Your enemy’s mistakes
So on the surface level this is just flat-out hilarious.
Firstly because, as we showed you yesterday, the “significant proportion of Scotland’s population” which appears to have been won back to the SNP since John Swinney became its leader is… 1%.
That’s all their vote has actually increased by as Scottish Labour have haemorrhaged support since winning the UK general election. The vast bulk of Labour’s lost voters appear to have gone to Reform, who’ve more than doubled their polling in that period.
The SNP are poised to win the election not because voters are flocking back to them but because the electorate hates all the other mainstream parties (for a variety of reasons, some the same and some different) just as much as it does the SNP. Just 12 months after winning a landslide of almost unprecedented proportions, Keir Starmer is now the most unpopular Prime Minister since records began almost 50 years ago.
And voters have realised that however unconvincing the merits of Reform in its own right may be (especially in Scotland, where it has basically zero presence), what the party definitely represents is a very convenient and easy way to give a resounding middle finger to Labour, the Tories, the SNP and all the rest at the same time.
Which means, of course, that every time those despised mainstream parties present a united front to wail “Don’t vote Reform, it really upsets us!”, more voters decide to do exactly that, for exactly that reason.
Labour and the SNP both spent pretty much the entire Hamilton by-election attacking Reform, aided by the media throwing a massive and sustained false “racism” smear at its campaign, with the result that Farage and his merry men took a thumping 26% of the vote – far in excess of anything they’ve ever polled, and just a few hundred votes shy of beating the SNP (who’d been the bookies’ red-hot favourites) into second place.
And it probably goes without saying to alert Wings readers that that demonstrably catastrophic and counter-productive tactic is what’s won Neil Mackay’s heart.
More than 14 years ago, before Wings Over Scotland even existed, I had an epiphanic revelation, which is not some sort of medical episode but in fact a realisation of an extremely important truth. It came from the article below (which I retro-added to Wings at a later date).
The revelation was this: the best way to get your opponents to keep making terrible mistakes is to tell them, with absolute honesty and sincerity, the mistakes they’re making.
Because even in 2011 – and far more so now – politics is so utterly tribal that the vast majority of people involved in it will repeatedly stab themselves in the head rather than admit that their enemies are right about even the tiniest thing.
Scottish Labour were so furiously piqued at being kicked out of what they regarded as their permanent birthright in 2007 that they simply couldn’t get over it, and still can’t. So if a Scottish nationalist gives them completely genuine constructive advice – because Holyrood was supposed to be a constructive place of consensus-building, designed to never have a one-party majority – they assumed it was a dastardly trick and did the exact opposite.
It’s not something restricted to political parties – Scotland’s media is no better. So when the northern branch office chose Jim Murphy as its leader in 2014 and the indy/SNP side dissolved in loud mocking laughter (and helpfully explained why), they chose to believe it was because we were scared.
A bare six months later, after Murphy lost 40 of Labour’s 41 Scottish MPs – including his own East Renfrewshire seat to a swing of 24.3% – and resigned in humiliation, they learned nothing and promptly chose his idiot deputy Kezia Dugdale to replace him, as nationalists rolled on the floor in tears of uncontrollable mirth, watching as she then somehow contrived to bin 40% of Labour’s surviving Scottish vote.
(And at a time when Labour was more popular UK-wide than it has been since Tony Blair’s win in 1997. Anas Sarwar, who’s currently chasing headlong after Dugdale’s record as worst Scottish Labour leader ever, can at least – with partial justification – blame the toxicity of the UK party for his woes.)
We tried to tell them, we really did. Because we knew that if it came from us, they wouldn’t listen. And that’s the lesson that boneheads like Neil Mackay simply won’t learn. The problem with the “progressive” left is that they’re so unflinchingly certain that they’re the good guys they think it’s an inviolable truth of nature, and that anyone opposed to them can’t have a legitimate difference of opinion, but must simply and plainly be evil Nazi fascists.
And we don’t know if you’ve noticed, readers, but the current political climate, not just in Scotland or the UK but across the globe – suggests quite firmly that perfectly reasonable, moderate, sensible people have reached the end of their tolerance for being called bigot scum by horrible pious metropolitan tossers like Mackay, and the more he and his ilk spit and fume about anything the more likely voters are to do it.
(We warned about that too, of course, as we had way back in 2016.)
Just like Scottish Labour in 2007, Mackay and the rest are so indignant that they can’t shriek and bully people into compliance any more that they’ve resorted to the only thing they know – louder shrieking and attempts to “cancel” the people they don’t like, rather than defeating them with the power of their arguments.
(Extremely amusingly, having been one of the loudest proponents of cancel culture in recent years, Mackay recently took to the pages of the Herald to bleat about how terrible it was now that it’s being used by the right against the left. But in the tough years it was the paper’s right-wing columnists that had spoken out for people whose views they didn’t share, while Mackay raged and demanded their silencing.)
But that way lies doom. Thanks to the insanity of the gender cult, Wings has found itself allied with all manner of people we wouldn’t have chosen to team up with, from JK Rowling and Piers Morgan to Johann Lamont, Toby Young and Murdo Fraser – anyone who had something to contribute. Personalities are irrelevant. If you want to win, the facts are the only things that matter, not who says them.
So the surest way to ensure the triumph of Reform is to double and triple down on how they’re unconscionable subhuman monsters. Ironically, the exact same playbook was a large part of how the SNP came to so thoroughly dominate Scottish politics in the first place, as voters kicked back against the comically one-sided media and its often unhinged anti-Nat hysteria.
(Heck, some of us accidentally made a full-time job out of it.)
