scotlandisdifferent

Constant Readers Sey&Dor have chided me for not blogging for two months (can it really be that long?!). So here is a quick rundown on where this blog now stands, which of course means a quick rundown on where we all stand on Scottish independence. First up is total scunneration at the Holyrood election result: no dent in the SNP, Salmond's reputation is rubbished, and Alba gets nowhere. Indy off the table for five years. Second up is the unbelievable corruption in the Scottish government. Sturgeon and her clique conspired to pervert the course of justice and to jail Alex Salmond for life. A corrupt Lord Advocate - who runs the Crown Prosecution Service but is also a government minister - puts in place procedures (anonymity in sexual-offence cases) that mean that no whiff of this can be published. Craig Murray, the only journalist who gave an impartial account of the Salmond trial and highlighted the strength of the defence, has been sentenced to eight months in jail for doing s...

David Davis's speech in the UK Parliament on Tuesday evening blows the lid off the Scottish Government's long-term attempts to hide the Salmond stitch-up. He was speaking under Parliamentary privilege, which the Scottish Parliament doesn't have, so all the evidence is now in the open, and freely discussable and publishable. This means that the mainstream media can now report it fully. Be very leery of any outlet that doesn't! The full text of Davis's speech is here . Don't forget that you first read about the stitch-up on this blog.

  Sick and tired (From Wings Over Scotland, December 20, 2020 by Rev. Stuart Campbell )  Oh just shut up you useless waste of space. He DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. You can bleat at him for a thousand years and he won’t listen. You gave him his election and he has a majority and England has chosen its fate and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them dragging us down with them because you’ve wasted the last four years whining about it instead of doing the thing we elected you to do, which is put us in charge of our own future forever. Now either get off your worthless coward’s arse and do the only thing that’s actually in your power – a plebiscitary election – instead of grandstanding around the world stage achieving absolutely sod-all except getting your face in the press again, or get out of our damn way and let someone who can do the job take over. (PS that also includes the job of handling the pandemic, which you’re making a pig’s arse of too, but gosh, doesn’t ever...

Dear Nicola, I'm looking at your St. Andrew's Day appeal for funds, and I have to say I have some issues with it. Let's have a look at them. Your top line says that this is an appeal for the "Holyrood 2021 Election Campaign Fund". So the donations are ring-fenced. But you'll know that £700,000 raised by two earlier ring-fenced appeals didn't appear in the party's financial accounts, leading to suggestions of criminal false reporting. Can you assure me that the new funds will be properly accounted for, and can I believe you if you do? The top line also means that this letter sets out the basis on which I'm to donate. It's not the election manifesto, but it's a precursor of it: it presents your side of the bargain, the offer in return for which I'm to give you money. And it isn't impressive. I'm looking for indy in the first line, since that's the first item in the party's constitution, but indy isn't there. Wh...

My last post has been met with incredulous hostility by some commentators, hostile incredulity by others (all in personal communications), so I need to flesh it out a bit. To provide continuity with the previous post, I thought of heading this one "Where it's really at, asshole", but since the skeptics were my friends I've forborne to do this. The first point in my previous post - that Nicola Sturgeon would either commit or not commit to an indyref this year - was not controversial (how could it be? - it covered all possibilities). In the event, NS's response contained many fine words and high aspirations, but you should always listen to the small print. What she actually said was, " it is still my hope [that we can get an indyref in 2020]". That doesn't sound like commitment to me. My second point - that SNP policy is based on the belief that indyref without a Section 30 order would create too much hatred and division to be sustainable - attracted ...

That title reminds me of a linguistic joke, so let's get that over with: New student at Harvard, seeing a clearly established student whom he can ask for information: "Say, is this where the library's at? Established student (snootily): "This is Harvard. We don't end sentences with a preposition." New student: "Oh, I'll rephrase my question. Is this where the library's at, asshole?" To the point, now. It's been a long time since the Scottish independence movement has been anything other than murky, unpredictable, unbelievably baffling or just plain hopeless. However, things are beginning to turn the corner, with some upcoming dramatic events:- This coming Wednesday, it is said, Nicola Sturgeon will set out her response to BJ's refusal of the request for a Section 30 order. This either will or will not contain a commitment to an indy referendum this year. It's difficult to see how it will plausibly do that. But if it doesn...

It's disappointing, for three reasons, to see that the EU has extended the Brexit deadline to October 31st. The three reasons are: It's a compromise between those EU leaders who called for an extension of a year, and those who called for no extension. What do you do when you have opposing extreme viewpoints? You agree at a half-way point. However, that doesn't deal with the underlying issues, which are that one side thinks the UK can get its act together if given time (Donald Tusk), and that the other side thinks that EU should cut its losses and terminate the Brexit process in short order (Emmanuel Macron). The 'half-way' compromise doesn't settle that point (it doesn't even come near to acknowledging it), and the underlying issue bubbles on, underlyingly. The second reason it's disappointing is that the EU, in my view, has misjudged the UK's ability to come to a consensus. The UK - and that means England - doesn't do consensus: it's the...

What is going to happen with the indy ref? And why did Theresa May call the 2017 general election? Theresa May didn't call the 2017 general election to strengthen her majority - she already had a working majority of 17 seats. And she didn't call it to weaken Labour - Labour was weak enough. In fact, that was the problem. Labour's job - from the Conservative perspective - was to contain the SNP in Scotland, and Labour wasn't doing that. But Scottish independence on the back of Brexit would be a disaster for the Conservatives, since the loss of Scottish resources could lead to the annihilation of the neo-liberal dream. So they needed to get into Scotland, win the seats that Labour wasn't defending, demolish the SNP, and squash the independence movement for ever. They threw at it money and data: data to identify target voters, and money to inundate them with leaflets. And they nearly succeeded: the SNP lost more than one-third of its seats (21 out of 56), its vote-shar...

Liked this response of Nicola Sturgeon to an awkward moment. And her self-deprecatory comment about a lot of people wanting to do the same shows a level of self-awareness and public engagement that not many politicians have. Good on the girl. BBC video clip copied, tealeafed and duplicated from Munguin's New Republic . Well done, Munguin!