When It’s Just Too Dark To Care
Just under four years ago the world was hit by a pandemic that spread like wildfire and caused misery wherever it reached. It’ll be remembered by almost everyone who lived through it, especially those who worked to protect society’s most vulnerable.
We’ve all heard about its effect on our NHS, but less so on those working within social care. As the COVID inquiries on both sides of the border continue to reveal more and more troubling information, Wings readers should hear the story of what it was like to work in social care in Scotland during the COVID pandemic.
I’m writing this with 20 years of experience in social care, hoping to try and give a better picture of what it was like working in the sector during this global pandemic. I’m not writing this to put the blame on any institution, authority or government. We did a lot of good during the pandemic – without certain interventions and policies our death rates could have been much much higher.
But a lot of mistakes were also made, especially when it came to how those working within the sector were treated. Social care is a hard enough job at the best of times, long hours with barely enough pay to cover your basic bills. There’s little in the way of thanks and often you’re made to feel pretty worthless to society.
Often when people ask what I do for a living they’ll also ask why would I do a job that’s just cleaning shite off old people? Why put yourself through that for such little pay? After the pandemic I’m now wondering that also.
On the 24th of March Nicola Sturgeon put Scotland into lockdown. On that day I was at my job, a Support Worker in a 15-bed unit for people who had learning difficulties and complex care needs, staffed by a Staff Nurse, Senior Support Worker and four Support Workers. We had all been watching the news over the past months and knew that COVID was coming, it was only a matter of time.
By the time it had reached Italy none of our healthcare staff could understand why our borders were still open. The UK is an island and surely the best way to prevent a deadly virus from getting here was to close the border?
Luckily, three weeks earlier our care home had decided to go into lockdown before most others. Due to the complex and specialist care our residents needed, the common cold could kill them, let alone a deadly worldwide virus.
Before doing so we contacted all our residents’ families to inform them that we’d be shutting our doors for the sake of their loved ones’ health and to shut down as many possible routes for COVID to get in.
This was important as it gave the families time to decide whether they wanted to take their loved ones home, as it may be a long time before they get to be in contact in person with them.
For the first couple of weeks not much was different in how our jobs went – the absence of families did make the place quieter but things ran smoothly enough. Then our problems started. Panic buying at the supermarkets meant you could only buy a certain amount of products, and now that families weren’t coming we began running out of toiletries.
From shower-gels to shampoo, everything we needed to assist in personal care was on the verge of empty. Whenever we sent a staff member to our local supermarket and they filled the trolley with enough toiletries to do for every resident in the home for two weeks, they’d be stopped at the till and asked to put it all back, even after they explained who it was for.
For over a week we were using the soap out of the handwash dispenser, which staff used for washing their hands, to clean and bath residents in. That stuff dries your skin so badly that we had to start using tubs of moisturising creams after washing our residents. But despite staff asking management to buy the stuff in bulk nothing got done, mainly because some local pharmacies had heard of our plight and donated toiletries to us.
(I heard our manager laugh that they now would be able to save some of the budget with all the free stuff we’d been given. In social care these days the most important thing is the ability to cut costs, rather than improve the care you give to your residents.)
It was about this time that Nicola Sturgeon had announced that all schools would close down for in-class learning. I was shocked at how little our management knew about this – I had to inform them myself, much to their displeasure. Because of this we lost two of my colleagues, single mothers who had nobody to care for their children whilst they were working.
They’d asked for furlough, which they knew colleagues at our other homes had been given, but were denied as they were told that management couldn’t replace them. They weren’t even offered a chance to change their hours to try and somehow fit in both care for their children and work. Rather than take on another exhausting battle, they decided to quit.
The fear of COVID coming to the home was most likely another factor in their decisions, but the lack of support from above was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was always a “fuck ’em” attitude that came from above. It’s bad enough that society places such a low value on key support workers, but it’s even worse when it’s your own management (who are often trained nurses too).
After about a month we had started to notice that the PPE we had been given was so flimsy that 50% of it broke before use. (And this had been the PPE that had passed inspections, not the Michelle Mone crap she tossed off her boat before disappearing.) But at least it was PPE in some form.
During the summer the staff and management had a massive row. We had been told that some staff would have to go to another home to help them out. That home had been ravaged with COVID, and many of its residents had died from it. This alarmed us because we knew that guidance was not to mix staff from different settings, especially if COVID was present. I drew the short straw as I’d worked there before.
To get around guidance they classed it as an emergency. My first day there I headed for the unit I was to work in, a 28-bed dementia unit which was staffed by a mental health nurse and four carers. But entering the unit I discovered that the home had got rid of the nurse and replaced them with a “Senior Care Practitioner” – in basic terms, someone trained enough to be a nurse’s assistant, who could give out meds and write care plans.
To put the level of training in context, they got paid 20p an hour more than a standard minimum-wage carer.
This was in order to save more money for the home, much to its detriment. I spent the next five minutes looking for the carers in order to find out what they needed help with. We had two hours to get 28 people up, washed and dressed before the 9am breakfast.
Unfortunately there were only two other carers on duty that day. I asked them if the SCP was helping out but was told that she spent most of her time in the office, as she didn’t want to get COVID. Nice. I then asked them where I could find the PPE, only to be told I’d have to ask the SCP to get some as they weren’t allowed to know where it was kept. WTF?
The whole unit was a total mess. Staff didn’t know what they were doing and spent most of the day arguing with each other. With dementia and COVID you can’t lock those who have it inside their rooms, so all day we were trying to do our job and also try to divert COVID patients away from others who were clear.
But the staff were beaten down and had given up. They just no longer cared. One of them told me how she spent an hour sitting beside a COVID patient who was dying in their bed watching them pass away. I can tell you from my own experience that someone dying from COVID is not the peaceful ending you might hope for. Its horrific in some cases, for them and for the staff.
But not a minute after that person had died, this lass, still in tears after losing someone she cared for, was being told to get up and go sit with another person who was dying. This would in some cases be repeated day after day, for minimum wage. Those days there absolutely broke me.
It was no longer care but a free-for-all, in which staff had been given so little support that almost all of them had been destroyed and given up, defeated. I never felt so sorry for colleagues in my life. But it didn’t matter who they appealed to for help, nobody listened or really cared.
Back at my own post, when the scandal about hospital patients being transferred into care homes without testing broke in England I was glad knowing that the practice wasn’t happening in Scotland. Or so I thought.
One Saturday morning I’d come into work to find my colleagues telling me that we had a new resident, just arrived the day before from hospital and they were to be isolated in their new room for seven days. I commented that at least they would’ve been tested, right? Not according to my colleagues.
I was so shocked that I went and spoke to the new resident myself and yep, the only test they had been given was the one they had after they arrived with us. I was so angry about this that during my break I put out a tweet, without any details of where I worked or who I was referring to, on how angry I was to turn up to work to find a hospital patient in our COVID-free unit who hadn’t been tested beforehand.
Now I’m very careful with my Twitter account. No one who knows me in real life is on it, not my family, friends or – especially – colleagues. But within 30 minutes of that tweet going out my manager had turned up and was asking to speak with me. It was his day off and he had been advised by “authorities” about the tweet.
He demanded that I delete it straight away and put up a post saying I was lying. I was told that I would lose my job for gross misconduct if I refused. I agreed to delete the tweet but I would fight any attempt to have me fired. I also asked at the time that staff should be shown any evidence that the resident had their COVID test. Funnily enough no evidence to prove that ever appeared.
Meanwhile in the media the Scottish Government repeatedly swerved any suggestion that anyone transferred from hospital to a care home hadn’t been tested.
Around June we finally got our first COVID cases – luckily they concerned the staff rather than residents. My colleague was one of them and when she came back to work I found her in tears because she said she would now be in debt for having nearly two weeks off at home isolating. When you’re paid so little in the first place that you can barely cover your bills, you can’t afford to be sick, even if you’re risking your life and the lives of your family working in social care during a pandemic.
She had asked management if she could use her annual leave to cover her time off but was refused as they had already put it through as COVID. They went as far as to blame her for having COVID and not doing enough to prevent it.
During my break I started searching online to find if there was any help she could get. I came across a new Scottish Government directive for social care, stating that anyone working within the sector who was off work isolating due to having COVID must be paid in full by their employer, and the employer could then claim that money back from the local authority.
We hadn’t been told about this, although it was now about a month old. I informed the manager, who claimed they knew nothing about it. I handed him over a printout and informed him that it could also be back-dated for those who were off before.
But instead of being happy that his staff could be supported at no cost to him, he confided in me that he knew about this policy when it came out but HQ had asked him not to notify staff in case they all pretended to have COVID and took time off to get drunk and have parties.
Soon enough the worst happened. A resident on our unit had tested positive for COVID. I got a text message on my day off because I was their key worker. At the time I was on holiday but due to staffing issues they wanted me to come in. He was in a very bad condition and point blank refused any medical intervention. He had multiple sclerosis and it had been slowly getting worse as time went. But now he had COVID he saw it as a way to “get out”.
He had no family or friends, and they wouldn’t have been able to visit him anyway. So for two days I came in and sat next to his bed, slowly watching him gasp for air more and more. It was horrible. Nothing we could do would help ease him. The last 10 minutes of his life were the worst, as I held his hand and tried to reassure him that everything would be alright.
Every breath was a struggle and each one sapped more life out of him. He just stared at me and then started to panic. I could do nothing to help him and just had to sit there watching someone essentially drowning in their own saliva, becoming incontinent then giving one last gargle before they finally passed.
I pushed the buzzer and the nurse came in to confirm his death. Someone I’d supported for over eight years, who had become as close as some of my best friends, gone. In my job I had seen many people pass away over the years. It’s part of the job too. But this felt different. I still mind his face during those last moments sometimes, when I shut my eyes.
One interesting day as we all watched the news on STV we were rather surprised to see some family members of our residents protesting at the fact they couldn’t visit in the early days, apart from through a window. We found an infamous Facebook group which had hundreds of members which these families were part of, family members of care home residents across Scotland complaining about the situation.
They ranged from COVID deniers to full-on doxxing of staff. To our amazement our pictures and names were splattered on a post. We complained but were told basically not to upset them as they might make it worse for the home via the media, so we had to endure post upon post of derogatory and abusive slurs aimed at the carers who were risking their lives protecting their loved ones.
The situation escalated over the next couple of weeks – carers were being abused in the streets by various family members in these groups, as well as receiving social-media messages of abuse and threats. It all came to a head when the wife of one resident came to the door and tried to break in. After being unable to open the locked door she started launching bricks at the windows of the lounge. We had to very quickly move everyone back to their rooms just in case. Eventually after about an hour the police came and settled things.
As much as I pitied these people, I could never forgive them for the abuse and threats aimed at poorly-paid staff, often young women, just trying to do their jobs under intolerable pressure. Nor could I forgive the management for the lack of help they offered too when we asked for it, other than saying “just block them”. Blocking doesn’t help when you are walking down the street.
As a social care worker you work on your feet, usually for 12-hour shifts if it’s a nursing home, in sometimes horrid conditions. You can be attacked, spat on, verbally abused, covered in every bodily fluid and solid you can think of, all for a wage that keeps you trapped in poverty. For those two years with COVID we worked tirelessly but lost a lot of staff who felt they had no support and that those in charge, especially in the Scottish Government, didn’t care.
(We did get a one-off £500 bonus, of which most folk only saw about £300 after tax and deductions. That comes to about £2.88 a week.)
As I said, this is probably one of the most difficult jobs you can do, not just physically but also mentally. The sector has been in decline since Brexit when a large chunk of its workforce disappeared overnight. Two years of working through COVID without a break has decimated what was left of social care.
Some couldn’t take it and walked away, and some caught the virus on the front line and died, but there are now huge staffing gaps we can’t fill. We put out four job vacancies in the last year and not one single person even enquired about them.
The Scottish Government has promised to increase our wages next year to £12 an hour, the first time in decades our wages have gone up by such a margin. But it’s not enough to stem the bleeding. (Most of that rise, if and when it happens, will be instantly swallowed by the cost-of-living crisis.)
The problem is that working conditions haven’t improved for over 20 years. Most care home managers are tasked with cutting the budgets rather than providing better care. Nurses are having their positions chopped and replaced with inexperienced SCPs who don’t have the medical skills or knowledge to lead a mental health unit.
The unit I worked in last with its Nurse, Senior and 4 support staff has decided to change the description of the care provided from a Learning Difficulties unit to an Elderly one, despite the fact it’s the same residents with the same medical conditions. Why? So they could cut staff numbers – it now runs with just a senior and two support staff, basically two people to do the work of five.
Bed sores are becoming more common because of the lack of staff to do turns. Residents are having to wait much longer for assistance. Anything to cut budgets in order to keep profits rolling, no matter the detriment to staff or residents. And it’s not just the private sector, it’s just as bad now in council-provided services. Councils have millions in underspend because they can no longer find anyone willing to provide care for the pittance it pays, and doubly so after COVID exposed what they might be letting themselves in for if they do.
Free personal care is one of our flagship policies in Scotland, and we should be proud of it. But Brexit was a grenade that blew it wide apart, COVID ravaged the ruins and now it’s in a terminal decline as inevitable as that of my multiple-sclerosis patient, and likely to be just as grisly and upsetting.
Without swift intervention the policy will die a lot quicker than any of our politicians will be prepared for. Without a properly functioning social care sector that has proper working conditions and rights for its staff, it will fail and with that, it will drag down the NHS too as it tries to pick up the pieces.
The Scottish Government can promise reform until the cows come home, but without reforming staff conditions it will fail. And as a great many of us will end our days in the care system, that’s something we should probably all be worrying about.
.
Alison Speed has worked in social care for over 20 years, having started out in nursing homes as a teenager and subsequently across the whole sector including some of the most demanding and specialist units dealing with challenging behaviour, complex care needs, rehab and critical end-of-life care.
Fkin hell, that was truly horrific reading. 🙁
Sounds like it should be the Alison Speeds of this world that are in charge of such matters rather than the utter fckwits who allegedly are.
“Within 30 minutes of that tweet going out, again with no details, my manager had turned up and was asking to speak with me. It was his day off and he had been advised by “authorities” about the tweet.
He demanded that I delete it straight away and put up a post saying I was lying. I was told that I would lose my job for gross misconduct if I refuse.”
Chilling.
God Bless you Alison Speed. Set the truth free. Thank you for everything you did. I want justice fo all those who died and those care home staff.
I think Sturgeon tried to kill off the old people as part of a political choice. She’s warped.
Sturgeon’s not handing over all her whatsapp messages.
Lady Covid – known for her good communication and daily briefings – her lips are sealed. She’s handing nothing over. She’s secretetive. She’s on the defensive Allison. What is she hiding? We are all beginning to wonder?
I’m raging at Sturgeon. I want a vote of No confidence in this SNP Government. I think she ignored the advice of doctors and nurses in the hospitals to clear the beds. She knew what she was doing. She always knows better didn’t she?
There’s special place reserved in Corton Vale for Nicola Sturgeon. Her deeds would shame all the devils in hell.
Actually in tears reading this ( in fairness Covid triggers me ) and just want to thank you Alison and your colleagues for all you have done and continue to do for very little money, compassion cannot be overvalued and I appreciate it
An utter Shit show that you have had to deal with
On the subject of your managers for your sick colleague with Covid:
“She had asked management if she could use her annual leave to cover her time off but was refused as they had already put it through as COVID. They went as far as to blame her for having COVID and not doing enough to prevent it.”
This is why we need a national care service and workers rights for care home staff.
We need proper work conditions, workers rights motivated young people and Scottish workers who want to stay. I want the Social care service integrated into the NHS.
Our elderly are us. We are them. They are our families. They deserve better. We need to look after our future selves.
“He confided in me that he knew about this policy when it came out but HQ had asked him not to notify staff in case they all pretended to have COVID and took time off to get drunk and have parties.”
This manager should be named and prosecuted. Seriously. What an absolute low life piece of human garbage.
Just think, by the time you need this kind of assistance it will probably be much worse.
“Every breath was a struggle and each one sapped more life out of him. He just stared at me and then started to panic. I could do nothing to help him and just had to sit there watching someone essentially drowning in their own saliva, becoming incontinent then giving one last gargle before they finally passed.”
Allison, I’d like to know if your care home employed a staff nurse, registered to administer palliative care medication for those at end of life?
I’d implore you to name that home. That manager and company.
Good, timely post.Well worth reading.
I was a full time carer for my dementing father at home for 15 years until his death. i had a little support from my family- not enough.
When I was much younger I did a lot of manual labouring jobs on building site, the roads and in factories. None of this work is anything near as demanding in terms of the stress imposed as caring for someone long term.
It is also work that is enormously valuable. it can be rewarding but certainly not finacially.
The mess of social care is probably somewhat worse in England than Scotland but it has been, in both countries, long in the making and will not easily be fixed.
link to chpi.org.uk
I worked in the care home sector ( psycho geriatric, frail elderly,end of life) a long time ago 92-96, and I’m enraged nothing seems to have improved since then. How the snivelling, crooked management of these places can sleep at night is beyond me. I too, was what was then classed as a “whistleblower” . God only knows how many times I phoned the health board from that care home for serious/criminal failings. Not that they did much.
I’m so sorry to read it’s just the same shiteshow almost thirty years later, horrified to think what our place would have been like during a pandemic lockdown. Both workers and residents have been seriously let down by Sturgeon etc during the whole debacle. I agree with David Hannah, but I’d go further. I think every political party both North and South deserve votes of no confidence, we need to rip the whole political establishment up and start again.
You’re a special lady Alison.
There’s something wrong in a society where a MP carries home ten? twenty? times more than a social care worker. How is it possible that those people who are in such an important, difficult and stressing job don’t earn a decent income? How is it possible that for some everything is available – especially for those in politics – and there’s nothing but contempt for those who do the work?
Alison,
thank you for this piece. It’s devastating to read.
Your experience is at the other end of the scale from mine, and I have been fortunate in many ways, but it is you who wears the angel’s wings. Wear them with pride.
That was horrifying to read. I was an ambulance technician before COVID and I visited care homes on a nearly daily basis. There appeared to be a complete lottery as to the care residents would receive depending on which home they were in. Some of the care assistants were fantastic while some of the nurses were terrible but all were limited in what they could do. Most of my colleagues said they would rather die than end up in a home and many of us discussed making sure we had DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders in place long before our health deteriorated to the point we would be put into care.
Right now my family is contemplating the near future when an elderly relative might have to go into care due to worsening dementia & being prone to falls. I was already thinking in terms of doing everything we could to keep them out of a care home but now I am absolutely determined to do that. Fortunately we probably have the means to do so but for the vast majority of Scots who don’t it is an impossible situation to be in. Heart breaking and infuriating. Our elderly are just being thrown into the dump before they have even died.
My work is now in the field of health and fitness and I have one please for everyone to heed: please, please, please do absolutely everything you can to avoid needing medical and social care in your old age. You would not believe how much you can positively influence your health by making the right choices in terms of eating, exercising, smoking and drinking. Getting taken into the care system is a slow, horrible death even without COVID.
I feel deeply with what Alison went through. But the common theme coming from this, apart from the governance, is funding. It doesn’t matter what we do in Scotland it will always be determined by the funds available. It would be nice to pay carers £20/hour but that will never happen in this dysfunctional UK. We can only dream of what kind of country we would be if we were independent and how we would have managed the COVID crisis.
That was some read Alison . Thank you for all you and your colleagues do for those in your care and have done throughout a most difficult time.
By the time it had reached Italy none of our healthcare staff could understand why our borders were still open. The UK is an island and surely the best way to prevent a deadly virus from getting here was to close the border?
We now have it more or less confirmed that Boris Johnson was the problem. The worst possible man in charge at the worst possible time. We should have went into lockdown as soon as Italy did as at that point Covid was in Europe & an earlier lockdown would have saved lives and resources.
After about a month we had started to notice that the PPE we had been given was so flimsy that 50% of it broke before use.
It is unforgivable that government used cheap PPE while winning bidders walked out with huge profits at a time when people were dying horribly. If anything comes out of the Covid enquiry it should be criminal charges from Johnson down the chain. Won’t happen. We might get a few people like Mone thrown to keep the tabloids happy but this was a failure of leadership at the highest levels.
But the staff were so beaten down and had given up that just no longer cared. One of them told me how she spent an hour sitting beside a COVID patient who was dying in their bed watching them pass away. I can tell you from my own experience that someone dying from COVID is not the peaceful ending you might hope for. Its horrific in some cases, for them and for the staff.
But not a minute after that person had died, this lass, still in tears after losing someone she cared for, was being told to get up and go sit with another person who was dying. This would in some cases be repeated day after day, for minimum wage. Those days there absolutely broke me.
A friend is a nurse and this reflects her experience. Sitting with one person who dies then told to look after another dying and repeat. That friend is no longer a nurse. People can only take so much & their mental health collapsed last year.
Free personal care is one of our flagship policies in Scotland, and we should be proud of it. But Brexit was a grenade that blew it wide apart, COVID ravaged the ruins and now it’s in a terminal decline as inevitable as that of my multiple-sclerosis patient, and likely to be just as grisly and upsetting.
When I see Holyrood waste millions or sell off assets for cheap or pump money into endless Trans ‘charities’ while we have huge amounts of genuine problems that aren’t going to be solved with slogans and wishing for unicorns. Politically we’re screwed, especially with the SNP locked into a death spiral with an increasingly unhinged Green Party. Labour won’t make things better and we face an election next year where yes, the Tories need to go for a generation at least but the prospect of a weak Labour Party tweaking round the edges doesn’t fill me with hope.
Many of us are going to end our lives in the care system. I’m still a wee while away (hopefully) from that but in 30 years time I fear there won’t be a care system left even though we have a massively ageing population but not enough young people. Thanks to Brexit we can’t rely on immigrants plugging the gap either so things are bleak unless we have politicians brave and smart enough to make hard choices that benefits most people and not a small amount of the wealthy or the middle class.
Staff could have got the full £500 bonus if the Scottish Government had called it an honorarium – just like footballer testimonials – no expectation of reward being the legal requirement. Nicla knew this and she refused.
I think First Minister’s questions today was the worst I’ve ever seen.
Tories and Labour wasting parliamentary time talking about proven liar Michael Matheson when there’s more pressing issues.
The health secretary should have been sacked weeks ago. But it’s all to do with secrecy of this corrupt cabal in Holyrood. They openly lie to the public. Get caught out lying and lie again.
We need a vote of no confidence. The Alphabetties need to be named.
Sturgeon lacks compassion. It’s not wired into her DNA. She’s a liar herself about her sexuality. She lied about Alex Salmond and her failed plotting conspiracy she orchestrated. She lied about wanting Independence. She sold out Scotland. And she killed thousands of old people. Because she’s lying about what she knew. And she’s covering it up.
She’s a murderer. She’s a luty letby type killer of a politican. I hope she rots in hell.
not all heros wear capes.
no they give them shite PPE.
ffs what a cuntery
Sturgeon wanted to be different from Boris. She locked us all away. Her and the dentist. They loved the fame. On open goal and the football radio shows. They loved it.
These people were crooks. And control freaks.
Sturgeon wanted to clear the hospitals.
She was advised to test patients. We all know what she did. She ignored advice and send the plague into the care homes. Her orders. The buck stops with her. Then she locked us up longer than anyone else to try and clear her conscience. But we know Nicola doesn’t have that. She lacks compassion. She’s ruthless. She’s a bunny boiler. She’s a fraud. A proven fraudster both professionally and personally. She’s sold out Scotland.
Through the book at her I say. We need the crown office separated from Humza’s Parliament. They run the country like a mafia. They’ve turned our institutions into a criminal enterprise.
Nicola Sturgeon. Dorothy Bain. Lady Dorian. Resign you charlatans. Sack them I say.
David Hannah @2.24
Did they talk about anything significant – like the impending closure of Grangemouth and its implications?
Alison, you must be absolutely furious with all those tik-tok dancing nurses from all over the world, including the UK, who had all that time and resources to make stupid dance meme videos as if they were all co-ordinated to do the same thing at the same time when they were supposed to be drowning in covid cases.
They obviously had plenty of time and money and not much to do.
It was hard enough reading this, so God bless Alison for actually working through it, then being able to write about it.
TBH, it confirms a lot of what we know. Newspapers print government PR, and there’s no-one we can trust to tell us the truth.
And privatising healthcare is always a disaster.
@John C says:23 November, 2023 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for a good post, but I’m going to take issue with this statement:
Thanks to Brexit we can’t rely on immigrants plugging the gap either
Here’s a link:
link to ons.gov.uk
And here’s a wee quote:
“The provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for year ending (YE) June 2023 was 1.2 million, while emigration was 508,000, meaning that net migration was 672,000; most people arriving to the UK in the YE June 2023 were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000)”
The pre-Brexit flow of immigration to the UK has turned into a post-Brexit deluge. No knowledgeable commentator expects that to change any time soon.
Thanks Alison, It sounds like a horrible experience.
I just wonder how much of a thing Sarscov2 really was?
Three days before Boris locked us down the government marked down Covid as not being a ‘high consequence infectious disease’
There was no test for Covid at that time (or later??) and doctors were instructed to diagnose illness on death based on ‘flu like symptoms’ as Covid symptoms.
Flu vanished in 2020 and 2021.
Guidance was run from Imperial College based on frightening mathematical models by Neil Ferguson.
Excess deaths in 2020 occurred in the lockdown months, (and rose again when they started injecting.)
Politicians abandoned their duty to technocrats and collapsed the health system.
@David Hannah says:23 November, 2023 at 2:36 pm
She’s a fraud
And by a remarkable coincidence, so’s her replacement.
“Continuity” in many more ways than one.
It is worth mentioning that the health service in Scotland is fully devolved.
I really don’t care what the English/Welsh/Irish systems are like, better or worse. Our Government!! have a duty of care to ALL in Scotland. I honestly believe that the overwhelming majority of doctors/nurses/carers/ porters and everybody else involved in the SNHS genuinely strive to provide it. I cannot say the same about our Government.
Will people like Alison Speed give evidence to the ongoing Covid enquiry. I very much doubt it as the Politicians scramble around trying to protect their backs.
My thanks to Alison for her honesty, compassion and bravery. Not qualities we see much of at the top of the SNP/Loons coalition.
Grim reading. This is what happens when anything gets privatised, obviously; profit comes before everything else and to hell with the consequences.
The know-all Tories spouting off on here about privatising the NHS should read it. And then read it again.
It seems so little to say but the work you and your colleagues do is valued and respected by everyone who understands it. I’m heartbroken and outraged at the treatment of carers who deserve decent pay and recognition for the outstanding service they provide. Our world wouldn’t function without it and it’s about time politicians admitted that.
I wonder if Fabiani will be called back in to conduct the Michael Matheson Whitewash.
Thanks for sharing that story Alison. It is an emotional and harrowing read and it must have been absolute hell to live through.
I have some experience of what it is like to care for elderly and incapacitated people, both mentally and physically, and I can tell you I have never been so glad as when the real carers arrived to help me.
The job you do is without doubt one of the hardest I can imagine and I have no idea why we pay the people who do the jobs the rest of us cannot (and do not want to, if we are honest) do such a pittance.
Thank you to you and your colleagues and I am sorry that during a time when our leaders were dishing out instructions on how to behave to the rest of us they could not have been looking after the people who really needed to be looked after.
Chas
“It is worth mentioning that the health service in Scotland is fully devolved.”
Health is devolved.
It’s budget is not.
Great article. It must make your blood boil when you see the way the Scottish government is treating the Covid enquiry, the withholding of and deletion of critical evidence by Sturgeon and co is nothing short of a national scandal
An innarestin link:
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And a couple of innarestin wee quotes:
“The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past.”
“The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save”
If our governments had instead employed the money and state resources to specifically lockdown, ring-fence, support and protect the vulnerable and weak, allowing the healthy bulk of the population to go about their normal and necessary business in a responsible manner, the outcomes for all would have been better, and that includes the care homes occupants and staff Alison Speed writes about.
The evidence is all around; we trashed our economies, freedoms, kids educations and health systems to no good end. It’s a conclusion of such jaw-dropping magnitude that most who lived through Covid will never be prepared to acknowledge its truth.
WHat a hard read, seeing as a local care home lost 9 “inmates” and was taken over by the NHS when its owner screwed up royally, and the staff got abused even when trying to do a job with their hands tied behind their backs
“without reforming staff conditions it will fail. And as a great many of us will end our days in the care system, that’s something we should probably all be worrying about”
And this is the reason I have told my family that I will be going out at a time of my own choosing when I am no longer fit to look after myself, and that isn’t to say I don’t trust the care workers, I do, but who knows what shitshow will happen in the future
Great, if deeply depressing article. Care jobs are so critical.
I work in elderly care in the NHS, and one of the massive problems is people coming in with, say, a broken hip due to a fall, but who also have dementia and have been “managing” (read “managing” as they themselves or their families struggling through absolute hell with no help) at home but who simply can’t go back. Some live in upper flats or have been living in squalor, come in malnourished and ill in other ways. No health professional will send them home in a state they’re not fit to go back.
So they end up stuck in hospital, where they’ll likely decline further in things like mobility, while a place in a care home is found. Sometimes this might include dealing with squabbling families who see the NHS as ‘free’ and care homes as an expense, so are unhelpful and hold up the process. Or it involves family having to get power of attorney which can take forever and be a nightmare.
But then on top of that, you need to be able to find a place in a care home. Or find carers who can go into their home to get them back there. These are people who don’t need to be in hospital. They’re just also not fit to go home, certainly not with no care package in place.
That could, and likely will, be all of us at some point in our lives either personally, or with our parents or loved ones. It’s simply not possible for everyone to give up jobs, move miles and become a full time carer, even in the early or easier stages of caring. But we can’t expect the NHS to do it, or we won’t have a functioning NHS for those who do need to be there.
So did I pick that up correctly, Grangemouth is being sold to cover costs of Manchester United purchase?
My aunt was a in care home during the Covid crisis. The staff had a very hard time, trying to keep the residents safe, whilst trying to look after themselves and their own families. They had to make very complex arrangements for and kind of visiting or contact, even taking her to a window so she could see us whilst we talked to her on a mobile phone.
The discharging of untested patients from hospitals was needlessly cruel and irresponsible, making a very difficult situation far worse…
Hey Alison, just read your article. I think you and your colleagues have all our respects. I am sorry we have educated Scottish society in a way that makes them think it’s okay to be horrible to public servants such as yourself. Harassment for being the only people in the room who really care.
I am very proud of you and your colleagues.
I wonder what is so wrong with us that we can’t create a fair society. One that cares for others and a media that reports the truth.
NS and the comedy parody that accompanied her was just another way of misleading us.
Care is an important part of all our lives, many of us writing on these pages may find ourselves there, so Karma is important. If the profitable care homes work, how come all care homes can’t work.
Does anybody have any ideas how we can effectively make the changes necessary? Is it about improving health so we don’t need hospitals? Maybe, but that would take just too long. Public sector workers should have better conditions in terms of pay and hourly commitment. This cudgel where “if you don’t like the job” you should move on, is appalling. Your point Alison of care workers who “care” being sold down the river for profits is a really bitter pill.
I have no idea where to go from here! Every election I vote for the people that say
We will fix the NHS
We will fix poverty
We will fix education
We will fix crime
Don’t know about you guys but I’m still waiting on any of them delivering.
@And spouse says:23 November, 2023 at 4:48 pm
So did I pick that up correctly, Grangemouth is being sold to cover costs of Manchester United purchase?
The Guardian Online and other MSM sources are linking the two facts. Jim Ratcliffe wants to sell out his stake at Grangemouth and wants to invest £1+ billion in Man U. It’s unclear to me if there is a direct cash transfer from one business venture to the next, but probably!
Grangemouth won’t be completely closing. The refinery business will close, but the plant will be used to onshore and presumably distribute overseas-produced liquified gas.
It’s no doubt an unpopular opinion on here, but ScotGov’s virtue signalling about being faster than the rest of the UK in phasing out oil and gas production and use won’t have helped with the refinery’s long-term prospects.
If the shift to renewables is going to make us poor, cold huddlers in the dark, we can always console ourselves that we are world leaders in that.
Honestly, I read things like this, then look around at the state of Scotland following brexit, and I just get so damned angry. Boris, Sunak, the whole lying thieving, murderous lot of them ought to be in jail.
But then I recall, the SNP promised us independence. They promised to keep us in the EU. AND THE COULD HAVE KEPT US IN THE EU IF THEY HAD A BACKBONE. Election after freaking election, and yet here we are, forcefully removed from the EU and stripped of our EU citizenship wholly against our wishes by idiotic, pig-ignorant, English Tories AND Labour AND Libdems and those who vote for them.
Sick of it all. Just utterly utterly sick of the mess which England has made of Scotland. I wish they would just bugger off and leave Scotland in peace.
THIS is why I get so freaking angry at the lazy, careerist MPs, MSPs and others in the SNP, who act as though they have another twenty years to push for independence.
They can see NO urgency, none at all, while all of Scotland cries out in utter, utter despair.
The care sector has been particularly and brutally betrayed by the DISLOYAL uniparty crap bags in London, and that fact cannot be denied.
The care sector, having toiled through immense stress during COVID (I had a mask on for 12 hours a day myself,) got it’s reward in the form of African and Indian migrants being crammed into Britain, at breakneck speed, by the worst and most disloyal shower of shite to ever be in government, in order to keep wages rock, rock bottom.
London isn’t working… and that’s an understatement so vast, I’m practically embarrassed at having articulated it. London works mainly for people south of Birmingham, and for other beneficiaries from a rigged system.
