Saturday 30 November 2013

A LOOK AT THE 1603 AND 1707 TREATIES

Reading around the Facebook pages this morning, I noticed this post on "EU Citizens for an independent Scotland".


In what seems like, I have to admit, another rather lazy post for me, I wondered if anyone had any opinions on this aspect of the law (particularly given Mr Carmichael's recent references to international law) which I had not considered before.

Our First Minister and Spain's Prime Minister are both correct in their interpretations of EU Law.

Spain cites a part of the EU Treaty relating to a "region" of a country. The First Minister is correct to point out Scotland is a country and not a "region" therefore the part of the Treaty cited by Spain does not apply to Scotland.

The Treaty of the Union 1707 is an International Treaty. The Scots negotiating the 1707 Treaty cannily insisted on it being an International Treaty.

The legal ramifications of a Yes vote are far more integrate than the current assumptions. First, the Union of the Crowns 1603 will still be in place and it is this Union which gave rise to the establishment of the United Kingdom.

Therefore the title United Kingdom will have to be removed from the Union of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Secondly, the 1707 Treaty established the new nation state of Great Britain; with a Yes vote Great Britain ceases to exist. Given that the United Kingdom between Scotland and England will still exist it could be seriously argued that two new nation states would exist upon a Yes vote: Scotland and the Union of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.


This is not the simple issue the Unionists' make it out to be; this is not my opinion but the law of the land.

Jim Dear
Arbroath

Friday 29 November 2013

Lazy post, lifted from the Guardian here. I reproduced it because I think it is appropriate at the moment with Dean's revelation that he has joined Labour for Independence.

It talks of hopes of political revival in Scotland when parties are no longer "branch offices" of London organisations that legislate mainly not just for England, but for the Home Counties and the City... and demand loyalty from the branch offices despite the fact that these policies are actually harmful to the "regions". (Look what happened to Murdo's plans to rejuvenate the Tory party in Scotland in 2011? Look how Allan Grogan's pro independence group within Labour is being treated by the UK/Scottish Labour leadership.)

And he seems to agree with us that, despite all the threats just now, when the deed is done, there will be nothing but welcomes on the world stage for our new country... 

It's worth a read:

It was 1977 when Tom Nairn spooked the political world with his famous book, The Break-Up of Britain. He predicted Scottish independence, a bit prematurely. But last Tuesday, as Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon launched their government's manifesto for an independent Scotland, ancient Britain's citizens were being offered a break-through as much as a break-up.

In itself, the fat policy manual isn't revolutionary. Scotland's Future is a sturdy, sensible, well-written catalogue of aspirations – all of them achievable with luck and skill. But what's so exhilarating is the flock of many-coloured hopes gathering behind this project, like seabirds in the wake of a working trawler. Scotland's departure from the union could mean all kinds of liberations and reinventions for the islanders who live under the crown.

England, above all, could at last disinter its identity and the buried radicalism of its people. Stripped of the "British" comfort blanket, the archaism of England's power structure and its monstrous north-south imbalance would become visible and intolerable. And in Scotland itself, there would be a violent climate change in politics as parties ceased to be London's branch offices.

Scotland is in many ways a naturally conservative country – with a small c. A new rightwing movement, freed from association with "down south" posh boys and Maggie Thatcher, would find strong support. More significant, there would be an insurrection in the Scottish Labour party. With a fresh leadership committed to using independence for social justice, I'd expect such a party to push the Scottish National party aside and form Scotland's government within a few years.

Then there's the factor of opportunism, comically familiar to small countries. I have seen it in Scotland before. When whiffs of independence spice the air, the big Union Jack men talk differently down the telephone at night. "Of course I can't say this openly, Jimmy, but I want you to know that if it comes to it, I've always been privately …" Lawyers, bankers, union leaders and unionist leaders – they'll realign in droves "if it comes to it". Why not?