The likes of Neil Mackay and the UK’s mainstream political parties are pathologically incapable of understanding, let alone accepting, how despised they are by normal people who don’t live and breathe politics, largely because of the impenetrable echo chambers they’ve all constructed around themselves in the last decade in particular, screaming “NO DEBATE!” at the gentlest challenge and blocking anyone who has the temerity to question them even in the politest manner (or as they’d call them, “right wing trolls”, “extremist culture warriors” and “Nazis”).
The most successful parties have always been big tents, as the SNP was 20 years ago. But now almost all of them are paranoid dictatorships that mercilessly crush any internal dissent and expel anyone who drifts off-message even once, believing it the only route to success.
But no matter how many times history shows where that ultimately leads, the tale plays out time and again. The people the electorate has come to loathe tell the electorate what would hurt and offend them the most (rather than – forgive our gauche naivety – asking the electorate what might perhaps make them slightly LESS angry), and are then shocked when the electorate does it.
Reform won’t be in power at Holyrood next year. But Labour thought they’d ridden out the storm of 2007 when they won the UK election in Scotland in 2010. In reality all they’d done was slightly delay the real apocalypse. The desperate pact they made with their former deadly foes in the Tories in 2014 sealed their fate, because alliances only work if they’re based on a solid principle, not cynical opportunism.
If Labour and the SNP (who are already almost as indistinguishable from each other as Labour and the Tories are south of the border) try the same trick next year when both are at historic lows of popularity, rather than genuinely trying to understand WHY they’re at historic lows of popularity, the victory will likely be as short-lived and bitter as Labour’s last year has turned out.
And may Hell (current embodiment: Nigel Farage) mend them all.
spread far and wide to all parts of the compass.
people must waken up and transform the three individual Countries on the island to enable them to stand alone
Having scrawled a huge X from corner to corner of my last few ballot papers, I’m inclined to vote Reform next time round because it effectively represents ‘None of the Above’. However, I’m painfully aware of where this could lead us, but what else can I do to request change?
Perhaps we need to take a collective peek down the rabbit hole (sewer) in order to make the rest of them buck-up their ideas?
ISP.
Any Scot who votes for “Reform” urgently needs sectioned.
You’re a typical fucking zoomer who’s part of the problem. Get it into your numbskull people who disagree with your political opinion are entitled to their view without being stigmatised ya fuckin clown
“Den”;
Away and take a flying fuck to yourself ya Tory bastart.
“James”
And right on cue…. you exemplify the whole point of the Rev’s post !!
Why didn’t you even bother to read it before posting your drivel ??
I am seriously considering it.
It is the only option on the ballot paper that lets me stick two fingers up at the SNP. They won’t win but how much more harm can they do compared to the clown show we have.
Plus for the indy supporters out there if Farage gets in down south, which is looking increasingly likely, then if he does screw us over maybe there may be a argument for independence.
Tbh with you and others trying to ash sense into SNP voters about using list vote to get rid of unionists and the clowns not listening does my head in. The obvious choice then is to vote for an absolute bastard instead of abstaining which is in fact the reform candidate, with the hope that the annihilation of SNP & Labour these thick cretins wake up for the next election and actually vote for other Indy parties.
“because it effectively represents ‘None of the Above’”
Except it’s actually a vote for more of the above as far as foreign policy (Israel, Russia), erosion of liberties and reduction in public services goes. I doubt there would be any change on immigration either. Reform exists to absorb the reaction to these things in the main parties and then to make sure they continue uninterrupted after the next election.
Reform getting at least some traction in Scotland I see in the polls; we can only hope this trajectory continues, possibly even enough to start worrying the SNP.
People have had enough of left wing claptrap and for good reason.
The Germans tried the rabbit hole in 1933. If you think I’m being hyperbolic take a look at Trumps America, Tommy Robinson’s London marches and the UKG’s salivating enthusiasm for digital ID
Holyrood needs a serious shake up, the current crop we have is as bad as it could ever get. Most have never had a job in the real world and have a 39,000 feet view on reality. No more blue sky bollocks.
Reform 1&2 let’s see if we can stick a few lumps in the gravy.
When there’s a whole bunch of decent principled people to vote for i.e. the Liberate Scotland group, why vote for anyone else?
Sarah those posters are not listening ,they are just shilling for nige and reform ,if reform did get in the NHS especially the SNHS will cease to exist, nige will sell everything to the yanks
And as for his immigration policies he’s already about turning on them , we appear to have an upsurge of engerlish tory voting fuck socialism thatcher loving greedy arseholes
“if reform did get in the NHS especially the SNHS will cease to exist”
Remind us again, Twat H.
Just how many days do we have left to save the SNHS?
Actually, you have to admire Farage’s logic. If nobody can summon up the balls to prick holes in the rubber dinghies, instead, destroy the pull factors that will only cause the numbers of illegals to increase year on year until the systems in this country collapse under the strain.
For example, unlimited medical treatment, free at the point of demand.
You lot insisted it would be “racist” to restrict that to just the people who were paying for it.
So now it is no longer affordable, because the millions paying for it can’t also pay for the millions leaching off it without contributing, it’s only “fair” that it gets withdrawn from everybody.
If it was just to be withdrawn from the leaches and grifters, you lot would still be screaming “racism”. Cos that’s what you always do.
And so, Twat H, you reap what you sow.
Exactly why the left cannot admit that Trump (despite for his own ego) has actually managed to get some semblance of peace over in the Middle East. Yes, it’s only a small start but he’s actually got something but the left can’t admit it. Utterly pathetic.
Is it the left?
I think it’s the antisemites.
Admittedly, most of these are on the left.
I smell a HOTPOT – EATER
WTF is it with the “reform shills”
Farage NEVER HAD A REAL FUCKING JOB IN HIS LIFE
– HE GOT PAID TO BET WITH OTHER PEOPLES MONEY
he is a fucking parasite
Are you a knave or a fool?