The sooner we don’t need to deal with the disloyal [stuff that accumulates around a bath tub if it’s not been cleaned regularly], the better!!!!!
Two world wars together for London to give the place away to the entire world, and for the descendants of the men who fought and died for this place to be treated like dirt by lazy London louse bags!
To hell’s fire with them in a hand-cart. The sooner, the better.
The Care Industry as it is known is a misnomer.
With over seventy percent oh care home ownership in the private sector the industry would be better named the Offshore Property Investment Industry.
With ownership roots and multi stratos corporate structures real ownership of so many of our care homes actually sits of offshore tax havens around the world. The Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands is actually what our so called care sector is about.
Rich pickings from the hapless saps is the driver behind the ultra complicated multi stratos tax avoidance models. And do the hapless saps stumping up the money know about exactly how the so called care industry works. No of course they don’t. That why they are saps, our country is full of saps. But the Government know. They know well, but do nothing.
Money talks, and our SNP government know it, and know that fine. And wherever you look be it energy profits, rights for the landowners and their stratos offshore structures, the failure to set up an investment bank, the little people just pay.
This article illuminates the good and hard work undertaken by folks doing an absolutely service.
Bet they don’t have a clue about what their industry is actually about.
I’ve never understood why care workers are paid less than nurses. As an unpaid carer, who only had one person to look after through lockdown, I can appreciate everything you do nd think you all deserve to be paid and appreciated much more than you are.
If a country is to be judged on how it treats it’s poorest and most vulnerable and that care is reflected in how govt values those who care for that demographic then Scotland is failing badly.
“But instead of being happy that his staff could be supported at no cost to him, he confided in me that he knew about this policy when it came out but HQ had asked him not to notify staff in case they all pretended to have COVID and took time off to get drunk and have parties.”
This shows tha apalling attitude the middle classes in this country have towards the working class. They obviously judge us by what they would do in the same circimstances, not knowing that we have higher standards.
I’m so sorry you have had to cope with all of this and I am so grateful that there are people like you there who I hope will still be around to care for me, should I need it – assuming I haven’t been killed off by austerity measures before then.
RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus now allowing the USA to hop from this base to Israel in C-17 military planes, C-17 US military planes predominately carry troops and equipment.
The USA and the UK, by aiding the Zionist war criminals are themselves complicit in war crimes against humanity.
link to nitter.net
Well from my own personal experience Buckreddan Care home in North Ayrshire robs it’s inmates as they come in. Run by a hairy thief.
Knowing what I know now about the quality of Scottish care homes I’d discreetly murder any relative they want to take into their ‘care’. It would be a mercy killing.
Dreadful shitholes.
Meanwhile as 2.3 million Gazans including many children starve to death in Gaza, providing the Zionists don’t kill them first.
“The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain, participated in a forum to collect donations for the Israeli army.”
link to euromedmonitor.org
@Robert Louis says:23 November, 2023 at 5:52 pm
Here you go, a wee link:
link to electoralcommission.org.uk
And a wee quote:
Remain Leave
1,661,191 1,018,322
1,018,322 Sovereign Scots voted for offski last time around, I’ll wager any day a considerably larger number will vote to tell the EU to get tae the next time around.
And/Or, tell the Indy parties tae get tae if they continue to make EU membership a certainty if we vote for Indy.
I’d get ma heid roond the idea of iScotland making a go of it as an Independent, Sovereign nation, Robert. You’re going to wait a long time for the EU to sort things for you.
Israeli planes flying to Lebanon ‘touch and go’ in Cyprus.
link to new.thecradle.co
Social care, like so many jobs that mainly women do are considered to be without value to society. These jobs cannot be quantified as that, say, of an engineer can, so they become dead ends with low pay and even less incentive. The problem, I would hazard, does not stop and start with the type of work, but with the value placed open that work. Almost all female work is undervalued.
Why should that be? Because it is considered to be women’s work, and, therefore, of less intrinsic value. It is a vicious cycle. Engineers make things that benefit society. That goes without saying, and that is reflected in the pay and conditions. Is social care not of benefit to society, then? Of course it is. So, what’s the difference? I would suggest that the difference lies in what people are willing to pay for the services of an engineer as opposed to the services of someone who cares for the elderly, the disabled, mentally and physically, the sick, etc.
It really is that simple. The same person who will pay whatever the going rate is for an engineer, wants to pay sweeties for a caring professional. Why should that be? Often, the state will pay the going rate for an engineering firm to do essential work, say, to build a school/bridge/public works, but will not pay what is required for the services of a professional caring service. Again, women are expected to take up the slack and work for sweeties.
The treatment of women and their work choices (often made because they must also undertake childcare or care of elderly parents) is considered to be ‘voluntary’ in that women are expected to undertake such work because their biology dictates that this type of work is better suited to female people – which may have a ring of truth about it – but, nevertheless, the work itself is considered of little value.
We saw starkly throughout the pandemic that it was those in mainly working-class and caring professions who were expected to ‘carry on’ as if there was no pandemic: nurses, doctors, care staff, shop workers, factory workers producing essential foodstuffs and so on, while middle-class professionals who worked in offices were paid to stay at home. So, in the end, the pandemic response was one of ‘screw the workers on the coal face’ and ‘screw the women’, if you’ll pardon the pun. Then, of course, there was the ‘let all the old barstewards’ who can’t afford private personal care because they don’t have the wages that allow private care, die horribly. Who cares?
It is not that there is no money in the communal kitty, it is that profit comes before anything else and most of the money accruing to British/Scottish society is concentrated in the hands of the few, thanks to the Thatcher doctrine of ‘theft by the wealthy from the poor’ and the hoarding of dosh in tax havens – the Robin Hood principle in reverse. Many people are born into dire circumstances, many lose their livelihoods, others become or are born physically and/or mentally impaired, yet they must be punished for circumstances beyond their control.
All that requires to be done is to tax the wealthy and put a freeze on their assets and earnings so that they cannot be removed from the economy, then start rebuilding communal public services and utilities that can be accessed by the many. Oh, and start evaluating female work by its usefulness to society. Any exercise in that direction will show very quickly that societies (and people) die without adequate care provision, but nobody dies from a lack of hedge fund managers. Let them be chivvied off the ‘buroo’ and into McDonald’s. They are a parasitical lifeform on the body economic, social and political.
Indeed, without them, many companies will not go under and/or suffer hostile takeovers, and people will not lose their jobs – Thatcherism in reverse. If it can be done one way, it can be done the opposite way. All it takes is the will. Or we have that very long-delayed revolution that the UK has managed to avoid for several hundred years – and it may well be led by the female of the species.
S’funny how everything the SNP touches… Health, education, marine protection, environment, independence, etc. etc. all turns to shit.
What is the SNP for exactly?
Someone please remind me…
@Republicofscotland says:23 November, 2023 at 6:24 pm
Seeing as how you’ve been wound up and set off yet again …
All reputable news agencies make it clear the obstacles holding up the humanitarian, extended, cease fire can be laid clearly at the door of Hamas.
If Hamas can ever bring themselves to take a breather from their avowed intent to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth, the USA, EU and UK will, as usual, be at the forefront of bringing in the humanitarian and medical aid Gaza needs. Subsidised from the taxes of Sovereign Scots. Probably some Sovereign Scots pitching in at the sharp end too, and maybes taking incoming fire. Maybes you will be wanting to post some praise for their efforts?
Haha, I crack me up.
One word comes to mind after reading this: ‘dehumanizing’. Which is always a feature in any colonial society.
A people are ‘dehumanized’ because there are ‘no human values’ in colonialism (Cesaire), only exploitation and subjugation by external interests.
We recall ‘one-nation’ Thatcher telling us Scots there is ‘no such thing as society’, only private profit. In such societies a people and their culture is cast aside.
These are not Scottish cultural values, they are alien. As is most of the nonsense inflicted on Scots via Westminster and its Holyrood puppets and state agencies.
“But instead of being happy that his staff could be supported at no cost to him, he confided in me that he knew about this policy when it came out but HQ had asked him not to notify staff in case they all pretended to have COVID and took time off to get drunk and have parties.”
Boris and chums had parties at Downing St, Catherine Calderwood happy to take her family to their holiday home whilst telling us to stay indoors and do not go out.
Nicola preaching solemnly whilst knowing hundreds were dying in care homes and doing nothing too help the hard pressed staff working in these care homes.
A pox on all their houses, It’s a shame that Ms Alison Speed can only now feel comfortable in speaking out and not then when it would have really highlighted the national disgrace that was happening within the care sector.
I’d strongly urge Alison to name the manager and care home and urge to report this matter to the police as corporate manslaughter.
Why do we tolerate so many parasites and leeches, so many ghastly self-satisfied managers, bosses, politicians and their hangers-on who think they’re so worth their fat profits, pay packets and privileges while they look down on and exploit the people doing the real work?
Much respect and thanks to you Alison, and your colleagues. It’s particularly chilling to read about the instant tracking and tracing of a tweet.
Scotland was supposed to be different. Huh.
The usual female supremacist 1950s mouth-froth from Lorna Campbell. Truly awful. Any chance to rant about women, women, women. Men work in the ‘care industry’ (horrible phrase) too in nursing homes, exploited as badly as women, treated with sexist disdain, or creepily leered over.
How do I know? Because I am male. And was doing the job earlier this year. Everything I mentioned happened to me. Lorna, sorry for whatever man broke your lonely heart and brain. The truth, however unpalatable, is this: carers are not valued because old people are tragically not valued anymore, just ‘useless eaters’ (as the vile phrase has it), and the quicker they’re gone the better.
According to Sturgeon and Cummmings and Johnson and other penny-pinching lunatics, that is. So why spend money on them? They’re not going to complain, especially if they have a neurodegenerative illness that means they don’t even know what decade it is, or where they are. That’s the truth, sadly and disgustingly. I’d say to stop your tired bitter manhating feninist ranting. But I know you won’t.
We don’t tolerate them Craig. The Alba Party should change the constitution of Holyrood. We should be allowed to sack our politicians.
They ignored Grangemouth today. Humza has got to go.
Michael Matheson. The fondler of Morroco. He hates children. He certainly hates his own.
Patrick Grady. The toucher upper of other people’s children. He got to stay in the SNP.
Michael Matheson. No one believes your story about your children watching football.
He’s been watching something much more sinister I suspect.
Being in a Salvo motion. Perhaps our leader Ash Regan can help us. We can’t be allowed to suffer on until 2026.
We need a Salvo motion. The people should have the right to sack them when they don’t work for us.
They are not working for us. They should be sacked.
There are reports that 3 years supplies of Midazolam were used in 2020.
There are reports of being put on DNAR lists without their permission.
NHS staff were demanding immunity guarantees.
link to bbc.co.uk
I wonder what went on in some places.
Incredibly interesting.
link to u.pcloud.link
A wee link to the latest news from the EU on Unherd:
link to unherd.com
And a (not so) wee quote:
“Snappily entitled, “Report on proposals of the European Parliament for the amendment of the Treaties”, it proposes to massively restrict the right of member states to veto EU measures. Other features include the “establishment of a defence union including military units […] under the operational command of the Union”; exclusive EU “competence” (i.e. control) over environment and climate policy; and a “strengthening” of the “Union’s common immigration policy”.
This week the European Parliament voted in favour of his proposals by 291 to 274. That’s not enough to make them law: treaty change would require the unanimous approval of all 27 member states. Nevertheless, the idea that full-blown federalism is a minority pursuit, or a Brexiteer conspiracy theory, is blatantly wrong. The Verhofstadt view of the EU’s future commands a majority among the Union’s directly elected politicians.”
If your favourite dram is one watered by your own tears over our being “dragged oot agin oor will”, best ignore this post.
But I bet there’s well over a million Sovereign Scots who are thinking, thanks to the good sense of English voters, Scotland dodged a bullet.
@Johnlm says:23 November, 2023 at 6:33 pm
That’s a great link, thanks for posting it.
Great to see our side getting serious with the fight back against the nihilistic deniers of all life, freedom, joy, music, comedy, human rights, and the rest.
And touching to see how our side makes such well-intentioned but perhaps ridiculous attempts to stay on the right side of international law, even to the extent of performing touch-and-go landings at third-party airfields.
Still, when every tiny flaw on our side is inflated to the size of a mountain, whilst every outrage from the other side is sanded down to nothing, we can’t afford to cede any of the moral high ground, eh?
Keep these posts coming!
What a terrible but totally accurate read . I had the misfortune to work ‘care ‘ in the community just before Covid . There was no ‘ care ‘ about it then and I can only imagine how horrific it was during it .
There was no time to do any caring , visits overlapped , no travelling time allowed , if a client cancelled you weren’t paid for that time .
I remember one time coming across a senior lady who’d had a road accident ,we stopped to help and got a call from the office ( the car had a tracker ) asking why we were stopped , we explained the situation and got told ‘ tough ‘ get to your next client
The whole system is a nightmare
What is Roderick Spode slavering on about now?
Interpreter please !
Geri
Health is devolved.
‘It’s budget is not’.
It took a while but it appears that the penny has finally dropped. This money stuff is quite important after all! Well done. But, to be clear, the budget for the SNHS lies 100% with the Scottish Government and especially with the succession of useless Health Ministers.
The removal of elderly patients from hospitals back into care homes, some with Covid, some not, had nothing to do with monetary/budget matters. It happened because of a lack of understanding, callousness and sheer incompetence by the Scottish Government.
You never seem to get very much right Geri, probably because you cannot think. I am always happy to try and educate the uneducated but in your case it will be a long haul.
@Johnlm says:23 November, 2023 at 8:25 pm
Good one. I had to look up your reference.
All ower the place though, aren’t you. Hasbara one week, N@zi the next, it’s like you make it up as you go along. And all because you just can’t thole me pointing out the disaster your SNP has been and continues to be for Scotland.
But beware. “Sam” will be along in a mo to accuse you of abuse and bullying, and demand you apologise.
Haha, I crack me up.
@ Lorna Campbell at 6.37. That’s a good btl again,as are many today, all informing us of the true state of the care sector.
Wouldn’t it be good if there was a campaigning newslaper or old-style Panorama programme to force politicians etc to put the system right.
The level of sheer stupidity beggars’ belief.
We lost our steel industry at a time Scotland had the largest steel market in Europe.
We are self-sufficient in electricity (near enough) but need to pay international prices.
We pay more than anyone else in the UK to connect to the grid
We have to contribute to the cost of England building nuclear power.
We get to pay for HS2 for Birmingham with no benefit to Scotland.
We don’t use Russian gas but pay a price driven by them.
The North sea wind farms supply power direct to England and we see not a penny.
We will shortly be the only oil producing country to lose its oil refining ability, but England will retain theirs.
And Humza is trying to defend someone who ran up a bill and tried to dump it on the government.
What a f…… car crash
Perhaps the Scots are genetically inferior right enough.
Humza needs to go now!! They need to ask Salmond to come back and they might have a chance of recovery
Willie says:
23 November, 2023 at 5:57 pm
“This article illuminates the good and hard work undertaken by folks doing an absolutely service.
Bet they don’t have a clue about what their industry is actually about.”
All industries in the economy have been turned into ruthless exploitation of workers.
Dedication and loyalty are taken as gullibility and exploited to the full.
As we have seen in the struggle for independence.
@sarah says:23 November, 2023 at 9:10 pm
force politicians etc to put the system right
That would be done by increasing taxes, or starving something else of funds, or a mix of both.
Governments of all stripes have been ducking this issue for decades, and despite all the noises about it, I’m guessing there just aren’t the votes in it, which is why the difficult and expensive choices are never on any manifesto.
It will be interesting to see what Labour, the likely next government at WM and at HR, are planning and/or promising.
Given they are expected to get in anyway, with much the same policies as the Tories, probably not much.
At HR, right now, the SNP/Greens could, if they so desired, slap some extra tax on for social care. They could even argue it would be a neutral fiscal move, given that WM has just decreased NI by 2p in the pound. Anybody calling for a Tartan Tax increase of 2p for this?
Anybody?
@Lorna Campbell 6:37pm
I wasn’t going to comment on Alison Speeds heartfelt article. Her article stands up as a piece of authentic reality of the Care Sector during Covid times. I might have responded by saying swop stories with my A and E son. I knew that from him saying don’t clap for the NHS which I didn’t, except on the last day where a disabled boy at the of my garden was banging a pot so I did the same for 20 minutes. What’s provoked me to respond is your complete lack of understanding of the engineering sector that you mentioned several times. Here is the reality I earned half of the 120k salary of Michael Matheson. The half life of engineering knowledge is 5 years so I constantly had to retrain when my kids were growing up. And there is 2 types of engineers one fixes cars and fridges the other has Chartered status and typically looks after multi million projects with the operational safety of hundreds of men. And I mean men because women avoided the profession and rightly so. The peripatetic nature of the profession didn’t appeal to them.
John Main @ 7.48.
I posted about this yesterday under the previous article (Remembrance Day).
Not one response.
The SNP is setting a big trap for Scottish voters by saying that a vote for them is not just a vote for independence (as if) but is a vote to rejoin the EU, no referendum on that. It’s another desperate attempt to attract votes to keep them in power.
Another con-trick They know that there is no way they will walk back into Europe in the way they claim.
If the Scottish people will only look and see what the EU has become, and where it is going to, it could be a massive own goal for the SNP.
Judging by past performance, I have little confidence that enough people will pay attention to this crucial matter, and they will just carry on voting for idiots.
Why are people like Alison not running care homes and the country?
We have politicians in it for themselves and no priority for improving the quality of life for the many.
Chas;
Nice try…but away and haud yer bollocks.
Scottish budgets have been cut year on year by Westminster giving us less and less of our own money back. So the cuts are made and the ‘clever’ Tories red and blue hope that Holyrood gets the blame from half wits like you. Jog on.
Still, someone might believe you – that’s all you need eh? Just 1.
@Merganser says:23 November, 2023 at 9:56 pm
Thanks for your response.
My opposition to the EU is obvious (!) but I am at heart a democrat.
If the people of iScotland freely and fairly vote to dissolve our nation, laws, culture, etc. in the EU, whilst I will think it a crying shame, we will all have to abide by the majority decision.
But as you say, it’s the sleekit nature of the SNP’s deception that sticks in my craw, especially given the rapid changes taking place in the ethos and practical behaviour of the EU.
Who knows, maybes if the UK can make a go of existence outside of the EU, we Scots will feel emboldened to try and do the same.
But is any of this relevant any more? Surely the SNP/Greens are as finished in Scotland as the Tories are finished in the UK? Once the SNP are out, it’s probably 10 years before Scotland can get the numbers together for supporting Indy again. It’s a brave punter who would bet serious money on the EU still holding together in 2035.
@James says:23 November, 2023 at 10:07 pm
As I pointed out up-thread, WM just knocked 2p in the pound of NI.
HR could, if they so desired, put 2p in the pound on Scottish income tax, which would therefore be fiscally neutral for Scottish tax payers (below retirement age, and thus paying NI).
That extra Tartan Tax could be ring-fenced for the SNHS, social care, whatever ScotGov deems important (admittedly that maybes trans toilets and resident trans mimes in all primary schools).
Any pertinent, relevant, adult comments, or should I jist gang aff an haud ma bollocks?
LOVE English/Welsh people. HATE London rule. Jeremy Hunt is a prime example! That guy is looking more and more deranged and detached from reality with every passing millisecond.
Just because the g1mp happens to be Peter and Virginia Bottomley’s nephew, doesn’t mean that the oddball should have one iota of authority or working nfluence over the lives of real people on this island!
The Nobility in Scotland at the time of the Act of Union should have steadfastly stipulated that the Union could go ahead ONLY if it was ran from Edinburgh!
That way, we could have cut a lot of odd bodies, parasites and other assorted hangers-onners right out of the picture, entirely.
During WW1, men died face down in the mud, an eternity away from home, and from their ragamuffin children, only for a bunch of spoon-fed London leeches and disloyal grubbers to give the whole island away to all and sundry, while the critics of their vile schemes were publicly shamed as racists and xenophobes.
The end result was a Fake country called Britain.
Once the best country on earth, our once proud island has been reduce to being a landmass that is dedicated entirely to the cause of GDP and dividends.
Two World Wars for this pile of horse sh1t!!!
Two World wars so that a bunch of lazy, parasitic shite bags in London could race bait and pillage the descendants of those brave men who traversed the Continent, doing their best to advance the cause of dignity and freedom.
If the job of “hangman” suddenly appeared in Jobcentres up and down this once proud land, the person responsible for sifting through the applications would be one busy bee. One very busy bee, indeed.
In the meantime, Scots should concentrate on recoiling away from this nasty, disloyal pile of grubbing parasites, as they will never change.
Even if they did change… it is probably the case that the damage is now done!
Chas
Sorry you’re unable to be corrected without lashing out.
Scotlands budget is set by Westminster. Fact.
Scotland cannot borrow. Fact.
Health is devolved. Yay, we get to choose how many paracetamol to buy within budget.
It’s budget is not. Oh bummer. If England don’t spend the same amount on health – we get less.
It’s called the Barnet formula. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
If England spends less on health – we get less.
Scotland wants to spend more? Tory trick of fine, YOU raise & pay for it, Scotland – but be warned.. whatever you spend **will be deducted from next year’s budget** See what they did there with that hocus pocus slight of hand?
England is pushing for private healthcare. Thatchers dream of everyone paying for themselves. Thatcher is dead. Her dream is not. It lives on in every Tory & in every USA trade talk & in every muttering of a dementia tax.
If Scotland wants to retain an NHS then only independence will secure it.
Philippa Whitford gave excellent lectures on this very subject during 2014. I suggest you listen from an expert.
Tories aren’t daft. They don’t scatter gun. People would notice that. No, they slowly outsource & chip away around the edges. Outsource & reorganise, reorganise & flood it with over inflated management & we’re starting to see the collapse now. 12 hours for an ambulance. Patients in car parks & corridors.Bed blocking & a non existent social care. Nurses shuffling about wards aged 66 yrs old FFS!
They cheered in Westminster at voting to keep the pay cap while they accepted a pay rise. Absolute shysters.
Pay peanuts, have no happy working environment, constant pressures, targets to meet, dealing with death daily & shuffling about wards doing heavy lifting at 66..but hey, don’t forget to rattle some pot lids.
COVID was a cluster fuck. We live on an island. Scotland had hee-haw control over our airports & borders. Even the bastard Royals & Bojo ignored a travel ban to Scotland.
Care homes, if private, have a duty of care. They should also be forced to face an inquiry. Did they violate their duty of care cause £5,000 per bed was more profitable & fck PPE & any consequences of contamination?
I was in hospital during COVID. (Not COVID related) but the beds were always being moved around to howls of wtf? It was *management* instruction. Budge up & shut up. I’m not making excuses for anyone but anyone witnessing the scenes across Europe of the military carting off the dead to closed crematoriums should have been warning for BoJo to shut down the UK. He chose not to. The buck stops with that buffoon. “take it on the chin. Show the Dunkirk spirit. Let the bodies pile high. Eat out to help out”
Sturgeon was an idiot but she had zero control to enforce anything. That’s the responsibility of the home office as every britnat waster & armchair COVID expert liked to remind her. Fck – even her public announcements riled up the fury of britnats while loafer BoJo couldn’t decide if he could be arsed or if he wanted to address the nation like a fcking eejit draped in *flegs* like he was presidenty, dressed like a scruff like he’d just emerged fae his kip, or if the heat was too much he’d fake another self isolation episode.
& How many times was he photographed without a mask mingling with hospital staff?
John Main
Your another Yoon that doesn’t understand how the system works FFS!
ANY money Scotland raises is DEDUCTED from her budget the following year.
When will it sink in do you think?
Quite a read.
There is a general callousness, a viciousness about how the old are treated; you would think the opposite – I mean, we are all going that way, old, weak, sick, probably to die in great pain. We all have a vested interest here and yet everyone thinks – it will never happen to me and – why don’t all these useless people just hurry up and die?
Covid brought it all out, along with the generalised incompetence of our politicians; government is mostly run on autopilot, by bureaucrats – making big decisions, in a crisis, is what the leaders job is all about. Weighed and found wanting.
– been catching up with that tory cunts autumn statement, full on vicious
– great to see all the “stephen hawking” wasters out there who are sucking the fat teat of the nation on the universal credit will be rammed back into work, just as long as they can “work from home” by say, moving an eyebrow or puffing into a breath tube; these freeloading bastards will no longer be sitting round the pool smoking a big fat blunt, chilling to the rapper music, while the girls twerk suggestively …
– geryerselsumminknoice on that 11.44 sweet stuff
why do tories all go on about tax cuts – they don’t fucking pay any?
honestly, this is what you do, when you make any money at all – you incorporate yourself; now, you only pay taxes on profits, so you make sure you never make a profit. This has been called hollywood accounting. Claim all your personal items as business expenses. Claim back VAT (which you never paid). Did you get an 80 inch bravia telly … that was a “conference room audio visual presentation system”. This is what you pay your accountant for. Get creative, move your assets to the isle of man. It becomes a bit of an insiders joke – among celebs, they would claim tax relief on their coke habits as “flowers”, the daily mail claimed elton john spent 200k per month on “flowers” when his accounts ended up in court … of course he did.
All small businessman are crooked as hell, and no one makes a profit. And this is before actual crime appears. If you need to do a bit of laundry, then think of it as business financing with negative percent interest rates. Laugh at all the PAYE saddoes.
I live in a narco state and I know what I am talking about – we lost all the industry 30 years ago, but there are bentley showrooms. Wossallthatbaboutthen??? … oh I know
– those freeloading universal credit bastards, they’re all driving the mulsanne convertibles and with the sky premier sports as well.
Seriously though, the entire middle class are crooked bastards, but no one gives a shit, since they are all at it.
– the tories who whine about taxes are chiefly those who have fat govt jobs and they can’t really do the company trick (john birt had an arrangement where he was technically not employed by the bbc, despite being DG, but there was a scandal about it). So, if you have a fat govt job, say 100K grade 6 or better, you do have to pay the damn tax but, before you start blubbing for these poor bastards – the govt pays 27% of your salary into your pension, and it is into the old style “good pension” – “defined benefits”, so you are really fucking bulletproof and should just shut up.
A friend of mine told me something sick the other day – the jobcentres have a new logo and slogan on their front doors, it is
“making work pay”
I thought – sounds like something … making work pay, almost like
work makes you free
or in the german
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
on the gates of Dachau, a labour camp.
Andy Storrie,
careful with your characterisations of Scottish soldiers. They – and I’ll also say we, because I was one once – ain’t no serfs to London, or had no agency. We looked to each other and fought for each other in combat with our nation’s enemy.
A great grand uncle of mine, serving with the Black Watch, died at Magersfontein. His nephew, my great uncle, died at as part of the remnants of the London Scottish. Another great uncle died in Normandy, a Scotsman but in an English regiment. My father commanded a platoon in his regiment, the Argylls in Aden. I commanded a platoon in Northern Ireland, and a company in the Gulf in 1991 and in Bosnia.
I can tell you this. Our loyalty was to each other. Not the Crown. That’s too distant, although when needs be, we’d put on our kilts and spats and glengarries and march to the sound of the pipes. And why not? It’s just a job. A better one than most, and certainly with a better band of brothers.
Hi Merganser at 9:56 pm
You typed, or quoted,
“John Main @ 7.48.
I posted about this yesterday under the previous article (Remembrance Day).
Not one response.
The SNP is setting a big trap for Scottish voters by saying that a vote for them is not just a vote for independence (as if) but is a vote to rejoin the EU, no referendum on that. It’s another desperate attempt to attract votes to keep them in power.”
As far as I’m aware, any sovereign nation wishing to join the EU must hold a referendum to determine the will of its people on the matter.
We need to take over Grangemouth. We can’t allow it to close.
We need our own energy company. That bitch Sturgeon promised us, only to sell the sea bed sites in a reverse auction with a maximum price cap. To foreign multinational oil companies. And not one Scottish company. She created fuck all even though she paid special advisors £500,000 to do that very thing.
People are saying that Nicola Sturgeon has been doing dodgy deals with this Gupta character? Who is he? Does he own our steel plants? Is he a fucking crook like Nicola?
Save Grangemouth.
ASS
Away & dinnie talk pish with yer Walter Mitty bs!
Scotland hasn’t had an *enemy* since the 30s.
Everything after that was occupation & imperial invasion.
Joe Glenton tells it like it is. Yer sold a shit load of lies & not to think. Governments picking up the poor fae the schemes & no hopers for a dream of traveling the world which is knocked out on Day one.
What gives with britnats always wanking over the military? Do you not have a sense of an identity? A family that cares about you?
Lambs to the slaughter, ten a penny to fight for another man’s greed & dominance over countries that’s fck all to do with them.
Instilling *democracy* to the savages while not allowing it in their own country. LOL
The Britnats are an embarrassment.
Rumour has it, Nicola’s in bed with Gupta. The police investigation into the fraud is actually to do with some dodgy deal Nicola Sturgeon has struck with with Gupta character?
Penny Morodant said in Westminster yesterday there’s 22 ongoing police investigations into the SNP.
And nothing has came to fruition. That’s because Dorothy Vein, of the Clown Office of Clowns is protecting Nicola. And we all know it!
Dorothy Bain. More like Dorothy Stain. And Dorothy Vein. She’s given the okay to the safe consumption room next door to Morrisons in Glasgow East End. Where children will be.
Herion addicts, can inject in comfort. All thanks to Nicola and her Herion addicts first approach to tax payers money.
Brian you are correct.
There has to be public consent for joining. I don’t know why the SNP keep persisting on linking our independence to it.
They really need to spend less time over a ref that’s compulsory & concentrate on securing the one they had a mandate for.
They’re just kicking the can because Scotland is nowhere near ready for Indy OR an EU referendum.
Heroin addicts First in Scotland. That’s the voice of the SNP.
Geri,
I doubt that you’d have the courage to take 33 men onto an objective, across a billiard table flat desert, taking strike from weapons over the frontal arc of your vehicle, and then get out and fight through a position.
And I’m certain that my soldiers, sensible and serious men, mostly sober except at weekends, would have any truck with unintelligent screaming harridans such as yourself.
Why not take yourself back to your addled drug den, or the corner behind the bins where you normally sleep. Did a cat piss in your ear last night?
Confused LOL
£200k on flowers – bargain.
The Tories idea of work paying is a zero hours job earning just enough (if the supervisor takes you back the next day) for a bag of porridge. It lasts a whole month if they eek it out wisely.
If they have a mobile phone, needed for the zero hours call, that’s proof they’re earning plenty.
Anyone ever watched I, Daniel Blake? It’s tragic.
Meanwhile Westminsters lavish menu’s continue & Downing Streets Bollinger continues to flow..
David
They are proven to work. It’s not just addicts shooting up. It’s a rehabilitation service too.
I wouldn’t have put it next to a supermarket tho but I guess it depends on access. No point having it somewhere the back of beyond either if ppl can’t get to it.
The riots in Dublin tonight are very unexpected. I thought we’d see that on the steets of Britain. Never Dublin.
Especially the diaspora of the Irish across the world.
I suppose it’s all to do with the government lying to them. They lied about the terrorist attack because reports say he was an Algerian Muslim.
Sadly. We’ve also got a white hating first minister in Scotland. That is Africa first. Heroin addicts First. The false green agenda first. Scotland last. And white men shit on his shoe.
We need to sack out government here. Immediately. I’m fed up with them.
I’ve heard of the Argyll’s Tour of NI.
Their feats of shoplifting have passed into legend..
It’s on Hunter Street next to Morrisons.
The new £2 million shooting alley. I wonder where they’ll go after they shoot up?
What will they do after they intoxicate themselves with heroin. Lie on a couch and have a nurse look after them? They’ll all come to congregate and have one big party!
Someone get the bevvy in from Morrisons. Quick!
It’s going to be mental to see the safe consumption room in operation. They’ll be people going for a booze run before 10pm!
They’ll be nurses from the NHS pouring the drinks. Will the NHS nurses help them jag safely?
Will it become a buyers market for all of the illegal street drugs?
I don’t think they’ve thought this through.
They name the consumption room, call it Dorothy Veins!
Drug addicts. Dealers and desperate shores. To have everyone all in the one place. Is really white special.
10 smack bag, happy hour. Anything goes! Covid Booster. Nicola Sturgeon special. Anything goes down at Dorothy Veins, next to Morrisons for the booze run!
Watch you don’t drop the needles or drugs now. There could be children about.
Covid was a bad flu but that was it. For the first time in history people were classed as Covid deaths just because of some plastic test kit. Over 90pc of covid deaths involved people who had other serious health conditions. Over 70pc of covid deaths had two or more serious health conditions. These people would die naturally but would not be classed as flu deaths, and yet the rules were changed for covid.
But worldwide governments used the flu to destroy democracy and make themselves and their pals in Big Pharma rich beyond belief. Here in the UK it has been used to destroy the NHS.
Sweden had a much more sensible approach. Or even Belarus who just got on as usual and hasn’t wrecked its own economy the way the UK has.
Finally, and probably most importantly, it was the Iron Lady and her cabinet who took elderly care away from the NHS and made it a private operation. That is who is responsible for all the disasters which have befallen the elderly since 1980. And when most of us end up in care and have to sell our homes to pay a grand week for shoddy care by someone who doesn’t even speak English, it is ultimately Thatcher who is to blame.
Anyone else have fond (but distant) memories of going mental,barmy, off our heads, etc without having to worry too much about the implications of wearing an overcoat to bed or COVID belief going viral and the right to life liberty and pursuit of happiness being seconded to the characters* negotiating nurse ratchet’s request for a pay rise.