Much the same applies to the apparently fearsome rebuttals to Salmond's document. On inspection, they are nine parts bluff. What makes cheeky Salmond think an independent Scotland would be allowed to use the pound, or enter the EU, or be admitted to Nato? Well, the answer is another question: "if it comes to it", what sort of Scotland do you want as a neighbour? Does London seriously want to force a currency frontier at the border and screw up trade with England's second biggest partner? Does Brussels really want to expel a loyal member and accelerate the EU's disintegration? Does Nato want a new hole on its east Atlantic flank? No, if the Scottish people do vote yes in September (which is still unlikely), healthy opportunism will cobble up solutions to all these problems.

Reading Scotland's Future, I couldn't at first account for a faint twinge of melancholy, a recognition. Then it dawned on me. The Scotland being here described – or proposed – was the Britain so passionately hoped for by the millions who voted for Tony Blair, back in 1997.

After 18 years of Thatcherism, the longing was for a return to fairness and a stronger regulating and redistributing role for the state. What New Labour did with those hopes is another story. But Salmond's "what sort of Scotland" is also a moderate, statist social democracy that partners the private sector but is not afraid to – for example – renationalise the Royal Mail.

The yes camp is wider than the official yes campaign. Around Scotland in recent months, I keep meeting people who would never vote SNP or trust Salmond, but who are painfully admitting that they may have to vote yes. This is because they are appalled at the way the British state is heading, under Tory or Labour: the downward plunge into the barbarism of neoliberal politics, the contempt for public service, the almost monthly advance of privatisation. Wrestling with old loyalties, they may vote for what Ian Jack called "the lifeboat option" – an independent Scotland as the only way to escape that fate.

It's a lifeboat the SNP government has already launched, using devolution to keep out English "reforms" to the NHS or higher education. Gordon Brown himself used to argue that the health service and the postwar welfare state were the supreme achievement of Great Britain's history. And yet it's only the SNP that has embarked on this astonishing attempt to preserve and grow what's left of that achievement in one part of old Ukania. It hurts to laugh at some of history's jokes, but here's one: in spite of itself, the SNP is the most truly British party in these islands.


Thursday 28 November 2013

PHOTOS ON (very nearly) FRIDAY

Anyone know the number of this U-turn?
Yeah, go on. Vote for Davenomics
You have to admit, it makes no sense.
They aren't the cuddly type really, are they?
Gideon looking a little more sensible than normal
Big choice...
But they won't admit it...
and that is where they lose any kind of credibility
Lord Darling of Referendum?
Obvious. He's there to keep the
 bad stuff from touching the Tories. 
Smug, self satisfied smile wiped off...again.
Many of the answers are now at your fingertips.
No hasn't got an answer to anything yet...ask Alistair.
Starting in around 1947 the money these British Empire people
 have wasted on being important  and being able to kill people
while we lived in slums and went hungry... and died of curable diseases
...especially if I debate with Alex. If I have to I'll send Clegg.
He's expendable
Failure as Secretary of State for the Empire Number 3.
Soon will the Liberals run out of people and it will be Muddle's turn
Good place to be a BANKER
Borrow now.. Pay it back over 5 years
And we say lying Tory bastard

Wednesday 27 November 2013

I'M SICK OF THE BBC AND BETTER TOGETHER TREATING ME LIKE A MORON

I gave up listening to the news interviews yesterday on the subject of our country’s future because they were almost unremittingly biased.

The BBC seemed to me to be taking full advantage of the fact that it has no obligation to be fair and balanced in its coverage of the referendum until the official campaign starts.

It appeared that Jim Naughtie was firmly in the camp of the No campaign, presumably with the backing of his bosses in London. I'll apologise if I've got him wrong, but I suspect that I have not.

No one, least of all Naughtie, seemed interested in asking hard hitting questions of the No side. Maybe the BBC genuinely believes that there is no need for Better Together to have a plan B, whilst it is imperative for Yes, but for the sake of decency, could they not just ask the questions about it.

