next “pandemic” and destroyed – this is part of the global warming/climate change SCAM as well.
It’s defo interesting you don’t believe in viruses, Billy.
Back in the early decades of the last century, the inhabitants of Hirta suffered from an ailment they called the Boat Cold. Only some half dozen or so ships ever called at Hirta each summer, but as the Hirtans had no immunity to the germs brought by the crews and passengers, they would all mostly catch whatever was going.
And then, of course, we have the historical record of what happened to the major and highly developed civilisations of the Central Americas when they were first exposed to the infectious diseases brought by Europeans.
Population decimation, civilisation collapse, and a legacy of failure and destruction.
Sure, there were some disparities in technology, but that was more than compensated for by the opposite disparities in numbers.
So if it wasn’t infectious viral and microbial agents to blame, to which the indigenous peoples had no immunity, then I guess it must have been all in their heids.
But enough. Keep quiet about viruses being non-existent. I thoroughly enjoyed the extra year of oppression that the Covid Spreaders inflicted on their own people, during which they pursued their Zero Covid policy with fanatical, and ultimately futile, efforts.
The next time they unleash a similar man-made plague on the world, I want the Covid Spreaders to suffer excessively, all over again.
So don’t tell them the truth.
Hatey McHateface 27 May at 1.11 pm
Told you you do not like using your brain. All of what you have said about viruses and infectious diseases has been totally DEBUNKED by all of the EVIDENCE by the doctors, virologists etc that I mentioned in my last comment and by all of the FAILED experiments that have been carried out to try and infect people with colds, flu etc. There is also the FACT that they NEVER do control experiments when they claim that it is imaginary viruses that are the only things that they CANNOT see under the microscope – they can see bacteria, cells and everything else but NOT these imaginary viruses.
Dr Stefan Lanka the Virologist was offering 100,000 Euros to anyone who can provide EVIDENCE that viruses actually exists anywhere in the world and only that one doctor, who FAILED with his “evidence” in that 2017 German Supreme Court case I mentioned in my other comment, has tried to challenge Dr Lanka because there is NO evidence for viruses anywhere. There was an American businessman during the covid scamdemic that was offering $1.5 million to anyone to prove that the covid virus actually existed with NO takers – can’t remember his name.
Maybe you can provide your EVIDENCE that these indigenous peoples actually got wiped out from “infectious diseases” and it was not just fake stories put out much later by the corrupt medical system to bolster their scam virus/infectious disease narrative where the reality back then was those populations were wiped out by the invading nations or they died off from starvation and the diseases from that after they were forced from their lands and struggling to feed themselves after their farm land etc was forcefully removed from them.
Like I said all of these viruses and infectious diseases etc have been totally DEBUNKED with absolutely NO evidence anywhere for them existing.
There is also the FACT that they NEVER do control experiments when they claim that it is imaginary viruses that are the only things that they CANNOT see under the microscope – they can see bacteria, cells and everything else but NOT these imaginary viruses.
Can I assume that you’ve never heard of electron microscopy, Billy?
What about computer viruses then?
Should I stop my Norton subscription because they’re imaginary too?
A man has died after falling down stairs at a lap-dancing club in Glasgow city centre.
link to bbc.co.uk
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That’s more interesting than some poet spouting rubbish that he knows nothing about.
Is it true he landed awkwardly, impaling himself fatally on a rigid, blunt, elongated object he happened to have in his hand?
It should be
“As we enter a pre-war era …”
When was this written? Over 3 years ago?
Hard to believe that anybody can’t have noticed the war that’s been raging since February 2022.
IMHO, it has had a far bigger effect on the chances of Scottish Indy than Covid ever did.
That would be an adverse effect, just in case anybody thinks the opposite.
It started before then, not long after the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government and the new puppet regime thinking eth nic clean sing was the way forward.
Mere trivialities to some, of course.
Aw.
That wound still throbbing, eh?
Wings BTL favourite militarist, aggressive, colonialist imperium, occupying the world’s largest continuous landmass, plus 20% of their neighbouring ex-colony, still being portrayed as the victim?
There truly is something about ex-colonies fighting for their freedom and sovereignty that sticks in the craw of some on here.
It’s an absolutely killing flaw in would-be Scottish Indy supporters, but it’s a flaw very dear to them and thus they’re not going to give it up.
Lets hear it for the RF, BP. Ooooorrrraaaaawwwwww!!!!
Hatey,
I understand that the facts are inconvenient for your world view but strangely enough, I don’t care if it’s upsetting for you.
My stance hasn’t changed one iota, this is, and always has been, an East West power struggle. A powerplay by the Americans that massively underestimated their opponents and has made them look like the imbeciles they are.
It has impacted us negatively with astronomic energy prices that affects every aspect of our lives from morning rolls to mortgages.
But never mind, as long as little Jon Main gets to shake his fist at the nasty Russkies, everything is fine in the world.
Just remember the next time you want to complain about the cost of anything, this is what you were a cheerleader for, silly sausage.
Aye, BP, those fecking nationalist, sovereignty-defending, freedom fighters, eh?
If only they would cave. Have you seen the price of a morning roll lately?
The sooner they’re all deid, and the RF has rolled up to the borders of its next target, the better.
Get your excuses ready now so that when the next invasion starts, they’re well rehearsed. They had it coming, they poked the bear, they’re Nazis, they’re kiddie fiddling shirt lifters. Probably all of these at once.
Ooooorrrraaaaawwwwww!!!!
Correct BP.
Be honest now, Marie.
Wouldn’t you be better for shedding a few pounds?
If you don’t want to entertain any ideas of getting your bod “beach ready” for the summer, think of our over-stretched SNHS instead.
Cut down on the rolls for the sake of your health, and to help ease the pressure on our struggling medical heroes.
“diversity is the realisation of quality”
Nah.
Quality is quality. Quality must be prioritised, and if it leads to diversity – all well and good. If it doesn’t, then diversity is self-evidently a busted flush.
Prioritise diversity over quality and everybody gets mediocrity – something even President Trump clearly sees.