*Characters who, presumably, are not that far removed from the ones that managed to (selectively?) negotiate roaming tarrifs 10 to 11000 times more punitive than those currently available to the average 12 year old.
Maxxmacc
So true about Thatcher.
She destroyed everything & handed it to the markets.
She broke the NHS & franchised it out under her trusts.
The health secretary in England & Wales is no longer *legally* responsible to make sure every citizen has healthcare. People can fall through the cracks & the Tories don’t care.
Over 70% of tendering goes to private firms like Virgin/Atos. England pays £10 per item prescription & up to £10/20 for a GP appointment. Tories are pushing self funding. People can wait for the NHS or go direct through NHS to a private firm fast tracking care. Radiation treatment £10k up on their websites. In the same hospital & the same machines their taxes already paid for.
Scotland abandoned that idiocy under Devo & got rid of Thatchers trusts & returned to a free cooperative public NHS where our health secretary IS legally responsible.
The Tories despise free health care & are destroying it by the boiling frog method & have been for decades with very little notice because the media aren’t at the wheel. They’re only interested in immigrants & Muslims.
The health of Nations publishes all the steps the Tories have used to pick off & dismantle from within until ppl are driven into private healthcare.
That’s why it rips my knitting that yoons still squawk that health care is devolved, therefore fully protected & nothing to worry about, when it is no such thing. When Tories slash their NHS budget they slash ours too. Tories could end the budget overnight & Scotland is up shit street without a paddle & an NHS & this has been common knowledge since 2014 indyref.
A bit like Sunak during COVID over Furlough – his answer to Scotland was to fck off. He told Scotgov to fund it themselves. Brilliant advice in the middle of a pandemic when it was the law to remain closed & we don’t have a treasury at our arse.
Elderly care is just non existent. The Tories are only interested in how much their property is worth & what they can fleece from them.
I expect that’s why all the pensioners are flocking to Scotland. Free prescriptions, free eye & dental care & elderly care. £400 million mitigation against Tory policies only for the eejits to still vote Tory when they get here..
The only way we’ll retain a free health service is becoming independent. Our own money, our own decisions, our own spending choices & our own immigration to help staff it.
Pocket money can’t fund everything.
David Hannah says:
23 November, 2023 at 2:31 pm
Sturgeon lacks compassion. She’s a murderer. She’s a luty letby type killer of a politican. I hope she rots in hell.
So you think LL is guilty?
I wouldn’t trust the legal system, the medical experts, or the senior doctors on that. That ward was contaminated with sewage. Check out what the hospital handyman / plumbers evidence..
Great news in Alex Salmond suing the Scottish Government for the false charges and persecution set against him.
He is due Millions for this!
I also ponder if the timing was to influence many SNP supporters to look for a real independence party at the forthcoming elections.
The actions of SNP leaders the police and crown prosecution were unjust and wasted millions in the public purse.
There will be many facts brought to bare that will expose the corruption of this cabal.
@Maxxmacc says:24 November, 2023 at 1:08 am
Covid was a bad flu but that was it
So glad somebody else noticed.
Read some of the recent posts on here and you will see that even though the posters lived through the Covid Years, they have not a scooby about what it was, how it spread and how little a risk it posed to most people.
Covid’s still out there now, but you hardly ever see a face mask, yet your average poster is unable to join the dots.
Busy places with poor ventilation are rammed, yet your average poster is unable to join the dots on that one either.
The figures for countries that locked down and those that didn’t are in, there is no correlation between lockdowns and Covid spread, yet posters just can’t stop greetin that we didn’t lock down earlier, harder, longer, etc.
And the enormous fact that never gets a mention. Hundreds of millions of third-world inhabitants – no lockdowns, no PPE, no vaccinations, SFA in fact, doing just fine on Covid, but trashed because of the first world’s destruction of the world economy, to “fight” Covid.
@Confused says:23 November, 2023 at 11:35 pm
Cluck cluck cluck.
been catching up with that tory cunts autumn statement, full on vicious
Bwak! Cluck cluck cluck.
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
Aye, confused, pensions triple lock retained, and as much tax cuts as can be generated given the difficult economic situation right now.
Oh, nearly forgot, and minimum wage increased.
It’s like some macabre horror from the worst excesses of the Third Reich, so it is.
Geri
You’re not fooling anybody with your constantly repeated denials of the plain and simple fact that the SNP intend to automatically take Scotland into the EU if we ever become independent while on their watch.
Your denials are just reinforcing the impression you give of being as deluded as you are demented.
Geri says:
24 November, 2023 at 4:51 am
“So true about Thatcher.”
Yes, imperial elites imposed English ‘values’, which are alien to other peoples, and with this comes a ‘dominated consciousness’. As Paulo Freire wrote:
“In general, a dominated consciousness which has not yet perceived a limit-situation in its totality (e.g. the ‘union’ as ever tightening ‘colonial corset’ facilitated by complicit actors) apprehends only its epiphenomena and transfers to the latter the inhibiting force which is the property of the limit-situation. When people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality.”
Anyone got any ideas as to what a “fully funded” NHS would cost iScotland? And whether that figure is sustainable, given poor health generally, and a calamitous demographic of declining native birth rates which means that the future is either increased immigration, increased taxation, or collapse.
That’s the reality.
The U.K., whether as an entity or as four separate nations, needs to get rid of the NHS. Far from being the envy of the world (here’s a clue: no other country has copied it), the NHS is an intolerable burden on national life. We need to copy the successful models of places like Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, and other countries and have an insurance-based system.
Truly a crime against humanity, decisions propelled by ignorance, greed and false teaching and the get away with it. Not the National Health Service but the National Harm Service
Sincerely Alison, thank you so much .
Your story is not uncommon but reminds me that vast majority of humankind are trying to help their surroundings.
The computer modelling of human behaviour has long operated on the understanding that just a tiny number can initiate much harm on the majority. Usually call themselves managers and wear suits.
Good on Alex taking them to court.
These people are not fit fir public office
I note I am being ‘attacked’ by two of ‘Wings’ heavyweight contributors Geri and James.
I will repeat, once more, that the total spending for the SNHS is set 100% by the Scottish Government, not by Westminster. You both seem to be confused by spending versus budget. No surprises there.
Geri then goes off on his usual rant which, in all honesty, is not worth even attempting to respond to, other than to say, that both you and the other galloot have belatedly realised that this money thing has some relevance after all.
I apologise for calling you ‘heavyweights’ earlier. Flyweight is more appropriate.
@AScotAbroad
“the NHS is an intolerable burden on national life. We need to copy”
Wrong. So says the KingsFund.
“The UK performs well on protecting people from some of the financial costs of ill health, but lags behind its peers on important health care outcomes, including life expectancy and deaths. The latter could have been avoided through timely and effective health care, and public health and preventive services.
There is little evidence that one particular ‘type’ of health care system or model of health care funding produces systematically better results than another. Countries predominantly try to achieve better health outcomes by improving their existing model of health care, rather than by adopting a radically different model.”
Geri 4.51.am.
Hi Geri. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re often right in what you say. Don’t be put off by someone else’s opinion.
YAY ! Off topic, I know, however how great is it that, as Effigy pointed out, Mr Salmond is taking action against the devolved administration !
Let’s hope that this may be the start of the truth emerging and that many a household is a bit more apprehensive this morning.
@A Scot Abroad says:24 November, 2023 at 8:34 am
a calamitous demographic of declining native birth rates which means that the future is either increased immigration, increased taxation, or collapse.
That’s the reality
Actually, I think we are well on course for all three.
Increased immigration: New figures out, nearly three quarters of a million last year. Probably in excess of half a mill next year. All bets off when the climate collapses, the war(s) really kick off, or the religion of peace finally achieves critical mass.
Increased taxation: Baked in when Labour take over, which itself looks to be baked in.
Collapse: The unsustainable aspect of the NHS that is seldom mentioned is that it’s the older, indigenous Brits that put by far the highest demands on the NHS, and that imbalance only continues to grow worse, because of our demographics.
Yet the taxpayers who are funding it all are increasingly immigrants.
At some point, the immigrants will simply stop voting for the parties who bleed them dry to support the grandparents of what is to them a foreign ethnic group. And at that point, down comes the entire house of cards.
Aye Alison, a very hard read indeed. Thank you and your colleagues for your and their dedication to the job.
Crash, and I was back there in 2020, sitting in the care home garden looking in and trying to talk through glass to celebrate my (hard of hearing) father in law’s 100 birthday. No celebration allowed, no other family members. The highlight was a cake the staff had made. Mrs Dram sobbed all the way back home. It was awful.
The care home lost enough people through COVID that they cleared an entire floor and used that floor for new intakes from hospitals (a kind of isolation ward so to speak).
Then he got his second COVID Jab and his decline began. He just faded away quite rapidly. On the night he died, we still had to be tested before being admitted, he had gone before we got there, we knew that. In the meantime the staff had laid him out complete with a bottle of his beloved whisky beside him. The kindness they showed to us that night still lives with me.
And we still miss him. Bloody COVID.
Thanks again Alison.
@Alf Baird says:24 November, 2023 at 8:22 am
apprehends only its epiphenomena and transfers to the latter the inhibiting force which is the property of the limit-situation
Erm … I’m thinking that fails the T shirt test, other than maybes in a techy student union.
alien to other peoples
Aye, ah ken fit ye mean.
link to bbc.co.uk
Oh this is fantastic news. Alex Salmond is sueing the government.
Dear Leslie Evans.
Dorothy Stain. Liz Lloyd. Nicola Sturgeon. Lady Doughball and James Wolfe. The lot of you are corrupt as fuck!
We’ve had enough of you lot. You’re all disgusting people.
Justice for Alex Salmond.
Big Eck. With you all the way. A beautiful start to the day. We need to take this government down. We need restore trust in Scotland. We Alex Salmond back. He’s my leader. He’s always been the leader.
God bless big Eck. What a guy. Incredible.
@ sam says:24 November, 2023 at 10:00 am
lags behind its peers on important health care outcomes, including life expectancy and deaths
Woohoo, we’re mostly gonna die sooner, but check out our ideological purity. Aint that more than enough compensation?
The latter could have been avoided through timely and effective health care, and public health and preventive services
AKA throwing even more money at the problem.
And that’s particularly innarestin coming from Sam. Only a day or so since he was promoting the spending of £1.8 trillion on the grifters and chancers self-id-ing as descendants of slaves.
Got to hand it Sam and his fellow-thinkers, when it comes to spending other people’s money they are without peer.
Two big political stories today:
1. Dame Jackie Baillie is named Scottish Politician of the Year by The Herald. Well, in a poor year, somebody had to get it, but to give it to such a two-faced liar, whows how far that rag has fallen.
2. Wee Eck is finally going to sue the Scottish Government. I wonder what the odds are on Lady Dorian being named as the presiding judge. After all, The Establishment cannot allow Eck to win.
So, Nigel Farage and Nigel Farage, sorry, A Twat Abroad and Daily Mail Main, in between praising the Tories are back on form agreeing with each other that the NHS is unsustainable and needs to be privatised – despite the incredible article posted above. (We see you). A right couple of Jeremy Hunts!
Oh and, Geri, keep up the good work – Chas and his rag tag band of misfit Yoons, blinking in the light every day after emerging from beneath their collective stones, can’t stand being shot down in flames by the truth. (GIRFUY).
The cure is to tackle poverty & end poor outcomes from even starting in the first place. The NHS is a success story if the Tories would stop draining it with irrelevant shite like fat cat salaries for mediocre mis management.
Half the admissions are caused by poverty.
Poverty kills & causes so many social problems & poor health & it never breaks the cycle.
Work that pays & a free education will set ppl free more than zero hours & universal credit top ups will.
Happy citizens in a happy workplace are more healthier & productive.
Greed is the root of all evil & the Tories excel at it. They asset strip everything to the bare bones.
In an energy rich country they could start with free winter heating for pensioners – that would surely cut the admissions for cold related admissions. Pneumonia, hypothermia so they don’t end up in hospital in the first place.
Same with free prescriptions – in England pensioners start doctoring their prescriptions because they can’t afford everything they’ve been prescribed leading to more admissions.
Fck big business & get them to pay people a real living wage. End so called ‘top ups’ from multi nationals. WTF should the government be topping up anyone’s wages when they are making billions in profits & pay fck all tax towards services?
Children living in poverty would cut further admissions.
As would drug & alcohol abuse to escape the shit life ppl have.
Free education unlocks ppls potential. Not £10k fees & a sea of debts before they’re even 20.
This would also cure the reliance on immigration..there’s one for the racists to get behind.
As for the notion of insurance based healthcare – that’s another idiocy. Hundreds of thousands in fees to have any kind of treatment. & we’re dealing with Tories here – it’d go the same way as the £350 million a week to the NHS. Aye right – it’d go into someone’s back pocket & the sick would be denied treatment.
The NHS & Schools are flooded with irrelevant shite that doesn’t enrich anyone’s life. In 5 yrs WTAF benefit will lessons on anal sex & transgender shite have to do with a future workforce? Same with NHS *training* on how to support females giving birth through their imaginary penis FFS!
OT but has anyone an explanation as to the riots in Dublin? I can understand folk being shocked and disgusted but I don’t understand the mob turning against the police.
Re Alex Salmond
I dunno why the BBC is claiming it’s new. This has been on the cards for at least a year. It’s only now that it’s reached a court date. Let’s all hope it buries the SNP by Christmas.
I read elsewhere there’s not going to be any redactions either. Good news if it’s true. At least they’ll be in possession of ALL the facts.
Wishing him the best of luck but this will be an excellent test for the courts to either redeem themselves or prove they’re complicit. He could’ve easily been sent to jail on false charges & I hope that is taken into account & some arrests are made for perjury.
Leslie Evans is a Westminster employee. I’m sure the parasites will be out to protect her cause it was no doubt under their instructions that she launched this witch-hunt to get rid of him once & for all.
Horrible experience shared across much of the NHS. I have had former colleagues in tears from obvious post traumatic stress.
Management across the board must shoulder the blame. They did not have to care personally for those dying. It was more vital to protect their jobs and toe the line with their political masters. Those degrees of separation from the scenes of death allowed them to do just that.
The current inquiry illustrates just that.
May you find peace Allison. You did your very best and I admire you very much for so doing. Heroic is the only word I can think of. Perhaps it’s not how you feel, but it’s what you are.
Good to see so many working epidemiologists and medical historians commenting on this thread.
@Phil M
Most of them have a degree in stupidity.
At last! The moment has come to lance the boil. It has taken some time, but Alex. is now going to set matters right and enable Scotland to be free from the millstone Sturgeon hung round the neck of the Scottish people. Slowly slowly catchee monkey. Or in this case, a whole damn tribe of monkeys.
My only concern is that the SNP will pay any price to cover up the identities of the false accusers and the conspirators. Three million pounds would let them off the hook lightly for the wrong they did.
Nothing less than full disclosure of all those involved as well as a financial penalty which will sink for good the SNP in its present incarnation.
Let the shock waves roll out, and sound doom to Sturgeon and her mates. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It is no more than you deserve.
Quotes from the BBC:
‘The “extraordinary outbreak of violence” had come after “hateful assumptions” were made based on material circulating online in the wake of the stabbings, he added.
It is understood that included false claims that the attacker was a foreign national.
Sources have indicated to the BBC that the man suspected of carrying out the attack is an Irish citizen’
Looks like they have the perp in custody, so we will just have to wait until he is charged.
Two of the five people injured in the stabbings outside the city centre school, one of them a 5 YO, are still critically ill.
Back in 2007, I was part of a group of ordinary people concerned about the risk of a pandemic. As part of our activities we reviewed the plans of our countries. I and a friend were even able to go to a review panel of doctors, care home workers, utility planners and various other infrastructure people. The plans were made under Labour and the SNP. The buzz word for the plans was ‘business as usual. You may still be able to find them. There were to be no lock downs, no testing, no serious attempt to do anything but bury the dead. Sending the elderly out of hospital was part of those plans. The ultimately unused Nightingale hospitals were there. They were planning for a pandemic with up to 2.5% fatality and a disease that affects the very young as badly as the very old.
We argued that the plans didn’t suit our modern society and that death on a large scale wouldn’t be met with stoicism. Nobody listened.
And in other news …
Cease fire in place, humanitarian aid convoys rolling.
Total silence from the usual suspects.
I guess they might surface later to proclaim it’s the wrong kind of cease fire, the aid is not ideologically pure, or some such moonhowling lunacy.
Ah weel, if they dae, Indy support will still flatline at 45%, just as it has for the last decade.
C’moan James, ca somebody a hunt. That’ll nudge the dial, eh?
@Dorothy Devine
Homelessness and overcrowding amongst the Irish people, the net target for a decade immigration wise reached in three years with a gay Green minister sending out the message in multiple languages that if you come to Ireland from anywhere in the world you will have your own front door in six weeks.
A nurse was murdered by an immigrant, her throat cut whilst she was out jogging and two gay men were decapitated by an immigrant who said that he would have continued to murder gay men. Sinn Fein has turned on its own people same as the SNP whilst the protests in favour of increased immigration look like exactly the same group of people who show up at the ones in Scotland, England and the rest of the West.
Complaining about immigrants shagging or stabbing your children is far Right according to the political, media and academic classes and people have had their fill of it.
Everyone involved in the Salmond conspiracy is the lowest of the low.
Lady Doughball knows that Woman H is a perjurer who tried to lead the jury in her court, reprimanded 4 times.
Then she gave her lifelong anonymity.
Lady Doughball. Up to her neck in corruption.
The Salmond conspirators are unhinged. They’ve poisoned our once competent and successful country with the sleeze, scheming and corruption.
The small cabal around Nicola Sturgeon. You all know who you are. And so do we.
I have took a few days to respond to this blog, because there are two sides to every story,
While I have full sympathy with the manner in Which medical staff were treated, it was appalling the way families were also treated,
A nurse, carer or doctor may feel grieved when they loose a long term resident patient that they know reasonably well,
A son or daughter or mother or father has spent a longer loving period of time with that patient with a closer connection for most as family members they grew up with, than perhaps a few years years in NHS or Private care homes, and it trebles the guilt of some of these families, that the were not allowed to be there for family without saying good bye,
That all evidence of how their loved ones had actually died, and the cause quickly hidden by cemations.
I lost many three members of family in Care homes, two of which died within a few weeks of entering care homes suddenly,
There was no inquiries into the sudden deaths then or now, and the reasons brushed under the governments decisions,
No one knows if their families all had the caring treatment that Alison Speed mentions,
They do not know if physical abuse, or murder or sexual abuse was suffered by their loved ones before passing away.
Old people are a profit or loss scheme to the managers and corporations, other wise they would not be in the business.
For all a relative knew, the family member they had last exchanged a smile with, could have been murdered through wrong medication, lack of Medical or personal support,
I have full sympathy with the doctors and nurses carers that did do there work with due care to their patients, medically, but emotionally it was harder, because a family grieves for longer with no answers under the method their loved one passed away with no Answers under the Covid policies, and a appalling lack of empathy or sympathy at the briefest of self distancing funerals.
There are alway two sides to every story and the relations to those whom suddenly died in care homes and hospitals.
They will never have a post mortum or inquiry for how their reletive spent their last days or hours in some of these places that put profit and turnover before their loved family members.
In total between my spouse and myself we lost four family members suddenly during Covid, we have know way of knowing why or how they died.
A excellent example in my family was a member that had gangarine as cause of death on medical certificate but was being put down for cremation burial as a Covid death,
we fought.that lie and deceit from the officials
And that is the problem here,
The same may have happened to other patients in the care system, during Covid, some may have been euthenised in more disreputable premises,
I am a older generation, and perhaps more in tune with the medical world than most, as my father was a medic in the army, my sister in law was actually a Sister of a hospital ward, at a time when they were the boss over everyone and everything to make sure all was ran efficient and clean to the last detail,
My daughter in law and My own sister were Carers during the Covid period,
The result is that I am well aware how genuine carers and nurse were treated so badly but also very much aware how the families of those that died will never have an true inquiry as to the last days of their loved ones life actually ended.
Full support for Alex Salmond! We need to expose the corruption, deceit, lies, sexual deviance and fraud that Sturgeon & Murrell spread like a cancer across Scotland. Convictions and jail sentences must be secured.
Aw, Johnny, did ah hurt your wee feelings? Bless.
James
Cheers!
The NHS doesn’t need privatised.
It needs to get back to basics.
Accident, emergency, life threatening. Everyone is covered.
Not a personal wish list of gastric bands, late terminations bigger boobs and the latest GRR ransom note of facial feminisation, cotton wool care, bottom surgery with free lifetime supply of drugs & removal of healthy breasts.
If they cut all the irrelevant, non life threatening bullshit out there’d be better service & more money for elderly care & mental health.
Same with schools.
Cut out the hours wasted on gender bullshit that benefits no one in the grand scheme of things or anyone’s chances at a real job. Life skills, numeracy, languages & allowing individual expression instead of a dumbed down set menu that doesn’t fit all. If it doesn’t educate a life skill then bin it. It doesn’t make the grade.
& Scrap tuition fees. Talent is turned away because they can’t commit to a life of debt.
Tories won’t ever do it tho. Them & their fat cat mates don’t get rich when things are tickety boo. So they continually waste copious amounts on reorganising & shuffling about bad management on eye watering salaries while dumbing down the public into thinking they need self funded private healthcare cause the NHS is in crisis & judging by the yappers on here we can see it works on the dumb.
It’d just be another con. Insurance would use that we’ll known clause *that’s not covered* that we all know they pull even now on a cat or dog!
Work that pays could end half of the NHS problems.
In some European countries students look after the elderly with visits in return for free tuition. That could also help the elderly live in their own home for longer & free up some elderly care & relieve bed blocking.
Better telly too. I’d put money on this Gender shite being traced to RuPauls drag race shit programming along with the benefit street/poverty porn TV shows.
Now the studies coming out are suggesting that lockdown were not the answer,
That two of the esseintials to fight Covid was vitamin D from the sun and heathy body excercise out doors,
And masks made you recycle the old oxygen you breathed as spent oxygen, back into your own lungs.
Making it a secondary poorer quality oxygen you kept breathing for nearly two years. Instead of fresh purer air.
The elite were still partying, traveling all over the world to All the non elected meetings that run the our goverments from afar, and going aboard for holidays,
Just as they still do for Climate change.
The psychological damage done to society and the distrust it built up between doctors, nurses, hospitals and care homes will take years to mend, especially as doctors were not prioritisng other serious illnesses that also caused deaths closing most patients out of the NHS system.
Kidney patients cancer patient and much needed operations,
It was chaos and doctors should have raised their concerns that no one patient or their death was more important than the another,
But I suppose if doctors got paid for vaccinating it returns back to profit margins,
Aw James, do I keep posting facts?
The truth is liberating though – you should try it. Nothing else is going to set Scotland free.
Dorothy Devine says:
24 November, 2023 at 10:52 am
OT but has anyone an explanation as to the riots in Dublin? I can understand folk being shocked and disgusted but I don’t understand the mob turning against the police.
Ireland has suffered terribly from immigration (legal and ‘refugees’). It’s turned Dublin into a foreign city with all the usual problems and unpleasantries you never had to worry about in the 80’s. The Irish Central Bank openly admits its policy is open borders to keep Irish wages low. This obviously keeps the cost of living high, because migrants need housing and many other expensive services in limited supply.
This is a policy that makes the top 1% in Ireland richer at the expense of everyone else, except the new arrivals who keep arriving every day. It’s a recipe for conflict.
Media censorship is just as strict there as it is here. So while you probably never heard about the Glasgow grooming gangs where as many as 50 asylum seekers were believed to have been involved in one example (not as important as I’m A Celebrity though), there have been plenty of cases of Irish children being victimised, stabbed or something equally horrible.
They can’t sweep it all under the carpet forever, and maybe that carpet is too threadbare to hide much in 2023. That’s why there’s anger.
The Irish want to decolonise their wee bit hill and glen of a country before it’s too late for Irish children to have their own country. You would think their politicians might be happy to seek their votes, but they’re not. Sinn Fein has been turned into a woke open borders party, just like the SNP. All the other Irish political parties have teamed up against the Irish people.
Sound familiar?
Their Vichy government run by foreigners has declared war on the Paddies, with the full weight of the corporate media providing whatever lies and distractions are required to support the regime in this challenging time.
You will witness fiery-but-mostly-peaceful Irish nationalism being painted as the second coming of Adolf O’Hitler by people who’ve spent over a month trying to persuade you it’s OK for Hamas to do some light kidnapping and murdering.
The same sordid drama will happen to Scotland, where Scots are being steadily phased out while we in BTL land argue with each other about Fanon, men in frocks, global warming, and showing John Main the money.
The police exist to serve the people in power and enforce the status quo through violence when necessary. That’s why the Irish intifada is fighting them.
Merganser says:
24 November, 2023 at 11:21 am
Let the shock waves roll out, and sound doom to Sturgeon and her mates. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It is no more than you deserve…
Careful with your words there Merganser, don’t forget Mark Hirst faced criminal prosecution for merely suggesting the Alphabetties “would reap the whirlwind”, or everyday words to that effect.
He was acquitted of course, but a lot like Salmond, the conniving bastards took him all the way before the Sheriff Court threw it out as having no case to answer. All that stress and stigma for months, and just out of sheer badness.
Maybe the fragile wee cretins have learned their lesson, but you know what they’re like… if there’s some shit to stir…. I never thought in a million years they’d get away with jailing Craig Murray, but all these unhinged and vindictive wee fkrs are still in their posts.
@Geri says:24 November, 2023 at 12:09 pm
Better telly too
Hear hear!
I also think supermarkets should sell hard-boiled eggs. It’s unreasonable to expect ordinary people to be able to boil them, time them, etc. etc. Then there’s the pan to wash up.
But the Tories won’t allow it – no profit in it for them!
Knives out!
link to bbc.com
Go get the bastards!
Covid was a bad flu but that was it
So says the Resident Bully. Not only is it untrue but the lie is given to it by Alison Speed
He said “not one single person has been held accountable” for the botched handling of the harassment inquiry, which he said a Court of Session judge described as unlawful, unfair and tainted by apparent bias.
“With this court action, that evasion of responsibility ends,” Mr Salmond said.
I love him man. We need our journalists inside the court of Session.
We know Lady Dorian did to Craig Murray.
She jailed him.
We know the twin roles of the Crown office. And Nicola Sturgeon’s chosen cabinet minister. That is the biggest built in corruption our country has ever seen.
And then Fabiani and James Wolfe censored our parliament from the hearing the truth.
Now they protect the SNP. That’s all they are good for. Bring down the Perverts in the Scottish Government. And all their woke pish. Save Grangemouth. Bring back Alex Salmond. Scotland needs him more than ever.
In my opinion Dorothy Bain will protect Sturgeon in the covid inquiry. Their secretive dealings are unbelievable. Their contempt for the laws of the land is there for all to see.
And now they want to abolish juries. We know Scotland’s – in my opinion – corrupt judge lady Dorian wants to abolish juries. And then gives rapists convicted by juries freedom. She should be sacked. She’s up to her neck in all this.
They have destroyed the reputation of Scotland’s institutions. And they’ve all helped to sabotage independence.
@Red says:24 November, 2023 at 12:23 pm
Great post.
showing John Main the money
If only, Red, if only.
But then if the money had been shown, not just to me but to all the other Sovereign Scots, Indy support wouldn’t have been flatlined at 45% for the past decade.
Frontier Economics did calculations of the money saved by addressing health inequalities.
The basis of the calculation was the savings to be made by reduced welfare payments to a more healthy society. In addition, more revenue would be raised by the longer years of work done by a more healthy population.
No account was made of the savings to be had in expenditure on the NHS by having a more healthy society.
This calculation was made for the Marmot Report 2010 for the UK government and accepted in full by that government. At once it cut the ground from under Marmot by passing responsibility to local government while beginning to reduce public spending.
In making the calculation Frontier Economics assumed that the UK could improve public health to the level enjoyed by the richest decile of population.
Of course, this is unlikely ever to happen but the purpose was to illustrate that many billions can be saved by reducing health inequalities.
It is impossible to separate the economy from society at large.
Prejudice and ignorance won’t take you far in public health
@sam says:24 November, 2023 at 12:30 pm
You need to read Alison Speed’s article again. There’s details in there that back up what I write and refute what you write.
Once the penny has dropped, take some time out to consider if you have the intellectual heft to contribute meaningfully on here. Or you could apologise for getting it wrong.
Or maybes trace your family tree. See if you are in line for a share of the £1.8 trillion that was exciting you yesterday. It’s a long shot, but like you, I’m thinking it’s worth the grift if it pays off.
I can send you details of a boy who does a very convincing parchment, but it’s gonna cost you, and he’s gonna do mine first.
Police said the unrest was driven by a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology” and warned against “misinformation”.
Al Jazeera reporting on the Dublin incident
This one’s for you and your mates, little Johnny;
http://www.dailymailheadlinegenerator.com
robertknight @ 12.28.
Amen to that. I wonder if this was what forced Sturgeon to quit and leave Humza in the hot seat.
I see that Alex has got Gordon Dangerfield as his solicitor. That might explain why Gordon has been quiet on his blog recently. He’s been very busy on Alex’s case it seems.
The sword of Damocles is in full view over the SNP. They are finished and we need to regroup quickly to save the dream.
To think that all their tre4chery resulted only in advancement and financial reward. Until now when they are about to find out the price they are going to pay.
They must be running around like headless chickens, or looking for excuses to visit China, with this news.
The day of reckoning is indeed coming for them. The sooner the better, but I will enjoy their anguish as they wait for the day to arrive. Sweet revenge for their despicable behaviour.
What was the statistics for (influenza deaths during) the Covid period, compared to infuenza deaths years prior to the Covid virus.
Have the been amalgamated with each other?
I expect there will be some who will be annoyed at what I’m going to say but I’m past giving a shit, those who own care homes do so for one reason, to make money, yes there might be one in 50 who offer good care but the majority is as described by the writer of this post, it’s all about profit, I not only worked in a care home I lived in one which was private and had a high rating for good care with the authorities, I wouldn’t have let the majority of those carers look after my dog.
Cheap food and and an absolute lack of cleanliness and hygiene, they employed an old man as cleaner for a home with 28 rooms, I won’t get into everything else that was wrong in that place other than I got out of there for my mental health, did I make complaints? you bet I did, did anything come from them? No.
The other was a council run care home where my father was placed, I believed this to be one of the good homes, wrong, I’m not going to get into that either because living with the fact that this is where my fathers life ended torments me to this day and will till I die.
Now “covid” is where I suspect many will disagree with me, like I said I’m past giving a shit,
Yes many died during covid but very few actually died from covid, what they did die of was the absence of proper care whilst suffering from lung infections and pneumonia whilst being told there was no treatment, can you believe that? there is much evidence now which can’t be disputed that lack of proper treatment for respiratory infection and the “covid” rules such as lockdown, isolation, inappropriate mask wearing caused more deaths than any virus ever could.
Between 11.000 and 15.000 people die every year in the UK alone from flu, this has been recorded as high as 25.000 during a particularly virulent strain and that was during the days when actually treated people who ended up with respiratory infection.
What were we told during “covid” if you test positive stay at home for 10 days and only seek help when you can’t breathe.
At Christmas 2019 both myself and husband had really bad colds, mines was much milder but he was quite unwell for almost two weeks, I guess had we had the “covid” tests then we’d have tested positive, the reason I’m going into this so much is because in 2018 I had a bad flu which then turned into pneumonia, I’m elderly and have COPD, my doctor gave me steroids and antibiotics but she actually wanted me to go into hospital, I didn’t and I fully recovered (albeit it took a year to do so) with the medication, she told me that in future at the first sign of chest infection make sure I got checked out by doctor and not to leave it to go deeper into the lungs.
Now I wonder how I would have faired had I been told there was no treatment and to stay at home for 10 days until I couldn’t breathe, I’ll tell you what I believe, I wouldn’t be here today.
I never took any of the “covid” vaccines much to the horror of my family, I firmly believed by the time the vaccines became available that there was nothing about the whole “covid” narrative that made any sense to me, My husband had his first jab and was knocked off his feet for over a week then unbelievably to me took the second one, he’s never been quite the same since but thankfully due to research he decided he would take no more, I’m not an anti-vaxxer or to be precise I wasn’t then I just chose not to take these vaccines, I can say heart on heart I am an anti-vaxxer now and have no shame in admitting that.
So for me in my honest opinion our care homes are an absolute disgrace and the majority are not fit for purpose, the “covid” protocols killed more people than the virus which I’ve never doubted existed and believe it was a particularly virulent strain but it should only have been the vulnerable who needed protection along with proper care and attention.
Society should never have been locked down and the effects of these damaging and crazy protocols will be felt for years to come.
The only “pandemic” we had was a PCR pandemic.
Sam @12:30
Are you talking mass formation psychosis, ritual humiliation & theft of the white house?
Can’t say I saw any of that in the article – unless you’re referring to her admition that she’ll never forgive COVID deniers (aka those who remained sane) and claiming it as one of the features the narrative was designed to bring about.
Grateful for your clarification(s)
@james Che
Here is the WHO flu data chart.
link to app.powerbi.com
Use the ‘by date ‘ button to add previous years to the graph.
John Main @12:55
Worth the grift if it pays off..
Timely moment to remember the various interests that were able to join the Dos Santos/ Miller Brexit case and investigate the possibility of us all piggy backing the Salmond case for our £millions in lost earnings and opportunity too 🙂
@sam says:24 November, 2023 at 12:49 pm
No account was made of the savings to be had in expenditure on the NHS by having a more healthy society
That’s because there won’t be any.