The EU is a case in point. BT spreads doubt about whether or not Scotland would be accepted into EU, then whether it would be forced to accept the Euro, and then what the cost to Scotland (a rich country) would be.  But no interviewer to my knowledge has said…So Mr British government spokesman, the answer to these questions can immediately be got by you, as a sovereign state member of the EU. Why does Mr Hague or one of his minions not simply ask Brussels for that answer? They would be obliged to provide it for you.

Likewise, the question of membership of an existing sterling zone is a matter that could be settled now.

George Osborne is the Chancellor at the moment; notwithstanding accidents or serious fallings out with Cameron before October 2014, it is more than likely that he will be the Chancellor at the commencement of negotiations between Scotland and the UK.

Why hasn’t an interviewer put it to a No spokesman that Osborne has not ruled out sharing the pound?  After all he hasn’t, despite the silly hints from Alistair Carmichael that George Osborne usually gets what George Osborne wants (an interesting insight into Cabinet government in London and the habits of spoiled rich boys).

We all know the reason. By hinting and suggesting that it would not be
allowed, by international public law (rubbish) or by convention (rubbish) or by George Osborne (who knows) or Ed Balls (who may or may not ever be chancellor even if Labour wins the next or subsequent elections), the No campaign spread doubt on Scotland’s position.

 If they made a definite statement and said that certainly there would be no sharing, then the doubt would pass to sterling and its future.

International money markets would begin to consider seriously that, in the event of a yes vote and Scotland adopting a totally different currency, the pound, losing the massive petro boost, not to mention the large export contribution of Scotland to its value, would sink like a stone.

I even heard this morning that they were saying again that Scotland would be forced to join the Euro, despite it being impossible to join the Euro without first having spent two years in the ERM, and only starting that two years once the present currency meets economic equivalence with the Euro. Germany has had to spend too much money bailing out wayward economies to accept that Scotland should be able to skip all the preliminaries and go straight to Euro membership.

Surely someone in the BBC knows this, but chooses to ignore this, because it doesn’t fit with the agenda.

I wonder though, what is the point of this, particularly on Radio Scotland and Radio Four. By and large the audience is intelligent and thinking. If I can see through the imbalance in the reporting, so can the rest of the listeners. There are radio programmes with audiences which will swallow whatever the BBC throws at them. ‘Good Morning Scotland’ and the ‘Today Programme’ aren’t them. 

So isn’t the Beeb really shooting itself in the foot?

It’s strange that Labour seems to see no good at all in the paper when the Unite Union has already said that they are pleased to see some of the suggestions that the government has made with reference to industrial relations. You'd have thought that there would have been a similarity in what these two organisations, so closely associated with each other, would have thought was interesting.

The headline in the “Scottish” Daily Mail today was half a page of blistering attack on Scotland’s Future”. Even given that they are a bit on the mad side, I was taken aback by the vitriol. I haven’t read the document yet, but I'm always wary of anything the Daily Mail approves of. So I'm assuming from the paper’s outburst of visceral hatred that the document doesn’t contain any Xenophobic or Fascist policies, no cull of the poor or sick or Muslims.

So that’s a relief.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

HMMM...THAT'S A HARD ONE IAIN


I can see, of course, where the confusion arises. 

A Christmas fund is set up so that one can buy things for Christmas; a holiday fund is set up with the express aim of paying for a holiday; a pension fund for the provision of a pension. So it may have been a wee bit difficult for the Subway man to get his head around the idea that the purpose of an oil fund was not, in fact, set up with the express intention of one day purchasing oil.

You see, Iain, we already have oil. We've no need to buy it.

Bless him, his spell out of the front line hasn't really improved him any. Still Nicola is always ready to explain this sort of thing to slow pupils. 

Norway's that long thin country up there, on the right hand side...

POSITIVE DAY FROM YES, NEGATIVE DAY FROM NO

SO WHAT'S NEW?


It's hard to take them seriously when they had rubbished the contents of the document before they had had a chance to read it. There are 670 pages. Surely common sense would have told them that to make it look like they had done any more than skim the contents, they should have left comment till at least this evening. Wings has already commented wittily on this.