– farage is telling you, us all, what he intends to do, usually in the daily mail and its all fucking nuts
TAX CUTS TO GET INTO CRYPTO??
DOING A THATCHER MARK 2 – that worked out well the last time, eh?
MIGRATION IS FINE AS LONG AS ITS LEGAL – which will dwarf all that “people on boats” pantomime
he is also a shyster and a hypocrite – he made his career out of bashing the EU, then took their coin as an MP for 4 terms; their money was good enough!
he is the worst of the little englanders who thinks scotland is a wholly owned possession of england and everything in it will be spent to make sure the south east can live beyond its means and they get to have all the fucking bullshit they cannot afford – nukes, weapons and power, 12B for the yookraine, tax cuts for the already very wealthy, loose regulations so the cartels can get their money onshore a bit easier, tax breaks for rich foreigners, its a never ending list of really bad ideas.
And with huge chutzpah – Tice – robin to batman – was up here last year telling us all how “well resourced we are”
“not for fucking long” if they have anything to do with it.
What’s your beef with Yookraine then, Confused?
Is it that rather than posting interminably online about how much they want somebody else to gift them freedom and independence, they get to their feet and fight bravely and resolutely for it?
Rhetorical question – of course that’s what absolutely drives you crazy with envy, shame and impotent spite.
I agree, the idea that Farage will cut off the stream of cheap labour that business in the UK craves, is highly unlikely. Business loves unemployment, the more, the better.
So I’m afraid the people that want to stop the foreigners coming in, will be more than a bit disappointed.
He’s more likely to get rid of the Barnett formula.
“the best way to get your opponents to keep making terrible mistakes is to tell them, with absolute honesty and sincerity, the mistakes they’re making”
Yup. I guess I’ve had one of these epiphanic revelations too.
“politics is so utterly tribal that the vast majority of people involved in it will repeatedly stab themselves in the head rather than admit that their enemies are right about even the tiniest thing”
And that extends all the way from the Scottish Cabinet, right down to the most inarticulate poster on Wings BTL.
“all the way from the Scottish Cabinet, right down to the most inarticulate poster on Wings BTL”
I see now that could be read as if I am ruling out members of the SNP/Green Scottish cabinet from also being inarticulate posters on Wings BTL.
Of course, it’s very possible that one individual could be both, and perhaps even a Tourettes addled genitals obsessive as well.
Happy to put the record straight on this.
Spoke to a councillor recently (hard working one at that) who was in shock after doing some canvassing. Simply couldn’t countenance people answering their door and saying they’ll vote for reform. They still live in a bubble.
@ ScottieDog
Good news at last a real chance of the SNP being ousted from our parliament and Scots lives. For me our enemy is the NUSNPD I couldn’t give a F*ck about reform its more important to get rid of the ("Tractor" - Ed)s running our country.
yep
I agree with this. I’ll never vote for Reform (or any unionist party), and I cannot abide the explicitly racist policies they adhere to. But I don’t believe most of their supporters are racist.
People are struggling, unhappy, can barely afford to eat, and someone comes along and tells them that its all the foreigners fault when it clearly isnt. Parties need to engage with them, talk to them, and put forward a counter argument. Explain that it isn’t immigrants that are making us poorer, that in fact, immigration makes our lives better.
Screaming “No debate, racist!!” is never going to work.
“immigration makes our lives better”
Perhaps you should back that assertion up with some facts and figures.
I’ve been around a few decades now, but I still recall my schooldays attending a typical Scottish secondary. We used to speculate a lot about the future and how all of our lives would improve.
Computers, mass air travel, miniaturisation of electronics, advances in TV technology, better, faster, safer, more fuel efficient cars, the opening up of careers and jobs to talented women on a meritocratic basis. We discussed all of these things and talked endlessly about the possibilities of further improvements as yet undreamed of at the time.
Not once ever did anybody suggest that we could improve any part of our lives by importing a bunch of third-world, aggressive, bigoted, misogynistic medievalists to live among us.
No sane, rational Scot believed that then. None believe it now.
Andrew,
Immigration is absolutely fine if it is balanced and targeted.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe that this is the model in use at the moment.
It is so hard to come to this country legally. Some of my former colleagues were here on high salaries, paying lots of tax, in high skill public facing roles, but in order to stay here, they would have had to pay thousands in visa costs. For my own partner, we had to take out a bank loan to cover the costs, as well as the lawyer fees. It is costly to stay here!
The majority of visas given out are for short term high skill, temporary work, or student visas. A lot of these people leave again.
Immigration contributes far more than it costs. If anything, I would make it easier to let people in. If you want to cut illegal immigration, the least cost effective way to do it is to make it impossible for people to come here legally.
And ultimately, this is all a red herring. It isn’t immigrants who are responsible for us barely being able to afford the messages. It isn’t immigrants who are whacking up prices and rampantly profiteering. It isnt immigrants who are trousering millions in government money while paying no tax. And that’s the key point. Why are we blaming immigration, when the real culprit are the uber rich who are paying less tax than any time in recent history?
Immigrants are just an easy target, and we need to give people an alternative.
“It isn’t immigrants who …”
You’ll be claiming next that it isn’t immigrants who sleep in beds at night. They don’t keep their beds in bedrooms. These bedrooms aren’t parts of the millions of flats, houses, etc. they don’t occupy. By not occupying these millions of homes, these millions of homes are available to rent or buy, at affordable prices, to the millions of indigenous Brits currently struggling to keep or even put a roof over their heads, due to demand far outstripping supply
Aye, Andrew, these millions of immigrants sleep standing up on street corners, don’t they?
“For my own partner …”
Enough, Andrew, you can stop now. All is crystal clear.
And while you were at school, how were the dinners? Food in this country is a million times better than it was a few decades ago. And why? People immigrated here and brought their food. People emigrated, were exposed to new foods, and brought them home.