Prioritise diversity at all, and even truly exceptional diverse hires are tarred with the same brush as the no-hopers. Everybody looking at them is thinking “you only got that post because you’re from a minority”. Even any exceptional people end up wondering about that too – every time they look in the mirror.
Chitra Ramaswamy asserts “diversity is the realisation of quality”. She would though, wouldn’t she?
Why doesn’t she practise what she preaches? She should encourage the fast tracking of a puckle of white Scots to go live and work in India. Why isn’t she keen to boost her ancestral home with some of the diversity she claims to value so much?
Scotland`s future,
1 million English immigrants,
facilitated by a Scotch overseer class,
sustained.maintained,pampered and indulged by exploited Asian,African and European immigrants.
This is the Spartan model,
The Spartiates the elite citizens,
The Perioikoi second-tier citizens but free,
The Helots were the state-owned serfs who made up 90 percent of the population.
A decent article with much to mull on but the stuff on arts funding falls into the trap of attacking the funders with their own false ideas:
‘… our institutions no longer defend the principle and further the cause of artistic excellence; they seem to have forgotten that their job was to showcase that excellence as our own distinct contribution to global culture.’
The principle and cause of artistic excellence? What actually is excellence in art, let alone the principle of it? Excellence is one of those words funders love but in fact, when it comes to creativity is not just meaningless / false, but stultifying. And global culture? You mean literally everything human beings do culturally, as opposed to the aliens?
These statements are the very opposite of what art funding should be about. It should be focussed on allowing artists to do their work without interference, without concerns about bogus ‘excellence’ and without concern to be contributing to anything, not even a national culture (let alone a global one). It all sounds like the sort of thing expected of a poet laureate extrapolated to all funded artists. Add into that the funder’s required tick box list of (self-)righteous causes and no wonder the cultural landscape is so moribund.
“.. our institutions..”?
Postcolonial theory tells us that institutions in a colonial society tend to hold only to colonizer values, with the aim of widening the cultural gap between colonizer and colonized (Memmi; Fanon). Which is what we see:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
But that does not address the points I am making. It is not specifically the English that have imposed notions of excellence and all the rest, it is the tide of western thought equating art with commerce and ‘returns’; the commodification of creativity, the reduction of art to ‘content’ and as a an imperative vehicle for whatever cause(s) (and yes, even for national promotion). This problem goes way beyond an independent Scotland, de-colonised in your terms or not.
We cannot treat “the colonial question…as a subsidiary part of some more important global matter” (Robin D. G. Kelley).
And colonial “racism… cannot be subordinate to the class struggle’ (Cesaire).
For decolonization is about removing a racist system of exploitation (Memmi).
Sorry Alf.
Common sense tells me that even if you accept the existence of the Coloniser (with one set of cultural values) and the Colonised (with a different set of cultural values), then the “cultural gap” you refer to can’t be widened any further by any institution.
At least, it can’t be widened by the institutions tending to “hold only to colonizer values”. Which is what you claim they do.
In fact, just a smidge of logical thought makes it crystal clear that an institution holding to the coloniser’s values, and attempting to inculcate them in the colonised, would narrow the cultural gap, not widen it.
After all, if the aim of the institution is the eradication of the culture of the colonised, and the inculcation of the culture of the coloniser, and that aim is achieved, then the cultural gap is eliminated completely.
And sorry again. Every time you mis-spell the word “coloniser”, which you always do, you betray your own intellectual colonisation.
Physician heal thyself!
Alf, you remind me of the dad on Goodness Gracious Me who whatever his son is talking about, it is always Indian in origin: Christianity, Elvis, Sherlock Holmes, the discovery of the the theory of relativity, all ‘Indian!’
You cannot relentlessly view the world through a single lens (and one that seems to be based on unexamined extrapolations of a tiny handful of writers) as it stops being a useful focussing device and instead becomes a blinker.
As Professor Black and others have discovered, its not really that complicated Don (OBE, FRSE):
“What are we”?
A colonized people.
“Where are we going”?
Towards decolonization and then liberation.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
“Towards decolonization and then liberation”
And wads of moolah.
You forgot that. And to most Scots, that’s the bit that matters.
So please don’t forget it again.
Have you seen the price of a morning roll lately?
(I think it’s the kind of roll you eat that we’re concerned with here).
Yes, John, you’re correct, it is something you eat, particularly in Scotland. What the English call rolls, tend to be stodgy babs.
I would like Scottish self determination precisely to stop the takeover of English baps in Scottish bakeries.
I would still allow French croissants and Belgian buns.
Fuck the Empire biscuit, though, because it’s shite.
“Towards decolonization and then liberation.”
Indeed, Alf.
The third and final phase of Scotland’s decolonization has begun there’s no doubt about that.
From conversations I’ve had over the past few months with folk in the street and in shops and in supermarkets and just generally aboot the place more and more Scots are now seeing the union for the hoax it really is – I’m paraphrasing but thon’s the gist of it – and are angry at how unfairly the Scots are being treated by Holyrood and Westminster.
A few of them now speak in terms of Scotland being a colony – a word I haven’t really heard Scots in the street use when talking about Scotland until fairly recently.
It would seem that despite the lack of mainstream media support for independence the message of Scotland’s colonial status is still getting out and is spreading among the people.
tldr;
We should learn from past failures, not beat ourselves up about them. “He who does not understand his history is condemned to repeat it”.
We have learned that depending on politicians, no matter which politicians, is foolish. The only effective democratic agency in Scotland is the people themselves and they must organise.
The way forward is with groups like Liberation, Salvo and others, people who have no ambition to squat in some silly chamber with their thumbs up their arses, fretting about where their next bribe is coming from.
Let’s arrange that ordinary Scottish citizens govern Scotland, just we, ourselves.
tldr;
We should learn from past failures, not beat ourselves up about them. “He who does not understand his history is condemned to repeat it”.
We have learned that depending on politicians, no matter which politicians, is foolish. The only effective democratic agency in Scotland is the people themselves and they must organise.