Fair point Frankie
But no, treating the Scottish people with complete disdain, they were talking about it within minutes of it being released. 

Really, please stop treating us like we paint our faces with woad and communicate in grunts. We know you are big clever London people but you can't read and understand that fast!

Your criticisms would have meant so much more if they had been based on what you had read rather than your utter terror of losing your seat in the House of Lords.
TODAY WAS THE DAY
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR MR CAMERON IS DEAF
THIS IS THE MAN THAT DAVID CAMERON AND NICK CLEGG,
NOT TO MENTION ED MILIBAND HAVE SUCH FAITH IN

NOT IF THEY CAN HELP IT
LEFT TO DARLING AND CARMICHAEL IT WILL BE GOODBYE TO SCOTLAND

Today Ken Guild, leader of the council in Dundee took possession of his copy of Scotland's Future, delivered from parliament by a special messenger. Thanks to Tom for the photograph.
Ken Guild and messenger at
 City Churches with all important document

Monday 25 November 2013

DEAR, DEAR, DEAR


...as long as they were already there to begin with.

Dear Rt Hon Mr Alexander

How proud did it make you to open a food bank for the starving in your constituency and to pretend to be helping to pack a parcel to feed your hungry constituents? 

Yours sincerely

Tris
**********
Dear Rt Hon Mr Carmichael,

Could you please point out to me where in Public International Law it says that you cannot share a fully convertible currency?

Does this stop Guernsey, Jersey, IoM, Gibraltar, and probably the Falkland Islands/Malvinas from having this currency and will they now, under Public International Law have to join another currency or start their own?

Best regards

Tris
**********

Dear Ms Davidson,

I understand you are a big Dr Who fan. In the hopefully likely event of Scotland becoming independent in 2016, will you fight tooth and nail for Daleks to be allowed in Scotland, or will you emigrate to England where you will be able to watch them as much as you like.

Kind regards

Tris
**********
Dearest Rt Hon Darling

Would you like to explain these actions to the Scottish taxpayer, and perhaps outline why on earth we would believe anything you say now regarding financial arrangements?

Sincerely

Tristan
**********
Dear Mr Hosie,

Thank heavens someone in Westminster is talking sense about the sterling debacle.

I particularly liked the comment from you today in the Herald.

"The UK, or sterling zone, balance of trade deficit right now is £35bn a year; Scottish oil and gas exports are £30 billion. That would effectively double the sterling zone trade imbalance and shred the currency. That would be really silly." 

You also pointed out that imposing barriers to trade with Scotland would "destroy at least tens of thousands of English jobs and that's just bonkers."

We are grateful for some sanity being brought to the debate. Of course it must help that you have a handle on your brief!

I was wondering if you think that people like Osborne and Balls, Carmichael and Darling are aware of the consequences of their pettiness?

Best

Tris
***********
Dear Mr Carwyn Jones,

I was amazed to read that you would veto the UK and Scotland sharing the same currency. 

I hadn't the vaguest notion that you had that power. Nor, I think, did anyone else.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to indicate if there are other things that you would veto regarding Scotland's future, what with you being a Welsh first minister. It's best to know these things in advance, wouldn't you agree? 


gyda fy nymuniadau gorau

Tris
***********
Dear Rt Hon Grieve,

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Why did you set out to stir up racial tension by accusing Pakistanis of being corrupt? Is your government not in enough trouble already without you adding to it? 

Was this not a rather stupid thing for a) a legal expert [we've assumed that you are a legal expert, you know, what with the job you do, and all] and b) a politician? I mean you must presumably have some Pakistanis in your constituency. Do you now feel you can serve them as their MP.

I can tell you that you nearly caused a friend of mine to crash his car when he heard you on the radio. I mean, it takes great comedy skills for a member of the House of Commons to talk about other people being corrupt. Didn't one of your own papers, the Telegraph, recently discover that more than 50% of your fellow members had fiddled their expenses, some to an incredible extent? 