The founders of the NHS had the belief that with medical treatment for all ailments free on demand to all, illness and sickness would eventually be drastically reduced, and that the yearly costs of the NHS would therefore reduce over time.
As we all know, they were wrong.
Soz, as all apart from Sam and a few others know, they were wrong.
“Covid was a bad flu but that was it
So glad somebody else noticed.”
link to ft.com
1 million long covid sufferers.
Just under 227,000 people died in the UK with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate.
James Che
If you really want to get a handle on the Covid Years, then the excess deaths figures are the way to do it.
These are easy enough to find. Key facts are:
The numbers attributed to Covid are greatly exaggerated. During many months, we are expected to believe that cancer, heart disease, flu, etc. stopped killing people, so that they could die from Covid instead.
The numbers attributed to the overreaction to Covid are under represented. Critical treatments for serious diseases ground to a halt, in some cases for years, and the backlogs for treatment remain at record levels. People are dying as a result. What goes down on the death certs is “cancer” or whatever, not “delayed treatment for what would in normal times have been curable early stage cancer”.
Anyhoo, somebody will pop up in a mo to claim Covid is “deadly”. That person will probably not have been vaccinated this year, wear no mask, never hand sanitise, and cheerfully mingle with strangers on buses, etc. yet claim to not believe in the “herd immunity” they bleeding obviously enjoy, along with just about everybody else.
Don’t get me started on the people who vaccinated kids with experimental substances and forced babies to wear masks!
It’s been known for centuries (except in dark corners online) that poverty causes poor health.Reduce poverty and health improves.Public health across the world knows this. But not the ignorant with prejudices to press.
link to health.org.uk
“The study linked austerity measures with the deaths of almost 60,000 more people than would be expected in the 4 years following their introduction. It also found that the slowdown in the gradual improvement to life expectancy coincided with the cuts to health and social care spending.
These findings are upsetting, but unfortunately not surprising. The RCP adopted reducing health inequality as one of its priorities for influencing in 2018. Our members were well aware of the growing gap in healthy life expectancy – around 20 years between the poorest and richest areas – and its connection to spending on health and care.
Indeed, we’ve known since at least 1980 (when the Black Report was published by one of my predecessors) that we need to spend more if we want the gap to close. More on health services, yes, but – more importantly – more on public health measures that prevent ill health, on social care that helps older people stay at home and younger people continue working, on housing that doesn’t make people ill, and much more.”
link to indyposterboy.scot
link to indyposterboy.scot
link to indyposterboy.scot
The monthly death data for 2020 suggests that there were excess deaths only in the months that the NHS shut its doors, – excepting December when the experimental jab was rolled out and all the old folks started dying again.
Excess deaths have continued almost every month since, despite allegedly high injection take-up.
Strange.
And what about the spike in miscarriages and still births?
Could it be the jab? Could the jab be long Covid?
Nobody seems to want to look into it.
link to nrscotland.gov.uk
link to indyposterboy.scot
link to indyposterboy.scot
@sam says:24 November, 2023 at 2:10 pm
Just under 227,000 people died in the UK with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate
Aw naw, clincher!
Oh but wait. How many people have died in the UK with flu listed as one of the causes on their death certificates?
Ever, since records began?
But that’s not fair I hear a sheep bleat. You can’t total up all the deaths from flu since the start of record keeping.
Naw? So why you doing exactly that for Covid?
Compare like for like, why don’t you.
As for long Covid. The incidence of people with “long Covid like” symptoms is within statistical equivalence between people who defo have had Covid and people who have never had Covid.
Innarestin, to say the least.
Oh and Sam. I hope you won’t see it as abusive if I point out that your predecessors’ knowledge or ability in a field is not heritable. Soz, but thems the rules in genetics.
Also, correlation does not prove causation. Soz again.
I’m not going to insult you by saying this is primary school stuff, cos it’s not. Secondary school though, defo.
You should have paid more attention when you had the chance.
Robin McAlpine’s blog has an interesting take on the Michael Matheson I-pad incident. He speculates that Mr Matheson was acting under (bad) advice from SG spin-merchants when he spoke.
Which is why he can’t be sacked – other than the original misdemeanour, he’s been doing what his employer told him to do.
link to robinmcalpine.org
I’m not a fan of the EU but if it helps to serve as a stepping-stone to better control of our powers? A truly democratic Scotland will make that decision, not a load of political spivs south of the border. Meanwhile, this is what’s on offer compared to what we currently have:
link to indyposterboy.scot
As you were, Troops. Have a good weekend. 😉
Stoker.
Thanks for those links.
Thanks for the explanation of unrest in Dublin – last time I was there I thought if was a lovely place relatively problem free but that was a long time ago.
“Covid was a bad flu but that was it”
“If you really want to get a handle on the Covid Years, then the excess deaths figures are the way to do it.”
“There were more excess deaths in Britain in 2022 than almost all of the past 70 years. According to an analysis by the Times, more than 50,000 more people died last year than in 2019. Excluding the first two years of the pandemic (2020/21), this was the highest excess death toll since 1951.
Citing data from the statistics offices of the countries of the United Kingdom, the newspaper reported, “Overall the 656,735 UK deaths last year were 51,159 above the pre-Covid five-year average. The figure was exceeded only in four years prior to 1951 since records began 130 years ago.”
link to wsws.org
But what was the cause of those excess deaths in 2022 when omicron and the vaccines were working to reduce deaths?
“Long A&E waits contributed to 23,000 excess deaths in 2022, a study by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has suggested.”
“From the start of the pandemic through to 29 September this year around 204?700 more deaths from all causes were registered than expected, the analysis shows. Of these deaths, 75?600 were in 2020, 56?500 in 2021, 39?400 in 2022, and 33?200 in the first three quarters of 2023, shows the analysis by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ continuous mortality investigation (CMI).1”
Explainer Coronavirus
‘It’s not a bad flu season’ – Covid myths debunked with data
link to ft.com
JOHN BURN-MURDOCH: If anyone says to you that the conditions we’re seeing in England’s hospitals at the moment are no different to what we get in a bad flu season, this video is what you should show them.
Robert @3.16pm.
Thanks for the link.
McAlpine calls Matheson “An Honest Man”
Maybe the penny has begun to drop for McAlpine.
“And I was pretty confident that the independence movement could get its act together and regain momentum fairly quickly. I’m beginning to worry that this SNP team is doing so much damage that I may be wrong and the path back may be become more difficult to navigate.”
No shit Sherlock, whilst the rest of us know the SNP is now a party full grifting careerists, McAlpine isn’t quite sure yet that that’s the case. Talk about flogging a dead horse.
O/T Alex Salmond’s Court litigation case for misfeasance was time barred after six years. Hence he has tabled the case now. The United for Scotland coalition is officially in the bin. He tried hard to get the SNP to the table for a coalition of the willing for Independence. But some in the SNP were never interested in Independence, only the gravy train and imported ideologies. I was expecting Operation Branchform to deliberate this week. The misdemeanor by Jo Farrell has pushed that back. A super Wow moment deserves a clean media slate. It’s imminent though. A much needed shattering of the Status Quo.
I saw online last night as the oppressed Palestinians starve in Gaza, the CEO of the World Food Programme Cindy H. McCain attended a fund raiser (front row seat) to help fund the IDF. She (McCain) should be sacked immediately from the WFP.
link to euromedmonitor.org
Wow. Rob Macalpine latest is a strange one.
Seems to me that when Matheson saw the charges for the data he knew exactly what it was and then dishonestly tried to pass it onto the taxpayers. Honest guy is he Rob? Really?
link to bbc.com
The new woke chief of police doesn’t even live in Scotland. She’s a fucking disgrace. Get to fuck Jo Farrell.
Google the terms «uk» & «decline» and rich pickings are to be had.
The end of the British state few «nationalists» seem prepared for?
The party whose purpose is its termination is more engaged in signalling its pretentious «virtuosity» than making merry hell with those pickings.
Is there a vaxx for sturgeonitis?
Jo Farrell. Only in Scotland to abuse the tax payer. Who the fuck does she think she is? Chauffeured down South?
To think she cheated out many good officers in Scotland of the top job.
Rainbow flags and transgender police officers coming to an old firm game near you. With Jo Farrell’s sexist, racist, homophobic and mysogynistic fairy police force.
She’s corrupt. I call that corruption. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
I wonder if Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were in the back of Joe Farrell’s getaway car. Fleeing from Alex Salmond’s £3 million litigation for their conspiracy.
This whole salmond case is the fault if sturgeon either on the own decisions or as a result of being played. Was she compromised
Excess deaths over the last 4 years seem to be occurring in many countries.
Deaths is, statistically, more likely in jabbed individuals.
– figures are probably even worse because, although jabbed, the victim was not classed as such until 21 days (in Scotland) after injection.
link to expose-news.com
David Hannah @4.07pm.
Jo Farrell refused to question Boris Johnson “special advisor” Dominic Cummings on his jaunt to Barnard Castle during the height of the pandemic, choosing instead to believe his preposterous excuse that he was testing his eye sight by driving there.
Now she’s head of Police Scotland, she’s another Cressida Dick in the making.
I’m sure there must be someone (A Scot) capable of holding the position, but then again Alf Baird’s colonial interpretations of most Scots not holding very prominent positions in colonial Scotland hold true here as well.
Very interesting. BBC bigging up nicolas claim there was no conspiracy.
Wonder why the bbc clowns never asked about the vietnam group or flying irons.
They also talk about hamas releasing hostages but not Israel releasing hostages.
Playing ans shaping the message i think.
THE KLF have just announced their foray into the ‘Kare’ market.
link to klfkare.com
Not too sure it will come to much but having just attended The People’s Pyramid: The Krossing it’ll no doubt add some fun to the latter years. They demand MuMufication!
You never keep pranksters down!
Republicofscotland @ 4:40 pm
“colonial interpretations of most Scots not holding very prominent positions in colonial Scotland hold true”
In a colonial society senior leadership across most areas of public and commercial life is effectively outsourced to people mainly from the ‘mother country’, much as we see in Police Scotland, universities, government depts, NHS, CMAL, Ferguson’s shipyard, SEPA, Scottish Water, HES, plus a wide range of major business operations incl privatised utilities etc.
Legal sector is a bit of an anomaly due to ‘protected’ nature of Scots Law (as condition of Treaty), senior lawyers practising here tend to graduate from law schools in Scotland, although those from private school backgrounds appear to be prioritised, according to Elitist Scotland report.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
What has happended to MacWhirter?
Re-posting this link showing live data on energy maps which is quite interesting for the techy types to search and investigate.
link to app.electricitymaps.com
It is pretty windy at the moment but noticed the transfer of leccy generated by renewables in Scotland to England is lower than I thought it might be.
And with a bit more searching I found this site, and if you click on some of the windfarms in Scotland you can see that some are in “curtailment mode”, and this means they are deliberately reducing output which is fed into the grid.
https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com
I understand the generation companies get a subsidy to compensate them for the loss of revenue they could have accrued should the windfarm be feeding all the energy it generates into the grid.
This is where a lot of contractual obligations come into play for generation companies, so they can obtain return of investment levels that cover building the infrastructure. That’s why there has on occasions been general waste from Glasgow carted up to Dundee to burn in the energy from waste plant.
Not overloading the leccy grid if all generation plants were run flat out obviously comes into play.
It’s just a pity some of the excesses of power that could potentially be being generated couldn’t still be produced and dumped locally to say power our hospitals, which must get through a fair amount when you think about it.
“According to official figures, wind farms across the UK received a total of £806 million in “curtailment costs” during the years 2020 and 2021, with a significant 82% of that sum paid to generators situated in Scotland.”
And with the ever increasing renewable infrastructure being built in Scotland’s geographic area, that figure will undoubtedly rise significantly in the future.
Glad to see Alex Salmond starting court action against the SG & Sturgeon + all those who lied & colluded in his frameup .
All the best Alex .
«British Vogue Forces for Change is a movement not a moment,” says Enninful. “Through it, we want to create authentic conversations into more complex and nuanced areas, whether they concern female empowerment, mental health, or sustainability.”
OK….
link to dailymail.co.uk
Come the revolution…how much rope do they need?
Media reporting that Alex Salmond’s lawyer is Gordon Dangerfield, Mr Dangerfield kept us well informed in the past with his excellent blog.
link to gordondangerfield.com
Ronnie , a big haloo and wave to you!Hope things are OK
I am also delighted that Alex Salmond is making a move – I wonder if Nicola Sturgeon will still be suffering from amnesia???
Tammany Hall (aka Glasgow City Chambers) SNP councillors go for a sleep in the building after midnight, their pish excuse they couldn’t get a taxi.
No councillors are allowed in the chambers after 9pm unless its a function night which it wasn’t.
It begs the question what were these two clowns up to in the chambers after midnight? I don’t buy the sleeping because they couldn’t get a taxi story.
link to archive.is
Dan, re the ‘leccy,
As a man with a practical and engineering mind, you’ll perhaps be interested that for domestic reasons, I’ve just purchased a 3.2 KW generator that will power a part of the house. Not all of it, but the part we can hunker down in if we get an extended power cut.
Small sitting room with a sofa bed, telly and 6 13A sockets, oil fired radiator on wheels, in the kitchen a single induction hob, microwave, small low wattage sidelights, fridge and freezer, and (turning most other things off) an immersion heater in the boiler. Probably about 500 watts left over.
Why? Because those unlucky people in Angus and Aberdeenshire had their power off for a week during that storm 2 years ago. That brought home to me the reality is that it’s not just the national grid going down, it’s also local vulnerabilities such as overhead cables being brought down in a storm by facing branches. Living where I do, there’s 5 miles of overhead cables between here and the nearest substation.
@Ronald Anderson (6.24) –
Great to see your name appearing there.
😉
Dan – Energy from waste is one of the primary sources of power on Tokyo. They are sited underground and burn so hot that they burn all waste. Heat generated turns produces steam which turns a turbine to produce electricity to be fed to the grid. They are all over the place in central Tokyo.
@ ASA
A power back up genny is not a bad thing to have.
It wasn’t just Angus and Aberdeenshire that had power cuts for extended times during Storm Arwin.
My mother lived in the Scottish borders and the power was also off there for many days. This would be far from ideal at anytime, but it was even more of a hassle as we were caring for her as she endured the hellish progression of cancer, which she ultimately succumbed to last year.
Once the roads were cleared of fallen trees and branches that had been blown down we were able to decamp to another property and stay there till the power came back on at her house.
The ridiculous thing was that a large windfarm is actually visible from her kitchen window.
What needs to be done is that a proper concerted effort to protect our essential infrastructure needs to be implemented. Cut down branches and trees along power line corridors that could potentially take down the lines in a storm. This should be done during fine weather times so folk aren’t having to work and try to repair faults in dangerous storms.
As her house had no real secondary heating options in the event of a power cut, I quickly organised getting a wood burning stove and managed to fabricate and weld up a bespoke flu adapter and register plate, and it was installed and up and running giving out lovely views of flames and cosy heat in time for what was her last Christmas.
The case we need to see is the one against the perjured allegations and the conspirators. But this one is a start and will cause some sleepless nights, I hope.
Dan;
Are you for hire? (only half joking….)
….wish I had a wood burning stove….and the roof could do with a tune up lol….
Sarah @ 8.9pm
It will definitely cause sleepless nights for many people. The fear of exposure will haunt those who were a party to the attempted frame-up. Even if there are no criminal charges, the possibility of all the facts being put into the public domain in the civil action brought by Alex will gnaw away at them day after day. It will be sheer torture for them. But they have brought it all on themselves, and they must pay a heavy price for their
scheming.
They should have known better than to mess with Alex.
Good to see AS making his move.
Scunnered to hear fraudulent pretendy HY on the radio stating that the bottomless taxpayers funds extorted by ScotGov from Sovereign Scots will be deployed in the fight back against AS.
An utter disgrace. A stain on Scotland’s honour. The outsourced box ticker misusing our money to attempt to crush a true Scottish patriot.
“bed sores are becoming more common” that’s not really true, with more modern air flow hospital beds bed sores are less common than they were 10 years ago.
Gaun yersel, Alex!
I want to see Sturgeon in jail.
I want to see Evans in jail.
I want to see Lloyd in jail.
I want to see the alphabetties exposed and in jail.
WTF appointed Joe Farrell when she doesn’t even live in Scotland?
& Hark at her nerve to not only cadge a lift home but to give some other dosser a lift too.
Is Scotland so hard up for officers & financial advisors that we need to import them?
& What was so urgent she couldn’t wait a day to get a train? We’re hardly living in Tornado Alley with risk to life FFS! A deck chair blows over & it’s panic stations..
She should resign & refund the costs.
Dan,
I haven’t received the electrician’s bill yet, but the cost of the genny and the work to take the kitchen and sitting room 13A circuits onto a second ICU that I can manually switch to genny supply is going to total around £1,500. That’s a bit spendy, perhaps, for many. But for us, with around 5 hours per winter month with a powercut, it’s money we are happy to spend. Over 5 years or so, it begins to be negligible.
Humza will be fighting nobody but the queue for the dole.
What a prat. He’s burnt all his bridges & will no longer be a politician come the next election or the next scandal – whichever one comes first.
I’m not surprised the media hasn’t went after his shagging exploits yet but I suppose, like Sturgeon before him, having a dud in place save the union for now..
As for Robin..aye, there’s sometimes I wonder if he’s on the same page as the rest of us. Maybe he’s too close to see there is no one honest in the SNP anymore. Their cause isn’t Indy – it’s their salary.
Humza Yousaf will defend his government robustly.
You couldn’t punch in a phone number.
Yousaf.
Ya fucking bellend.
I’m sick of them all. I’m delighted Alex Salmond is taking those bastards down.
I want Sturgeon in jail.
Peter Murrell. In jail.
Leslie Evans. In jail.
Lloyd in jail.
The alphabetties. Exposed. And named. And in jail.
Fucking crooks the lot of them.
Merganser is right..
The tension will be killing them.
Sturgeon has already aged 30 yrs & looking like an auld hag.
Nothing ever stays hidden forever. Especially in politics.
Especially in a group too. It only takes one to crack & bring all the others down like dominoes.
Dirty little secrets are bad enough to keep on yer own but they’re relying on an entire coven of spite.
Armitige Shanks will be seeing some action this week in the Murrell’s household waiting on the footsteps coming up the path..
I hope she is facing jail. It’d be delicious if she was thrown in beside Katie Dolatowski for a bit of bonding..
Nicola may have dropped a biggie…. “Salmond’s actions are a matter for him, and the conduct of the case is a matter for the Scottish government.”…. (reported macbeebie….)… so, the conduct of the case is not a matter for the Scottish courts and judicial system then? Hmmmm, I guess it’s something many of us suspected, but it’s surprising to hear it confirmed by Nicola!
These events will be revealed as a lasting stain on Sturgeon’s “government”, but the nagging question I have is the extent to which the “get Salmond” philosophy emerged after Salmond stood down, or whether the campaign to destroy him was already at work in the 2014 Yes campaign.
If these freeloading charlatans were never serious about Independence, but merely token flag wavers, then does that mean Salmond’s leadership and YES campaign were already carrying dead weight for a long time before Sturgeon’s t-reach-ery and incompetence revealed itself?
Am I being too kind or naive by calling it dead weight? Or were these vile fkrs already trying to undermine Independence long before Salmond was taken down? It’s an unsettling question, but were we really firing on all cylinders in 2014? We thought we were, but were we in actuality?
I am also deeply suspicious of those who try to blame Salmond for promoting these deadbeats to high office. Where else in history does the betrayed carry the responsibility of the betrayer? What warning signs was Salmond meant to pick up on before the conspiracy broke cover? He was surrounded by colluding conspirators. Think about that.
The past cannot be changed, but until this whole can of worms is laid open to forensic scrutiny, it is going to blight our Independence campaign at every turn. The Scottish Government is compromised, the SNP is compromised , the Scottish judiciary is compromised, the Civil Service as it exists in Scotland is compromised, the Scottish Police are compromised, the media we know are deeply corrupt and compromised… This is the very essence of Scotland the Nation being compromised. So who, or what is doing all the compromising?
This “holistic” perspective, trying to see the big picture, is very discouraging because those who would destroy Scotland seem so very well placed to succeed. It makes our challenge to overturn the status quo seem immense. They provide the string, and we all dutifully dance like puppets. It’s sickening.
This is also why SALVO inspires such hope in me. SALVO is willing to contemplate taking action outside the jaded parameters of our Vichy Holyrood Assembly, and if necessary, circumvent the whole political bourach. All my instincts are telling me that SALVO is on the right path in this, and needs our support.
In Scotland we have politicians who believe the power in Scotland is democracy. Perhaps one day it will be, but at the moment, our Scottish democracy is diseased and deeply compromised by the mechanisms of the Union, and Scotland’s democracy cannot be trusted or relied upon.
We need something much more radical. A reset of the constitution to factory settings.
I don’t mean being radical in a violent way, but radical in a Constitutional way. Scotland’s extant and lawful Sovereignty MUST be upheld and recognised internationally, and we must stop wasting our time winning over our wet, doomed to fail by design, Vichy Holyrood institution; a colonial outpost of London rule which seeks to usurp the popular sovereignty of the Scottish people.
Hail SALVO. They “get it”. Sadly, too many of us still don’t. How I wish we’d had SALVO onside back in 2014… earlier in fact. With SALVO, we’d never have conceded to any colonial Scotland Act bullshit, like a Section 30. Indeed, the very principle of Devolution and the whole damned Scotland Act would be in existential crisis.
The Scottish people are sovereign. We decide, and a Scottish Government obeys the people. A delinquent government doesn’t just risk losing an election, but will face constitutional impeachment for malfeasance.
Breeks
I would agree with you that Sturgeon had been got at by some uk officials,,,but I would say they got to her before 2014.
She was probably told that there will definitely be a No vote, and all she had to do once she took over from Salmond was to steer Scots away from getting their second referendum.
Her and her handlers then came up with the plan to frame Salmond.
After that, she got Harvie involved,,,to turn Scotland into the biggest freak show in Europe.
What she didn’t plan for was it all falling apart so quickly.
That took her and her government totally by surprise.
Sturgeon was a lying, two faced narcissist and not the smartest leader Scotland has ever had.
Good news, Mr Salmond, a wholly innocent man, is taking the Scottish government to court for damages. As the old saying goes, ‘I hope he takes them to the f***ing cleaners’.
Those who conspired against him shall have a most uncomfortable christmas. Good.
In other matters, and something which really bothers me. Yesterday Isreali and foreign hostages held by Hamas were exchanged with Israel for Palestinian hostages held by Israel. Nobody in the Western biased media seems to have noticed, amongst those Palestinians released by Israel were CHILDREN HELD IN ISRAELI PRISONS. CHILDREN, FFS, held in a foreign jail. Why do our media keep portraying Israel as ‘the good guys’?
If there is another referendum, the debate will be led by a media and political class who have now totally blown their credibility with Covid. G4za, climate, 404, trannies and the rest.
The baddies media weapons won’t work if no one can be bothered to pay attention to them.
Barrheadboy has the statement from Alex Salmond and his lawyer Gordon Dangerfield.
link to barrheadboy.com
I wish I could say I had more confidence in Scottish justice, but sadly I have neither confidence nor respect for the Scottish legal profession and Establishment. Scotland has had a sovereign constitution to be defended since 1707 and the Faculty of Advocates has been asleep at the wheel while Scotland has endured countless humiliations and injustices.
Sad to note too, there is already a comment beneath the statement from a political dunce to the effect Salmond the sexual predator is trying to smear the SNP and Sturgeon. How do we encourage these thickheads to open their eyes? Is it still credible to think they’re only a bit dim, or that they have to assume a malicious agenda?
Salmond is seeking justice. Only justice. It is a measure of the man’s integrity that Salmond only wants justice. I’d be demanding the unholiest revenge and retribution if they’d done to me what they conspired to do to him.
This conspiracy is mired in criminality of the worst and most despicable kind; a grotesque and chilling abuse of the system to destroy an innocent man’s life and reputation, and see him spend the rest of his life in prison falsely branded as a sex offender. For it’s deliberate malice alone, this will indeed make Watergate look tame by comparison.
More power to you Mr Salmond.
Hope this AS court action goes the full road , what’s to stop the SG settling this out of court pay Alex the £3mil claiming it’s in the best interest of the taxpayer and worm out of any responsibility. Let’s face it those involved and named will not want this seeing the light of day they know what they did and will want to keep a lid on it and they will be pushing an open door in getting Useless,s buy in.
Have we lost Chris Cairns for good?
Alex has to pursue them this the very end.
At any point they might change the rules again and pull him back to face trumped up charges with no right of response.
In any case the unionists now have the whatsapp messages of the vietnam group. They are almost certain to use them in any election
I can wait to see nicola not remembering much when she gas a book documenting everything. Even the useless corrupt judges in this country will choke on that
For the unaware there IS currently a ceasefire in you know where.
But it is probably a bring out your old ceasefires, new ceasefires for old scenario.
The «jinn» are having fun.
Chief Negotiator for 404, David Arakhamia, in an interview yesterday says that Rvssia wanted 404 to guarantee not to join N*TO or the EU for peace.
Boris flew in and stopped it.
The seagulls are leaving the trawler?
Possibly only the second occasion this pensioner won’t grudge public money being paid out, should Mr Salmond win his case and be awarded costs and compensation. (The first being when he won his first case).
I am, however boiling with anger at the thought of the devolved administration having all their not inconsiderable legal costs being paid by taxpayers. Not to mention certain, unnamed by me, civil servants having their defence fees picked up by either the administration or Legal Aid.
Get stuck right in their, Mr Salmond, lance this festering boil on the bottom of the Scots body politic.
We probably do not know half of the facts in this tawdry affair but I sincerely hope that they all come to light in court.
‘National Security’ is often used as a reason for not having full disclosure of any pertinent information but, in this case, this is not applicable. Everything should be out in the open, exposing Sturgeon and her cabal for what they really are.
The saddest thing to see will be the Sturgeon loyalists trying to defend the indefensible.
Like it, or not, when this goes to Court it will put any prospect of Independence off the table for years but Scotland simply has to root out the liars and incompetents and basically start again. The Unionists will milk it for all it is worth.
One word of warning-when anything goes before a Court of Law the outcome is never certain in advance. Unless, of course, the ‘court’ is tainted. Of course, that could not happen in Scotland. Or could it?
I want Wings Over Scotland inside the court room.
I have zero faith in the media in Scotland telling the truth. David Clegg even wrote a book. Everyone knows where the leak came from.
Lady Dorian. The destroyer of the legal system in Scotland.
Lady Dorian. The Jury hater.
Lady Dorian. The journalist jailer. She’s corrupted journalism in this country to protect Woman H.
Who she repirmanted 4 times for trying to lead the jury stating she’d be in contempt.
Yet lady Dorian works to cover up the tracks of Sturgeon.
She reeks or corruption. She jails journalists. She’s a disgrace. And she’s part of the problem in Scotland.
What a legacy she’s leaving behind.
Sven. The Scottish government vs Alex Salmond , is by default Salmond versus the UK Civil Service. Essentially it is a case where the Scottish government are taking on one of their own. That can only mean the Scottish government are agents of WM. Fifth columnists if you like.
The Cabal was created by Sturgeon, and orchestrated by Liz Lloyd. Sturgeon became an agent of Westminster as soon as she realised it could benefit her career.
It is Machavelian in it’s sinister methods to remove a modern Scottish freedom fighter. Didn’t Sturgeon even claim she was ‘British’. Words we never thought we would hear from an SNP leader. Who’s sole purpose is to free the spirits of the distinctive Scottish identity.
Go Salmond ,don’t give any quarter to the British.
I look at Salmond vs SG as Scotland vs the British state. Unfortunately, as you say, we are all paying for it!
I suspect Alex Salmond will do a lot of good with the 3 million. He’s that kind of man. Knowing Alex Salmond. Hell be thinking of people beyond himself. A victory for Salmond is a victory for everyone in Scotland that wants Independence.
He thinks of the country. He is honest. Truthful. Kind. Inspiring. He’s a God damn hero. I love him. He’s a historian. So intelligent. He makes you feel good to be Scottish. He’ll stand up for Scotland like a true statesman.
Something inside so strong. Come on Alex.
The Dream shall never die. Thank you for being you.
Breeks said;
“The Scottish Government is compromised, the SNP is compromised , the Scottish judiciary is compromised, the Civil Service as it exists in Scotland is compromised, the Scottish Police are compromised, the media we know are deeply corrupt and compromised… This is the very essence of Scotland the Nation being compromised. So who, or what is doing all the compromising?”
It’s not just Scotland that’s compromised, the entire UK’s democracy is compromised, because the UK’s Parliament, supposedly the very seat of democracy in the UK, is itself thoroughly compromised, and has been since 1707.
As I’ve pointed out more than once, the Union is formally and legally constituted as two equally sovereign kingdoms which agreed to joint governance from a shared parliament, with each kingdom represented in that parliament by their own team of MPs. It is NOT constituted as 650 non-sovereign constituencies. It was the two kingdoms that negotiated, agreed, signed, and ratified the Treaty, not the (now) 650 constituencies.
When MPs vote in the Commons, they must do so as two sovereign kingdoms, not as 650 constituencies.
The Treaty of Union spells this out; ‘Forty Five Members to represent Scotland in the Parliament of Great Britain’. That number is now 59. Scotland’s MPs are there in the Parliament to represent an entire sovereign kingdom, which is not the same sovereign kingdom England’s MPs are there to represent. And that means their two MP bodies cannot be treated as a single body for the purpose of ‘democratically’ deciding matters of Union governance.
Treating them all as a single body of UK MPs subject to a simple majority voting system is not only thoroughly dishonest, it is democratically inappropriate, because constitutionally inept, and represents a serious abuse of the Treaty and especially of Scotland, which owns a full half of the Union’s sovereignties.
Right there, at the very heart of the Union, is where the Union’s democracy and the Union’s integrity is compromised!
Neither kingdom gave up their sovereignty, because nobody had the authority to make them and the Treaty didn’t oblige either of them to so anyway. They merely agreed to replace their independent self-governance with joint self-governance. The retention of both sovereignties obliges that joint governance to have the formal agreement of both kingdoms, via their two sets of MPs, for any matter to pass in the shared parliament of the Union.
As neither kingdom can be obliged to be subservient to the other (because that’s what sovereignty means), England’s numeric superiority has no relevance. Thus neither body of MPs has the formal authority to impose their majorities over the other, and because neither body of MPs represents the Union on their own, neither body is entitled to pass Union legislation on their own, not even over their own kingdom, (because that’s what joint means).
Westminster’s internal voting system completely ignores the fact that its MPs represent two distinct sovereign kingdoms, rather than the single one it was originally designed for. As a result it isn’t remotely fit for purpose as a democratic means of agreeing joint decisions between the two sovereign kingdoms their MPs act as agents for.
The PCR test which enabled the scamdemic was fraudulently used as a diagnostic tool, as detailed by its inventor. Propaganda and a docile public was all it took to create the illusion of a pandemic. It was the lockdown & ‘vaccine’ which caused untold misery & death. The care industry who enforced the lies are as culpable as the liars in govt.
Chas @ 9:59 am
“‘National Security’ is often used as a reason for not having full disclosure of any pertinent information but, in this case, this is not applicable.”
State security agencies may authorise criminal conduct in certain instances, e.g. Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 (Sec 5) (a) in the interests of national security; (c) in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.:
link to legislation.gov.uk
Some good posts BTL this morning (and how often can anybody write that)?
Xaracen, you have written an excellent post laying out the technicalities of our constitutional situation in 1707. What you are not considering are the precedents established in the 300+ years, and the 8+ human generations since. It’s a remarkable view to adhere to, that every legally determined minutiae of our lives should be voided so that we can wind the clock back to a time long before we were born, but fill your boots. BTW, are you a lawyer drumming up business, by any chance?
Johnlm, you profess to believe that the man who couldn’t enjoy a glass of wine in his own garden without disgrace and downfall was still powerful enough to pit two of the world’s superpowers against each, unleashing possibly hundreds of thousands of casualties, and uncounted billions of pounds of damage. That’s a remarkable view to hold, and begs the question: are you a congenital eejit, or did it take decades of internally focused bias reinforcement to reach this point, or do you simply get a kick out of posting preposterous lies?
Xaracen,
you persist in your ludicrous nonsense that Scotland and England are co-equal and sovereign within the single Parliament of the U.K. How many times have you been told that you are simply wrong? And yet you keep making the same fallacious non-point.
@John Main
You really don’t get it, do you?
Charles Wheeler’s ex son-in-law is a cypher who progresses no matter how dumb his behaviour.
Are your continuous insults and repetitive boring posting, a medical condition?
Tourette’s perhaps?
As AS prepares to go head-to-head with the Scottish Establishment (and sadly, the deepish pockets of the people of Scotland, as we are going to be bankrolling the Establishment’s fight), I look forwards to some knowledgeable discussion of how this might work out over time.
Does anybody know how long a case like this may be expected to take?
What impact will there be on the case from the two pending elections; WM in 24/25 and HR in 26?
Could our fraudulent, pretendy FM drag things out past the time in 2026 when few expect him, or his fellow cabinet troughers, to still be in power, or even still in public life? (Maybes not even in Scotland – oh happy day!)
Would an incoming Labour administration “inherit” the case, would they want to, could they throw in the towel, bung AS some taxpayer’s dosh, and let the perps go Scot free?
Etc.
Given where the Scottish legal Establishment is with the investigations into ring fenced funds, camper vans, Covid, etc, surely this case will take years, not months?
Greeks
I think Sturgeon was got at in 2017 in that hotel room with Mayhem.