The way forward is with groups like Liberation, Salvo and others, people who have no ambition to squat in some silly chamber with their thumbs up their arses, fretting about where their next bribe is coming from.
Let’s arrange that ordinary Scottish citizens govern Scotland, just we, ourselves.
Well written as y’d expect from a published poet ( an excellent one at that ) with much to enjoy & agree with , but…….is D.P really saying anything different from the Hassan/Belly-Up Catatonia mob ? Sounds to me like yr boilerplate ” Progressive ” rose-tinted Panglossery – ie , ” Independence would be nice , but we only want if it’s acheived after a wholesome vegan lunch and no one is offended – ever !
Aye seems we ” need to take our Unionist friends with us ” , aye , nae bother , but whit if they don’t wantae go ? dae we jist hing aboot waitin’ fur thum ? Offer thum , ah don’t know , sweeties , a bevvy , puff oan a joint ? n if they still don’t wantae go , gie up n go hame ?
Nah , Don , we should jist tell thum we’re oan gon doon that road , the wan that leads tae Independence n they kin come if they wahnt , but we’re gon whether they come or no .
+ fuckssake , D , ” admire Sturgeon’s compassion ( during the Covid debacle ) ” ye kiddin’ us oan ? that daft midden follied aw the same shite as the rest a the heid-nodding ” consensus ” donkeys n hid us aw locked in our hooses fur fckn months oan end , n as is her typical stupit , petty wiy , kept that idiocy gon even longer than the doughballs in Engerland , just tae try appear * different * fae thum , she wisnae n isnae any different fae that mob , jist another daft wee muppet gein too much power n lettin that power go tae her addled wee mind . She used the whole Covid mega-balls-up as an extended promotional for her future career prospects , only takin a bit a time oot fae that tae stick another dagger in Alex Salmonds back ; did ye miss that bit , D ?
Sorry , D , if ye cannae see through sumdy as ‘kin obviously bent as her , yr judgement oan urra hings is pure dodgy
A soond analysis Robert. Yer deid richt, thar’s faur too mony jubous poleetical assumotions in this piece.
Poetry theory is ane thing, postcolonial theory anither:
link to salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
I enjoyed reading this, Robert. Brought a smile, much needed.
The down fall and hollowing out of Scotland and changing its ethic population and culture were dilberate actions talen,
The constant advertising in mainstream papers/ media of places in Scotland that you can was also done to Wales and Ireland, causing an influx of migration, that not only diluted these Countries culture but also the election results in those Countries,
However under the race to one world government agenda and depopulation of the planet for the benefit of a certain few, larger Countries in the Western world that had a little bit more clout needed a different approach to bring them down.
England is one of those Countries that is now being targeted.
Deconstruction of the systems that worked and were still working.
Take away energy = climate change laws.
Take away community cohesion= diversity and equality laws that favours others first,
Remove medical care system, cause the NHS to fail,
Remove food supplis,= bring in new EU laws on farming and fishing, and tax heavily.
Remove small businesses and high street shops,= new laws that are limiting and heavy taxation = replace with on line shopping,
Remove banks and long recognised money = replace with digital money so governments can check and acess your real finances retaining a minimum income for all.
Remove transport and travel acess to the people = fail road infracstrure, tax road usage, block of roads, do not replace, remove the ability to mend and repair vehicles,
Remove free speech, = on every subject and lock people up if they communicate their feelings to each other by bringing in Hate crime laws.
Then create mass migration into England to dilute the communities culture,= change the laws to favour non English/ british people,
England had to be done from the outside with the help and aid of puppet master politicians put in place that were educated and bought,
because of the size of Englands population that already existed.
And the EU has played a high hand in changing and infiltrating the laws of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. To bring about the demise of the old empire rather quickly.
England is presently experiencing what the other three Countries that make up Britain have experienced for centuaries,
If there is a problem in England = then there will be a Solution,
England has the advantage over the other three Countries because it did it to them = Recognition of being Colonised, and becoming a colonised Country from outside aggressors wishing take over England, and then Britain
One way to relieve England of the Colonisation that is in progress is to end treaties, make them null and void,
Take the leveridge away from the outside aggressors wishing to Colonise the people,
That is what Scotland is now trying to do,
And although it is not at first obvious to people whom want the union to remain, the end of the Treaty of union between Scotland and England gives England back control of England as well.
And as many have already said we like the people themselves in England many have relatives both sides of the border, each way,
The people can work together to regain their Countries, back providing we are not dum enough to listen to the diversity racist rants of Scots hate English, English hate Scots, that some are instigating regulary on here, propaganda,
It is time the people worked together to benefit each other and their Countries.
Absolute stauncher by Don Paterson.. from a fellow Scot X…
Also..Toy Fights.
Wallonia has the right of veto in Belgian Federal decisions, it’s population of 3.7 million is 31.4% of Belgium……..
I live in Hamilton so we have people canvassing and leaf-letting for the by-election next week. I’ve never had so many canvassers at the door or seen so many leaflets before, but one today caught my eye – have these guys been reading Wings?
Most importantly, please read our petition overleaf which will be sent to your MSPs, MP, Councillors, Leaders of the Conservative, Green, Labour, Lib Dem, Reform and SNP Party Groups and Leader of your local Council demanding they STOP the Party Whip and the Block Vote. It is the single lynchpin flaw in our current system of politics causing so many of us to be so unhappy with politics. There is a solution!
They need to think about their leaflet though – four text-dense sides of A4 is a bit off-putting.
Website at southscotlandpeople.org
That is indeed interesting about the party whip system. I’d love to see their candidate win.
@ duncanio at 11.23 p.m. and twathater at 03.33.
Thank you, twathater for correctly pointing out my motivation for supporting Liberate Scotland i.e. any efforts by principled people towards leaving the Union will get my support.
The personalities of Roddy Macleod and Peter A Bell can no doubt be aggravating at times but there’s no denying their sincere and energetic efforts to progress our cause.
Liberate Scotland have nearly 11 months to adopt the Manifesto for Independence. Perhaps if each party/candidate is asked to do so, it will encourage them to take it up.