Add the House of Lords, police who blame their own incompetence on drunken youths, knock over sick men at demonstrations, never mind that they are making their way home for work (a striver, I'm sure you'd agree), kill Brazilians on the metro and lie through their teeth in court about it, and sell stories to the press in return for health spa holidays and cash incentives, a press which hacks people's phones, some dodgy invitations to royal weddings from people who had given use of their private jets to Prince Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles, and finally a state broadcaster which you sometimes wonder ever had time to make programmes given what was going on in its premises, and it's all looking a bit like a  good old fashioned Whitehall farce?

Silly man.

One more question, if I may. Do you really think you're up to this job, or wouldn't you be better suited to prosecuting petty thieves?

With my best wishes for the consequences of your outrageous slur.

Tristan

**********
Dear Ms Lamont,
If Private Eye thought that any of their readers had ever
 heard of you, you might have made their lookalike feature.
As it is you will have to make do with Munguin's.
Some of our readers will probably be aware of you
Tris x

**************************

Sunday 24 November 2013

IS THIS A CHANGE IN THE HERALD'S ATTITUDE TO THE DEBATE?

The Herald’s editorial takes a pleasingly balanced and sensible line on the White Paper on Independence.

The thing that most caught my eye from this one time strong Labour supporting paper was their obvious distaste for the unionist parties’ negativity and, frankly, lying.

It seems that BT the coalition always start by saying that a) they are proud Scots, and b) that they know, of course, that Scotland could make it alone...and then having been seen to deal with all this Scottishness stuff, they get down to some serious Scotland bashing. Perhaps the Herald has started to see through this ploy.

At FMQ on Thursday, the only time in the week that she is let out on her own,  Ms Lamont read from a script, presumably written in London, about how the highly respected Tory think tank foresaw doom and gloom for Scotland. 

While pointing out that the First Minister habitually quoted from reports selectively, she proceeded to do the exact same thing. Our aging population would mean that we would need to put up taxes and reduce public spending. She neglected to say that this was exactly what the UK was being forced to do. That in fact the same report said that the Uk was facing 50 years of austerity. That’s something for us all to look forward to. Perhaps precious few of us will ever know anything BUT austerity if we stay with the UK.
 
The Herald has apparently seen through their debater of the year, and her colleagues. The moral of the story appears to be that your supporters will follow you so far, but when you start to insult their intelligence with the kind of fear bombing for fools that has been so obvious of late, there is a fair chance that they, in an effort to retain some intellectual integrity and dignity, will say...enough! Far too far!

The tone of the editorial suggest that that time has come for the Herald.

Here is the piece for those who can't get behind the paywall. Thanks to Cynical for pointing it in our direction.

While on the subject of Lamont’s lamentable performance at FMQs yet again, can I point you in the direction of an excellent piece of reporting and analysis here.

Keep an open mind on White Paper
Sunday 24 November 2013

The one thing that can be said with certainty about the Scottish Government's long-awaited Independence White Paper, which is published in Glasgow on Tuesday, is that it will be dismissed by its critics as a feeble document that fails to answer the many questions about an independent Scotland.

There is also indignation at the audacity of Alex Salmond for even producing it.
From Lord Wallace of Tankerness, the Advocate General, to the Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, the cry has gone out: how dare you? How dare the Scottish Government assume that it can use the pound after independence, or that Scotland can remain a member of the European Union? The Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has even suggested Scotland could be prevented from using sterling, despite it being a convertible currency used all over the world.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests Scotland's ageing population could plunge the country into penury and that there will be cuts to public expenditure. Meanwhile, MPs on the Scottish Affairs Select Committee have demanded guarantees on successful negotiations over independence, even though the UK Government has refused to negotiate anything in case it lends credence to the Nationalist cause.

The Scottish people are yet to be convinced of the relevance of independence to Scotland's problems. However, we approach this White Paper with an open mind and we urge others to do so too. We applaud the Scottish Government for at least attempting to present an alternative future to the dismal prospectus offered by the unionist parties.