Plus immigration a few decades ago was all about plugging staff shortfalls at the bottom of the job market. These days, many immigrants plug shortfalls right at the top of the job market. Immigration brings an absolute fortune into this country, and many of our most skilled workers are people who moved here for work. Oh, and many of them are now leaving because the UK’s immigration rules no longer make it viable to stay.
Immigration is absolutely brilliant. People fixate on a couple bad apples, but the vast majority of immigrants make our collective lives better, whether through taxes, skills, or food! What you have said is like saying all football is bad because some Rangers fans are scumbag.
“Food in this country is a million times better than it was a few decades ago”
Naw. It’s nae.
And good luck finding any meat product in a supermarket that isn’t Halal. So that’s the majority of consumers in Scotland being forced to eat Halal, whether they like it or not.
I don’t recall being asked about that, but the industry quietly made the shift anyway, on the basis that we wouldn’t make a fuss if they did, and the immigrants would chop their heads off if they didn’t.
“And while you were at school, how were the dinners?”
Not Halal.
“Naw. It’s nae.”
I mean, it so clearly is. Just off the top of my head, we eat pasta (Italian), fajitas (Mexican), curry (Indian), sweet and sour (Chinese), kebabs (German/Turkish) on a regular basis. At home, its quite normal for people to have pizza, lasagne, rice. How about to drink? Well tea and coffee aren’t native crops, vodka is a Russian drink, people drink a lot of Belgian lagers, you get the idea. Even our “native” foods are not exempt. Ever wondered why a lot of Ice Cream and chippies have Italian names? Why its those pesky Italian immigrants again, who founded these shops. All of this food and drink comes from immigrants coming here, and us emigrating to other countries. I mind reading an old Oor Wullie comic that referred to ravioli as “foreign muck”. Ravioli! Anyone who says food culture isnt better because of immigration is simply not being honest.
“And good luck finding any meat product in a supermarket that isn’t Halal. So that’s the majority of consumers in Scotland being forced to eat Halal, whether they like it or not.”
I’m not sure how halal food is the reason why cost of living is so expensive. A couple decades ago it was immigrants, recently it was the EU, and now its halal food? Considering that only a subset of immigrants specifically eat halal, I hope you can join the dots. Did you believe everything Better Together told you too?
But anyway, that halal claim isn’t true either.
link to farmersguide.co.uk
“Most major supermarkets declined to share a comment but 100% of Lidl and Aldi meat is from pre-stunned animals, and while all Sainsbury’s own-brand meat is stunned before slaughter and is not halal or kosher, labelled, pre-stunned halal and kosher products are available.”
“…and the immigrants would chop their heads off if they didn’t.”
I wonder how many decapitations are carried out by Scots born people vs Immigrants? This is yet another British style dog whistle. Its honestly like reading a Better Together advert from back in 2014.
The things you are saying are indisputably untrue, and surely, surely you must know that? Surely you can see it isn’t halal meat that is resulting in the cost of living going through the roof?
“And good luck finding any meat product in a supermarket that isn’t Halal.”
=======
Really?
I do a bit of cooking. One family favourite is my Goan pork vindaloo.
I have great difficulty, though, sourcing halal pork. Any advice?
More generally, what is wrong with halal ANYWAY ?
Forget my exotic tastes. If you ever, like your mum or your grannie, want to cook old-fashioned mutton as a slow roast or in casserole or braised mutton chops you will not find mutton these days in a supermarket.
Your halal butcher, however, will oblige you.
They are stalwart defenders of some great British cuisine.
“What is wrong with halal ANYWAY ?”
Good question. What is wrong with Kosher anyway?
For hundreds of years, adherents to that religion were happy not to force their dietary preferences on the majority.
Yet, as soon as a tiny handful of the adherents to The Religion Of Peace had established a bridgehead, the change came.
Tell me what was wrong with having an open and honest democratic vote before making the change?
“Your halal butcher, however, will oblige you.
They are stalwart defenders of some great British cuisine.”
Jeezo. Mince being written in a post about mince.
Away to your obliging Halal butcher the morn and demand he caters to the indigenous customers by serving bacon, pork chops, and boiled ham.
Stand your ground. Make a scene. Tell us how you get on.
Hatey McHateface says:
‘“What is wrong with halal ANYWAY ?’
Good question. What is wrong with Kosher anyway?’
============
Not one of your better efforts at deflection.
Ducking one question by posing another is a cheap trick punted by third rate politicians, not all of them in the SNP.
2/10
Incidentally, you appear to think kosher and halal are unrelated. They are not. The children of Ishmael and his half-brother, Ysrael, share many dietary preferences whose divergences are lost in ancient myth and history.
Revised score:
1/10
Is it just me or does Andrew’s message feel as though it should have been suffixed with, “That was a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Green Party”? 🙄
I am making rational and common sense points based on factual evidence. The Green Party in Scotland is very much in favour of unproven gibberish about Trans rights that goes against all factual evidence and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Blaming immigration for the high cost of living. It doesn’t stack up, doesnt make sense, and is the sort of mumbo jumbo that the greens (who are also anti travel) would also say.
I would say that
This shower are a lost cause, Andrew. Don’t waste your time on them.
Bad Actors and paid operators promoting votes for Fish Face – Thatcher on steroids – rather than ISP/Liberate Scotland.
Bring it on say the shills above. SNHS; sell it, poor folk in Scotland who can’t afford to eat properly or heat their homes; tough luck – let’s vote Fish Face to create another cash bonanza for the City of London and tax cuts for the millionaires. All made possible by massive cuts to benefits and public services.