Why not meet in the official residence of Bute House or at her office in Holyrood? (Other than to have no minutes recorded)
She was done for in the lack luster GE a few months later losing 22 seats.
Salmond was done for soon after. He made an announcement in the national he was returning to politics & to watch this space. I’m sure it was only a week, or a matter of weeks later, the scandal broke.
I think he had words with Sturgeon to make a move or he would, imo. Brexit was a shit show & Mayhem was floundering & Tories in chaos. Indyref was ripe for the taking. & that narcissist met with Evans on how to find a way to get rid of him once & for all with a willing britnat establishment only too keen on getting rid of their biggest threat too.
Independence is always going to attract arseholes & bad actors,it has for over 300 yrs & 2014 was no different.
It’s the hypocrisy I can’t stand from Britnats . Tories can literally steal, murder & lie but the SNP better be close to saintly hood or else.
Xaracen
Excellent post.
I think that’s our key out of this union. The treaty has broken the terms & conditions.
A convention needs to assemble as soon as possible & never, ever be disbanded again.
ASS
Can you point me to the expect part of the Treaty of Union where Xaracen is wrong?
Main..
International treaties are only recognised by facts & what’s stated in them.
Not 300 yrs of added on bullshit that favour one over the other.
That renders a treaty void.
International law is only interested in what was agreed to. That’s it.
Not 300 yrs of pish that came later with zero authority.
Perhaps those SNP players owned by the British state were instructed to “get Salmond”, no matter the cost, when it looked like he was coming back following the Brexit debacle. Pure speculation of course lol. Lots still to come out about this sordid affair. Hopefully we will be a little more informed and wiser following this latest move from Team Salmond.
A Twat abroad;
“How many times have you been told that you are simply wrong?”
What, by YOU? Ya fcucking roaster! ROTFLMFAO!!
Xaracen.
You’re persistence that their is a equal union between Scotland and Englands parliaments is amazing without full disclosure of omitted historical facts.
A dissolved Parliament of Scotland by the Westminster parliament of England in 1707 cannot have members of a Scottish parliament in Englands parliament.
As non members of a Scottish parliament in Westminster England neither can it represent any of its constituents.
As a Scottish Dissolved parliament in England from 1707 on wards it has no obligation to be bound by its predecessor parliament,
If it wished to open a alternative Scottish parliament in Scotland.
The Scottish parliament was only dissolved from the treaty of union in Englands Westminster parliament by Westminster parliament in England,
Once the Scottish parliament was banned and dissolved from Englands parliament from being a member of the rebranded parliament of GB in waiting it had no further legal affiliation with the parliament of England.
Please do you’re homework on the position of a dissolved parliament, especially as it comes under the laws of England, and the Scottish parliament was dissolved in England from the treaty of union of parliaments,
Not In Scotland.
May I make apologies to the people I was unable to respond to over the last two days, what with all the medical appointments away from home.
And the caring for my better half, taking up most of my at home I have been inconsistent in responding here,
My apologies to all concerned.
Geri, at 12:34pm,
Nobody can point to where Xaracen is right, because it’s a moonshine fantasy. As you yourself put it, it ain’t international (or even national) law that Scotland and England are co-equal in Parliament, and because nowhere is that written down, it ain’t the law. Xaracen is just making crap up.
Why not read the texts of the law yourself?
link to legislation.gov.uk
link to legislation.gov.uk
Xaracen,
It is of no help to the independence grassroots movement nor to Salvo or to Alba to whitewash the the facts of the position of A “dissolved Scottish parliament” in England by the parliament of England in 1707.
As you stated a number of times yourself here, It was at some unmentioned vague later date that the Westminster parliament of England dissolved itself to enter into its new stated parliament of Great Britain Parliament.
This is simply a new (rebranding name) of the old parliament of England especially as a 1707 dissolved Scottish in England had no members in Englands new rebranded parliament,
The Coronation oath is also, still to this day sworn to the governance of the people England under the laws and statues of Englands parliament.of 1688.
Geri
What you refer to as “300 years of zero authority pish” is the de facto laws and ordinances that control and govern every tiny detail of our lives.
From which side of the road we drive on, through the age at which we are entitled to a pension, via the length of time you can be remanded without charge, to your entitlement to keep an unlicensed dog.
Every single piece of WM legislation over 300 years is up for challenge if it all has to be revisited and examined against Xaracen’s stipulation that it can only be legal if passed by a majority of both nation’s representatives.
Why don’t you lead by example? Find some piece of legislation that fails the test, something that particularly irks you, and on a point of principle, stop obeying it. It could be the necessity to renew your passport every 10 years, or having to wear a hairnet when serving chips, maintain a minimum 1.6 mm tread on your car tyres, carry only a plastic sgian dubh in public – the examples are endless, and I am sure you will be able to come up with your own.
It’s only zero authority pish, right? So why would you comply if you truly believe that?
Luigi @1:11
It’s a case of sequere pecuniam and/or cui bono in trying to establish the who’s, why’s and wherefore’s of the political assassination of Salmond which, in the eyes of the broader public, was largely successful.
I’d like to have faith in our judiciary in expecting a just outcome, but sadly…
Is it not just a tad strange that the sturgeon takes power and immediately the judiciary becomes part of the government?? This is quickly followed by the enthusiastic prosecution of AS. Then there was the prosecutions of Manny Singh, Mark Hirst, and Craig Murray, all prominent Indy supporters, but strangely no unionists harassed.
These attacks on AS and the Indy supporters mentioned cannot be coincidence but rather by design. But by who exactly.
ASS
You are wrong. The first parliament is written down.
45 MPs each in the parliament of GB.
Scotland came armed with terms & conditions to the treaty prior to that treaty even being enacted. The claim of right. Still a live oath.
It’s you that is continually wrong.
No one gives one shiny shite what the UK government enacted, legislated for or dreamt up in parliament later. It was fck all to do with the actual terms & conditions.
Int law is only interested in that. Not the bullshit they thought they’d add later with absolutely no authority to do so.
The one nation pish never happened. The English rejected it in parliament. Also documented.
We share a monarchy, by consent of the Scots, that’s it.
No one gave the English any authority to change the treaty of Union into Scotlands sovereignty being permanently erased while they miraculously maintained theirs to play superior.
The treaty of Union was a contract. That contract has been violated & is void.
Xaracen,
No where in any of the Articles to the treaty of union, or in the agreed terms does it state that the Westminster parliament of England would be the successor state to the Scottish parliament in Scotland and Englandin 1707.
Nowhere does the agreed terms or the Articles of the treaty of union state that the parliament of England was able (to have the power dissolve the parliament of Scotland) from the position of the parliament of England.
And Colonise Scotland without the Scottish parliament Existing and now Dissolved in England within the yet to be created GB parliament , or the Scottish parliament being able to united with the parliament England, to go forward and proceed into a treaty of parliamentary union,
Englands parliament alone has entered into the parliament of Great Britain. With out the 1707 now dissolved parliament / extinguished parliament of Scotland under Englands parliaments laws and Statues,
Englands parliament took the pre- empted ( error ) decision to dissolve the1707 Scottish from Englands long wanted and awaited union by dissolving the 1707 Scottish parliament from England prematurely.
Main,
Don’t be an idiot.
There are shared laws that are beneficial for both Kingdoms but we retain our OWN laws too.
There are those that are not beneficial.
Brexit for example. Scotland voted remain. Whether you like it or not 62% voted remain. Every single constituency. That should have caused pause for reflection & compromise. It didn’t. It was a bombastic act of parliament of 533 votes to 56.
Brexit is just one example, immigration another, war another, breaking int law another, deportation to Rwanda another, oil licences & territory..on & on it goes. One dominant partner who has bastardised Westminster by loading the house so it always wins & slowly erasing Scotlands standing in the Union to a fcking doff capping serf.
That wasn’t the original terms & conditions.
John Main said;
“Xaracen, you have written an excellent post laying out the technicalities of our constitutional situation in 1707. What you are not considering are the precedents established in the 300+ years, and the 8+ human generations since.”
John, you are not considering that those ‘precedents established in the 300+ years’ never had the constitutional level of authority required to deprive Scotland of any of her full 50% share of the two sovereignties of the Union. No-one outside Scotland has that authority.
ASA.
I agree with you it is moonshine fantasy,
It cannot be a international treaty when Englands old parliament in 1707 dissolved the only other entrant possible parliament that would have created a union of parliaments, (the Scottish one.)
that then left solely the parliament of England in England. In the treaty,
One parliament in England on its own cannot make a treaty with a dissolved ( Scottish) parliament, prior to the creation of the Great Britain rebrand name.
It is pure fantasy.
More of that techy engineering stuff highlighting how badly suited so many of our politicians are when they are tasked to deal with stuff they have little clue about.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Geri,
Nowhere is it laid down in any law, Scottish, English or that of the U.K. that there should be 45 MPs from each of Scotland and England. The operative word being EACH.
45 MPs from Scotland are stipulated in the Scottish Act of Union. The English and Welsh MPs at the time (513) transferred over by royal proclamation.
All of this is quite easy for you to find out, rather than asserting total falsehoods such as 45 EACH.
Dorothy Devine 6.54 24 th Nov
Ian Brotherhood 7.29
Thank you both for thinking of me , im not as mobile but try to keep abreast of things .
Take care both of yous .
robertknight @ 2.51.
A posh John Main expression there!
I’m puzzled. Who’s money, where did it come from, and where did it go?
I share your scepticism about the judiciary and what the decision in the case may be, but the process should put into the public domain alot of information presently hidden frm view. That of itself would be a success.
If the court prevents publication of a lot of relevant facts, that would add a lot of weight to what you have suggested.
Semper in spe.
ASS
You seem to have used a time machine & jumped forward 100 yrs LMAO!!
The treaty of Union & the first ever parliament of Scotland & England was 1707, not 1801 FFS!
Geri
I note you decline to answer my simple question: if it is mostly “zero authority pish” as you claim, why do you comply with it?
Don’t bother answering this time around either. We all know why you comply – it’s the law of the land.
As for your fantasy figures about Brexit – 42% of us Sovereign Scots voted to remain in the EU. That’s not one of these facts you get to rewrite, along with everything else.
A smaller percentage of us Sovereign Scots voted to leave, that’s another fact. So why do you feel the need to lie about it at all?
And then there’s the biggest, baddest facts of all. Just as with the referendum that took us into the Common Market in the first place, the Brexit referendum was stipulated as a majority vote for UK voters. Remain lost, get over it, and educate yourself on why that was a good break for Scotland, and thus why iScotland won’t be going back if we true Indy Scots have our way.
Whatever fraudulent pretendy FM Yousaf may say about it.
James Che,
only the Monarch can dissolve Parliament. The old English Parliament didn’t dissolve the old Scottish Parliament: the Monarch did after the Act of Union was passed in Edinburgh. 16 peers and 45 members were then appointed (no elections) to the new Parliament of Great Britain. For whatever reason, the English Parliament wasn’t formally dissolved, but the members of it simply transferred to be the English and Welsh members of the new Parliament of Great Britain.
So, the first Scottish members were actively selected, the English and Welsh just transferred. Both the dissolution in Edinburgh and the transfers of English and Welsh MPs were by royal proclamation.
Xaracen
I thought I was clear enough.
The unchallenged precedents established over approx 300 years and 8 generations are what count.
I’m not disputing what you write about 1707. I’m stating my opinion that as all or any challenges to it failed at the time, and have failed since, or never even been attempted, then it’s too late now.
If I’m wrong though, and you end up proved correct through the courts, we will all be living in very interesting times.
For starters, what personal property or assets will any of us be entitled to claim as our own, if the laws and regulations governing their acquisition and perhaps their handing down through the generations are shown to be non-applicable, or even illegal?
Xaracen
[resubmitted with daft spelling edit to avoid moderation trap]
I thought I was clear enough.
The unchallenged precedents established over approx 300 years and 8 generations are what count.
I’m not dispooting what you write about 1707. I’m stating my opinion that as all or any challenges to it failed at the time, and have failed since, or never even been attempted, then it’s too late now.
If I’m wrong though, and you end up proved correct through the courts, we will all be living in very interesting times.
For starters, what personal property or assets will any of us be entitled to claim as our own, if the laws and regulations governing their acquisition and perhaps their handing down through the generations are shown to be non-applicable, or even illegal?
ASA
Which monarch?
The monarch queen Anne of England France and Ireland that missed swearing a oath to the people of England and the governance of England under the 1688 statue of the English parliament as did Queen Elizabeth and her father, making the present Charlie a illegitimate king.
Or Is that the same monarch queen Anne (not ) of England France of Ireland who Claimed she had swore the Scottish oath to Scotland (in England out of sight of Scots) to any scots witness it ever having being done, and never in her life time required a coronation in Scotland to become queen of Scots,
Is that the monarch you mean,the monarch that NEVER WAS a monarch of either kingdom?
Breaking the chain of monarchy in England and Scotland,
Geri,
you continue to just literally make things up. The Parliament of Great Britain – its formal title – came into being in 1707. Not 1801. I have checked my comments above, and all refer to 1707. It also included the Welsh, not just Scotland and England.
Xaracen,
either prove your lunatic assertion of equality, by linking to formal legislation or treaty, or take it back inside your own head and dream “what if”.
The monarch can be forced to prorogue parliament when there is no longer consent.
Main,
Fck off with yer obsession over the EU, ya plank.
The UK had a referendum. The kingdom of Scotland was assured in parliament (Salmond/Westminster/ check the Hansard) it was only an advisory referendum. The Union would be consulted with the result with ALL parts of the UK ****having to show a majority to leave****
It wasn’t.
Parliament, using it’s 533 illegal votes, voted to trigger article 50 & Brexit was put in motion with absolutely no regard for Scotland.
Yet again you spectacularly miss the point.
The English parliament had no authority to steam roll over Scotland’s democratic vote.
They also had no authority to deny a compromise with the most important part of the treaty of Union = Scotlands consent.
Now apply that same principle across the board.
No one made England the superior in the Union or in parliament.
Are we clear?
Ya fcking dullard!
*Triggers imaginary block button again*
ASS
Legislation = Claim of Right.
& In practice = Scotland retains her sovereignty, her laws, her education, her police force, her legal institutions, her crown & her territory on land & sea.
You prove where it was ever erased.
Go on…
Geri; are ye no fair scunnered wi the twa nodding donkeys yet?
The Daily Mail cut and paste kings.
Here’s a brave pair o’ Fifers!
“Fife couple reveal ‘dream’ plans for women-only gym in Buckhaven”
link to archive.is
A Scot Abroad said;
“Xaracen, you persist in your ludicrous nonsense that Scotland and England are co-equal and sovereign within the single Parliament of the U.K. How many times have you been told that you are simply wrong? And yet you keep making the same fallacious non-point.”
ASA, your sleekit point is sleekit. Scotland and England are supposed to be co-equal and sovereign within the single Parliament of the U.K. because they both have their own distinct sovereignties. It is the Union’s governance via simple majority vote of all MPs that denies that fundamental co-equality because the voting method is too simple to correctly reflect the Union’s actual constitutional basis.
How often do I have to tell you this before you get it?
Why hasn’t the voting system ever been properly amended? Because England’s establishment gets a huge and unwarranted boost in power over Scotland via their MPs 10 to 1 numeric majority under it, and they’d completely lose that power if the system was ever replaced with one that was fair to both sovereignties. England’s establishment has always wanted full control over Scotland, so they’ll never let that happen, and under the current system they’ll never be made to.
Book recently published on the social care crisis.
It costs a whopping £39.99 paperback.
Here is a bit from the promotion for the book.
“… Its central argument is that while a health/care divide dates back to legislative separation at the inception of the welfare state in the 1940s, the major cause of the current crisis has been the slow but insidious ideological and practical splitting off and fracturing of social care from other state welfare institutions, notably the NHS, and its consequent entrapment in the treacherous straits of ‘profit and loss’, self-interest and individualism. These issues and others, the book argues, contribute to the building of a strong case for bringing social care into the public sector. Towards the end, the book goes on to consider the impact, from 2020, of the Covid 19 pandemic on a caring crisis that was already well-established. The consequences of this global shock are still working through and are likely to be profound…”
Caring in Crisis: The Search for Reasons and Post-Pandemic Remedies Hardcover – 29 May 2022
by Gillian Dalley (Author)
Geri,
there’s only one Parliament of the U.K. The monarch ain’t going to prorogue it on the basis that some sweary Bravehearts don’t consent to it. In practice, the Claim of Right has been meaningless since 1707, despite the words still existing. It would be perhap be better being applied to the jumped up parish council in Holyrood.
Xaracen,
There’s no legal basis for your statement that “ Scotland and England are supposed to be co-equal and sovereign within the single Parliament of the U.K…..”. Nothing at all. It’s just something that you’ve made up. And all that follows in the rest of your comment is therefore irrelevant.
@ Xaracen at 5:19 pm
Another aspect to consider is that the UK political construct doesn’t really properly cater for the needs of a great many decent folk living in the Kingdom of England, as the system generally tends to serve the elites.
So that makes it quite interesting to see NuEnglish so adamantly and busily defend the Union so much.
Ending the Union would furnish the opportunity to reboot the political system in both Kingdoms so it would better serve a greater number of folk.
Clearly as NuEnglish is an owner of several properties (1 in England & 2 in Scotland) it goes to prove the point that they hold an advantaged position in society compared to folk that are struggling to get by and manage to even own or rent one property.
Many of his posts on here seem to positively revel in continually highlighting how shit, unhealthy, and broken Scotland is.
To me he comes across as someone lacking any inherent sense of self-awareness and decency for his fellow human…
Xaracen,
Scotland and England ( do ) have their own Sovereignties, however that is further endorsed by the parliament of England dissolving the parliament of Scotland without authority to do so prior to the creation of one united parliament of Great Britain establishment,
The Scottish claim of right is not affected as it was passed in Scotland under Scots Law.
Scottish Sovereignty is not affected due to it being passed in Scotland under Scots laws.
The Territory of the Scots remains Sovereign to Scots under that same laws passed in Scotland,
The problem that most Scots are facing is not getting their heads around the dissolving of the Scottish parliament in 1707 in the Westminster parliament of England and the coup played on Scotland whereby England claims to have coronated a queen for Scotland by an Simple oath not seen or heard by Scots in Scotland.
It is all fantasy and fairy made up from none other than England,
The Queen of Scots made by England.
The treaty of two parliamentary union with only one parliament of England left undissolved.
Shhisshhh, that is the position of the fallacious none international treaty of union.
One parliament and a dodgy claim to be queen of Scots.
Like looking through the wrong end of the telescope, the broader perspective is lost.
Scottish politics?
David Hannah 10.13. Regards Salmond being a hero.
It’s baffling that so many so called independence supporters think he is the opposite. We think the unionists are brainwashed, try having a conversation with an SNP diehard. They are so focused on protecting the SNP, that they have forgotten they didn’t join a party, they joined a movement!
Salmond is Bruce, Sturgeon was Balliol and Humza is the captain of the Titanic heading straight for the iceberg.
James Che,
It wasn’t the Parliament of England that dissolved the Parliament of Scotland back in 1707. The Parliament of Scotland in effect dissolved itself by passing the Act of Union with England, to which Queen Anne as Queen of Scotland gave her royal assent. The Parliament in London was not involved.
Whether you think that she wasn’t properly the Queen of Scotland is neither here nor there. Nobody since the Bonnie Prince has, and if the odd individual does, it’s only because they are very odd.
@Geri 4:57
Innarestin post.
I’m on days this weekend, so I am now starting my pre-dinner G&T.
From the state of your post, I reckon you must have started late breakfast time.
I have a fine Isle Of Jura 10 YO on the go for later on. I may or may not be tempted to post on here but if I do, I hope to be able to avoid playground name calling.
Looking forwards to hearing about your first adventures with ignoring the “zero authority pish” as you like to call it. I suggest you start small (parking on double yellows, or refusing to pay your TV licence?) and work up from there.
BTW, if being “dragged oot agin oor will” was unconstitutional or illegal, does that mean that technically we must still be in the EU? Have you notified Brussels?
“Whether you think that she wasn’t properly the Queen of Scotland is neither here nor there.”
ASA.
As far as I’m aware the monarch isn’t king or queen of Scotland, just the monarch of Scots, with consent the union wasn’t and still isn’t a territorial union, which opens up a whole chapter itself on asset stripping.
“When the parliaments of England and Scotland ratified the Treaty of Union in 1706 and 1707, a new state came into existence, the United Kingdom of Great Britain. In the difficult negotiations for this single, unified state there was one, especially thorny, obstacle: the two nations had opposing and irreconcilable constitutions. In England, (from the Bill of Rights in 1689), parliament and the crown were ‘sovereign’ over the people. Parliament was in charge (and still is). But in Scotland the pretension of a government or a parliament to be sovereign over the people was not just an alien idea, it was unlawful. It got James VII deposed!
The incompatibility of the constitutions was never resolved. Instead, the two nations agreed to keep their two constitutions, with a guarantee that in post-Union Scotland the Claim of Right would continue.
The guarantee was that an insertion was made into the Treaty and ratified, along with the articles of the Treaty by the parliaments of Scotland and England.”
In England, (from the Bill of Rights in 1689), parliament and the crown were ‘sovereign’ over the people. Parliament was in charge (and still is). So if the parliament and the crown are still sovereign in England, which they are the last time I looked, then the people of Scotland via the Claim of Right are still sovereign as well.
Neither the Bill of Rights or the Claim of Right were expunged.
@Big Jock 6:01
Naw.
Humza is the stowaway who stole the Captain’s cap and keys, then convinced the rest of the crew to go along with the charade by promising them a share of the loot in the ship’s strongbox.
And naw again.
The Titanic struck the iceberg several hours ago, the first crew members have already left on the first lifeboats and the rest of the crew have calculated there aren’t enough remaining lifeboats to go round.
Meantime the passengers (us) are still mostly in the dark about the sinking ship, although the total lack of headway, stopped engines, and rising water level is starting to get noticed.
As the Zionist genocidal war machine blew up hospital after hospital full of injured people and babies in incubators looking for Hamas’s HQ, what the world didn’t know, well most of us anyway, is that the murderous IDF had already found Hamas’s HQ eight kilometers away under a building that they’d already razed to the ground.
So in effect the blowing up of hospitals and ambulances had nothing to do with Hamas and its HQ, it was to do with murdering the sick and innocent and leaving other injured women and children nowhere to seek medical help.
War crimes by the Zionists and their enablers MUST NOT go unpunished.
link to consortiumnews.com
Sam
The UN rapporteur was scathing on the UKs austerity driven ideology & it’s complete disgrace & disregard not just regards ppl living in abject poverty but it’s shameful treatment to the elderly & disabled too.
Mayhems retort to him was ‘Who? Never heard of him’ Another Tory said the same, I think it was. McVey.
They just drip arrogance & entitlement.
Which he also covered. A government in arrogance & in complete denial there are any problems at all when all around there is evidence of failings, destitution & food banks with services running on fumes & a DWP killing off the sick. Scotland & Wales were just about managing but only through mitigation of some of the harsh policies.
The UK isn’t run by the UK. It’s foreign owned.
They’ve sold it to remain sitting on the world stage to give the impression it can punch above it weight internationally when in reality it has no power at all & that was hammered home during Brexshit, & since, when one by one they all turned their backs & the war in that other place proved London is really made & owned by Russia LOL
There’s English patriotism for. Tories have flogged everything to the highest bidder.
There’s only the NHS left.
They’ve already seized over 80 powers from Holyrood, Scottish water, NHS & Fracking included, so we can see ours being sold off next.
RepublicofScotland
Correct.
& As we all know that principle is & has been applied in a court of law.
Neither sovereignty was ever extinguished.
Therefore Scotland remains sovereign.
As does England’s.
Armchair constitutional NuEnglish experts need to sit down & STFU in their slavish desire to be owned by England.
It never happened & it it ever going to either..
Sam
Innarestin posts.
Does the book tell us what kind of tax increases we could expect in order to solve the social care crisis? Or maybes tell us what, as a society, we could forego, in order to free up the funds needed within the existing taxation regime?
I ask because it always seems to me that there is a total disconnect between the things people say they want, and the things people choose to vote for in the booth when virtue signalling does not matter. I think it would be great if parties were to just make manifesto pledges to set taxes at a certain level – the evil Tories low, the virtuous socialists high – and the majority could then choose which they preferred – evil disposable dosh, or virtuous empty pockets. Why do you think that never happens?
Innarestin too that the book acknowledges the Covid “global shock”. It hints at a truth – the lashing out at WM and HR is just displacement therapy because the real guilty parties, the government of the PRC, are beyond our reach.
@RoS 6:58
Let me stop you at word 7 of your post.
No hospitals were blown up.
And let me gently ask, as I would ask a troubled child roaring face down on the carpet, beating his fists and flailing his legs in impotent fury, if the Hamas HQ has already been destroyed, who are the Qatari’s negotiating with as the cease fire continues?
Long Covid. 1 million in the UK. 65 million in the world. More care and carers needed. Who cares for carers?
“Long COVID is a multisystemic illness encompassing ME/CFS, dysautonomia, impacts on multiple organ systems, and vascular and clotting abnormalities. It has already debilitated millions of individuals worldwide, and that number is continuing to grow. On the basis of more than 2 years of research on long COVID and decades of research on conditions such as ME/CFS, a significant proportion of individuals with long COVID may have lifelong disabilities if no action is taken. Diagnostic and treatment options are currently insufficient, and many clinical trials are urgently needed to rigorously test treatments that address hypothesized underlying biological mechanisms, including viral persistence, neuroinflammation, excessive blood clotting and autoimmunity.”
link to nature.com
John Main,
To be true, one hospital was at least partially blown up. At one point that evening, all the media, and the Palestinians themselves, were claiming several hundreds of dead and blaming the Israeli Air Force.
It was actually blown up by a Palestinian missile, fired from the hospital grounds, misfiring, and ploughing into a central area between hospital buildings, where people had taken shelter. Turns out that you cannot really believe anything a Palestinian spokesman says.
Still, it’s an Innarestin development, even if it conforms in every respect with the usual narrative of overlapping fallback positions.
The first line “there are no tunnels” has been overrun.
The second line “OK, so there are tunnels, but they’ve all been found and anyways, they’re under a collapsed building” is still being defended.
Once the second line is overrun, and the defenders of that line have conceded defeat, there will be further lines to attack and defend before the objective is reached.
As set out by Al Jazeera several weeks ago, there is a network of horizontal tunnels and vertical shafts, totalling around 500 km. if that fact is good enough for Al Jazeera, it’s good enough for me.
James
‘Geri; are ye no fair scunnered wi the twa nodding donkeys yet?
The Daily Mail cut and paste kings.’
Aye..
& I read cut as something else at first. LMAO!
They’d burst yeh aye? Tho that’s their intention.
Gob almighty sure climbed onto his ginger crate when a wee yappy pal showed up..
Geri says: at 6:59 pm
“The UK isn’t run by the UK. It’s foreign owned.
Indeed, I’ve asked those btl commenters in favour of the union to adequately explain and defend the UK’s energy policy before, but never had a reasonable explanation as to why they are happy to be exploited by those pesky “foreigners”.
I made this post earlier in the thread and it highlights the practice of curtailment mode, and not maximising the generation potential from our own windfarms. Subsidies are paid to the windfarm owners during curtailment mode.
Stuff like not overloading the grid is a regular explanation for this practice. But hud oan a moment…
Many of the UK’s windfarms are currently in curtailment mode, yet we are at this same time importing leccy from France (6.6%), Netherlands (2.6%), Belgium (2.7%), and Norway (3.7%) to meet GB Grid demand. So instead of generating our own we are paying subsidies to big corporates not to create power here, and they get the double win as we are also buying their leccy from abroad too.
If we weren’t often receiving up to 20% of leccy into our GB grid from abroad, we could actually be generating more power from the infrastructure located in our own geographic area and not be overloading the grid and paying out subsidies.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
A Scot Abroad said;
“Xaracen, either prove your lunatic assertion of equality, by linking to formal legislation or treaty, or take it back inside your own head and dream “what if”.”
ASA, that equality comes directly from the two kingdoms’ own separate sovereignties they both clearly had pre-Treaty. The fact they were separate fully self-governing kingdoms for many centuries is solid proof of their two sovereignties, and that they negotiated a Treaty between them is also de facto proof of both sovereignties and of their inherent ‘co-equality’.
Sovereignty isn’t subject to domestic legislation, especially somebody else’s, so you can stuff that one.
If you are claiming that Scotland was not sovereign pre-Treaty, then such an extraordinary claim requires impeccable evidence. So prove it with the relevant formal constitutional document with the relevant clause.
If you are claiming that Scotland gave up its sovereignty, or demoted its sovereignty to be formally subservient to England’s via the Treaty then prove it. Quote the relevant Articles, and highlight the relevant clauses.
If you are claiming that Scotland’s sovereignty was already of lower rank than England’s, then prove it with the relevant formal constitutional documents with the relevant clauses.
“if the Hamas HQ has already been destroyed, who are the Qatari’s negotiating with as the cease fire continues?”
John Main.
If you’d bothered your backside to read the article you would’ve known the HQ was already empty, as for Qatar its a well known fact that Hamas has an office their where the likes of Washington and Tel Aviv government officials can sitdown with Hamas chiefs and cut deals.
Link for the ‘space’ hosted by ‘Khalisee’ and Sulaiman Ahmed.
It’s been going pretty-much every day since Oct 7th, sometimes marathon sessions going overnight, and has been right at the forefront of debunking the amateur-hour Zionazi pish being punted by msm.
link to twitter.com
This one is for John Main and ASA.
The Hannibal Directive as witnessed by Israeli’s themselves.
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to thegrayzone.com
And this ones just for John Main.
link to mintpressnews.com
“This is what happened at Al Shifa Hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.
Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one, the hospitals are being picked off. Soon, there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.”
The ‘safe and effective’ Pfizer BioNtech vaccine report, which they wanted hidden for 75 years, recorded nine pages of side effects.
link to twitter.com
The jab, which was meant to stay in the arm actually was rapidly spread to every organ in the body.
There seems to be evidence of those jabbed having raised levels of IgG4 antibodies which are disrupting the autoimmune system.
link to jessicar.substack.com
Xaracen,
you offer 3 choices of your definition, suggesting I choose one. I’ve never been pushed about by anyone, so I’ll tell you what I think, and it isn’t one of your three choices.
In two parts:
1. While not legally extinct, both Scottish and English sovereignty and the ancient guff that preceded 1707, on both sides of the border, are completely irrelevant under the present union. Should the union break up, both sides get their sovereignty back to exercise as they see fit. So, “sovereignty on ice”, as it were. Day to day, it matters not a jot.
2. It is a matter of reality that Scotland isn’t co-equal with England in the political sphere. When the union set up the Parliament of Great Britain, that’s political, and England is much larger by population than Scotland. The Crowns may be co-equal, but that’s mostly flummery and neither Crown gets involved in politics.
@RoS 8:04
So …
Hospitals “shut down” then, not “blown up”.
It’s a terrible problem when posters are unable to use the right words to accurately state what they mean. Readers are forced to decide between a number of unpalatable options: is the poster an eejit, or a malicious, bigoted stirrer?
Neither answer helps the cause the poster professes to support.
I’m simply going to repeat what I have posted before. If Hamas stops shooting and returns the hostages, all this is over. Of course, Hamas will then likely be exterminated unless they negotiate their escape as part of the deal, but I am of the opinion that Israel would accept that compromise in return for ending this.
It speaks volumes that in all the virtue signalling hand wringing over the civilian casualties that nobody ever calls for Hamas to pack it in.
A lasting cease fire on both sides. All hostages released. Israel will empty its jails of Palestinians in return.
No doubt Israel would then despatch its assassination teams in pursuit of Hamas, but fair’s fair, Hamas will mostly be in Lebanon and Iran plotting the extermination of Israel.
Hasbara John and ass
The mowing of the grass has included bombing UN schools and building who regularly update their coordinates with the I5raelis. c.100 UN staff killed to date.
Here is an analysis of the ‘fallen missile’ on the Baptist Hospital.
link to twitter.com
@IB 7:59
“Zionazi”
Good one!
Looks like you missed a trick though. If you’d come up with a similar catchy hybrid word back in February 2022, just think how much further on your cause would be by now!
Never too late though. As the BTL posts on here show, there are still plenty of posters who think arguments can be won by name calling alone.
Enjoy your next marathon overnight sesh!
Wow, I post about those who truly believe name calling is all that is needed to win an argument and along comes Johnlm to prove my point.
Why not call for both sides to cease fire for the duration, John, release all the hostages and prisoners, destroy the tunnels and bunkers, and let the aid in?
That solution not ideologically pure enough for you?
That solution not exterminating the side you want exterminated?
Hi Johnlm.
An interesting video. The guy seems to know what he is talking about. Kinda makes the US complicit in the bombing of the hospital.
link to twitter.com
Ass
‘flummery and neither Crown gets involved in politics.’
Absolute horseshit & you contradict yourself in just a few short posts.
You said earlier only the monarchy shut down parliament. Now you also claim he doesn’t get involved.
Ya dunce! Of course he gets involved.
*He chooses the government.
*He has ppl swear an oath before they can sit on their arse.
*He has weekly meetings.
*He approves laws.
*Nothing passes unless it receives royal accent.
*He meddles in parliament & world affairs.
*He’s an unelected adulterous prick that wants to be a Tampax in his spare time & Munster to plants.
So away & stop spouting absolute shite.
He’s not a symbolic idiot either as the English like to claim.
That’s just another great deception cause if the public really knew they have no parliamentary democracy he’d be minus a throne.
Flag wavers eh?