They seem to revel in negativity, dismissing Scotland's ability to run its own affairs and suggesting we can only survive as a nation on the basis of subsidies from England. They have yet to argue how remaining in the UK can offer a better future than regional irrelevance.

The geriatric forecasts of the IFS are surely a vision of Scotland if it stays in the UK. Without a new immigration policy and economic policies that keep skilled Scots families in Scotland, how can Scotland avoid an ageing population?

Carwyn Jones has also joined the clamour for the Barnett Formula on Scottish public spending to be cut.

The message is clear: within the union Scotland faces a future of public spending constraints, falling population and economic decline. Scottish representation in Westminster will likely be cut under the McKay Commission into the consequences of devolution.

The Scottish Parliament will have to pay its way by raising taxes in Scotland, without having access to oil revenues or the ability to legislate for growth. Scotland may be dragged out of Europe if it remains in the UK.

This is the off-the-peg future offered by the unionists. They'd better have a care: Scots might actually start listening to what they say.

Saturday 23 November 2013

RANDOM WEEKEND WITTERINGS

It has to be once of St Vince’s great successes.

He sold off the Royal Mail at half what it was worth, after bankers lied to him about the value.

(Whoever would have thought that bankers would have lied when it came to money, Vince? Just like Daily Telegraph reporters. Can't trust anyone nowadays, can you?)

And now the postal regulator has told the company that it must improve services after missing key performance targets and warned that it could face fines.

RM (how can it still be called Royal Mail when it’s a private company? Should it not pay someone millions to come up with a name like, say Consignia?) has a target to deliver 93% of first class letters the next day, but in fact managed only an average of 91.7%.

In some areas (unspecified, but I wouldn’t mind betting that the Highlands and Islands will be amongst them) it was as low as 62%.

Isn’t it amazing that a private company (with all the efficiency advantages that that apparently brings) can be so pathetically bad at working to its targets. After all a first class stamp isn’t exactly cheap these days.

In response to Offcom’s report, the Royal Mail said it was "disappointed" that it hadn't met all of the service targets required.

Oh well, that makes it all right after all we're a tad "disappointed" too.

**********

If you live in the Dundee area and you are thinking of getting some dry cleaning done, take my advice and walk right past Aberdeen Valet Service in Broughty Ferry. Not only are they outrageously expensive, but the staff must be the most disinterested and impolite I have ever come across. Only my opinion of course.
**********
Camergold
Mind you, someone has given her dress lessons.
She's got rid of her granny's curtains

**********
I read that a Liberal aristocrat, Lord Purvis of Tweed no less,  has been given the job, by Nicky Clegg, of bringing the Labour and Tory parties together with his own, to have a common agreement on what to do when (they refuse to accept "if") there is a NO vote.
Lord Tweed of Purvis, or something else stupid and pompous

They are hoping that they can agree a raft of new powers for Scotland, not an unreasonable thing to do, given that Devo Max is what most Scots said was their preference, at least until Cameron ruled it out.

But I was just wondering why would we believe anything that they said. Quite apart from the British government having form on this kind of thing, the Liberal Democrats must be the most unreliable party ever when it comes to making promises.  Ask students in England, and what was that about electoral reform?

Oh yeah, nothing.

Then there is the matter that both Alistair Darling and Michael Forsyth raised way back when we were discussing the third option on the referendum... You can't offer any new powers to Scotland without the approval of the UK parliament. 

So what the Noble Purvis has been charged with doing is getting these people, all of whom are desperate for power and the money and self import that it brings, to agree that they will all have the same stuff in their manifesto. Yep, that's going to happen.

Of course that it won't happen is no great big deal to them. They are politicians after all. What they say today is footsteps in the sand tomorrow, forgotten like it was said 500 years ago. And it just seals the deal that a shape shifting Liberal is in charge of it.

But on the off chance that they manage to get it into their manifestos, who here thinks they will actually act on it. I mean seriously...