Am absolutely sick of politics and politicians now, you can’t build your policy on we have to stop insert bogeyman for reasons unspecified
Aye I get it you don’t like the opposition
But all you have to do is sell me on what your willing to do to improve the lives of the majority of people
Even that’s too hard for these Muppets
S’funny, me and the missus were brought up in Glasgow at slightly different times.
I had about three asians at my secondary school out of around 400 pupils, none at my primary.
My missus, who is a bit younger than me was one of the few white faces at her secondary school, she stands out in a sea of brown in her school pics.
Its amazing just how fast demographics change when uncontrolled.
Actually, what you’re describing is the precise opposite of “uncontrolled”. What you’re describing is very controlled concentrations of particular groups of immigrants in certain areas. If it was “uncontrolled”, then you would have far more balance of demographics around the country. Plus the Rev has previously pointed out that the Scottish Parliament is disproportionately made up of ethnic minorities. Immigration could do with being a bit less controlled than it currently is. Again, it would make everyone happier, and most likely wealthier by not ghettoising immigrant groups and moving more people to where we need them.
Andrew you are Kate Forbes and I claim my £10
Oh well. If it comes to it I can very much live with the SNP in power for a generation or two.”- WoS, June 17, 2011
=====
Our host should have re-posted his open letter to Slab in a fortnight. Hallowe’en – when things return to haunt us.
Don’t ever vote for Reform!
Farage use the Banker’s and Billionaires money to ensure that the EU wouldn’t stop them avoiding taxes and money laundering.
He and Boris painted the £350 million per week for the NHS on the side of a bus knowing 100 percent that that sum was not the UK’s net contribution.
They won with the biggest lie ever.
Not only have families lost thousands due to Brexit but we also have these travel restrictions and no voice in the world’s largest trading market.
My basic assessment of better trade deals for a stand alone U.K. were as simple as would any trader or country give a better deal to 28 people or countries or give better deals to an individual?
Reform will remove human rights that include your own.
They will fuel race hate and that will see the immigrants who keep our NHS and Care Homes functioning close.
Healthcare will be for the rich and those who have life savings or houses that can go to private hospitals if they wish to save the lives of loved ones.
Remember Farage pledged to end the Barnett Formula so Scotland automatically becomes much poorer. Imagine the English outrage when they get more cash for themselves.
Getting Tommy Robertson as Reform’s Secretary of State for Scotland could be your end product.
Tommy Robinson for Secretary for State for Scotland. Now wouldn’t that be a thing.
With enhanced powers in an utterly right wing Anglocentric Westminster the Jocko Monkey would soon know the tune he had to dance too.
You couldn’t make it up. Turkeys voting for Christmas really.
Wow, Effijy, you make a compelling case for Scotland remaining in the UK.
Just as you make a compelling case for Scotland retaining all those white sizzlers from south of the border who fill so many necessary jobs.
And the icing on the cake – you are blissfully unaware you are doing it.
And it’s all due to the tribal hatred you nurse for Farage, the Tories, etc. – exactly as Rev Stu is writing about at the top of the page.
“families lost thousands due to Brexit but we also have these travel restrictions”
Sure. You’ve been plunged into poverty and even if you had the money, none of youse can ever cross the Channel or fly to Tenerife, ever again 🙂
Yes, and not just Tommy Robinson for Secretary of State for Scotland, how’s about Prince Andrew be given a slot up here.
Wouldn’t he just seal the deal for Scotland’s future. I know I jest about our Royal prince but its only a half jest. I mean why not. All those young Scottish lassies too. He’d jump at the chance.
Ah Scotland, we can but dream of the reality set to come. Of course we could of course wake up. But truly are we wont to do that.
“The problem with the “progressive” left is that they’re so unflinchingly certain that they’re the good guys they think it’s an inviolable truth of nature, and that anyone opposed to them can’t have a legitimate difference of opinion..” Is the profound crux of Labour and Cons and pious Jim (Murphy) when he was around.
Meantime, on Planet Reality, events march on, untroubled by the querulous voices rammying in the Scottish Indy silos. Here’s a wee quote:
“If this technical capacity is not decentralised, then economic and civil life will be decided neither by the will of the people, nor of their chosen representatives. It will be dictated instead by the systemic power and fabulous wealth of hyper oligarchs and a smattering of dictatorships, the wielders of an algorithmic power untrammelled by the need for human collaborators”
And the article itself:
link to unherd.com
Keep your eyes and ears open, folks. One day soon, you will encounter your first autonomous machine, perhaps on your street, or perhaps even in your own home (if you haven’t already).
Mind and mark the date in your calendar. For it will be the day your life changes forever.
You be amazed at what a electromagnetic pulse could do.
Just saying.
Indeed, Anthem.
Initially very amazed.
48 hours later, slashing your own wrists suicidal.
To understand where I’m coming from, take a wee dander through your house and write down all the stuff you own, and all the services you cannot exist without, that won’t survive an EMP.
Mornin’. A howp awbody haes a guid day the day.
Ah, Northy, such a shame you’ve made enemies of the Gaels reading on here. They have long been noted for being one of the finest mannered races on God’s green earth. If you hadn’t spent so much effort insulting them, I’m confident one at least would have troubled to return your greeting.
As a Scot, let me tardily wish you a good afternoon, just to show that we’re not all lazy, inconsiderate and rude.
As me dear old mammie used to say, manners cost nothing.
Perhaps you will just hear the indoctrination of the coloniser in that phrase, but then that’s entirely your loss.
It was a test, Hatey, and, unlike you, those fucking Gaels… and all those other cold-hearted fucking fuck-faced fuck-witted fucking fuckers on here I’d come to think of as my fellow oppressed and subjugated Scottish compatriots, failed miserably.
What a bunch of absolute cunts; and that goes for any cunty Picts who prance about this place, anaw… cunts!