Xaracen is correct & you are always wrong. You cannot claim Scotland relinquished her Sovereignty because she never did.
Therefore the ppl of Scotland remains sovereign because no one had the authority to ever erase it. Period.
Dan, aye. It’s a mess. Scottish power is Spanish lol. WTF?
John main
To explain it all to you again
The H4Mas attack was a bad move and it was wrong to have killed and abducted civilians, although
many of the dead Israelis it has been admitted were killed by tank and helicopter fire when the Israelis finally decided to sound the alarm.
The soldiers monitoring the Gaza boundaries were reporting unusual events for days before and were told to shut up.
H4MAS offered the hostages it is said 4 times since the 7 Oct. in return for a cease fire, and were refused.
Sure, I think there should be a ceasefire but that is not the Zionist wish, the clearance of G4za is the plan.
Your cheery posting on this subject appears to suggest that you are happy with the situation.
As usual you avoid actually saying what you really think, which makes responding to your nonsense difficult.
You seem to think that the Geneva Convention is a stupid document, that it is just fine to slaughter civilians (if they’re Palestinians).
You miss the finer points of law regarding occupied territories.
Zionism is an English invention, not Israeli, and ties to 404 too, so I suppose that is why you defend it, and you are probably not as obtuse as you pretend.
But, hey, maybe you are just a big fan of apartheid.
I don’t want anyone exterminated, though maybe you do.
Post details of HAMAS links to Iran if you’ve got time.
If you want references to any of the above, let me know.
Main is always on the wrong side of history.
Israel has a state of the art surveillance system.
Israel controls all movement in & out.
Israel has a nuclear arsenal.
Israel has hauners.
Israel has self appointed locked & loaded militia.
Israel has settled them into an open air concentration camp.
Israel has targeted civilians.
Israel cuts off power.
Israel shoots weans & the media for target practice.
Israel bombs hospitals.
Israel kills UN personnel.
Israel glorifies in crushing Gaza.
At what fucking point is the Palestinians to ‘pack it in’?
Pack in what exactly? Trying to survive?
Johnlm
He’s a far right racist britnat.
He can’t help flash it from time to time along with ASS.
WASP. KKK..
His world view is money, greed, supremacy & jack boot.
He has the morals of an ally cat & his knowledge stems from bite sized shite fae the Daily Fail about foreigners.
He has not a single care for the ppl of Palestine. International law, rules of combat or human rights violations. They’re the wrong colour for those to apply to them.
The very fact that we still have 77ers working in this place on a permanent basis means that the Yoons/Brits are still worried about Scots pushing for independence.
That’s got to be good.
And there are other positive signs: the fact that the Scottish government has become a very unfunny woke joke doesn’t appear to have dented support for independence; Alex Salmond’s refusal to go quietly is enraging all those who (overtly or not) supported the conspiracy against him; the constitutional arguments raised by Salvo/Liberation Scotland are gaining traction; ‘abstentionism’ (a kick-in-the-arse away from ‘civil disobedience’) is entering mainstream political discourse; gratuitous attacks on what remains of heavy industry in Scotland, alongside blatant moves (Freeports) to further erode workers’ rights are triggering alarms.
Right now, this place is the closest it’s been to being taken over by shills and spooks. There’s no need for anyone to finger them, or even to give them a hard time. They’re just doing their jobs and they wouldn’t have been assigned to the task if they weren’t suitable.
It’s maybe a backhanded compliment to Wings that the Brits have deployed people who can at least string sentences together. By comparison with Zionist propagandists generally, the ones who put a shift in here at least make an effort to engage with other posters, even if their contributions are mostly negative and insulting.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that these characters should not be viewed as ‘real’. They do, in their own way, develop a btl persona, but it shouldn’t be treated as ‘human’ in any real sense. They are willing robots, taking dosh in exchange for, well, they don’t really care anyway, they’re just ‘following orders’.
They’re not real ‘Wingers’ and never were.
Geri,
you know perfectly well that no British monarch since Edward VIII has gone against the advice of a political PM, and he had to abdicate. Before then, you are pretty much back to Charles I, and he caused a civil war.
Modern Monarchs aren’t political in a partisan sense. They have a few, constitutionally defined roles in politics, such as opening and prorogueing parliament, formal appointments, head of state and the like. And you know that.
If Hammas had any humanity then Kfir would have been released first. A now 10 month old baby. Same age as one of my grandchildren. Of course both his parents were killed on the 7th of October but he deserves a chance of life. He is being used has a bargaining chip. The FMs wife was on an International stage in Turkey and never mentioned Kfir once. The duality and ambiguity of humanity? According to the FM and wife it only applies to the one side. We might as well replace the Saltire with a Palestinian flag. I didn’t sign up for that. I signed up for Independence and not the bidding of Foreign identities.
Ass
You are wrong. Again.
Lizzie clashed with Thatcher on a number of occasions & Lizzie won out because she can. It’s HER parliament.
Lizzie also interfered in indyref.
There’s a few examples for you.
Why don’t you just shut up eh? It’s clear you know swfa about Scotland, the monarchy, parliament or Scotlands sovereignty.
Go play with yer ham radio or something eh?
@ASA, you’ve conceded that Scotland was sovereign in 1707, but you haven’t explained how it isn’t now, despite its sovereignty being ‘not legally extinct’.
Your part 1 just says the Treaty removed or set aside both sovereignties in 1707. But you didn’t explain why or how it did that, so you’re just blustering.
Your part 2 just says politics outranks sovereignty. No it doesn’t. Nothing outranks sovereignty, that’s why it’s called sovereignty, so you’re just blustering again.
“Modern Monarchs aren’t political in a partisan sense“
Another howler from the ASSmeister.
I seem to remember queen Lizardbreath being ‘overheard’ at Crathie in 2014, and of course the speech in 1979 “ I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
Ian Brotherhood 10.19pm.
Well said Ian.I think you have articulated what many are thinking. We who want Scottish independence haven’t gone away, either from wings or anywhere else. We’re waiting for something to happen. Maybe Alex Salmond’s actions are the start of something bigger.
Meanwhile, independence is at least a day further away than it was yesterday. Probably two weeks further away, in reality, given the fact that support for the SNP is notably falling, and yet Alba seems to be behaving with all of the political agility of a stunned slug.
It’s quite within the bounds of possibility, indeed perhaps probable, that the next WM election will see perhaps 20 SNP MPs, and the next HR election down to around 30 SNP MSPs. Alba ain’t going to turn up in any significant sense, they may get a couple of seats.
Much more of this and it’s going to be Indy delayed for years. And years. If ever. Particularly as most migrants into Scotland aren’t likely to be wanting to leave the UK.
Johnlm
She also purred down the phone to Cameron when she didn’t lose Scotland.
George Ferguson
Scotland doesn’t have a foreign policy. What’s a branch office manager going to do to free hostages?
The Israeli flag flies over Westminster. It’s signed up to never ever badmouthing Israel, it’s atrocities, it’s crimes against humanity & it’s illegal occupation.
I’m more scared of that, aren’t you? It’s like Nazi Germany all over again & we see it in action as the UK cheers on the killing of innocent civilians. No one seems to spare a thought to the many 10month olds blown to pieces over the last few decades..but one single Israeli baby missing is used to pull on the heartstrings.
ASS
There are more ways to skin a cat than through its arse.
Indy is very much alive & well.
If WM take Holyrood… Great. It’ll speed up independence all the faster.
Labour were absolute shit last time & will be again, minus £400 million + mitigation & wearing the exact same straight jacket as the SNP.
Bring it on. Holyrood was a delay to Independence. A sticking plaster that’s failed. There’s no more plasters. There’s no more Better Together bullshit. Independence is full steam ahead.
We don’t need Holyrood. We never did for all the other referendums either.
A convention is where it’s at..
These characters … shouldn’t be treated as ‘human’ in any real sense.
Ian Brotherhood 10:19 pm
@John H (11.17) –
Hoots mon.
😉
link to theguardian.com
Just for clarification
When I say Israeli code of conduct I’m referring to the IHRA.
The code that shuts down debates & any/ all criticism of the state of Israel & it’s actions & atrocities.
Everything is classed as antisemitism.
31 countries all signed up. Including America & the UK & ALL the MSM.
Sturgeon couldn’t wait to sign up Holyrood too.
This has already been flexed on numerous occasions to thwart democracy & have politicians sacked & deposed including Neale Hanvey & Denise Findlay from SNP selection along with Corbyn & his allies across the UK, from removing councillors, women meeting at coffee mornings to rent a crowd plants demonstrations calling for Corbyns head. (Corbyn files)
A code adopted by the UK parliament by a foreign, unelected lobby group with zero input from Joe public. How very British.
That’s carte blanche to be an untouchable barsteward. The hunted has now become the hunter & can feel at ease shouting about final solutions to their Gaza problem without so much as a peep from the international community.
That should scare everyone yet it doesn’t. It’s only what Humza doesn’t do on cue that gets the Britnats all riled up…
Geri,
unless you are advocating for an extra-Parliamentary route (careful, there) to Indy, you’ll need to go via HR and WM. Your ignoring of HR and calling for a Convention ain’t going to do anything. It’ll be laughed at. A few saltire waving Braveheart eejits with sweary mouths don’t move the needle.
John Main @4:13
To be taken seriously, you’d need to include Palestinians in your definition of ‘us’ when considering the non trivial matter of private rights and property.
That said, since what happened in Gaza last month looks a lot not unlike what happened to many of our cathedrals and castles back in the day, civil asset forfeiture and redistribution amongst the clans that did not betray us could be a good opening gambit in any negotiation.
..and if the recently promised magic genie doesn’t render the need for such reparations obsolete, it can instead provide great help ironing out the detail of who gets what, and how much, once it arrives.
Until then, Salmond & We the People v Scottish government, #We want our money back, #Me2 makes for a cracking warm up
Ass
They did the last time.
Who do you think brought the Scottish parliament into a reality?
Tony BLiar & Labour? LMFAO!
The Scottish ppl are Sovereign. They don’t need to go through another country, ya eejit.
Xaracen
“Nothing outranks sovereignty”
Let’s admit you’re right. Let’s accept you’re a Sovereign Scot.
So am I.
That’s not to say I will defo use my sovereignty to cancel yours. What it does mean is that you won’t get my sovereignty aligned with yours until the movement makes a rational, respectable, sound, economically literate, reality-grounded case for Indy. A thought through plan, all working shown, no faith needed. Moonhowlers and eejits safely quarantined where they can do no harm to the grown ups working to build a successful, prosperous, rational, first world, independent country.
TBQH, many of the regulars on here make precisely the opposite case, tonight’s crazed efforts having been a master class in that regard.
45% Indy support, 55% Indy meh, so you need to reverse that ratio and hold it steady. You can start first thing in the morning.
I’m raising my glass to your future efforts now – slainte mhath.
@Geri 11:25pm
Scotland doesn’t have a foreign policy? So we can quit the foreign embassies. We can quit World Class Conferences. We can quit International Conferences by the FMs wife? And her unelected musings. Perhaps then we can build a Ferry?. I am of course circumcised and standing at the Wailing wall everyday putting personal notes in the wall and eating shabbat bread. I stand under the Independence Flag and not the Palestinian Flag that doesn’t make me a Jew but some one that is capable of Independent critical thought.
Geri,
until someone can define who “the Scottish people” are, they ain’t sovereign in anything at all. And no, it ain’t going to be your definition of somebody born in Scotland, because there aren’t any grownups advocating that. You don’t count as a grownup, you are politically nothing more than a toddler having a scream. Totally ignorable.
50% + 1
Every.
Single.
Election.
It’s already way above that & has been since 2014.
Mayhem even had to lock opinions on ***the absolute cluster fuck of the the state of the Union*** away to be sealed as a matter of National security while babbling eejits in parliament spoke of such shite as cricket being televised in Scotland to *strengthen the Union* LMFA! That’d be torture!! They’re as deluded as you are, Main. An adult game of rounders will convince us all to stay..
Tick tock…
Young ppl are sick of being shafted. Sick of no house to live in. Sick of no prospects. Sick of no job security. Sick of the bank of Ma & Da. Sick of 28 countries being closed.
They won’t be voting for the Union. Neither will the working class when £400 million mitigation ends & Tory policies are unleashed along with draconian workers non existent rights.
Best thing to happen to Holyrood.
Scotland doesn’t need a Westminster branch office on Scottish soil. It’s in direct violation to Scots sovereignty.
George
Yes we can quit them. They serve zero purpose. They are governed by Britnats.
We’ve even been told we need a chaperone in attendance to any meetings & the UK isn’t funding unauthorised travel.
You seem to think Holyrood is independent already.
Holyrood is a Westminster branch office under direct Westminster rule.
I dunno what clout you think it has. It has zero. Not even in Scotland far less influence abroad.
Salmond should never have changed its name. People think they actually have a Scottish parliament. We don’t. It’s an administration policed under direct rule of Westminster/Scotland Act. The civil servants that work there work for WM. MSPs take an oath to a foreign king in parliament.
It can yack until the cows come home putting the world bang to rights – & then everyone goes home.
It has zero influence on anything.
A few county council matters.
Dumbza asking for hostages to be released would fall on cloth ears.
George
You don’t need to be at the wailing wall.
You will comply whether you are there or not.
That is the point.
Can you point to any other occupied territory that commands such slavish loyalty from every government & media outlet worldwide?
I’ll wait while you get yer critical thinking booted up.
A nasty piece of work exposed at last. His personal “Mafia” entourage have pushed this TransCult Messiah for years. A nasty piece of work who almost makes Sturgeon look honest
link to archive.ph
Bon Dimanche!
Another Times article that despite the author’s bias I find it difficult to disagree with
link to archive.ph
link to conter.scot
Israel was given support to steal a large area that belonged to Palestine.
The Holocaust was absolutely horrific. We all felt for the Jews to have such an inhuman crime
committed against them.
I never saw any any Palestinians take part in that so why were they the victims of the aftermath.
How about they got what was East Germany.
I can see why Palestinians fought US and U.K. troops as they didn’t want to lose their home, job, rights and country. Wouldn’t you.
In a later war trying in vain to expel Israel the Palestinians lost 3 additional areas to Western backed Israeli military forces.
I expected these areas at least to be used to negotiate their return for the sake of peace.
No, every day Israeli settlements are being built on this second batch of stolen land.
So apply the same rules to the territories in Gaze that Israeli troops have taken.
What’s to stop them building their own settlements in there?
In the last world war there were resistance fighters in almost all nations occupied by Germany. France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway etc etc.
Is what the Palestinians do any different in wanting their country back.
There is no removing the original map created for Israel.
Their financial and military support is too great to overcome.
Palestinians need to face this and offer peace in return for the more recent stolen lands, self control and a UN force based here to ensure there are no more water pipe rockets fired.
I’ve see 2 clips of Israeli activities.
One looks like a Palestinian firing at Israeli troops who is seen to be captured and stripped
anther clip shows the man freed and puting his clothes back on with the troops walking away from him as one of their own.
The second from a Western media reporter advising of Israeli snippets shooting unarmed men walk away from them.
Why isn’t this reported on my TV and newspapers?
You would think that some people have better things to do on a Saturday night then slaver on about 300 year old pish and the old favourite ‘Sovereignty’, whatever that is.
We also get screeds about troubles in foreign lands. Do any of the ‘intellegencia’ who post on here think that World Leaders are trawling ‘Wings’ posts for ideas on how best to proceed on anything? Or does it simply make the writers feel world wisely and important? Strong drink has obviously been imbibed by some. I wonder if they read their posts on a Sunday morning with some embarrassment or are they too thick to notice?
Change only comes via the ballot box in this country. Some people need to remember that. The wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth and continually shouting ‘it’s jist no fair’ don’t cut it in the real world. The imaginary one, in their heads, does not count.
Geri says: 26 November, 2023 at 12:51 am
“50% + 1”
But at the moment there isn’t 50%, let alone anything higher. You can’t back date policies to previous elections. The SNP even backed down on their promise of a referendum because it turned out that legally they couldn’t deliver that. I suspect that they were told in no uncertain terms that the EU would not accept the results and admit Scotland entry as a result of an illegal exit from the UK. Even EFTA might reject such a situation.
As for future elections, the SNP aren’t saying “50% + 1” Humza isn’t saying “50% + 1”. Economically we are living in interesting times and the electorate tend to be more cautious. Independence is an act of extreme bravery.
If you want independence it would be better to start working towards it for about 10 years from now, when a legitimate referendum would be hard to prevent. Build plans for everything based on realistic figures, not best case ones. Whichever independence party heading Scotland needs to demonstrate that it can run a country – you know, like get a ferry built, improve education and health without limitless funds (which you would never have). These are not unreasonable ideas.
There is too much Dick Barton thought process here – ‘with one bound Scotland was free’.
A Scot Abroad said;
“until someone can define who “the Scottish people” are, they ain’t sovereign in anything at all. And no, it ain’t going to be your definition of somebody born in Scotland, because there aren’t any grownups advocating that. You don’t count as a grownup, you are politically nothing more than a toddler having a scream. Totally ignorable.”
Sez the screaming toddler in his best Clint Eastwood accent! 😀
Working out a franchise for constitutional plebiscites that recognises and prioritises the sovereigns in the Scottish electorate has yet to be done in Scotland, but there are many countries that already have ones acceptable to themselves that we could use as templates for our own. There is nothing about Scotland’s circumstances that would make this particularly difficult. Well, apart from unwarranted interference from Westminster’s English establishment of course.
Increasingly hard to tell these days for whatever reason but a quick read of Andrew Tickel’s expectation management in Salmond (& we the people) v Scottish government suggests the following clarification might add value:
Malfeasance in public office would be negotiating a contract (eg sim cards) at commercially uncompetitive rates
Misfeasance in public office would be extorting first £3k, then £11k, from an employee/ public official on the back of such rates
The tort of misfeasance is not tempered by intent (ie any perceived need to distract from the malfeasance) but can be amplified significantly by compounding factors – such as in facilitating defamation by others, and should be judged accordingly.
@ Ian Brotherhood at 10.19 p.m. on 25th Nov.
Well expressed, Ian, and spot on. Regaining Scotland’s proper status is the wish of a majority in Scotland. And given that it is the cause of truth and principles as opposed to that of liars, exploiters and criminals, then our cause should be supported by all decent people everywhere. It is a pity that there seem to be no decent, principled people in the UK security services or the rest of the Establishment.
sarah @ 9:52 am
“the cause of truth and principles as opposed to that of liars, exploiters and criminals”
Aye, an is this no mebbe pairt o the proceeds o crime?
link to heraldscotland.com
Sarah 9.52am
And if there are, they’ll be too feart to put their heads above the parapet.
IN MY research on that nebulous thing «Scottishness» came across this gentleman.
link to en.wikipedia.org
He is the quintessence of what has been styled the «Caledonian antisyzygy»
link to en.wikipedia.org
Check him out. A paradox of seeming contradictions.
If Scottishness signifies anything it is this set of variables.
Being a proud Scot and yet an advocate of keeping Scotland in a politico-cultural set up which no longer serves any productive purpose is certainly a manifestation of the thing.
stuart mctavish – I don’t live in France as you purport to do and I have the advantage over most that write in here in that I have experienced malfeasance by the Scottish Government at first hand.
Misfeasance is working within the law to achieve an outcome which is not in the public interest and that is what Alex Salmond’s team are alleging.
Malfeasance is working outwith the law to achieve an outcome which is not in the public interest.
Maybe Alex Salmond’s team are waiting on the conclusion of the perjury investigation and the leaking of information to the press story before they decide, but it’s “misfeasance” for now.
I seem to remember giving you a lesson in engineering a few weeks back and now I’ve had to give you a lesson in law and I’m not even a lawyer.
I understand that you, on the other hand, are a practitioner of both. Perhaps reason enough to understand why both professions are “collapsing” in Scotland.
I am more than a little concerned with the output of our once revered universities. I was astonished at the demand for an apology by ‘ students'( could have been one or two) at St Andrews for a tweet made by the Prinicpal concerning Palestinians , causing a stushie at high level.
I once believed that universities were places of learning and debate, now am beginning to think that closed minds and group think are all they are producing.
Geoff Anderson , thanks for those.
Hamas political wing spokesperson saying that Israel has reneged on the ceasefire deal, firstly by not allowing the two-hundred aid trucks into Gaza that are required daily just to keep the people alive, secondly by not releasing the required prisoners held in Israeli prisons, and thirdly by continuing to fly military drone over Gaza during the ceasefire.
On the other side of the fence, news channels showing smiling unharmed and fairly healthy Israeli hostages being transferred back to Israel.
I wonder what those Israeli hostages will think when they find out that their government has killed almost 6,000 Palestinian children not including the children still buried under the rubble.
The English staging post in Edinburgh is costing the taxpayer a fortune.
“THE cost of running the UK Government’s flagship hub in Edinburgh has been revealed to add up to more than £11million annually, prompting accusations a “monumental” amount of money is being wasted on a “PR stunt”.”
And it not England’s only staging post here and in other nations.
“Queen Elizabeth House is one of the regional hubs and headquarters opened by the UK Government – including in Glasgow and Cardiff – which came with a commitment to have a regular ministerial presence.”
These staging posts are there not for the benefit of the people they are there to interfere and to assert a certain degree of control they are also safe house for the security services and prominent House Jocks.
Basically they are the modern version of the English forts build all over Scotland during the hunting down of Highlanders after Culloden and the Highland Clearances.
stuart mctavish – You have some right funny ideas. “Misfeasance” and “malfeasance”. Let’s leave it to the real lawyers.
It is tiresome to read certain opinions on the Levantine Question without any reference to the histories of the actors concerned. The «problem» did not start with the British mandate or «Zionism».
Being a Jew or Christian or any «non believer» in the dar al islam was never a easy affair.
Tolerant in the Enlightenment sense it is not. The yellow star has its origins in the culture of «dhimmihood».
All this is in the literature whether in Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish or in the ahadith and the Qur’an itself. Oh, and some of it appears in English, French, German…..
Western «ignorance» or is it some form of guilt on the matter is non productive.
Feelings of guilt coupled with ignorance lead to bad judgment and the promotion of the «antisemitic» motif.
@Republicofscotland says:26 November, 2023 at 10:37 am
I wonder what those Israeli hostages will think
That’s an easy one RoS, and I would have thought even within your own limited intellectual capacity to work out.
They’ll be thinking that if only the ham boys had used the 3 week gap between the 7 and 28 October, when the ground offensive began, to negotiate release of the hostages, an exchange of prisoners, abandoning of the tunnels, etc etc, then every one of these Palestinian kids would be alive today.
I was having a bit of fun at your expense in the first sentence of my reply, cos I don’t actually believe you are too thick to see what the reality of this war is. No, you are fanatically determined on the extermination of one side in this conflict, so will happily post your lies for eternity.
At least some of us will wonder what your ravings could possibly have to do with Scottish Indy.
Scots have been asked what makes for decent work. Here are their responses.
“Table 1 – Priorities for decent work from focus groups
Rank Description
1 Decent hourly rate: An hourly rate or salary that is enough to cover basic needs such as
food, housing and things most people take for granted without getting into debt
2 Job security: Job security
3 Paid leave: Paid holidays and paid sick leave
4 Safe environment: A safe working environment free from physical and mental risk
or harm
5 Supportive manager: A supportive line manager
6 Fair pay to similar jobs: Being paid fairly compared to other similar jobs
7 No discrimination: A job which in which there is no discrimination because of who I am
8 Purpose and meaning: Work that provides a sense of purpose and meaning
9 Regular hours: Regular and predictable working hours
10 Support after absence: Appropriate support to return to work following absence due to
injury or ill health
11 Opportunities for progression: Opportunities for promotion and career progression
12 No unpaid overtime: An employer that does not expect me to arrive before or leave after
my allocated hours or undertake unpaid overtime
13 Supportive colleagues: Supportive colleagues
14 Enough time for tasks: Enough time to do all the tasks required
15 Workplace representation: Available and effective representation to raise my voice
within the workplace
16 Additional benefits: Access to financial benefits beyond pay such as help with
childcare or signposting to additional support such as tax credits
17 Develop and use skills: Ability to develop and use skills in current role
18 Predictable pay: Predictable take-home pay
19 Training opportunities: Access to suitable and convenient training opportunities
20 Accessible location: A job that is easy to get to from where I live
21 Flexible hours: Flexibility in choosing my working hours
22 No excessive hours: Work that does not involve excessive working hours
23 Fair pay vs senior staff: Being paid fairly compared to senior staff
24 Socially worthwhile: Work that I believe is socially worthwhile
25 Varied work: Varied work
26 Control: Control and flexibility over how I deliver my work”
link to policy-practice.oxfam.org
The Pritzker Forum on Global Cities has just been held.
link to globalaffairs.org
Sadia Khan is a head of the UN C40 cities initiative.
link to globalaffairs.org
The WEF is keen to form continental Food Distribution Hubs.
link to globalaffairs.org
London is keen to funnel monies to cities rather than regions/countries.
link to gov.uk
Divide and rule.
sam says:
26 November, 2023 at 11:24 am
“Scots have been asked what makes for decent work. Here are their responses.”
All very reasonable and I’m sure that English workers would write the same. Unfortunately Scottish and English consumers want stuff as cheaply as possible, even if that means buying from a country/company that doesn’t offer those things. Or at least the cost of those things, like housing are cheaper anyway. It’s a hard lesson that UK workers and consumers don’t want to learn. We are no longer competing with each other, we’re competing with the World.
Turabdin
I know that you are precise in the meanings of words.
What do you mean when you use the words Zionist and Semitic?
09:36 start on a Sunday, I see. One maybe gave the other two a lift in.
Wonder if they get time and a half?
@Stuart McTavish
Do you have a link for what Andrew Tickel is saying?
@Republicofscotland says:26 November, 2023 at 10:56 am
Basically they are the modern version of the English forts build all over Scotland during the hunting down of Highlanders after Culloden and the Highland Clearances
Oh dear, as a Scot with some connections in my grandparent’s time to the teaching profession, it saddens me to witness the ignorance our present day teachers have allowed to spread.
The Highlands of Scotland are approximately delineated as the Mainland area north of Glasgow and Stirling, running as far east as north of Dundee, then extending northwards to the Moray Firth. All of the Western Isles are included. Very roughly, it’s about half of Scotland’s land area.
Alert readers will immediately realise the folly of building forts “all over Scotland to hunt down Highlanders”, as bleedin obviously, half the forts would be pointless.
Honestly RoS, for somebody claiming to care about Scotland so much, you seem to know precious little about the place.
@PhilM
link to thenational.scot
Think this was it, apologies if it’s now behind a paywall though.
John Main; wrong yet again. Every town in Scotland, large and small, not just the highlands, had garrisons after 1745 to keep the natives in order.
Hi PhilM –
Alex Salmond’s last stand is a high-risk gamble that will rumble on
link to archive.md
For some reason Tickell’s National article didn’t appear the first time I searched.
Not sure your SIM cards example is useful.
Misconduct/Malfeasance in public office is a criminal offence against what the public expects of somebody’s public role. In England/Wales it is tried only on indictment. It requires serious wrong-doing, well outside what is expected. One of the examples on the CPS website is where a policeman did nothing whilst somebody was kicked to death right in front of them.
Misfeasance in public office is a tort (i.e. a common law wrong based on English common law notions, though the word is french). In Scotland MPO is a ‘borrowed tort’, a delict (I think) and will not see any one go to jail unless they commit an offence whilst under oath or engage in witness tampering etc. MPO requires malice, targeted or untargeted, and requires a victim who’s been harmed by an abuse of power.
Nonfeasance in public office, as an ideal type, concerns a failure to act, plus a harmed victim.
I think this is right.
The expectation in Scotland is that the SPSO is the proper venue for complaining about public officials. If, like in England, you could bring private criminal prosecutions against public officials in Scotland much of the corruption up here would disappear overnight.
I’ve had a very strong feeling of deja vu since Salmond’s announcement was made. Remember when we all thought Rev’s case against ‘Dippy Dug’ was a slam-dunk stonewaller? Then the Court managed to manipulate its “findings” into something that appeared to have both sides winning the case. I’ve a very strong feeling either something similar will happen here OR put another way the outcome will not favour Alex, at least not outright. I don’t trust the Scottish legal system, and with good reason, especially with BritNats operating in the background. Brian’s link to The National article up thread at 1:16pm only serves to reinforce that feeling. Time will tell.
sam says:
26 November, 2023 at 11:24 am
Scots have been asked what makes for decent work. Here are their responses.
“Table 1 – Priorities for decent work from focus groups…
All sounds lovely.
Just out of interest, is the Employer entitled to the same conditions?
@ Breeks
I had social care workers in mind.
Just my unprofessional opinion but is Tickell forgetting about the text messages? Especially the ones regarding one of the alphabetties being apprehensive & being egged on to follow through despite knowing it could get them on the rebound?
I also disagree where he thinks we didn’t all understand the judicial review. We did & most of us crowdfunded it because Alex made clear exactly what it was about. They didn’t follow due process, denied him an arbitrator & deliberately leaked his shit to the Daily Rancid.
All monies were raised for the case alone. Any refund owed was to go to charity – which it did as I received an email after he won.
This one, it seems to me, is for personal loss & of that there can be no doubt. 5 yrs of bullshit & every media & hack on the internet hounding his public life even after being cleared. It’s blatant that it was a stitch up. I read somewhere this case won’t include redacted shite. I hope that’s the case & EVERYTHING is out from under its rock.
Go get ’em Floyd!
If it rumbles on then the law is either an ass or bent..
@Breeks
Longer reply.
The two long running studies of the health of Whitehall civil servants found a health gradient.
Those at the bottom grades lived shorter lives than at the top. The middle grades also lived shorter lives than those at the top.
The study took account of all possible factors that might account for the differences.
No civil servant at the time could be said to be living in poverty so that was not the cause.
Inequality was judges to be the cause.
A biological pathway was suggested.The effects of the stress hormone, cortisol,accumulated over time, can cause strokes and heart attacks.
The same social gradient can be found using education and income.
Permanently elevated levels of cortisol in children inhibits learning as it adversely affects the parts of the brain to do with memory and learning.
Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey is worth reading about the effects of a damaged childhood.
Message – it is in the interests of the middle class to have a more equal society. Do they know that?
Here’s a study that looks at how much people in the UK and USA know about health inequalities and the social gradient.
“Conclusion
Employing a novel approach to measuring perceived and ideal life expectancy inequality, this is the first study to examine perceptions of lifespan inequality by occupational groups. It reports widespread understanding of the occupation-related gradient in lifespan and a desire that these inequalities be eliminated in the UK, but considerably less awareness and desire for equality in the US. Greater tolerance for social status inequalities in the US than other similar countries appear to also extend to differences in life expectancy.”
link to bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com
Sir Harry Burns was a very effective Chief Medical Officer.
Innovative. He looked for small increments the way Japanese industry and big sports teams do.
I expect most of you will know why each of us gets an invitation to be jagged in a blue envelope.
There are quite a lot of Youtube talks done by Harry Burns that are well worth watching.
Despite the poor quality of the Health Ministers some of Sir Harry’s stuff has become embedded.
What causes wellness? Watch Sir Harry explain.
https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=yEh3JG74C6s
BDTT: many thanks for the archive link to Tickell’s article about Alex Sal.ond’s case.
Have to say that I am deeply disappointed by Tickell’s tone – implying that Alex Salmond should move on and get a life.
Having your life’s work and your reputation destroyed is not somdghing hhat anyone can get over. It is just not possible. Anyone who suggests such a thing and the media which publish it, should have the same kind of thing done to them. How I would laugh.
Sam
Couldn’t agree more.
Poverty kills.
Inequality kills.
All could be fixed by work that pays a real living wage & investing in young people to end the cycle.
It leads to a happier, healthier & more productive workforce & drastically reduces social problems & bad life choices.
I think we only need to look at the Nordic countries to see that policy in action.
The middle class don’t seem to care. The Tories instilled greed & an I’m alright jack attitude & I’d like to stay that way, thanks. Should’ve stuck in at school & everyone is benefit scroungers..
We can see where the problem lies but the English still vote for those arseholes.
My sister is high up in the care sector. Private nursing homes aren’t cheap yet they’re always *fundraising* for patient perks such as a Christmas party or a present or an Easter egg or a Halloween party. It’s obscene. Their patients are already paying thousands to stay there & the owners can’t chuck in a gift at Christmas? They’re the last organisation that needs hand outs, imo. But greed seems to just attract more greed & hijacks ppls good nature away from those who are more needing it.
“Honestly RoS, for somebody claiming to care about Scotland so much, you seem to know precious little about the place.”
John Main.
If I thought for one second that you were interested in the welfare of Scots or Scotland I say so, but going by your comments over time its patently obvious that just like Chas and ASA (there are other less notable ones) you are not.
Here is a map of 400 British army camps in Scotland after Culloden.
link to pinterest.com
The article is all too familiar.
My wife works in a Nursing home and the tears she shed, the exhausted brain & limbs, the anxiety of working among Covid was horrific.
The government or local authority, i don’t care which, knowingly moved covid positive people from hospitals into care homes and ravaged those homes.
Countless avoidable deaths among particularly residents but also staff was the result.
There is blood on the hands of the decision makers but i doubt they’ll ever be held to account.
It was a sick time in more ways than one.
Re my previous comment so more info.
“More than 11,600 British Army soldiers remained in Scotland following Culloden to suppress the uprising and its supporters, according to research by Stennis Historical Society, which is based in Edinburgh.
“Soldiers were also charged with enforcing laws designed to dismantle the Highland way of life, according to the papers.