Pfffffffffffff, snigger.
**********
Dump the lot. Labour Party policy since 1900
**********
The Greenest Government ever in the history of the universe
 is going to dump all the Green Crap that Cameron believed in with all his heart,
(like he has one) and soul (or that) and... Oh, pass me a bucket.

**********

And one last thought

...and it is only a thought. Christmas is nearly upon us, and I suspect that some people anyway, are running around, credit card in hand, wondering what to get old Old Uncle Ned or Auntie Betty.

Now, I don't suppose any of you were going to buy me anything, but just incase you were... what I'd like more than anything else is a donation made to help people like this wee lad in the Philippines.
Really, I have everything I need (well, unless you were thinking of a Ferrari).

Friday 22 November 2013

SCROUNGER MAINE

Click on picture for larger (readable) image. This is almost unbelievable, until you remember it's Westminster and she's a Tory MP.

A STATEMENT FROM CHARLES GRAY...

...in support of the Labour voice in the independence campaign. 

This was written exclusively for use for Labour for Independence. 

(Please share far and wide. Allan)

Even as the Festive Season approaches there is still a continuing interest in next year's Referendum to decide Scotland's future. It's subject to sometimes intense discussion in pubs and clubs, in homes and carefully, but formally in schools, colleges and universities. While many may still have to make up their minds, a fast growing number of Labour Party members and voters, and many more Trades Unionists are already determined to vote YES.

Older persons are mindful of the early Labour & TU movement of Hardie, McLean, Gallacher, Wheatley and Johnston and their like: men who birthed a vision of social equality and equal rights for all and in whose simple, but ardent ambition was Home Rule for Scotland.

Given, and recalling, the suffering endured by hundreds of all ages in those not so far off days, it would be foolish to contend that the present Scottish Parliament would be sufficient to satisfy their hopes; hopes which had clearly contained the dream of an Independent Scotland.

And now there is the increasing call by folks from all walks of life: ordinary men
and women, scholars, business and young people all joining in the call for Independence for our beloved ancient land : SCOTLAND.


Hasten the day!

Thursday 21 November 2013

DON'T BE AN INTERFERING OLD BUSYBODY

I understand that Cameron's man in Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, has asked Facebook to take down a page which ridicules Alex Salmond.

I suspect that it may be the page that was referred to by an angry unionist who posted it anonymously on this blog. 

I wonder why.

What has it got to do with him?

I suppose he thinks it makes him look statesman like. It doesn't. It makes him look like an interfering old busybody. 

Firstly, I'm sure that the First Minister is capable of dealing with Facebook himself, if he wishes to. 

And secondly,except where we are talking illegal pornography, terrorism or crime, politicians should keep their noses out of what people wish to discuss, down the pub, at the water cooler, in the canteen and on line. Even then it's a police matter, not political.

There is nothing illegal in calling Alex Salmond a deluded wanker. Sticks and stones, etc. 

And there are no brownie points in trying to look like you care when you don't. We still have freedom of speech in the UK, or certainly in Scotland, or did i miss something overnight?
**********
I see that Carwyn Jones was paid by London to come to Edinburgh and do the Tory government's bidding in selling his fellow Celts down the river. He wants more power for Wales (devo max which Scotland was denied) and less from Scotland, however, he may find that if he persuades Scots to vote no to independence, the courting of the Celtic nations may well stop, and he will find himself with a good deal less. 
Barnett, which he wants rid of,  may favour Scotland because of its size and the need to provide Scots with the services that their taxes pay for in more populous parts of the UK, but with the Tory (and Labour) fixation for making sure that London wins in every matter, if the really powerful Celtic tiger, Scotland, is slain, and independence put back in its box, Wales may find that Barnett will be replaced with something that will do the Welsh no favours at all.

The Tories don't have much to lose in the Celtic fringe; the memory of Thatcher just won't go away. And Labour takes us for granted. 

It's only when we look as if we may leave them to stew in their own juice that they take any notice of us.