I’ll be honest, I was a little downhearted wandering the solitary desert created by the dearth of goodwill surrounding my well intentioned and heartfelt greeting – until it was visited by your most kind reply.
Here! I’ve decided I quite enjoy letting loose now and then with a
fowl (I’m no chicken)tirade of foul language.I’d better not indulge myself too often though or I might accidentally slip into sweary mode at one of the great houses I often attend for dinners with members of the Scottish aristocracy and high ranking politicians and such.
“I say Nicola, would you be so kind as to pass me the salt?”
“Certainly, Northcode. Here it is.”
“Thank you Nicola, ye cunt.”
I think it’s plain to see just how terribly awry things might go during some momentary lapse of concentration.
The trick is to have foul language as one of the many weapons in your armoury.
And not to end up like James, who knows nothing else.
[his personal expertise in merchant banking excepted]
Andrew, I agree that immigrants are an easy target.
Most, if not all immigrants are here because of the policies persued by our, ahem, representatives.
I understand that it is convenient to blame the immigrants rather than themselves for voting in the very people who facilitate immigration, legally and illegally.
As I’ve already pointed out, it’s about balance and immigration is only one part of the equation. If we let in one immigrant, nobody would bat an eyelid, let in 10,000,000 and we have to add schools, roads, housing, policing, interpreters and wage structuring to name but a few, that then must be added to the equation.
Immigration can not be measured in isolation, nor only in monetary terms, so I must reiterate the importance of balance which applies to any country, anywhere.
Balance, balance, balance.
If immigration is out of balance, it is not the fault of the immigrants, it is the fault of the politicians.
Whether this is by design or not is another debate.
“I agree that immigrants are an easy target”
What a coincidence! That’s precisely what some immigrants say about us.
You know, the ones that blow up pop concerts, slash lassies to pieces at dance classes, drive vehicles into crowds, blow up buses, hound people “insulting” their religion into hiding with a death sentence pronounced over them.
Those ones.
Somebody really should tot up all the billions of pounds we’ve had to spend trying to protect ourselves from that self-imposed own goal, and write it on the side of a bus.
If they can find one big enough.
“You know, the ones that blow up pop concerts, slash lassies to pieces at dance classes, drive vehicles into crowds, blow up buses, hound people “insulting” their religion into hiding with a death sentence pronounced over them.”
Once again, it seems you have a specific problem. Do you really believe all that stuff you wrote? What about the ones that provide medical care, pick our food, provide dentistry, cook excellent food? I bet there are a lot more of those than there are of the ones you refer to.
“Do you really believe all that stuff you wrote?”
Are you claiming none of the atrocities I mention happened?
Rhetorical question. People like you can rely on the short attention span of what is still the the majority to keep the floodgates open. It’s not even three weeks since the last mass murder incident, but already the news cycle has moved on.
You’ll have your excuses rehearsed for the next one, whether it kills one or 100.
“Cook excellent food”
Ah, if only you knew something of Scottish culture.
A couple of generations back, every Scot would have known what happened to the boy who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Can’t disagree with the analysis, but I could never vote Reform or its allies, even to deliver a kicking. I’m more likely to spoil my ballot.
Maybe you can’t bring yourself to vote Reform Gaelstorm. I certainly couldn’t.
But it would dare you to look inside the heads of some voters. Farage is an English Brit Nat. He has no conception of Scotland as a country, only as a region of the UK.
And his politics. Well he wants to privatise the NHS. Introduce the American system of big business profit driven private care. That’s the type of guys he and his Bentley driving chum Tommy Robinson are. And didn’t he sell the saps the big lie with Brexit that a big bus would be arriving with £525 million ever week for the NHS. And the tuckers down south bought it big time.
All the dirty nasty foreigners really. And sadly, there are those in Scotland who would vote for him. Foreigners perchance in their own land if Farage takes the reins down south.
Ah well, some may ask. What’s wrong with a private health system. Folks would then be to buy all the healthcare they need. Just think of it. All of the deprived and low income folks free to buy as much health care as they need. Just the ticket and not a foreigner in sight.
Ah well not my vision but maybe the vision for those considering voting Reform.
Yes, Willie,
Reform would be one step closer to NHS privatisation.
It’s not just immigration that’s out of control.
Inflation too is raging like a gale-driven wildfire.
See the post from Effijy at 5:11 am this morning:
“£350 million per week for the NHS on the side of a bus”
Now Willie is saying:
“£525 million every week for the NHS”
I haven’t done the math, but at that rate of increase, how long before we should all be each promised a billion quid a week?
That’s the “fun” part of runaway inflation. It doesn’t take long at all before you’re needing a wheelbarrow to go to the hole-in-the-wall machine.
@Breastplate
“Reform would be one step closer to NHS privatisation”
If by “privatisation” you mean scrapping the demonstrably awful, moneypit, centralised socialist model currently in use that no one else copies (for good reason) with a hybrid private insurance model like the best performing healthcare systems in Europe offering vastly improved performance for similar levels of investment, then bring it on.
No time for sacred cows mate. People need medical care, not sit on waiting lists for months/years for the sake of political vanity. Deal with it.
Careful now, CC!
BP genuinely believes that as soon as you cross the Channel, you can’t even walk along the street anywhere without having to step over the dead and the dying, all of them denied health care because the backwards foreigners don’t have an NHS.
Don’t disillusion him. You’ll make him ill and then he’ll have to languish on a waiting list for months.
Willie; well said.
Captain Caveman,
As someone who lived in Germany in the 90s I have first hand knowledge of how good their system was.
It is completely different from the US model now that is designed to empty people’s pockets as fast as they can get away with, no prizes for guessing which model Nigel would like.
You believe the NHS is a money pit because that’s what you’ve been told.
Again, an example of people having no opinion but the one they’ve been given.