I sympathise entirely with your last sentence, duncanio, at 08.27. However voting for the umbrella candidates cannot make things worse. If Jim Thomson’s Action for Independence had been joined by Alba in 2021 I am sure there would have been some success so I am not going to leave the field open to the SNP to do more damage to Scotland and its people. Getting some intelligent, decent, principled people into Holyrood is worth some time and effort.
These next 11 months need to be treated like the run-up to the referendum. I hope the Rev’s input will come earlier this time!
Sarah –
We don’t have the luxury of time. Every time there is an election it could be the last opportunity as the Brits may well simply close Holyrood down or set laws such that all routes to restoring full self-government are outlawed.
Electing a handful of “intelligent, decent, principled people into Holyrood” will not make a difference if they cannot effect a change i.e. have a credible plan to bring about Independence.
Incidentally I have been in touch directly with Collette Walker. She confirmed:
a) The ‘Manifesto for Indy’ referred to on their website was indeed the SSRG approach from 2021
and
b) When drafting their prospectus for the Holyrood 2026 election the ISP will not even consider the Manifesto for Independence.
So there you have it: hit and hope.
Not for me anymore.
I am really surprised at that response from ISP. I’ve read and thought over the MforI and cannot see anything wrong with it. In fact it seems to me to be a factual description of the process that will take place when we get a majority vote to leave the Union.
Perhaps Liberate have a better series of steps. All will become clear before long, I hope. After all, Phil Boswell and Lloyd Quinan aren’t daft – they know what will be needed, surely?
Sarah –
I’m afraid Collette Walker was quite explicit in her email to me about the ISP developing their own programme and that this did would not include the Manifesto For Independence.
Yes, the Manifesto For Independence is 6 simple, easy and logical steps.
The difficult bit is getting people to endorse it, specifically parties and candidates that claim to wish to restore our full self-government.
Nobody is asking them to ditch their own policies and party identity. Just include a common workable plan on the constitutional question in their prospectus. That would give unity of purpose that all could coalesce around.
It seems strange, odd even.
They must know that they will have to break the British ‘domestic law’ in order to realise their asserted goal but refuse to acknowledge this or be bound by this.
If we don’t force those who claim to support realising our freedom to specify a plan then it will end up just being another mandate for candidates and parties to interpret any which way they like once elected.
I agree with you Sarah regarding Roddy and Peter Bell, duncanio criticises Liberate for having no publicly clear immediate route to independence and when he asked Roddy to explain it he was sent away with a flea in his ear which obviously angered him, he now supports SALVO,SSRG,& Liberation.Scot but also knows that those groups cannot win independence on their own
PAB has stated that his party is not an active political party but the MFI must be adopted by all indy parties including the snp to be effective or workable,I think we have all noticed that for the last 11 years the snp not only have REFUSED publicly to engage with ANY indy party or ANY part of the indy movement but they have actively worked against and sabotaged any and all attempts to UNITE the indy movement
I approached Roddy and Stuart Campbell to host a WARNING NOTICE form to DEMAND that the snp unite with the movement or they face destruction at the HR election, something has to be done to THREATEN their TRE@son and bring them to heel
twathater
I have supported SSRG, Salvo and Liberation since inception, having attended the Edinburgh Proclamation gathering on 1st September 2022 and signed it on the same day.
Roddy Macleod does not apply logic and when one magical plan fails he comes up with another one, equally certain that the latest wheeze will do the trick. He arrogantly dismissed the Salvo initiative as a ‘middle class talking shop’ or some such when Sarah Salyers first introduced it.
You are probably accurate when you describe outpouring from Roddy McLeod in the link I circulated as a ‘flea in the ear’ – plenty of volume but no reason was applied.
Sounds likes that’s good enough for you though.
The SNP are not for turning. Certainly not underthe current coterie of control that continues to show them as an ipso facto anti independence party they now are….bought and sold or is it blackmiled into being an Establishment Trojan Horse.
Independence to the SNP is like Socialism or Social Democracy is to the Labour Party.
The political process, democratic will has been utterly subverted by an establishment utterly skilled in the dark arts.
Political parties, trade unions, government institutions, the police, the judiciary are all infiltrated. Just look at the mainstream media as an example.
And that is the problem we face with our utterly corrupted political system. For me, and at present Liberate, !iberation, Salvo, the ISP the SSRG are all currently decentralised elements of the independence movement, as are current SNP voters hanging on in with a compromised SNP.
Not therefore the time to be squabbling between groups. Better that all double down in their own way to get the message out that change is possible and within our grasp.
No one, and I mean no one should miss understand how perfidious the establishment is. But 2014 shows us that he will fir independence is with us despite all of the roadblocks these oast ten years.
The SNP became a business to gather money from Scotland with a CEO,
I have been squinting quickly through, Textual Amendments to “Scotland union with England” Acts House of Lords ( privileges Committee )
Some interesting reading on the Parliament of great Britain,
Also interesting reading the piece that suggests that that Scots are the subjects of the English Monarch of Englands Great Britain.
When they were never subjects of the monarch of Scotland to be entered into the treaty in the first instance.
It was the other way around for The Scottish monarch.
@ duncanio at 8.56 re ISP and the M4I.
I’m perplexed. However there is time for ISP to change their minds. As I said earlier, there are people involved with Liberate who are experienced and very intelligent, very principled. I can only hope that a united approach will emerge within a few months at most.
Meanwhile there is still the Holyrood petition PE2135 to sign and spread the word. It keeps pressure on the current bunch of feeble MSPs. Implement the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights in Scottish Legislation is the title. It only has a few weeks to run and only has 6845 signatures. Once again a brilliant initiative isn’t getting the support it deserves because of lack of publicity.
Sarah –
Yes there is time for them all to change their minds.
And we must keep trying to persuade them to do so. Even the SNP … because they will get the bulk of votes and if we want to realise Scotland’s Cause we need every one of them.
Failing that we will withhold our vote … that is the only leverage we have over candidates.
