scotlandisdifferent

Update, 26/09/2020: The joke at the foot of this post, the pseudo-graph from pseudo Kevin Hague, has been picked up and republished by Munguin's Republic , a lovely site with stunning nature pics, a strong but unencumbering commitment to Scottish independence, and jokes. Thanks, Tris, and best wishes in the ongoing struggle. IT'S TIME for a brief look at GERS, the "Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland" report. The usual narrative is: • Scotland has a deficit, because it spends more on public services than it raises in taxes. • The UK funds that deficit by giving money to the Scottish Government (the "fiscal transfer"). This means that Scotland sponges on the UK. • An independent Scotland couldn't fund that difference. All nice and clear, then - and all nice and falsely spun. Let's look at those falsehoods. Firstly, deficits are normal: all countries in the world have deficits, bar a handful of tax havens. What matters is whether a country...

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...

Craig Murray's petition to bring in OSCE observers for the next Scottish referendum (which I hope you've all signed - DO IT NOW!) has resurrected the doubts about postal votes in 2014. These doubts solidify, for some people, into the claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged by the UK Government packing the postal vote with "No" ballots, as evidenced by the extraordinarily high postal turnout. This is a consoling narrative for those indy supporters who were gutted by the massive "No" wrecking-ball that crawled out of the woodwork on September 18th to steal the referendum (which many Yessers feel in their bones was in truth a clear victory for Yes) and demolish their dreams. So we need to look at that claim again now. The claim The detailed account of this rigging (the "Dunoon Report") has gained some traction among the Indy community. It was authored by Andy Anderson, Education Officer of the Dunoon Unit of the Democratic Socialist foundation, and...

According to a recent poll, if achieving Brexit meant that Scotland left the UK, then 63percent of Conservative Party members would consider that a price worth paying. This is of course good news for independence. The Unionist narrative for the last decade has consistently been that Scotland lives off England's £14bn annual subsidy, a fiction that GERS was designed to support. In that case, you might ask, why does the UK not just get rid of the scroungers and used the saved cash to paint another slogan on a bus? The reason is in The Answer That Dare Not Speak Its Name: that Scotland in fact contributes so much to the UK economy in natural resources and human skills that, without it, the UK Battleship Galactica would be holed below the waterline and bound for the deep glug-glug. A call to kick out the scrounging Jocks exposes this Unionist hypocrisy, and leaves Unionists with no message. Wee Ginger Dug puts this far more forcefully than I can, so I give you his words: What British n...

Reblogged from Wings Over Scotland , 8th May 2019. Mac says: Just had my account banned at the Guardian for this posting… I am wondering whats wrong with it. Any clues? My country has sucked the good years from my bones and rewarded me with a brittle poverty in retirement. I paid for bishops and lords I didn’t elect and illegal wars that I didn’t support. I fired expensive missiles at foreign families in a rich man’s oil war. I paid for duck moats for dick wads to control me, and bonuses for bankers to break the fabric of our financial system. I bailed banks that were resold at a loss to me. I watched our political system lord over decades of financial and cultural incompetence. A system not fit for the purposes and needs of a modern world, hampered by ancient tradition, debilitated by class stricture and structure. A system choked by nationalistic pomp and circumstance and run by an ossified establishment. It’s a heavy burden for an ordinary man. As I struggled to secure a roof and ed...

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...

Had an interesting conversation a couple of days ago with an undecided voter. He was behind the counter when I went in to get my monthly top-up of gut-rot spicy proteins, in the shop that his father, a Muslim from Pakistan, set up twenty or thirty years ago, with a strong unique selling proposition that has turned it into a Glasgow landmark. Spotting the SNP badge that's welded to my left shoulder, he said, "Can I ask you about independence?" "Absolutely! In fact, I can overwhelm you with opinionated bludgeoning before you've even got to your first pause!" I said. Or rather, thought. I didn't say that. But I gave a sort of indication. "Breaking up a country is a really serious thing to do," he said. "Heard that one before," I suggested, disappointed that he'd swallowed whole the toxic Yoon slogan of "breaking up the country". "We've been in the UK now for three hundred years," he went on, "and it's...

Overheard a bloke in the pub this evening telling his girl that lower Glasgow life expectancy - 15 years less than the UK average - was traceable from grandparents through parents to children. I don't know whether he was merely quoting this analysis, or actively wanting to promote it, and to my shame I bottled out of asking him, but if it's being used as an explanation of Scottish disadvantage then it's a pernicious interpretation. It means that lower life expectancy is genetic; it's simply part of being Scottish. Scots come from lousy stock, there's nothing they can do about it, and they obviously can't run a country with these short life-spans hanging over them. "Too poor, too wee, too stupid and too short-lived." The study he was referring to seems to be this one . Its key sentence is: Conclusions: Males and females in most of the larger ethnic minority groups in Scotland have longer life expectancies than the majority White Scottish population. Th...

Dear Seymour, You won't know this, because you decamped to Europe after the Brexit vote, but between the Byres Road and our house, in Glasgow's West End where you and your wife courted by dreeping aff back-court walls, there has now opened a CHURROS BAR to speed the weary WestEnder on his homeward walk from the boozerie. The prices are extortionate! Ten fried doughnut sticks (two portions, five sticks each), wee pot of chocolate sauce, plain cardboard-box kerry-oot ("Sorry, guys, we're closed for eatin' in, it's nearly ten o'clock") - the price for this is NINE PRE-BREXIT SMACKERS, would you believe!? That's nine Maybot vouchers as we speak, or fifty-seven Maybot vouchers by the time we get to next week, and three thousand two hundred and fifty-six point three Maybot vouchers by the time we leave the European Union. Not a problem for us, because we're old and rich - one of us is nearly in the grave, and as for the other one, I'm not always ...

Wow, this needed to be said, and here it is! This is a statement on the Catalonian referendum issued on 25th October 2017 by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. I show the link above, but I quote the statement in full anyway at the foot of this post. The statement makes four main points, exposing the logical fudges used by those who support the Spanish government. These points are also highly pertinent to the Scottish situation, and we need to think of ways of addressing them. The four main points are: The right of self-determination belongs to the people, not the state, and the state cannot take it away. The right to self-determination overrides the principle of territorial integrity. Using force, making a referendum illegal, and annulling autonomy violate international covenants on civil and political rights. Dialogue and negotiation are the way forward. The constitutional settlement for Scotland violates the first of these four points: we can...

Scotland is different because Scottish people look to live in a more equal and caring society than the one being created by the UK government. That's why I'll be putting the case for voting "Yes" on 18th September.