There’s no money for the NHS but there’s a seemingly infinite amount for force projection.
The people that are paid by the state, in the NHS pay taxes on their wages, they spend money (which is again, taxed) in the local shops, restaurants and pubs, pay their bills, and any money they have left is in a bank account, utilised by the bank and again subject to tax.
As long as the money is circulated in the country, it eventually makes its way into government coffers.
Any money that leaves the country or is kept in any foreign offshore bank accounts is no longer in circulation and the tax or utilisation of it is lost.
The circulation of money within the country is exceptionally important.
There are pros and cons of foreign owned companies taking profits to their foreign HQs.
I’m trying to keep this simple so you and John Main can keep up but the question of can we afford to fund the NHS, should be, can we afford not to.
Failure of our politicians will inevitably result in the sell off of anything that is and isn’t nailed down, and they’re running out of things to sell, it’s also not coincidental that the politicians are lining their pockets at the same time.
It’s not called Broken Britain for nothing, and Reform will not be any different from the Tories or New Labour or the SNP for that matter, they are only the illusion of choice for the hard of thinking.
[Fish Face will introduce] “…a hybrid private insurance model like the best performing healthcare systems in Europe offering vastly improved performance for similar levels of investment…” says the cave dwelling imbecile…..
Oh, ma sides…..stop it!
Seriously though, chummy; I’ve got some magic beans to sell you….
@Breastplate
If you know how good Germany’s (private) healthcare system was, that’s kinda the bloody point. You make my argument for me (again).
Who mentioned US healthcare? I said EUROPEAN. Read again.
As for me “believing the NHS is a money pit because that’s what I’ve been told”….? You patronising fool. No, I think you’ll find I have my own eyes to see with: real terms rises in funding every year, ridiculous waiting lists, poorer outcomes etc compared to our EU peers with their private hybrid systems. I leave blind zealotry to the likes of you and your ilk; I got to where I am today by being a grown up mate, capable of critical thought and taking a mature, holistic view of the world – and what works and what doesn’t.
CC,
I’m sorry if this is confusing for you, but the discussion was about reform and the likelihood of acceleration of privatisation of the NHS and Nigel Farage’s spunk filled wet dream of the AMERICAN model of health service.
Again for clarity, the discussion was about what kind of model would be ushered in under Reform.
Spoiler alert, it won’t be the German model, even if she’s looking good.
Of course, as ever, you are entitled to believe what you’ve been told to believe.
Impressive that you’ve got the hot track on Reform’s future policy, Breastplate. Don’t tell me, next up is this week’s six winning lottery numbers, right? Yawn. I could say more but what’s the point? I’d be wasting my time and breath.
CC,
It’s not a secret he admires the American system, it’s not a secret he thinks the NHS needs reformed and it’s not a secret that you clinging to someone else’s opinion.
All I would ask of you, is to apply a bit of reason and logic to your thinking.
I understand that this is a big ask, but please do try.
Show me a link where Farage has definitively stated it is Reform policy to upend the NHS and emulate the USA health model. I’m waiting/
What’s that you say? You can’t…?
You’re full of it mate. Next.
@BP – Nobody admires the American system, including people in America!
CC,
There is no such policy by any political party, including Reform.
Which means by the logic of your addled brain, there is no privatisation in the NHS.
You can believe the politicians all you want, that what they say is what they do, it is your prerogative.
Trump has specifically asked for the NHS to be opened up to American companies, would Nigel Farage as PM accommodate him or not.
You seem to believe that he wouldn’t because he doesn’t have a policy saying exactly that.
I on the other hand, believe that he would because of how much money would be available for him to pocket on the boards of any number of these companies.
You can believe Nigel Farage is the reincarnation of St George, ready to slay all your scary monsters, but pardon me if I believe he’s just another sleazy politician who has no interest in anyone but himself.
Goodnight and sweet dreams.
‘… There is no such policy by any political party, including Reform.
Which means by the logic of your addled brain, there is no privatisation in the NHS.’
Er no, I really doesn’t mean that. Go look up non sequitur, assuming can spell it. (Probably a vain hope, eh).
‘… You seem to believe that he wouldn’t because he doesn’t have a policy saying exactly that.
Well yeah, indeed I “seem” to do just that, Chief: I read and discern bona fide information from manifestos, actual policy statements direct from the horses mouth, as opposed to, say, listening to the brain farts of some idiotic random like “Breastplate” off the internet. That’s what grown ups do, and it’s how politics works, unless you’re some low-IQ grievance monkey/mouth breather.
‘… You can believe Nigel Farage is the reincarnation of St George,[etc]’
No mate, I leave all that guff to you and your ilk, howling impotently into the night about 1706, being colonised and in chains, the ‘Inglis’, C14th medieval battles and all the rest. Me? I’m mainly here for the laughs.
I will tell you another thing about Farage as a commodities trader – he couldn’t have been any good at it, because if he was he could have made out like a bandit and low grade activity like “party politics” would never have attracted him; he would have stashed 50M or so by the time he was 35 and just got “out” … politics is just so 3rd rate to these guys.
– so this guy who wasn’t much cop at I dunno what was it – metals, oil? – you want to put in charge of the whole show?
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”
that assumes they even know what they are doing. From Keynes.