The Manifesto For Independence Petition is here: link to manifestoforindependence.scot
From Robin McAlpine’s latest ( typically incisive ) post talking about the outrageous but entirely predictable green light given to the Flamingo Land ” development ” @ Loch Lomond …..
” The question isn’t whether we were culturally colonised 300 years ago,
it’s whether we’re being economically colonised now. Which means this decision is really bad for independence, because week after week, Scotland’s pathetic, needy economic strategy strips it of ownership of the national assets that make us a viable future nation-state.”
Good to see him – finally – use the ” c ” word , but I’m inclined to disagree with the initial sentence .
It surely IS a question of ” whether we were culturally colonised …” because had we not been ( and politically colonised ) Robin would not be having to vent his – wholly justified – spleen at this recent example of a local community’s wishes being overridden to benefit some foreign investor ( in this instance an English * investor ; their living on the same island as us makes them no less foreign ) .
That the principal target of Robin’s criticism is our ( kind of ) Scottish Gov doesn’t invalidate the point ; again , had Scotland not been tricked into a supposed * Union * in the pretence it ( we ) were forming a partnership of equals with our neighbour , we wouldn’t have such an embarrassing , compromised , feeble government as the one we’re currently saddled with .
We would have – and , eventually , will have a government 100% accountable to the people , which if it doesn’t do what it’s instructed to do by the people will get slung out on it’s arse – or , ideally , such a putative government would never get elected in the first place .
I’m not suggesting any post-Independence government will automatically comprise a collection of highly principled socio/political sages , but FFS we would surely be able to do better than the endless series of hollow men/women , venal , elitist parasites that – on both sides of the border – ( supposedly ) govern us currently and have done historically .
Hard to see how any Independent Scotland Gov COULD be worse than what we have now .
We don’t need to obsess or get hung-up on the idea of Scotland as a colony of England-as-the-UK – we just have to understand that to all intents and purposes this is indeed the case .
To repeat …..good to see such a fine , staunchly pro-Independence mind as Robin’s reach the inescapable conclusion ….in the words of Mr Baird – Independence IS Decolonisation
“the inescapable conclusion ….in the words of Mr Baird – Independence IS Decolonisation”
Hey, I’m not knocking the idea, Bob, but if it’s a trek of a thousand miles, why do you just step over the fence into the new territory, walk 10 yards, and just stop?
Take a former colony, now decolonised, India, for example.
How many white, Christian people are now in India’s government? Or civil service? Or captaining big industry? Or doing any of the other important and responsible jobs? Or affecting the result of elections? Or even just quietly holding down anonymous Indian citizenship?
So that’s what decolonisation really means. Ethnic cleansing. To really start on your journey of 1000 miles, you need to spell out what decolonisation means for the English in Scotland. And other foreigners, of course, but mainly the English.
Don’t be feart to call a spade a spade. I expect your ideas and plans will be immensely popular, so why would you need to dissemble?
And do try not to resort to personal insults and infantile name calling at my post. As I said at the start, I’m not knocking the idea. All I’m criticising here is the weasel-worded and indeed cowardly camouflage the decolonisation fans erect to conceal their true intentions.
I guess Scotland should never aspire to be a normal, independent, sovereign state, like the 200 or so others on the planet, because doing so might upset some people from abroad who having moved to live or work or study in Scotland may get upset if Scotland regains its status as a normal, independent, sovereign state.
“I guess Scotland should never aspire to be a normal, independent, sovereign state”
Beats me how you could read that into my post.
Words have specific meanings, and “decolonisation” is no exception.
As you write, there are plenty of normal, independent, sovereign states. Those of them that were former colonies and have now been decolonised, tend to have a history of population expulsions, using subtle or not so subtle methods of persuasion. I gave you the example of India – there are plenty more.
Take Professor Baird’s often-repeated call that post-Indy, only fluent Scots speakers should be employed (presumably by the state, but even that is one third of all jobs in Scotland).
That will clearly lead to an exodus south of the border, catching in its net plenty of Scots also, who have no wish to go back to school to learn a language they know nothing of.
If we’re all to embrace the concept of decolonisation, let’s at least have an open and honest dialogue about what it really means.
Whether an independent Scotland, thanks to malicious behaviour on the part of the departing colonial power ended up behaving like India, or whether there was a another course to be followed, is for the Scots to decide.
It’s what you don’t seem to appreciate when you continuously throw up all these “whitabootery” scenarios.
The point is that all the people of an independent Scotland will decide for themselves the shape and direction the country should take, for better or indeed for worse…it is THEIR CHOICE.
It’s not for the outgoing colonial power to try to destabilise in order to dictate what form these should take, as was very much the case with India, whose problems, many of which were created by the outgoing British, persist to this day.
This is my view. As usual – each can cleave to their own.
The ‘Scottish’ government is England wearing a poor Scottish disguise.
Scotland does not have its own government. What is seen at Holyrood is an illusion, a trick, a scam.
The Scots have no genuine democratic representation. The Scots have no voice.
Every Scot around the world could have signed a petition denouncing the creation of a ‘Flamingo Land’ near Loch Lomond – it would have made no difference to the outcome.
England decided one of its own would have a fancy very non-Scottish playground in Scotland and instructed its regional Scottish colony administration service to make it happen.
Scotland IS a colony and that ‘s why it’s treated like one.
Scotland is a colony and the Scots are “out of the game” as Professor Alf Baird tells us.
Scotland is a colony and so there will be a Flamingo Land and eventually many more ‘Flamingo Lands’. Watch out – another one is coming to your town soon.
Scotland is a colony.
Every disastrous policy foisted on the Scots by Holyrood is ultimately sanctioned by England and is therefore England’s disastrous policy deployed to make the Scots look incapable of governing their own country.
If anything goes wrong in Scotland you can bet England is behind it. It’s in England’s long-term interests for Scotland and the Scots to fail – and to fail very publicly too. Think about it.
And it doesn’t matter to England how much the colonisation of Scotland costs – the abundant wealth of the Scots will pay for it all eventually anyway and still leave vast profits.