Army posts were to be “occupied by the regular forces in the Highlands, to put the Laws in Execution for disarming the Highlanders, suppressing the Dress and for preventing Depredations,” a passage in the cantonment records said.
The map shows how the camps, which were recorded between 1746 and 1755, stretched from Orkney in the Northern Isles to the Scottish Borders.”
Scotland was under blanket British Army occupation for the seven to 10 years after Culloden.”
link to google.com
link to sites.google.com
Republicofscotland 3.40pm.
????????
Sorry.RoS. That was meant to be a smiley face.
An excellent post not that long ago from Professor Alf Baird using UN rules.
“We now know that a very different franchise was used in the New Caledonia referendum on independence. The ‘secondary criteria’ for that franchise was ratified by the United Nations and by the French State.
In the New Caledonia referendum, potential voters needed to be registered on the general electoral roll, and also had to meet one of the following secondary criteria:
Was on the electoral roll for the 1998 referendum on the Nouméa Accord;
Qualified to be on the electoral roll for the 1998 referendum, but were not enrolled;
Failed to meet the requirements to be on the 1998 electoral roll solely due to absence related to family, medical or professional reasons;
Having civil customary status, or born in New Caledonia and have their material interests in the territory;
At least one parent born in New Caledonia and have their material interests in the territory;
At least 20 years of continuous residence in New Caledonia by 31 December 2014;
Born before 1 January 1989 and have had their residence in New Caledonia between 1988 and 1998;
Born after 31 December 1988 and reached voting age before the referendum, with at least one parent who was on the electoral roll (or qualified to do so) for the 1998 referendum.
As a consequence of these restrictions, in the 2018 New Caledonia referendum 35,948 registered voters on the general list (17% of the 210,105 total registered voters) were excluded from the vote.
If a Scottish referendum on accession of ‘Auld Caledonia’ to full sovereignty applied such a UN sanctioned ‘secondary criteria’, and assuming that 17% of voters (those mostly from outside Scotland) are removed, of which an estimated two-thirds (i.e. 12% of total votes) are ‘No’ voters, this would then take the ‘Yes’ vote to 60% or more.”
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Geri
It is going to be hard for England to change for the better its social care policies. I think a revised PFI might be on the cards.
Scotland need not follow. Put social care back into local authority care, perhaps?
There will need to be space for private run homes and homes in the voluntary sector. There needs to be widespread discussion and awareness raising.
Beef up enforcement of a good practice regime for staff pay, training, holidays, work ethos.
Promote the building of homes with 10 to 50 beds. Designed, built, managed and run locally as far as possible and accountable locally.
Encourage change of procurement policies where needed to place greater emphasis on community wealth building.
Follow the Preston example. Keep money generated locally, local.
Johnlm@ 11.29am.
I addressed something similar a few months back, in which Glasgow right now, is part of a two-year lab experiment under the moniker of Project Gallant.
Glasgow like many big cities around the globe has come under the gaze of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
Here are the main funders of the group.
“The initiative is heavily funded by influenced by deep state interests, especially by the three “strategic funders”: Bloomberg Philanthropies (Michael Bloomberg), Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (billionaire Chris Hohn), and Realdania.[5][6] C40 lists provides no information on funding amounts.
The second highest category, major funders”, includes the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark; George Soros’s Open Society Foundations; the Oak Foundation; and the ClimateWorks Foundation.”
The University of Glasgow is playing a huge roll in Project Gallant, and anyone who has an inkling about the UoG knows its utterly unionist orientated.
link to gla.ac.uk
link to gla.ac.uk
link to wikispooks.com
Geri
I expect you already know most or all of this.
link to ippr.org
Did you watch Sir Harry?
Scotland is in a better place than the others at present,with around 1 in 5 children having mental health problems in England.
By 2021 only Bulgaria was more unequal by income than England.
Scotland offers money resource advice service to all pregnant women. The child payment scheme means a family will have more money leading to greater equality.
Professor Dorling has said:” “Two out of every seven children in Scotland, their families will get it and that has an effect on changing the inequality level in Scotland, which I don’t see in any country for which there has been data for the last 40 years.
“This is £4000 by this Christmas, to a family with three children claiming any form of benefit.”
Sarah @ 3.28.
People should be cheering from the rafters at the news of this action by Alex Salmond.
He’s not doing this just for himself. It is for Scotland.
We have watched as those instrumental in persecuting Alex Salmond have been promoted and financially rewarded. Not one person has been held responsible for a deliberate wicked act. Instead they have benefited from it.
This would leave Scotland as a prime example of a dystopian state, and for too long has hung over everything in Scottish politics like a nasty smell.
All the politicians, press, police, and legal profession know the identities of the accusers and what the motivation was behind the unjustified attack on Alex Salmond. The plebs have been kept in the dark by various means.
The air must be cleaned. The SNP Government had their chance to set matters right, but they chose to do the opposite and benefit the offenders.
It is only by bringing this action that the full facts will be exposed to public scrutiny and people will see for themselves who is involved and who did what in the campaign to bring Alex down.
The Fabiani farce didn’t begin to scratch the surface of what went on. It had no hope of doing that. Politicians judging their mates is hardly an unbiased objective tribunal.
There is no way other than this action which will enable Scotland to be freed from the shackles which are holding it back. Governments must be held to account, and if they won’t do it themselves then others must step up and do it.
I believe that not only will Alex Salmond have his reputation restored, he will go down in history as the man who restored Scotland’s reputation as being a fair and just country. Until then it can only be regarded as being run by an unaccountable rabble of third rate chancers.
That’s exactly how the next referendum should be conducted.
Anyone advocating a re run of the exact same franchise as last time would be a moron or happy to have a rigged referendum by the British state.
Aunt Jeanie, fae Manchester, living in the Highlands is not a sovereign Scot. Therefore has no say so on Scotland returning to independent status. Same with EU citizens.
Aunt Jeanie will not care if she’s got any metal about her. It’s not her native country. She’s a guest & may not be planning on staying for all we know.
If she does care then tough titty. Take her gripes & campaign for English independence & move.
Scotlands fate shouldn’t be in the hands of outsiders.
They move here for better government & mitigation (child care/elderly care) but can never seem to shake off the unionist pish they bring with them. They want a better life but at the same time want shackled to the cause of all our problems.
Devolution can be removed at any time it comes up a Tories humph to do it. Obviously covertly like they’re already doing. Devo is only temporary. Independence is for good & it shouldn’t be watered down & flooded by eejits with an opinion.
JOHNLM
Both terms are 19th century european in origin. Arabic, my first language but not my «native» one, struggles for semantic equivalence. Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Syriac are classed as «semitic» languages and the speakers likewise.
Although the both terms are current in English, and i have used them here, i do not think they are helpful, they are not «neutral», or even «scientific», particularly in the light of race theories whose origins are also 19century european.
Any further «exposition» would be pointless as far as the purpose of this site is concerned.
Sam
I haven’t had time yet. I’m just popping in now & again over a coffee break. Im trying to defrost a freezer lol.
I will be sure to read your links & watch any talks Harry has. I’d not heard of him before so thanks!
I’ll be back later to follow up…
@PhilM
Other examples are available but its probably a bit like penalty rangers – its rarely punished because its a feature, not a flaw.
Rather than risk disappointing you, and depressing me, further by listing some, here’s something much better (& from BBC no less)
link to youtube.com
RoS
If you meant camps you should have written camps.
You wrote forts.
I respond to what you write, not to what you think you meant to write.
@Geri 5:11
That’s all good, but I do think you need to come clean, reveal your true identity, and verify you are ScotGov Minister In Charge Of The Referendum Franchise.
Otherwise, you’re just flapping your mouth off.
Which makes my idea as good as yours, probably better in fact.
Anybody rocking up to the polling station with photo ID, a Scottish residential address, and proof of paying Tartan Tax gets a vote.
Simple, fair, and means the Indy movement needs to have done the work of showing a majority of Scots voters and tax payers that iScotland will be a viable concern.
I realise that “viable concern” bit terrifies you, but instead of bitching about it, why not do the work instead.
Show us Scots the money and explain how Indy is going to make thing better.
Believe me, you do that, and Indy is a slam dunk. But for now, because you can’t do that, Indy support is flatlined at 45%
A poll prediction in Scotland for the next GE.
“According to the Stonehaven analysis, this is how every one of Scotland’s constituencies are predicted to vote:
Aberdeen North – SNP
Aberdeen South – SNP
Aberdeenshire North and Moray East – Conservatives
Airdrie and Shotts – Labour
Alloa and Grangemouth – SNP
Angus and Perthshire Glens – SNP
Arbroath and Broughty Ferry – SNP
Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber – Conservatives
Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock – Conservatives
Bathgate and Linlithgow – SNP
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk – Conservatives
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross – SNP
Central Ayrshire – Conservatives
Coatbridge and Bellshill – Labour
Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy – Labour
Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch – Labour
Dumfries and Galloway – Conservatives
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale – Conservatives
Dundee Central – SNP
Dunfermline and Dollar – Labour
East Kilbride and Strathaven – Labour
East Renfrewshire – Conservatives
Edinburgh East and Musselburgh – SNP
Edinburgh North and Leith – SNP
Edinburgh South – Labour
Edinburgh South West – SNP
Edinburgh West – LibDems
Falkirk – SNP
Glasgow East – SNP
Glasgow North – SNP
Glasgow North East – Labour
Glasgow South – Labour
Glasgow South West – Labour
Glasgow West – Labour
Glenrothes and Mid Fife – Labour
Gordon and Buchan – Conservatives
Hamilton and Clyde Valley – Labour
Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West – Labour
Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire – SNP
Kilmarnock and Loudoun – SNP
Livingston – SNP
Lothian East – Labour
Mid Dunbartonshire – LibDems
Midlothian – Labour
Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey – Conservatives
Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke – Labour
Na h-Eileanan an Iar – Labour
North Ayrshire and Arran – SNP
North East Fife – LibDems
Orkney and Shetland – LibDems
Paisley and Renfrewshire North – Labour
Paisley and Renfrewshire South – Labour
Perth and Kinross-shire – SNP
Rutherglen – Labour
Stirling and Strathallan – SNP
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine – Conservatives
West Dunbartonshire – Labour”
link to archive.is
The best weasel words of the year award goes to:
Shona Robison, for her comments about the delay of the ferry contracts, when she said “There’s no change to the programme. The programme remains on track.It’s just the profiling of the spend”
A list of countries supplying weapons to Israel that are used on civilians in Gaza.
Also the SAS are in Israel and according to former Pentagon advisor Douglas MacGregor that there are 2,000 Marines and 2,000 Special Forces that have been deployed to the region. MacGregor also mentioned how U.S. Special Forces embedded with Israeli Special Forces entered the Gaza Strip in October.
Among the countries that are sending weapons and components to Israel to aid their genocide are, U.S., Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, and France.
link to mintpressnews.com
Republicofscotland @ 19.51
The way things are heading under the present SNP/Green idiocy, I truly believe that so many Scots voters are sickened and disillusioned with incompetence, self interest and suspected corruption the turnout will be so pathetically low that the outcome is going to be challenging to predict, RoS.
@Merganser (8.08)
‘the profiling of the spend’
Brilliant.
Thanks for the laugh in bleak times.
😉
John Main @ 6:40pm
“Indy support is flatlined at 45%”
One interesting idea raised but not adopted during the lead-up to the Brexit referendum (because Remain thought they were going to win anyway) was that the validity of a referendum should rely on a minimum turnout and a 65% (choose your number) majority to be valid. This would avoid ‘buyer’s remorse’. I wouldn’t be surprised if this would be applied in the unlikely event that there was another British referendum.
They’re all the same.
The idiotic SNP will be replaced with idiotic Labour, Tories & lib dumbs.
Scotland needs to vote for a complete eradication of Westminster lackeys cause that’s all they are. Branch managers working for the interests of another country & they’re not even good ones at that. One is as thick as the next. Bots with zero foresight & accountability to Scotland.
I hope Sturgeon & her husband’s chickens all come home to roost next year. A pair of barstewards that sold an entire country to remain in power while achieving the grand total of fck all but the spanner award on how to crash & burn an entire political party & movement to hail in chicks with dicks & the incel crew.
I’d much prefer them to be completely wiped out & banished forever back to their swamp along with the Greens.
I don’t know why they’re turning to Slabber. They’re another shower of corrupt incompetents who will only carry on where the SNP have left off..
Scotlands franchise won’t be set by another country.
50% +1 is the worldwide standard.
RoS,
the only participants in the conflict in Gaza that are committed to genocide are Hamas. Literally, their founding charter calls for the extirpation of Israel as a nation, and the death of Jews.
MacGregor isn’t a trustworthy actor. He’s a shill for the Kremlin.
Geri,
can you name a single other country in the modern era that has (or has had) a 50%+1 franchise _restricted to people born in that country_, as you have been advocating?
It was most recently rejected by the UN over East Timor, citing the precedent of collective UN decisions in the 1991 and 1992 Bosnian referenda. The Swiss don’t have it for their frequent referenda. Neither did the Northern Irish in 1997 for the GFA. It’s not part of any future Irish border poll. The Canadians didn’t have it for Quebec independence. The Aussies rejected it when they first talked about a referendum of becoming a republic.
A Scot Abroad = 77 Brigade?
@James Jones 8:47
It’s all academic squared anyway. The same posters endlessly banging on about the franchise are the same people endlessly greetin we won’t be “allowed” a referendum anyway.
I agree with them on the latter.
Which is why I call for Ash Regan’s plebiscitary election idea to be the preferred route going forwards, and adopted as Alba policy.
So far, all I’m seeing on that front is tumbleweed.
@ Merganser at 4.45: I agree completely that Mr Salmond’s case is essential for the cause of Scotland’s restoration as a free nation AND to clean up our institutions.
As you say, everyone but the masses knows the truth so why aren’t the press, radio, tv, politicians, police, civil servants whistle blowing? Every last one of them is a disgrace.y
RoS 8:31
Turkey a western country now? Helping the fight against Hamas?
We better watch ourselves. Between Yousaf and your deranged ideas, we might end up with the Turks kicking oor erses.
It’s worth noting that ‘Main’ claims to be a founder member of Alba.
That won’t be the name on his membership card, but it’s possible that s/he *is* a member and will be present at meetings, conference etc.
Infiltrators are sent right in there at the start of anything ‘suspect’.
Alex Salmond on Grangemouth closure.
link to albaparty.org
“Not a single Scottish MP called at Prime Minister’s Questions saw fit to raise the issue of the closure of Grangemouth refinery while the Scottish Government look asleep at the wheel. They need to act now with urgency to secure Scotland’s industrial and energy base.”
Thank you for speaking out. I was disgusted listening to first Minister’s questions this week and no one was speaking about it.
Save Grangemouth. Save the oil jobs. Scotland’s oil. 4 per cent GDP. Unbelievable they will happily see it close.
The SNP are a shambles as we know.
IB
It’s very worth noting that naw, ah dinna.
This being Wings BTL, I very much expect somebody to pop up and claim that “only a real member of Alba would deny his Alba membership”.
I read Alex Salmond’s book recently. He wrote about Ferguson Marine shipyard. And the workers. He spoke about meeting them. The union guys and securing the jobs.
Salmond would save Grangemouth. He’d speak to the workers. I hope he still can. We need the Alba Party running the show.
I’m so glad I joined them. A party that fills you with pride and hope.
Re Grangemouth, it’s a very poor situation, and it should be being debated in Holyrood. Salmond is correct about that.
It strikes me that if there is to be an iScotland, then it needs to have within its boundaries a reasonable degree of energy security. The war in south eastern Europe has taught us that. I’m not against huge amounts of offshore renewable energy, but until energy storage is functional at grid scale, a country would be foolish to rely upon that.
So, should Scotland nationalise Grangemouth? As refineries go, it’s relatively low scale, and hasn’t turned a profit for nearly 10 years. If it were to be nationalised, iScotGov would be subsidising it for decades until closing it.
I’m also sceptical that ScotGov has the skills to run a business. Look at Prestwick. Look at Ferguson’s where two ferries, functionally fairly close to the two ferries bought by the privately owned Pentland Ferries, are going to be years late and possibly exceed £500m in cost. Pentland spent about £25m on their two ferries and got them from Vietnam in 3 years. So what is the likely extra £475m that the Scottish taxpayers are spending getting them?
‘Long Covid’ is actually the long term damage caused by the Covid injections.
Civil servant flunkies to fck it up. What else?
Ian 10:35
Main would need someone to explain the route to the venue, draw him a map, pay all his expenses, study graphs & charts, eat all the free spread, agree with everyone, present him with a detailed plan in a binder so he doesn’t forget & pay his fare home..
He’d then announce on here that no one had a plan.
He/she/it is Batshit Jill the 2nd of History woman fame..
Main
Sovereign Nations don’t need to hold referendums. They can terminate treaties when they see fit. They can also set the rules as Republicofscotland already linked by Alf’s link further up this thread regards UN/ New Caledonia referendum.
David
Did you listen to Phil today regards Grangemouth?
Geri,
how would a sovereign nation establish a right to terminate a treaty without some form of democratic event such as a referendum? An election, perhaps, with the treaty termination being the number one policy.
But no Scottish party is actively calling for a referendum, nor has treaty termination as a number one policy.
Given demographics, and population movements internally within the U.K., Scotland missed its best chance at Indy in 2014. The chances diminish annually,and your lunatic 50%+1 of Scots-born franchise ain’t ever going to happen.
Best you tell your neighbours and your grandchildren that Indy ain’t ever going to happen in their lifetimes. And that’s a very good thing for the people of Scotland.
“ the only participants in the conflict in Gaza that are committed to genocide are Hamas.”
Another howler from ASS
link to twitter.com
David Hannah says:
24 November, 2023 at 12:06 am
Rumour has it, Nicola’s in bed with Gupta.
============
How absurd!
Whoever heard of a Frenchwoman named Gupta?
I see comments BTL here, which appear to be designed to dispirit the YES movement, whilst also denigrating the ability of Scotland to govern itself as an independent nation.
I also see comments from long-term Wingers, expressing despair at the former.
I think the time has come to ridicule the ‘nay-sayers’, whilst promoting the potential benefits of an independent Scotland.
The first, easiest one, is the amount of the state pension compared to other nations. If we, Yessers, could drive home that, by the end of the first term of an independent Scottish government, the state pension would be at the European average, it would go a long way to convincing the over-55s to vote YES.
link to imgur.com
I agree with you entirely Brian, the problem is that no indy party leader is doing so, the only ones who have been producing information and educational material is the likes of Indy Poster Boy and a few other individual indy supporters
ALL the time that sturgeon and her perverts have been in power and crawed about independence not once have they DISPUTED vociferously or otherwise the figures produced by WM
I have commented time and time again the lack of information or educational material to counteract the constant lies and misinformation spewed by WM and the media
It is no wonder the britnat shills and 77th brigade are multiplying BTL and regurgitating endless reams of shite that has been totally challenged and disproven numerous times by numerous commenters, they are emboldened by the lack of information coming from the official sources, TBQH IMO it was one of the reasons for the defeat????? in 2014
Alex Salmond and his CHOSEN crew were totally unprepared for the MOUNTAIN of lies and misinformation spewed endlessly and unchallenged by ALL of WM and ALL of the msm and ALL of the broadcasters, the naivety that WM would be prepared to lose it’s cash cow by playing by the rules without resorting to every devious and underhand method as they have done through their entire existence was infantile , and YET they persist along the same route
The only way to stand a chance against WM and the collaborators within Scotland is to be exactly like them, EVERY devious and underhand method, get the gloves off and EXPOSE the corruption and lies of the establishment, go for the jugular , but they won’t it is not diplomatic or gentlemanly, queensbury rules only
Why should scotland pick up the tab for legal costs of those accused in salmonds action? Those accused were not diligently pursuing legitimate Scottish government business. They were either “off on a frolic of their own”, (in which case they are not entitled to employer support and so must bear their own costs and penalties)…. OR … they were diligently pursuing the business of their London based employer (in which case that employer must bear the costs and penalties and the scales will fall from the eyes of even the the most hardened Sturgeonite.). I doubt that Westminster (or MI5, or any relative of murdoch) will allow admission of the second option, so the miscreants look to be most properly cast adrift and standing on their own resources. It mean Alex will not get the compensation sum properly due to him, but it also means bankruptcy for the main players (unless they have siphoned off more from the public purse than even I suspect). The positive would be a far greater deterrence against future misfeasance, and…. WE wouldn’t have to pick up the tab!
twathater says:
27 November, 2023 at 4:07 am
I agree with you entirely Brian, the problem is that no indy party leader is doing so, the only ones who have been producing information and educational material is the likes of Indy Poster Boy and a few other individual indy supporters…
I both agree and disagree.
Yes, the pressure for Independence must be relentless and indefatigable, and in this regard the SNP are an outright disgrace, but at the same time, pressure without result is demoralising and saps reserves. We also risk voter fatigue.
One of the most adroit comments I’ve heard recently came from Roddy McLeod Barrheadboy, (I think) to the effect whereas most people see this as a time when nothing is happening, this should really be a time of furious activity to coordinate and structure the Movement in preparation for the next stage of progression.
In reality, this I think has to be the Scotland United philosophy, but centred around the Claim of Right and Constitutional Sovereignty, definitely NOT Holyrood and its Vichy-like tendencies.
SALVO and the political parties need to settle their differences through the often talked about, but never delivered, Constitutional Convention.
I understand “why” it’s happening, but we simply cannot allow the dysfunctional SNP to be setting the pace and holding progress to ransom. We need leadership and initiative. Now.
I, for one, feel deeply uncomfortable about the SNP providing that leadership. They are currently doing more harm to us than the Unionists could ever dream of.
I’d like to see a fresh initiative, where the Pro-Indy Leaders declare a common resolve with SALVO, with ALBA, ISP, and significant others, and including an SNP contingent, probably led by Joanna Cherry, coming out fighting. Let me repeat for emphasis, – coming out fighting.
I truly believe Salmond is right to tackle the rotten Establishment which tried to destroy him. It is unconscionable that a Scottish “Government” can commit such gross and malicious attacks on a former First Minister of remarkable distinction, have their incompetence and failure confirmed in law, but yet not a single one of those responsible suffered as much as a reprimand. It’s a farce… except we know it’s much worse than a farce.
The fly in the ointment, perhaps, is that I’d rather see Alex Salmond at the heart of the aforementioned Constitutional Convention, arm in arm with Sara Salyers.
Revenge can be served cold. I want to see Scottish Independence red hot and in the forge.
Scotland, with 96% of the “UK” oil reserves will soon have 0 refineries, while the parasites south of the border have 5. Scotland must wake the fuck up, or they we leave Scotland a mere husk, populated by English retirees and second home owners.
@ Breeks at 07.20: Yes, we do meed a united movement – parties and non-political with capable leaders (plural).
They must accept that they are the servants of the Sovereign People.
The Convention is essential BUT it needs to be seen by the population as the accepted voice and route. Without mass membership of even those groups that are co-operating it will not be accepted as legitimate. Thoughts/ideas on how to solve this?
Breeks. Totally agree with what you say. But how do we get info out? The press and media screwed us the last time and they’ll do it again! Somehow, we need to get control over it. I have no idea how.
@ASA said: Look at Ferguson’s where two ferries, functionally fairly close to the two ferries bought by the privately owned Pentland Ferries, are going to be years late and possibly exceed £500m .
The Ferries are already 6 years late and already £600m and rising.(much more bad news to come on this one)?
Re: Your point about the Nationalisation of Grangemouth.
We cannot be all things to all men, as a country we need to only be investing in strategic business the problem is under this SNP administration we do not have a strategic business plan , we react to the political noise that’s created around an issue. The current administration do not see fossil fuels as strategic so why invest in Grangemouth ? Fergusons was a political show pony for the SNP ( remember Nicola’s selfie at the launch in 2017 were the ferry had painted on windows) Ferry building was never going to be strategic business either it was nationalised for a few votes in Inverclyde , but we are now half pregnant with it and it’s going to cost much more in taxpayers money before our commitment to it goes away.
Breeks 7.20am
Agree too, and that there needs to be unity. That requires communication between the groups who would have their own part to play but in a spirit of co-operation. Hopefully the time is coming and maybe clearing out the dross of the past is a necessary step towards that.
Meanwhile, as well as SALVO, much of the groundwork’s there (the ALBA wee book events, AUOB marches, Scotland Speaks, Wings and lots of other solid work online and in print). The ALBA MPs and its first MSP too.
The opposition is massive but, assuming that “timing is everything in politics”, it should just be a matter of when.
Brian Doonthetoon @ 3:08 am
“I think the time has come to ridicule the ‘nay-sayers’, whilst promoting the potential benefits of an independent Scotland.”
We’ve passed this stage, Brian. A colonised people primarily need to understand their colonial condition. Once they understand the real reason for their wretchedness they will be less likely to vote for the status quo.
Political leaders have so far failed to explain what independence means and why it is necessary:
link to salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
There’s a long and complicated article in the Telegraph about the problems facing grangemouth.
link to telegraph.co.uk
The issue is twofold. Fixing the most important part of the plant and ensuring a supply from the oilfields. The latter runs up against the drive for greener targets. Without a government in both Westminster and Scotland that are fully supporting oil and gas exploration, you’ve got a declining industry. What do YOU think of those prospects?
The plant won’t be fixed without a huge cash injection but what is the point if there is no supply?
INDEPENDENCE ought to mean a restart from zero.
For the fearful that is too radical. For the fearful retaining elements of the old dispensation is more comforting and reassuring.
The old dispensation therefore has its way in shaping the new.
That is definitely not independence. Politicians who think «fearful» will never deliver it.
The SNP/Green wankers are silent on Grangemouth because they are secretly and not so secretly delighted by it.
It fits in with their war against the Scottish Oil & Gas industry and their general dislike of business and and people earning money.
Because they are neo-marxist twats of the highest order.
As damaging as they are, socially speaking, the damage they are doing to the Scottish economy is beyond immense, as this non-response amply demonstrates.
The sale of renewables for peanuts also shows they are completely unfit to govern at best and wildly corrupt at worst. But here it will be both…
They will do nothing and a vital strategic industry will be closed forever.
Woke scum.
Despite all of these calls to action, nothing is actually happening.
Alba behaving like a stunned slug. Doing absolutely nothing.
ISP getting low hundreds of votes in an Indy-minded constituency.
Salvo writing mince on a website.
SNP now as popular as Labour were in the months before wipeout.
Literally nobody on the Indy side of Scottish politics with any credible and realistic vision for Scotland.
Alf Baird 27 November, 2023 at 8:44 am
After a quick skim through your PDF, I genuinely want to know what culture you are talking about. I’m not being rude. What part of ancient Scottish culture, other than language, are you wanting to reintroduce? More bagpipe music? More tartan? What? Because I don’t give a stuff about my ancestors culture. Not Scottish, Irish or English. I exist in the 21st century and live in a modern culture with modern music and old (from across the World); I eat foods from all over; I dress in what the shops sell in 2023; I get entertainment in English but don’t care where it came from so long as it’s good; I have the freedom to pursue any religion and I choose none of them.
What do you do that’s so different and Scottish? What do you want to impose?
Steve A @6:47am
100%. Hard to imagine such (alleged) shrinking violets being able to squirrel away £3million in honest earnings during the best of times let alone during a contemporary one in parallel with a decade or two of criminal negligence.. and that’s before we get to the £18T* they”ll need for we the people’s share.
*Technically, there having been so much in the way of backstabbing & footshooting (even from the indy supporting side, FFS!) – up to 5 from every 6 could have their allocation civil asset forfeited immediately (ie for collusion) so total required for settlement,in this instance, could, in theory, be negotiated down to around £3Trillion 🙂
Mac says
“Woke scum”
Seconded.
As others have pointed out, Grangemouth is being run down at least partly because ScotGov is prioritising ending of North Sea oil and gas production.
In other news this morning, second biggest story being run by the BBC is the hijacking of COP28 by “third world” producers of oil and gas flogging their products to the rest of the world.
When will we wake up and understand that it’s the economy that matters? Without a viable, profitable economy, there’s no pensions, healthcare, virtue signalling or tolerable quality of life.
No Indy either. Right now, it’s Sunak with his oil and gas development licenses that is assisting the Scottish economy, and pretendy fraud Yousaf and his cadre of reality-insulated hingers oan that is sabotaging it.
WT actual F, eh?
A Scot Abroad said;
“how would a sovereign nation establish a right to terminate a treaty without some form of democratic event such as a referendum? An election, perhaps, with the treaty termination being the number one policy.”
A, as a sovereign nation it already has the right terminate a treaty.
B, Why would it need some form of democratic event such as a referendum? Scotland didn’t enter the Treaty on a democratic basis in the first place. It was abundantly clear that the Scots people were totally against the Union. It was their government that entered the Union, because that is what the Union is, a Union of two governments, except the English half denies the authority of the other half, and that is a constitutional crime.
Bringing the perpetrators of a major crime to justice does not require a democratic event.
“But no Scottish party is actively calling for a referendum”
That’s because it’s become utterly pointless, it’s been made abundantly clear that no such referendum will ever be permitted. Do keep up!
Xaracen
So the plebiscitary election route is the only one left that provides a fully democratic decision making event on the question: Union or no Union.
So why is this not constantly under discussion, why is it not ISP policy, why is it not Alba policy, why is Ash Regan now silent about it?
Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, however improbable, must be the answer.
The words of a great Scotsman, if I recall correctly.
Plebiscitary elections, at HR, at WM. Absolutely nothing standing in the way of that. So what’s the problem?
So thousand of jobs to go in the Grangemouth area due to the decision to close the refinery and concentrate refining in a plant in England.
And so the economic and industrial destruction of Scotland continues.
But not a cheep from the SNP or their unionist bedfellows in Labour and the Tories.
Ah well a happy new year for the thousands who are to lose their jobs.
Part of a piece by IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Social care’s reliance on private bed provision is growing. New data from IPPR – in partnership with Future Care Capital (FCC) – shows that 84 per cent of beds are now provided by the private sector up from an estimated 82 per cent in 2015. In total, 91 per cent of local authorities saw an increase of private provision during this period. Meanwhile, just 13 per cent of beds are provided by the voluntary sector and 3 per cent by the public sector –both stagnating as a share of total provision over time.
Larger providers – particularly those funded by private equity firms – are becoming
more dominant. Nearly one-fifth of the sector is taken up by the big five providers, three of which are private equity funded. Such firms often rely on high levels of borrowing,complicated corporate
structures and cost-cutting measures such as tax avoidance and low staff pay. As a result, this model can leave them unstable, with two of the big five providers –
Southern Cross in 2011 and Four Seasons in 2019 – going into administration in recent
years.
A growing reliance on private provision could mean lower quality care. There are a
number of potential linkages between ownership and quality.
? Firstly, there is evidence that private providers have less training for staff, higher turnover and lower pay.
? Secondly, the private care market has proven volatile, with private equity owned
businesses operating highly leveraged business models.
? Thirdly, the emergence of large private providers contrasts with evidence that small
nursing and residential homes provide better care.
We need to be bold and arrest the growth of debt-fuelled private providers in social
care. IPPR calls for a bold set of policy interventions to arrest the growth of debt-fuelled
private social care provision and oversee the existing sector. This should include:
1. the creation of a powerful national financial care regulator – OfCare – to oversee the financial regulation of systemically important care providers
2. a new requirement that ensures all state-funded providers of care maintain a ‘safe’
level of reserves and demonstrate they are paying their fair share of tax in the UK
3. a commitment by government to build the 75,000 beds needed to by 2030 through
borrowing worth £7.5 billion
4. the care for these homes should either be provided by the state or by innovative
not for-profit providers, building on the success of the ‘Preston Model.”
John main:
“When will we wake up and understand that it’s the economy that matters? Without a viable, profitable economy, there’s no pensions, healthcare, virtue signalling or tolerable quality of life.”
Yes, it’s the “stupid economy” that matters. We haven’t had a viable profitable economy for years but we still have healthcare. We still have pensions. We can still do virtue signalling things like tax breaks for the poorest.
The failures in our current system – education, housing, energy price, environmental stability and now peace and security – are failures of the oil economy. Or rather they are successes of the oil economy, which fuels an interest-based debt-creating golden goose for the ruling class and their flunkeys. It really does “show them the fucking money”.
Sam
Why not help the environment by making your posts shorter.
Cut to the chase by detailing the tax rises needed to finance your £7.5 billion borrowing.
Detail how long it will take today’s youthful taxpayers (AKA immigrants) to pay for the care of older indigenous Brits and Scots.
Close as I am to wrinkly status myself, even I can see the inter generational unfairness of asking cash-strapped youngsters to beggar themselves further in the interests of non contributors. Hence why we have the public sector disappearing from social care provision, plus record peace time tax levels.
So how come you have that blindspot?
John Main said;
“Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, however improbable, must be the answer.”
And what exactly does remain, John?
“Plebiscitary elections, at HR, at WM. Absolutely nothing standing in the way of that. So what’s the problem?”
The problem will be getting the English establishment in Westminster to accept the outcome of a plebiscitary election, if it went in favour of independence. Their track record of accepting democratic decisions they didn’t like is not remotely encouraging, and gets ten times worse if it was a Scottish one.
If it has to rely on Westminster’s cooperation then it’s a dead duck already. It’s never going to happen.
In other words it’s exactly the same problem it always has been, utter disrespect for the Scottish half of the Union from the English half of the Union.
There’s no point in taking the democratic route when democracy itself has been totally subverted!
Better to take the buggers to court, and that just requires a case be built, and there’s mountains of material to build it from.
John Main @9:44 & Mac @9:05
Give the woke their due, it’s Scotland’s oil and if true Scots (still) aren’t benefitting from it there can be little harm, and much benefit*, to be had in keeping it in the ground pre indy.