Another beauty is – “the evil that men do lives on after them … ” (spoken by the philosopher Charles Bronson in the film of the same name)
– the circle completes itself; “time is flat circle” – Farage was a graduate of dulwich college, one of thatchers “special schools” which would “raise standards” (helped by getting 3x the funding of normal schools) – Nige was inspired to get into politics by a visitation there by Keith Joseph aka “thatchers brain” aka THE MAD MONK – the guy who supplied that batty tory housewifes mad fucking ideas; it all just keeps rising from the grave.
and this gets to his programme, i.e. “neoliberalism on steroids” which is for the slow-readers club
“MAKING THINGS -WORSE- … FASTER”
given how much privatisation has been done, there is not a lot left to go after (the failure of the market in the railways or water industry or power generation shall never be mentioned) – so what is left? Well, it’s the big two – NHS and welfare.
private medicine cannot work; the insurance business, run for profit, works on a simple idea “don’t pay out”. So they will insure all the young healthy people, but since health costs are heavily backloaded, either leave the sick who need care, uncovered, or as is common in the US, bankrupt everyone at end of life. Want something to pass on? Forget it. The US system overcharges americans all through their lives, you have hospitals where doctors are running around trying to do the most expensive thing possible, while lawyers run in the opposite direction, trying to stop anything happen at all. Even smart americans don’t use the US system – they can get better value in private clinics in europe or asia.
anyone who votes for Farage – I hope you watch your loved ones die, waiting for an ambulance, and your credit card charged anyway, as the ambulance had a wasted journey, the patient being dead by the time they got there, so it wasn’t needed …
Privatisation of the welfare system? – “bring back the workhouse!”
What disgusts me is how these english pricks who push this … they are so ignorant, they don’t even read their own literature. Dickens? Did you not get that at school?
Confused once again claiming the choice is a binary one:
The national religion of the sanctified NHS.
Or watching your loved ones die.
I used to believe this was the kind of post spewed onto here by an inveterate liar.
But recently I’ve started to question my own assessments. It’s possible the reality is something far worse – Confused actually truly believes what he posts.
Are you the same, #SP1? Can you *really* believe the unadulterated shite that you post, day in day out?
Or are you really a parody, a comedy turn?
Better information available here.
link to kingsfund.org.uk
Health inequalities are the measurements of life expectancy and period of life free from disability across and withhhin countries.
Health inequalities are not just a good measurement of population health but of the general health of the economy.
Scotland was, until the early 1980s, in the middle of other European countries with regard to life expectancy.
What happeened during the early part of Thatcher’s government was that life expectancy faltered. It did not stop improving as it had done for a century and half but the improvement lessened allowing other countries to overtake Scotland.
In particular, alcohol related deaths increased dramatically in the UK and did not in other countries.There were also increases in drug related deaths, suicides and violence.
These deaths are socially produced , not biologically produced.
Not all areas were equally affected. The worst affected were Scotland and the North of England where deindustrialisation was greatest.
There are inequalities between social classes and by geography.
Life expectancy in Kensington is 86 years, ten more than in Blackpool.In the UK life expectancy between the least and most advanaged is 6.4 years for men and 4.9 for women.
The gap between the most and least deprived in Scotland is much greater, for men the difference is 13.5 years.
For the most deprived men and women a life free from disability ends at 47 (men) and 51 years.
The greatest burden of ill health is borne by the poorest. It is caused by a great many factors. Poverty is one and underfunding of public health is another.
Uk governments have created the crises in all the NHS across the UK.
Some are born rich. Some are born poor.
Some are born with the capacity to move from poverty to wealth – immigrants, for example. Some are born with nothing more than an expectation of entitlement to handouts until they croak.
Some, like sam here, truly believe it is the role of government to permanently change human nature. Some believe the likes of sam will go disappointed to his final resting place.
Some always like to believe every problem has a single cause. Some like to name that cause Thatcher, others name that cause Sturgeon. Some observe that if every problem really had a single cause, reversal of that single cause would be an action so simple, it would be bordering on the trivial.
If you are debating the future of the N H S n Scotland or the UK as a whole go look up American reacts to videos not just healthcare and watch some of the videos the people are complementary and envious if they are in the US.
Progressing through the debate somethings overlooked are cemeteries which the increasing need for will prevent use or re-use for farming leisure scenery or as a last resort housebuilding.
Unless you order creations only.
I don’t believe we need many takeaway delivery riders who are reckless and inconsiderate and at times a danger.
Spell check changed cremations.
Kenny Farquharson on YouTube telling us SNP have cracked it…
Think that tells you everything you need to know..
The SNP is a souless career choice ; nobody likes them anymore = lack of motivation to actually physically go put an X in that box. It’s very possible Reform could become the biggest party at HR.
Mebbies Fish Face will appear in person to campaign?
Be great to see the c*nt get chased out like last time.
Be great to see a wheezing, hirpling, lard erse like yersel trying to chase anything more mobile than a black pudding supper. I’d buy a ticket just for that, and to support the paramedics who would have to stretcher you away.
But you do a great job of demonstrating why your brand of Indy can’t progress, indeed, needs to be destroyed if an acceptable brand of Indy is ever to take root in Scotland.
Your automatic response to anything you don’t agree with is to shut it down. Your respect for your fellow Scots is so low, you don’t trust them to hear anything you don’t approve of.
You’re congenitally incapable of comprehending just how weak and hopeless that makes you appear. And by extension, the Indy cause.
You bring to the political process what a blazing, expletive screaming knuckle dragger of a fan brings to an Auld Firm derby.
If Fatarse is in any way representative of mainstream Scottish independence support, here’s to another 300 years of the Union!
I daresay, thinking about it, I’d even go so far as to suggest he’s actually a “useful idiot” to Unionists. (Emphasis on ‘idiot’ there, natch).
Now there’s an ironically amusing thought for my Sunday morning walk with the dog, huh. 😀
Aw. The Site Prick and franchise Fanny have created a baby and called it Captain Caveman. How sweet.
Did I upstet the yoonie woonies talking bad about Fishy Wishy den?
Imbeciles.
Wow, James. Given a completely blank canvas to work with, you immediately grabbed inspiration from the box labelled homo-eroticism.
Did you take a break from handling yourself while you thought up your post?
Haha, rhetorical question!
Ugh. Fat creep.