I don’t believe McAlpine fully understands what being a colony means for Scotland and the Scots. Not yet anyway – but I’m sure he will soon. He’s almost there.
But first he needs to stop blaming the Scots for every decision England makes on Scotland’s behalf because…
Scotland is a colony the Scots have no voice and Holyrood belongs to England.
“Every disastrous policy foisted on the Scots by Holyrood is ultimately sanctioned by England and is therefore England’s disastrous policy deployed to make the Scots look incapable of governing their own country”
Sure, even including those disastrous policies struck down by “England’s” Supreme Court.
“Scotland is a colony the Scots have no voice and Holyrood belongs to England”
Heck, even those non-disastrous policies (there are one or two) that enjoy widespread support from Scottish voters are England’s fault.
I mean, how perfidious is that, eh? The bastards are doing stuff we Scots want them to. The utter cants.
Tell you what. You need to work on a way of bottling your concentrated essence of self-pity, NC. You could be minted if you do.
See if your country was caught in an ongoing unmitigated disaster with aw thing like its infrastructure and services going to ruination, and its very existence in the balance…
But you had the opportunity to grab half a dozen experts in their fields to listen to and develop a strategy plan to save it…
Would a poet really be one of the first folk you’d seek counsel from, or would you prioritise finding an engineer, food producer, health professional, and other personnel with more knowledge of actually maintaining essential to life requirements.
After all:
A poet’s confuzzled thoughts and whinery,
willnae be enough tae save oor refinery!
Ach, at this rate, next week’s woke as fuck political discourse to save Scotland will be focusing on prioritising the sale of Halal Forfar bridies and NuScotch pies as Scot’s meekly gie up oor oan traditional scran and suck up to the thousands of NuScot followers of Islam.
Maybe in this process, actual Scots could lobby for the wee concession of getting the mince to be ground up really fine to save chewing, seeing as finding a dentist to keep oor teeth in a usable state is now like finding a dollop of rocking horse shit.
—-
Mentioned Flamingo Land the other day, but naebody picked up and commented further on the matter. Guess it’s just the nothing going on mentality…
link to robinmcalpine.org
Robin defo talks a good talk.
I’d much prefer to see HR prioritising drill, baby, drill.
Opening a coal mine or two, getting steel manufacturing going, starting heavy industry again.
But their very own greenwashery and virtue signalling won’t let them do that. And so it’s tourism, seasonal jobs and zero hours contracts all the way.
But never mind all that, isn’t the environment so much better when all tat is made in Covid Central and shipped half-way across the world?
Here’s a thought. There won’t be any of Robin’s gridlock, or massive raking in of profits, if no Scot ever sets foot in the place.
Alas, though, a quick online search for Scottish amusement parks doesn’t throw up much at all. So it will very likely be mobbed.
When that happens, I’m sincerely looking forwards to Northcode posting on here that it’s the English making us Scots patronise the Flamingoland Amusement Park.
Dan @ 08.08
Always interested in your common sense posts, Dan. As someone once said, “it’s strange it’s called common when it’s actually so very uncommon these days.”
Other things going on where a bit of common sense usage wouldn’t have gone a miss…
I understand our Health Boards are in the process of migrating over to a new software system.
Even with my Luddite level IT skillage I can comprehend that this is obviously a pretty involved task to transfer a lot of health and social care related data for everybody in Scotland.
But the Health Boards are doing it on their own at different times, and it’s clear there are considerable issues arising during this protracted process.
The various health and social care staff that use the IT systems can’t now access or easily find some data, whilst others have access to data they shouldn’t be able to see.
It means a large amount of taxpayer funded worker’s time is being wasted as the staff have to attempt to navigate or filter their way through a compromised and protracted process.
This is sensitive and often time dependent data on these IT systems with ongoing treatment appointments, and alert notices being triggered and needing responded to all the time, and such an IT clusterbourach inevitably will compromise service delivery and potentially compromise data protection rules.
I wonder if whoever ended up delivering the IT contract is a result of this procurement process.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
As a matter of interest, has there even *ever been* a successful public sector IT project roll out in the UK?
As someone not involved in IT and looking from the outside, it always seems to end in catastrophically over-budget, delayed and supremely problematic outcomes (sometimes outright abandonment after aforesaid delays and expenditure). The Post Office Horizon and £10 billion NHS NPflT flop spring to mind.
Are civil servants even capable of running the proverbial piss up in a brewery north or south of the border, one has to wonder. Lessons are never learned, it seems.
We only hear about the failures though
Dan,
Like your common sense approach, to many airy fairy think tanks seeking payed for employment In Scotland as there is,
that have no idea how to make a country thrive, how to prosper its growth and feed its nation or build successful infrastructure,. Transport, shipping, farming, businesses, medical facilities, that work,
To have a police force that remembers what its orignal purpose was by consent of the people, and a single tier justice system.equal and price wise available to all,
The return of Non woke Councils sitting at their desks at their offices not working from abroad..
The return of high street banking,
encouraging exspansion and growth and of the size of the population by aiding financial support systems for mothers, and children,
We need modernisation but we do not need to sail into the land of stupidity as we are at present in Scotland,
The wastage in Council spending, in hospitals, CEOs and to many layers fat cats milking the system needs to go.
As does spending, our excessive waste of money sent from Scotland to build foriegn roads and bridges abroad or diversity training. while we suffer at home.
Dan,
May I add that people where they have a garden or piece of land available to them and are able, be encouraged to grow and contribute towards the produce at their table,
At least that could be part of a well being programme towards self help and self esteem.
So many people feel helpless and worthless.
In a sense it is taking part in the community, of sharing, learning from each other and closing gaps between generations and knowledge
Something that could be applied on many topics,
Such as the younger generation helping teaching the older generation how to keep up with technology sharing.
Closing the gap and having cohesion in the community between generations that governments have set asunder.
The younger ADHD generation will likely toil to apply themselves to growing foodstuffs, as it takes reasonably long term attention and commitment as well as physical graft to get results, and can’t be done with a mere swipe of a finger on a smartphone.