At the very least it could help even the most stubborn of the naysayers see a bit more of the money.
*eg INEOS alleged losses of £1billion over last 12 years means UDI by lunchtime could see SG acquire the plant for a nominal penny, grant itself an extremely generous restructuring loan, and take instant control of EU production in accordance with Phil Boswell’s explanation on Prism yesterday.
Pat Blake @ 9:30 am
“What do you do that’s so different and Scottish? What do you want to impose?”
Scots have another alien culture (and its Language) imposed on them, which is cultural imperialism. This is what enables external control, economic exploitation and oppression of subordinate/colonised peoples, and a ‘cultural division of labour’ favouring the dominant culture.
National cultures are the main bulwark against imperialism and colonial oppression, hence cultural imperialism seeks to eradicate other cultures. e.g. no teaching of Scots language, disquiet when we fly saltires, no live Scottish national football on TV etc.
Cultural imperialism involves cultural assimilation of a people, the loss of their culture and language, a people and culture perishing.
@Mac
With regard to the Woke hating business and people making money, in my own experience these people are a part of a global network which allows them to continue to live to the middle class standard which they are accustomed to whilst pulling up the ladder when it is the white working class and only allowing other self perceived oppressed minorities the same as themselves access to the opportunities which they dish out to their families, friends, cronies and people who are politically useful to them. This was certainly my experience in which I was repeatedly told, and I quote, “this is not for you” whilst watching people who openly hate my people and culture being given a shoo in.
Look at the bottle return scheme, we are not allowed to know who was going to profit from it.
Xaracen, at 9:55 am,
Scotland ain’t a sovereign nation at all, in practice and as the world understands matters. No currency, no diplomatic presence, no foreign policy, no economic planning. It’s a constituent part of the United Kingdom, about on a par with Yorkshire and East Anglia. It has no right to terminate the treaty of union unilaterally, and that wouldn’t work at all in the world’s eyes if it was attempted without a positive democratic consent. At the moment, there is no such consent.
Any declaration of UDI would very rapidly become a total disaster for Scots in the things that matter day to day, and the sooner the saltire waving bravehearts realise that, the better.
alf baird says:
27 November, 2023 at 11:41 am
“no teaching of Scots language, disquiet when we fly saltires, no live Scottish national football on TV etc.”
I wrote ‘apart from language’,which could now be rectified because Scotland is in control of its school system. However which language Scots or Gaelic or both and do the parents want their kids to learn them? The English don’t learn Old English. They learn modern English which is full or words without meaning in old languages. Do you expect Scottish children to drop English? Are they now more influenced by the English or by Americans?
There is far less disquiet, if any, for flying saltaires than there is for flying the cross of St George (who wasn’t English). I’ve certain not seen anyone object to the saltaire.
“no live Scottish national football on TV”, or much live football from England either, bar the women’s matches. Or live sport full stop. They’ve mostly been bought out by Sky etc. TV is hardly part of your culture anyway.
‘etc’, you’re going to have to explain the etc because you haven’t come up with anything convincing about culture.
“it’s Scotland’s oil”
Can anyone point to a pre-1707 map of Scotland that shows Scottish national boundaries extending to the middle of the North Sea?
Dundee scot, perhaps it belongs to Argentina then?
Pat Blake @ 12:13 pm
“‘etc’, you’re going to have to explain the etc because you haven’t come up with anything convincing about culture.”
Many ‘peoples’ are bi-lingual, learning their own mither tongue and another language, usually English. e.g. Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Dutch etc. Scots bairns learning Scots and English would be no different. The mother tongue is critical for maintaining a national consciousness/national identity, as well respecting cultures.
You might benefit from reading up on the subject. There are plenty of theoretical works on the connection between culture and imperialism. I would recommend Prof Edward Said’s seminal work.
National consciousness, of which national culture forms the basis, is also a major aspect in postcolonial theory, hence Frantz Fanon might assist your understanding.
This may also be of interest:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Stuart Mctavish
Would you say you were an AGW denier, like, say James Che and Johnlm, or a defier, like John Main, Confused, rev Stu, the prof., and the looming presence of Alex S. Defiers get the science, they just see past it to the profits to fund their fantasies. The reality of climate and environmental damage caused by the use for heating and transport and agriculture of “cheap” fossil fuels is not a “grown up” issue for them, it would seem.
For those not motivated to look at the Prism piece you referred to, Philip Boswell is an oil industry person.
John Main says on 27 November 2023 at 9:44 am: “When will we wake up and understand that it’s the economy that matters?”
When we the voting public elect folk intelligent enough to understand what you’re saying. Alex Salmond understood this and governed accordingly. He governed well, especially with a minority government. As you know, the current bunch of imposters are woke-driven and collectively couldn’t find their way into a piggy-bank never mind manage Scotland’s finances.
Mind you, Salmond was an economist before becoming a politician. He worked as an economist for both The Government Economic Service and The Royal Bank of Scotland. He studied economics at St. Andrews University. Until we have that calibre of person running things again don’t go holding your breath. The current imposters couldn’t organise a raffle.
Jeezo – they’re all out today. All the ‘names’ old and new.
Fruitella,
Interesting categorisations. There’s sense in there.
But maybe there’s a third. I’m neither denier, nor defier. Instead, I don’t see why the U.K. should beggar ourselves artificially by racing towards a probably impossible target of net zero, when China is putting up close to 100 new coal-fired power stations a year, and the mere growth in India’s emissions per year outstrips the UK’s entire annual emissions. As far as my understanding of science allows, the carbon emissions take effect at a planetary scale, way up high in the atmosphere. They ain’t local, that’s for sure. But the effect of policies are very local: our wallets are being hit, while the wallets of Chinese and Indian citizens (and a dozen other anpr emitting nations) are not.
So perhaps I’m a despairer, to introduce a third category.
@Dundee Scot
Here’s one 🙂
link to en.m.wikipedia.org
Alf, apart from 2 languages (and you don’t choose which) that Scotland’s government isn’t getting added to the curriculum and that few people are demanding, what have you got? Take some time to think about it.
Of course people can be bilingual but do the Scots want to be? Would it be a mark of progress or a sentimental wander into the past? With the internet people could be learning for free their native language, but would they? How many funny cat videos are there in a Scottish language and how many influencers are there. The Welsh have their own BBC language channel that frequently has zero viewers. What would you do with those languages? Is there a new breed of film makers who want to create stories based on Scottish mythology? And if they were in a language few spoke, who’d be watching? Modern English is a language for the 21st century because it grows. It doesn’t dwell in the past. It borrows shamelessly from other languages and happily drops words that it no longer needs. Even the French are waving the white flag on Franglais.
stuart mctavish says:
27 November, 2023 at 1:07 pm
@Dundee Scot
Here’s one ?
link to en.m.wikipedia.org
I assume your response was meant to be funny, not serious.
I got a chuckle out of it.
PAT BLAKE
English or more precisely American was the language of the 20th century.
One thing is certain the 21st century will see very strong competition with the current dominant and its culture being possibly eclipsed.
link to theconversation.com
link to euronews.com
And lets not forget the regional importance of Chinese or Hindi.
Multilingual kids are smarter than than their monoglot peers. FACT
link to brainscape.com
You need to «sharpen up» your argument.
Pat Blake @ 1:12 pm
“Of course people can be bilingual but do the Scots want to be?”
You need to better understand the ‘colonial condition’. A colonised people don’t have such a choice; in colonial society an oppressed native people are forced to endure ‘the torture of colonial bilingualism’ (Fanon).
It is only upon liberation that they are able to ‘grasp’ thair ain mither langage, realising that the colonizer’s tongue ‘burns their lips’ and they no longer have need to assimilate, quite the opposite.
TURABDIN, so not Scots or Gaelic then? Which is the point. 1.35 billion speak English as a first or second language. The Scots would be better learning Hindi or Chinese as a second language.
You also fail to come up with something cultural, other than language, that Scotland needs to recover from being colonised by the English.
Alf Baird,
the one person who needs to understand colonialism is you. You been banging on about it for months now, with all of the depth of understanding of a primary school child repeating something learned by rote. You embarrass yourself.
ASA
My tribe did their despairing in the late 90s early 00s when it became apparent to us that governments were never going to put the realities of the choices facing humanity before a dumbed-down electorate. It’s industry pushing the tech-fix response aiming to keep the economic (shit-)show on the road. Folk are right to question the substance of this netzero project, made by economists for politicians to retail to us.
The old eco folk, like me, support any serious measures to ease demand (insulation, literally) and increase self-sufficiency at appropriate scales. That would include our own steelworks and sundry other industrial infrastructure, but perhaps not a clapped-out refinery (I don’t know enough about Grangemouth to comment on that). This strategy would help protect us whatever the rest of the world does. However, the rest of the world is being hit harder by the effects of stupid energy policies than we are. That means they will have to cut back, drastically, or descend into chaos.
The SNP/Greens annoy me as much as anybody else commenting here because of the TWAW/Queer Theory nonsense but also because they have put short term social projects – legacies of the 20th century Left – in front of the strategy I’ve described above.
The destruction of nature brought about by the Stupid Economy (l’Economy Stupide) is regretted by many but there are some folk who embrace it as our human purpose. They are always on the side of economic growth, cheap energy, trickle-down, and investment opportunities for venture capital (cheap labour, cheap resources, cheap energy). Don’t like those ones at all.
Pat Blake
A colonised country is held back.
It cannot flourish because the imperial masters only interested in looting while forcing it’s draconian laws on that population.
We aren’t on the same page as England & never have been except for a short stint in WW2.
England is currently heading into a police state with a perpetual Tory government of harsh policies.
You don’t have a TV. You pay permission to watch it while funding propaganda.
Those clothes you buy come via another country’s ports.
Absolute reliance on an overlord playing ball, while constricting the means to support itself, isn’t even logic.
There was no greater example of that than COVID.
A world crisis & pandemic (whatever you think of its origin) Scotland was dumped on its arse. There was feck all pooling & sharing.
The English only survive because they do all the pulling from every other part of the UK while it thinks it can play God when no one ever gave them that role.
Scotlands resources are sucked dry & are not for our benefit.
We can’t fix our problems either with pocket money while the vast bulk of our money is retained for shite we don’t want.
Devolution can be removed at any time & the Tories have already done that by stripping over 80 powers under Sturgeons watch.
It’s not normal for a sovereign country to be hog tied by another. None of that shit was in the terms & conditions.
Alf, you are talking about the past, not the future. If the Scots have to learn a/both Scottish languages before they truly understand that they’ve been colonised, then it’s not going to happen. You essentially want to impose languages on people who could already seek them out if they wanted to. You want to impose those languages because you think that then people would be more amenable to Scottish independence. You’re trying to do what you accused long dead English people of doing to the Scots. We are in agreement that bad people did bad things in the past but you shouldn’t try to turn back the clock by doing the same. Scottish independence should spring from choice, not from force. How many who voted ‘yes’ can already speak a Scottish language and how many want to sign up for classes?
Look at the trends that are changing both countries. What drives them? How can Scotland use those forces? What does an independent Scotland want to be? What do young people want it to be? Both countries are rushing up to a terrible reality that TURABDIN hints at. Competition. Africa, China, India etc won’t give a flick about the differences between Scotland and England.
Geri says: “A world crisis & pandemic (whatever you think of its origin) Scotland was dumped on its arse. There was feck all pooling & sharing.”
Spot on! In fact, companies were even instructed not to supply Scotland with medical supplies etc. They were told to prioritise England, to supply England first. Hancock, if i remember correctly, was the one responsible for that “directive”.
Geri 7 November, 2023 at 2:48 pm “A colonised country is held back.”
I’m asking about what part of Scottish culture that you have lost, apart from language, that you would still retain if the union had never happened. Can you answer that in a way that doesn’t involve things that aren’t culture? The police state thing – laws and courts are considerably more lax than they were in the past. Would Scotland still have the death penalty? Many of our laws come from our time in the EU. How would Scotland be different?
Clothes, would you still be wearing heavy, raw wool? Would it still be woven by impoverished women in the home? People can still buy hand crafts but so few do. Which part of history are you clinging onto? I’m guessing that it’s post Industrial revolution and oil rigs. But the modern Scots want to be green, which means no oil rigs. If those assets hadn’t been used yet, would they ever be used at all?
PAT BLAKE
So because a language is a minority language it is thus «useless».
Too utilitarian by light years.
Minority languages are cultural vehicles. They are expressions of the unique. When they go, or are deliberately eradicated, so does the unique view of the world they shape.
Linguists often encounter the issue of ideas being difficult to translate. Translators know that well. Ideas from one language do not always travel well into another.
Gaelic and Scots are unique to their country. They are not antiquarian relics except in the mind of the those with prosaic imagination.
Quoting notional numbers of world English speakers is an old parlor trick.
28 million English speakers in Egypt…..really?
The number of competent English speakers, and competence is the key, in India is in the order of 300.000. 125 million is suspect.
I can read and speak some Gaelic but i am not a competent user of the language. Similarly most of the non native «speakers» of English.
By the way English is my fourth language.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Pat Blake says:
You’ve asked quite a weird question. I don’t know if I fully understand what you are getting at.
You say
‘But the modern Scots want to be green, which means no oil rigs.’
Got any proof of this? I’m wondering why modern Scots don’t vote for the Green Party.
That’s a weird question. What kind of culture can you have without a language?
Maybe you should tell us what you mean by culture?
You say in an earlier post
‘How many who voted ‘yes’ can already speak a Scottish language and how many want to sign up for classes?’
Here again you would have to specify what you mean by a ‘Scottish language’
I would say a high % of those who voted YES already speak a distinctive ‘Scottish language’
Maybe the more interesting question is how many who voted NO have been signed up for classes to ensure they don’t sound Scottish?
Fruitellathehun @12:39
I’d say I’m bias since the nuclear industry screwed me over big time but it doesn’t matter if it’s people escaping carbon taxes, the big orange thing that rises in the East or artificial stupidity that causes AGW if the solution on offer is to empower dishonest brokers then hide under the bed and wait for the England (or the Europe/ Canada/ Texas/ Africa/ China/ Russia, etc) to save us.
Pat Blake says:
Clothes, would you still be wearing heavy, raw wool? Would it still be woven by impoverished women in the home? People can still buy hand crafts but so few do
Very weird question!
If the modern Scot wants to be Green would this not be their choice of clothing?
People are still buying tons of ‘hand crafts’ but they are all made in China.
Pat Blake says:
27 November, 2023 at 3:31 pm
“I’m asking about what part of Scottish culture that you have lost, apart from language”
Culture is about the way ‘a people’ do things, and the way they view the world.
Brexit is a good example of what Scots would reject had we been in control of our own affairs. There are many social policies which also differentiate Scots from rest-UK. Refusal to privatise water. The early release of Megrahi is another. We would have done things differently with covid too.
Many other things the SNP elected majorities lack the courage to do, such as land reform. Stopping sale of arms to dodgy regimes. Declaring independence another.
A colonised people are effectively ‘out of the game’, no longer involved in decisions on ‘war or peace’, or matters to do with their territorial integrity, resources, or sovereignty. An independent Ireland has avoided 80 or more military conflicts since liberation; Scotland is not so lucky still being run by a British/English colonial-corporate-military cultural elite.
@Xaracen says:27 November, 2023 at 11:06 am
The problem will be getting the English establishment in Westminster to accept the outcome of a plebiscitary election, if it went in favour of independence
Naw, I just don’t see that at all. Soz.
We’re constantly stymied on the Referendum issue because WM won’t grant the permission.
My view is that there is nothing to stop anybody and any party writing a manifesto for Indy. If we return that party, with a majority of seats, then that’s the democratic mandate.
And if that’s a non-starter, then the latest big-hitter in the Alba party, Ash Regan, stood for SNP leader on a dud promise – either through foolishness, or through bad intentions. I don’t believe she did either, so if it’s a good enough idea for her, then it’s good enough for me.
@fruitella the hun says:27 November, 2023 at 12:39 pm
Defiers get the science, they just see past it to the profits to fund their fantasies
This “defier” doesn’t much want to freeze and do without so that the Chinese, Indians, Russtis, Americans (North & South), Middle Easterners, etc. can fill their boots with cheap oil and gas and coal.
This “defier” can do the math and see that as all the countries I list have made their consumption intentions crystal clear, it matters not one jot if every single Scot tops themselves tonight, so as to “save the planet”.
Our extinction won’t even dent the graphs measuring climate change. It would be 5 million out of 8, soon to be 10 billion.
That’s not denial, defiance or whatever. It’s informed common sense.
John Main @ 16:51 and 17:06
Agreed, it doesn’t really matter if Westminster are uncomfortable with Scottish decisions democratically achieved.
And Scotland should make use of the oil and gas albeit in conjunction with renewables.
Alf Baird and Geri be aware that pat Blake has no interest in independence he is just another Scotland is shite promoter, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a rebadged and renamed sensible dave, Andy pandy Ellis or some other version of a twat abroad,funnily enough they all like to head straight for Professor Alfred Baird and try to demean and deride him, in other words a time waster and a masterbater (bloody auto correct)
Twathater,
Pat Blake is being deliberately vague and obtuse but as far as I can discern he seems to believe he in particular and Scots in general have no cultural ties to anything.
Perhaps I am wrong and he can be more explicit
Alf Baird,
looking back over the last 316 years, it strikes me that the only time that Scotland has ever been run well is when it was run by a “colonial-corporate-military cultural elite”. Or looked at from the opposite perspective, when Scots run Scotland, as they have since 1998, it all goes to ratshit very quickly, and you end up with nonsenses such as Prestwick, trams, ferries, aluminium smelters, Europe’s worst health outcomes, insane policies such as cutting off the bottom quarter of fire doors to improve airflow in schools, drugs, public corruption, and First Ministers being arrested.
@ Breeks and Sarah your hopes of a union or even representation between ALBA and SALVO , SSRG or Liberation.Scot is a forlorn hope , if you look at the interaction btl between myself and barrheadboy it is abundantly clear that his vociferous denigration and derision of SALVO , SSRG and Liberation.Scot is equivalent to something that could have been attributed to one of our resident Scotland haters
From Sara Salyers being heralded at the ALBA conference by ordinary members for her revealing educational exposures of the Claim Of Right and Scots Sovereignty it now appears from Roddy’s palpable disgust and disdain that Sara and the representative organisations are now Persona Non Grata, I asked if this view was because the hierarchy of ALBA insisted that any convention would consist of the great and the good of Scottish society the very ones who have and continue to obstruct and subvert the independence movement , whilst Sara and the representative organisations call for ordinary citizens inclusion
SO it appears that SCOTLAND UNITED cannot and will not include members of organisations who have done extensive and expensive research and investigation to expose , clarify and educate Scottish voters of the immense power they have in their Sovereignty and how when used properly it cannot be defeated
Alex Salmond and the ALBA party have been pleading and begging the Scum Nonce Party to join a Scotland United and have been ignored and derided by the leadership , membership and hierarchy of that despicable corrupt organisation , but organisations who desperately and wholeheartedly explore any and every avenue or means to achieve our goal are EXCLUDED
No wonder we are still manacled to this despicable union
FFS ASA,
You’ll be telling us all next that Africans shouldn’t be allowed to run their countries.
One can just about sense it from your spittle flecked posts.
Twathater
You are correct. I’ve seen it too & that’s why Alba will fail.
They’re determined to shackle themselves to a party the whole country despises & are wedded to the already failed Westminster method of appealing to their better nature. They have none.
England is not democratic & the sooner people realise that the better we’ll all be cause they’ll not watch their only source of income & it’s world clout, just walk out the door.
We need to dissolve the treaty of Union.
We need someone willing to be radical & challenge it head on as a single & only issue away from government side issues continually steering it off course.
Some people have transferred their cult of Nicola onto another false God to replace the shite we already have in Holyrood playing the exact same game which will have the exact same failed results.
The game is up & the electorate know it.
The only way to fight it is a challenge to end the treaty union on an international stage.
A sovereign nation in a voluntary Union cannot be locked in a treaty not fit for purpose by the other half. It’s unlawful, undemocratic & illegal theft of a country’s resources they’re not entitled to.
I hope Salmond wises the fck up. He of all ppl knows Westminster & how it plays it’s game. He already has the keys to unlock the door – he just needs to get radical & challenge the treaty.
John Main
My mistake, looks like you don’t get thee science.
Geri,
are you seriously saying that Scotland is the UK’s only source of income, and the source of our world clout?
That’s not what the data says.
And why don’t you write in Gaelic? English is (according to idiots) the colonial language. You should be resisting that, if we are to take you seriously. Well, I don’t take you seriously, but others might.
A Scot Abroad @ 6:11 pm
“when Scots run Scotland, as they have since 1998, it all goes to ratshit very quickly”
Not so, for example, we see only 2 of 19 higher education institutions in Scotland led by Scots, and Scots are not leading most of our other social institutions incl. civil service, police, NHS, Scottish Water, HES, SEPA, and even the heads of CMAL and Fergusons shipyard are not Scots!
Scots actually seem to be permitted to run very little in oor ain laund. Raither like a wee doun-hauden colony, wad ye no gree?
Fruitella
Neither do you.
The Green party couldn’t give one shiny shite about the environment.
They’re corrupt as fck & have taken backhanders from big pharma to push mutilations onto children.
Slater blew her way through £9 million to please a company director on an eye watering salary of over £300k …who the fck is he? God?
They love big business if there’s a quid or two in it for them.
They’ve also hee-haw say on the oil industry. It’s reserved.
So the stupid knots can bumb gums all day – it won’t matter a jot.
They should’ve pushed independence when they had the chance – they didn’t.
Far too interested in LGBTQI2SBarcode ++++ & are a laughing stock buch of deviants.
Alf Baird,
in the last 25 years, Scots have run virtually all of those institutions. Many have been removed, or resigned, due to poor performance.
I’m not sure that there really are 19 higher education institutions in Scotland. Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities are, Heriot Watt possibly, so to Aberdeen and St Andrews, most of the rest little more than wee pretendy jumped up Polys apart from the drawing classes and fiddling classes offered by some niche tax consuming organisations.
fruitella, you seem like a nice guy, but not a deep, well informed, or pragmatic thinker; systems, dynamics, emergence, unexpected consequences, global picture, hard constraints, all that complex stuff has to be considered. You strike me as the kind of person who “has principles” but wants other people to pay for them, and when it all goes wrong, you disappear.
North Sea Oil was a disaster for Scotland, Independence and did little for the ordinary folks of flatland, especially in the NORF; of course London did alright (- it meant the wrecking ball of neoliberalism could be swung, with an insurance policy). But now we have it, “facts on the ground”, so what should be done with it?
The oil/gas and its industrial infrastructure is the property of the Scots, and should not be pillaged or sabotaged. Post indy, it will be for them to dispose of it. It is our call, not anyone else’s and fuck anyone who thinks so – we have had precious little benefit from it so far, maybe now it should be our turn.
I want to see the country run on renewables, and with our hydro infrastructure, which is the world’s greatest natural “battery”. The hydrocarbons are a valuable asset, which can solve many economic and financial problems – as the UK’s actions prove. It is a nice thing to have in your drawer. Your money will always be worth something.
Cheap electricity produced by renewables could be used as an incentive for foreign companies to setup shop here – the cloud, bitcoin mining, the AI/robotics boom, it is energy hungry.
Hydrocarbons is like “hard cash, in your pocket”, a backstop – you always have something to sell, to pay your bills with. Scotland needs huge investment in its infrastructure – an indy Scotland needs a generational programme to do this (and London will not be spending such sums up here); the hydrocarbons assure us such a program will be possible. Look at the Saudis, they are spending big now, so they have something after.
The point about Grangemouth is this; pump oil for money is good, but refining it for more money, a bigger markup, is even better – doing both is best. Pumping it, exporting it then importing more expensive refined products, is stupid. It looks like sabotage, actually.
Accounting – the oil industry is full of sharks and accountancy practices are very crooked (like in Hollywood) – it can be to your great advantage to pretend things are more or less valuable at different times; INEOS downplaying its profits, or manufacturing paper, technical, losses, is likely. You would need to see the books, the proper books, not the crap they show investors and analysts. There is considerable effort made by analysts in finding out “the real numbers” – e.g. infra-red satellite imagery to see just how full tanks are, plus industrial espionage. Ironically, Edinburgh has respected oil analysts, roundabout Haymarket – ask them, pay for their research.
Climate change – I have been following this for a long time; the modelling is very hard, but every time they improve the models, it says the same. Circumstantially, it looks man-made, to some degree. Now, since we have only one planet, the precautionary principle applies. So we need to “do something”. Scotland’s contribution to climate change is tiny, and whatever we do, or not do, will make not an iota of difference. Freezing in the dark, eating grass or burning tyres for warmth – makes no difference. So, who could make a difference? USA, China, India – and in particular, on its own, the Pentagon is the world’s biggest polluter. Shutdown the war machine! Not happening. A deeper problem is this – “capitalism” needs perpetual growth, otherwise it collapses; thankyou Prods, the Glorious Revolution, the Bank of England and Union.
Things can happen for multiple reasons; things can be true and false (in the muddy, real world) – climate change looks real, but “net zero” is essentially, a scam. First of all, serious measures to control the climate change will not happen, see above, so what is left? A lot of bullying the general public, in order to change their consumption patterns.
– amazingly, by pure coincidence, by “illegalising” all the old tech we create (create! artificially) great demand for entirely new sectors; let’s rip out all the old stuff and replace it with new. Cars, central heating, you need new things (waste?). The west will run on green tech, while the rest of the world runs on hydrocarbons.
Green tech needs a lot of exotic materials – these have to be dug out the ground, back to extractive industries, which are dirty and polluting. Maybe in 20 years time the campaigners will be saying “just stop lithium – leave it in the ground”. Green tech is where the new profits will be, which is why it is being pushed, not some possible climate change. Limits to growth came out 50 years ago, and the climate studies in the mid 70s – no one did anything (scandinavian building standards) because it was not profitable, but now it is, so you are getting it, rammed right down you.
What if climate change happens, and is at the upper end of predictions?
– nothing much, really.
Colder, northern and southern regions become habitable; some low lying lands (bye England!) will be lost. Equatorial regions will be uninhabitable, but great places to put solar power stations. Siberia, Canada, Scandinavia, Patagonia – mostly empty, now. World population is expected to stabilise (thanks, feminism) and fall back, almost everywhere except Africa. Africa is huge though, with huge resources, even a Sahara, double in size, would not be so bad, if it was covered in solar panels.
When I say “nothing much” I mean – if you approach this as a series of solvable problems. The trouble with much of the dogooders seems to be – they are all about catastrophising, virtue signalling, then when it comes to doing anything, doing the -wrong- thing entirely, or the trivial, at great expense and show.
– then they piss people off with their counterproductive exhibitionism, aimed at disrupting the lives of ordinary people who have no real control over the system anyway …
Confused
You think you’re a well informed, pragmatic thinker; who knows about systems, dynamics, emergence, unexpected consequences; who grasps the global picture, and is fully aware of hard constraints?
I don’t see any evidence of that scope in your sketches, which I mostly enjoy. That’s not criticism, nobody has expertise covering such a range of system behaviours and features across interacting mechanical, biological and political (i.e. economic) systems.
You offer nothing serious to attempt adapting our current system to the conditions you admit we face. Wisecracking despair is a shtick, I guess. It’s what you’re good at. Criticism of an opponent’s piece, not so much. Did you read my posts? Because I also criticise some of the same things you do. I’m not in the Green party because I am not a generic green, I’m old school Ecology Party with a generous twist of Catholic on a crunchy base of atheist biker. Plenty systems awareness in there, and I know enough about that not to claim expertise.
Fruitella @12.39pm
AGW denier is a double negative.
I think that the temperature may, generally, be rising.
.
Johnlm
I’m aware of your position and it’s a minority one regarding the weight of scientific evidence. I’m not up for a debate that has been clattering on for 35 years, wasting time – it’s purpose..
The A stands for Anthropogenic, not Anti – if that’s what you mean by the double negative comment.
TURABDIN et al, the reason I exclude language from my question and target Alf for the answer is because he provided a link to a summary of his ideas. Culture was number one and language was number two. Perhaps some of you haven’t bothered to read it?
Breastplate 27 November, 2023 at 5:53 pm
“he seems to believe he in particular and Scots in general have no cultural ties to anything.”
Culture is not static and a societal culture doesn’t reflect everyone. Because we live in a very different world from our ancestors we can’t help but have a different culture. There are subtle differences between nations and even regions but they are small compared to our differences with our ancestors. So how would your culture differ if you weren’t part of the UK?
alf baird 27 November, 2023 at 4:38 pm
A better answer, thanks. You give examples of things your country would or wouldn’t do if you weren’t part of the UK. Brexit was an example. Yes, Scotland didn’t vote by majority to leave the EU but it wasn’t 100% or anywhere near. Interestingly the vote to join the Common Market was far weaker in Scotland and Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK, with some regions voting against joining. As a standalone country, the transfer of fishing rights and other depletions of your assets might have caused Scotland to reject being in the EU from the start. For me the irony of the Scottish desire for freedom only to hand it over to the EU is bemusing. The EU’s founding policy is to form a single country, with all the hated things Scotland resents about the UK. Including an army, central taxation and shared social security, remote government on anything important, etc. The first major blow to that formation was Brexit, which could have been avoided with the most meagre of concessions.
I do believe that Scotland is more socialist that England but while it’s an important part of a good country, socialism can also be poisonous. It never knows when to stop. Look at how certain social issues have run well ahead of England, like the trans policies. Scotland’s social dreams rest on large amounts of money. Your belief that Scotland would have had plenty rests on a history based on the UK, not an independent Scotland. Maybe there would have been no early investment in drilling for oil? Maybe governmental policies would have balked at the very idea of potentially polluting the fishing grounds? Maybe England would have invested in more nuclear and fracking and not need Scottish gas and wind power? Your view relies on there being no knock on changes as a result of the changes in base conditions. Maybe England might have invaded Scotland rather than striking a union and one of the countries might not exist at all?
Yes, I can believe that Scotland might have copied Ireland and stayed out of the World Wars and other conflicts. The remoteness of your locations and the protection from having England and NATO between you and trouble is very comforting. There were and are people in England who favour turning a blind eye to whatever dictators care to do, so long as it’s somewhere else. Would Hitler have stopped, if the UK had joined Germany instead of resisting? Where would Scottish culture be now, if we’d become part of greater Germany? Maybe most of us would be better off? Perhaps Scotland would be full of English gimmegrants looking for free stuff?
Like much of Europe, might Scotland have lurched to the right if it felt the full force of socialist policies?
@Pat Blake says:28 November, 2023 at 10:23 am
You touch on some very relevant points and ask some very important questions. Keep up the good work.
Whilst I can see the potential for improvement that would accrue to us Scots in an Independent Scotland, I do not share the Marxist-Leninist, anti-western viewpoints of many regulars on here.
Neither, I believe, do the majority of small ‘c’ conservative Scots, which is why Indy support remains flatlined at 45%.
The solution remains crystal clear to me. Develop a vision of Indy that transcends the class divide, and that clearly incentivises support from both Sovereign (indigenous) and New (immigrant) Scots. Fail to do that, and with the immigrant demographic increasingly calling the shots, Indy support will wither.
As Alba have noticed, the key to Indy therefore lies in making the economic case.
As for the EU, Independence and EU membership are self-evidently mutually contradictory. That may not have always been the case, but times change.
Pat Blake @ 10:23 am
“A better answer, thanks.”
Dwelling on matters of possible political ideology in an independent Scotland seems rather academic. The main point about a liberated people is that they are free to make their own decisions without external interference.
Postcolonial theory tells us that peoples in self-determination conflict are invariably linguistically divided. The bulk of the Scottish independence movement (90%+) clearly comprises Scots-speaking Scots. This is not the case with the ‘No’ vote which is increasingly and may be predominantly Anglophone, given census data.
This helps explain why independence movements depend on the solidarity of an oppressed ethnic group, in this case Scots speaking Scots. Which further explains the central importance of ‘a peoples’ language (and culture) as a determinant of independence and national identity, and never merely a means of communication. Which also explains why the Scots are deprived of learning their mither tongue, a typical colonial procedure.
Alf, the loss of the Scottish languages is a sad reality but returning them isn’t likely to happen. Hard enough to revive one but two? Returning them won’t change modern Scottish culture. One of the ironies of the UK leaving the EU was that France suggested that English be dropped as it was no longer an EU language. Countries that use English because their own language wasn’t widely spoken were alarmed and Ireland had to remind everybody that they speak English. Others pointed out that English was the language of international business and science. Would you make Scottish languages compulsory?
While language is a large part of culture, it won’t peg the things you cite as culture in one place. Language and political position aren’t fixed. Welsh language might be a feature of its left wing desires but it’s Scotland and England’s economies that finances such foibles. Remember that, when you decry Scotland’s assets propping up the UK. Much of the money went to the poorest parts of the UK, some of it via the EU. Because Scotland was part of the UK, you didn’t even get to feel the full impact of EU taxation. As far as you were concerned it vanished into WM’s coffers. You forget that some of it then went out to subsidise poorer EU countries, including propping up their cultures.
While a tragic story, my biggest take away is anger at the private sector which essentially runs most care homes and social care provision.
It is the private sector paying poverty wages, treating staff so poorly, poor PPE if any, poor management, poor training etc. I know from friends who worked in the sector, and from the care provision provided for my own family, how bad things have become.
But upon reading this my anger is not at the Scottish government, though it made mistakes, it is mainly at the rampant profiteering of the private sector and the fact that privatisation has been implemented and continued by successive UK governments.