Plus, the emotional carnage resulting from a failed crop or poor yield might be too much for them to handle what with their stunted emotional evolution and binary love hate view of the world.
I’m a resilient, independent sort, and I’m still working to get over last year’s total pumpkin crop failure disaster due to shit weather.
That resulted in zero harvested pumpkins for food or fresh seed for this year, so I’m now nursing older kept seeds to germinate to keep my gourd line going. After several failed attempts I’ve only managed to get 4 out of 30 seeds germinated so far, but it’s getting on in the season for them to have time to turn into muckle mature fruit producing plants before the first frost comes and the plants wilt to nothing overnight.
The joys of a few years back when I had multiple basketball sized Crown Prince (the best tastiest pumpkins) are no longer present.
A lesser entity than I could probably apply for antidepressants or taxpayer funded grass to help chill them the fuck out and take the edge off the stressful pumpkin pangs. But I will not be broken and succumb to that path, and instead endeavour to strive on.
“Liking” the momentary fleeting notion of growing “planet saving” locally and seasonally sourced fruit and veg on ra Facebook feed does not maketh one a sustainable food producer.
I don’t know the answer to reaching the yoof and enthusing them to adore allotments, because I refuse to use Arsebook and Shitter which imo caused the underlying issue of many in our society becoming distracted unproductive spectators rather than engaged productive players.
Maybe best try asking a poet for a deliverable process and strategy to germinate the seed and propagate a deliverable reality of a healthy sustainable locally sourced food production idea is what needs to be done, rather than asking and listening to anybody that actually grows their own fruit and veg.
Lots of young people will be wanting to grow transplants.
And the Greens will encourage them in this.
There’s an interesting article by Dr Patrick Wolfe (1949 – 2016) called:
“Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”
The PDF can be read here
Wolfe was an Englishman born in Yorkshire. He is credited with establishing the field of settler colonial studies and made some significant contributions to various academic fields of study such as anthropology and Indigenous studies among others.
Well worth a read for those interested in such subjects.
Captain Caveman says ‘Are civil servants even capable of running the proverbial piss up in a brewery north or south of the border, one has to wonder. Lessons are never learned, it seems.’
Its not the Civil Servants really. Its the IT providers who see public sector contracts as a cash cow- they know every trick in the book.
Kit Bee said:
“Its the IT providers who see public sector contracts as a cash cow- they know every trick in the book”.
Heh. Oh, I don’t doubt that, believe me.
Let’s face it, where you have a clueless, naive, weak client (possibly with an inflated view of their capabilities), a hard-nosed contractor is going to go for every variation, extra over fees they can. Seen it too many times directly (I’m in the building game).
You can blame the contractor by all means, but they’re only doing what they’ve been *allowed* to do. Look at the 2008 “banking crisis”/Great Recession. Sure, Bankers caused this – but they were only able to do what they did as due to totally incompetent regulation (policing) by a Labour government that suffered a deadly combination of utter ineptitude and supreme conceit and hubris (“no more boom and bust” etc., as if it were that easy).
If I leave an open suitcase stuffed full of fivers and tenners in the middle of the street, it’s going to be nicked by someone. Is that the fault of the opportunistic thief – or mine for being so stupid and careless?
The private sector CAN deliver efficiency and well-run projects if kept on a sufficiently tight leash; it operates in a Darwinian environment so it HAS to. This is of existential importance.
If anyone can point me in the direction of a plethora of well-run, UK-based public sector projects delivered on time and on budget to a high standard, I’d be most grateful.
I’ll not hold my breath.
Queensferry Crossing……….
@James Barr Gardner
Everybody remembers the Queensferry Crossing precisely because it is so unusual
And there’s that big bridge that Humza Yousaf built.
The Scottish Government to pay the cost for the transgender supreme court failed case.
The Scottish Government doesn’t have any money – it is taxpayers money that will pay for the failed court case.
The SNP should have been made to pay.
Totally agree! They had no mandate or public support to even propose this bill let alone try and defend it in court!
GGOD NEWS from Liberate Scotland about the Manifesto for Independence.
At 3.35 Liberate Scotland posted their response to Peter A Bell’s comment on Barrhead Boy’s blog today [the article title “For the tribalists and the snipers..” refers to one James Kelly].
Para 2 “…our approach mirrors the essence of your Manifesto for Independence…repudiate s30, assert Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence, and dissolve the Union through a plebiscite election. Liberate Scotland is committed to this very strategy.”
Liberate Scotland go on to invite Peter to join them.
duncanio, twathater and others -this sounds just what we want to hear. I do hope that PAB will agree.
Typo – should say GOOD, obv.
Sarah –
I saw that and it is encouraging.
But it doesn’t mirror the MFI since the matter of parliamentary competence – step 2 of the MFI – is not part of Liberate Scotland’s approach since they wish to turn the election into a ‘de facto referendum’ on Independence.
At least that’s how things stand.
Sarah –
If you’ve checked the BB website recently you will see that Roddy MacLeod has answered a direct question
“does this mean all liberate candidates will be signatories to the manifesto and use it as the basis for differetiating the indys from the devolutionists?”
with
“All Liberate Scotland candidates will be standing on a single line manifesto of independence nothing else.”
at 7.07am today (link to barrheadboy.com)
So not a direct response and very clearly not an endorsement of the Manifesto For Independence.
Just the same ‘de facto referendum on Independence’ position as before.
And what about the straightforward simplicity of campaign messaging in Step 2 in this previously presented option.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
All these years pissed away through divisive bickering by my way or the highway types really hasn’t been that helpful.
Pretty much nobody in my area has even heard of Wings, Peter Bell, or Barrhead Boy.
Much as the chronically online may think anything can be achieved with a few hours effort and typing some keys, it will actually be down to the local activists on the ground who will be disseminating whatever campaign message is ultimately decided upon to the wider electorate, and that will be through many months of concerted physical and mental effort.
But those activists can’t effectively even start to deliver a serious campaign message to build any momentum if the message might change a month or so down the line.
This same shit happened 5 years ago, and it’s a real ask for committed activists to even start promoting the various differing plans of individuals who refuse to meld their similar ideas and form a unified strategy.
Divide and rule just loves a big ego…
Dan –
The reason why years have been “pissed away” is that parties/candidates have stood on a Manifesto For Something or Other.
These have variously comprised meaningless mantras, pathetic platitudes and simpleton slogans, open to any kind of interpretation that successfully elected wish to make … with the result that they have done absolutely nothing to advance Scotland’s Cause.
If you want activists to be effective can get behind then give them something simple, straightforward, logical and tangible that they can deliver and explain.
Folks are heart sick of being conned.
Has Jim Fairlie Jr signed up to any of the new manifesto ideas yet. Or was it that folk should have coalesced and signed up to what he suggested 5 years ago.
He wrote a trilogy of articles for the N
aotional “newspaper in 2020.1st – “The SNP Government, the Greens and any other party of independence should make a manifesto pledge that if a majority of SNP and pro-independence MSPs are returned to Holyrood in 2021, they will bring forward a bill “to assume the responsibility for constitutional affairs as directed by the people of Scotland”.”
link to archive.is
Google is shit so even with an advanced search I still can’t seem to source the 2nd article even though I know I archived it and have posted links to them on here previously…
So here is the 3rd – “I propose the SNP and others wishing to achieve independence must have in their manifestos for Holyrood 2021 a commitment, at the behest of the sovereign people of Scotland, to resume responsibility for constitutional affairs, which was misappropriated by Westminster in the 1998 Scotland Act.”
link to archive.is
Norrie Hunter is going to interview Ewan Kennedy, retired solicitor, who has proposed another route to independence via the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Ewan had an article on the blog of the late Ian Lawson.
ANOTHER route to independence?
How many does that make now?
@Agent X – it means that after June when the UNCDC meets and there either isn’t a whisper on Scotland or there is an outright rejection, there’s a need to keep the grift going and the approach to the ICJ looks like it’ll be just that
I do remember being a bit worried when Ewan didn’t agree with Salvo’s case. Perhaps he just thinks that the ICJ is better than the Decolonization Committee.
C-24 can request an opinion from the ICJ and may well do so in the case of Scotland.
I guess he sees it as an alternative route. Maybe they could be done simultaneously? A double whammy.
Folks you are in an echo chamber only talking to people who beleive what you beleive. The majority of Scots do no want independence now or ever full stop
The SNP will continue to win the majority of seats in Holyrood with 35% of the vote but 60% of the voters vote for parties committed to the union. Because of this there is no route to another referendum or independence so please move on and accept reality
“The majority of Scots do no want independence now or ever full stop”
LOL…
53% of Scots voted “Yes” in 2014, but you carry on…
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
And you get these percentages from where exactly?
Away ya zoomer.
Apologies…over 51%, not 53%. My error…
Skip to 1:55
youtu.be/bAC42VUwjXU?
Other sources citing the same research show differing figures…
BBC shows 50.2% of Scots voted Yes
link to bbc.co.uk
YouTube clip above shows 51%
Record link above+1 shows 52.7%
One can only assume some figures, as per the video, were preliminary findings.
Either way, in all three instances the Scottish Referendum Study shows a narrow majority of Scots voted Yes in 2014.
Austin;
That right, aye?
42.
Naw, that’s nae right, it’s 57.
Wait! Is it 69? Aye, defo 69.
That was supposed to be a reply to agent x.
Here’s another pair of numbers everybody should know:
58 and 600.
BREAKING NEWS
The UN is currently in emergency session to discuss the petition before it regarding Scottish Indepence. 80% of the delegates asked ‘where exactly is Scotland’? The knowledgable French representative advised that Scotland is to the north of England and has a population of some 5.6 million. He assumed that some 4 million would be of voting age. ‘How many signed the petition, was the cry? 19,000 was the reply. A mass exodus then ensued as everyone departed for lunch, this being far more important to all. If the Scots are not bothered themselves, why should anyone else be!
Somebody slapped the face of the knowledgeable French representative too.
Seems that’s just something our snail chomping old allies like to do.
Were there snails on the lunch menu?
“The UN is currently in emergency session to discuss the petition before it regarding Scottish Indepence.”
Do you have a link to that please?
“Scottish Indepence”
Is that the new name for our proposed currency?
Oh look, three unionist pricks in a row….
Must be the weather.
Oh look, James has been festering on his flabby erse for a week.
So the scabs on his knuckles he gets from dragging them along his bedroom carpet have healed.
Meaning he’s back in his comfort zone pounding his keyboard with his fists.
Stand by for enlightening, educational and persuasive posts, guaranteed to shift the dial on Indy support.
Voters in Scotland [those who are citizens of another country are not eligible to vote i.e. a similar franchise to current UK general elections]: “Do you want Scotland to be ruled by another country?”
Perhaps the question needs to be re-framed.
“Do you want Scotland to be ruled by another country?”
Whats this then? Are we having another EU referendum?
It’s not logical to believe another country will prioritise Scotland’s needs.
Of course, Chas and chums, taking time out from typing the complete works of Shakespeare, see it differently.
Great! Another convert to the cause of Brexit.
Lets just hope Brussels doesn’t suck him back in with the promise of affordable morning rolls.
John, why not explain to me and everyone else why my point was wrong instead of proudly wearing your ignorance as a badge.
Every Scot, eligible to vote, voted Yes in the 2014 Independence referendum,
the problem is there is a majority of non Scots living in Scotland.
Loving your logic, Scot.
It means Indy support is always 100%.
Of course, it’s divorced from reality, but perhaps that doesn’t matter any more.
You should take it further. Hows about if after the next referendum (if there is one) only the Yes votes get counted?
100% again!
Scot – I would put money on 70% of those reform voters being English incomers. The British identity is now sadly growing again in Scotland, and it’s not the natives.
Well said, sir.
Indy support is always at 100% with Scots,
Westminster support is always 100% with Brits.
We should learn to laugh in the face of paltry limitations.
Aim for 110%.
Did you skive ALL of your maths lessons at school ?