A particularly mendacious lie by Danny Alexander puts the institutional start-up costs of Scottish Independence at £1.5 billion. That is a cool half billion pounds cheaper than Scotland’s share of the costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, even on the Westminster government’s blatant under-estimate of the war costs.
So Scotland can afford criminal invasions killing hundreds of thousands to ‘bring freedom’, but cannot afford the smaller cost of its own freedom!!!
The £1.5 billion estimate is mendacious in two ways. Firstly, it is a simple recycling of a Canadian lie at the time of the Quebec independence referendum, apportioning with no argument 1% of GDP to startup costs.
Secondly, as nearly all the money will be spent in Scotland it is not a loss at all, but actually an increase to GDP, as any but the most nutty neo-con would be forced to acknowledge. And it would be the precursor of government money spent annually in Scotland rather than England for ever thereafter.
Thankfully Alexander won’t have a job much longer – and if he thinks a penny of Scottish public spending is going in future to support his huge arse and deceitful mouth, he is very wrong.
Congratulations Nevermind!
Best wishes to all 🙂
Squonk blog down. Hope AA isn’t down permanently.
When they inducted normal people they naturally fragged the officers so now the troops are all schizoids and mental defectives. It’s a whole new way to lose a war.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607?print=true
https://wikileaks.org/afg/event/2009/06/AFG20090630n1790.html
Nevermind, please pass on my congratulations…
Palestinian resistance. A weapon transformed into a thing of beauty.
Under The Olive Tree (CKUT.ca)
Palestinians plant flowers in Israeli tear gas canisters: http://bit.ly/1e0Ngzk
West Bank garden of teargas canisters – in pictures: http://bit.ly/17w2Lxo
From a Canadian radio station’s facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/uot.ckut/info
Congratulations to you too peacewisher, and thanks for the good wishes. Lets hope the same good luck will be bestowed on to the Independent campaign. The more one looks into Osborne’s financial juggling, the more one realises that the dependency might be the other way round.
Its Britain that needs Scotlands fishing industry, their armorical knowhow, their deep water ports and their oil and gas.RBS is a bit of a liability at times but I’m sure that they can find a Canadian to sort that out.
Can they also have a referendum on the same day for a dedicated official ‘Trump dunking day’, were all gather and watch Donald being blessed with an ancient $ iron around the chops, in scottish waters off course, each and every year, to keep him cleansed form his past and ongoing sins…..;)
should have been ‘ancient 4 iron’
Craig mentioned the Purnell effect before ie BBC carrying the Labour prop. This is another example which I read this on the BBC website. The neoliberals are alive and well in the Liebour Party, supporting privatisation.
Blair aide warns Labour over public service strategy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27647728
Lord Wood? Who he? Never heard of him. He is a Miliband peer and a paid adviser to Miliband
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Wood,_Baron_Wood_of_Anfield
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-wood-of-anfield/4217
Nita Clarke is the daughter in law of Tony Benn and Emily Benn’s mother. Note Emily’s support of Iraq war on the Wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Benn
Emily attempted to become an MP but she is starting at the bottom and is a new councillor in Croydon.
Stephen Benn, Nita Clarke’s husband.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/16/tony-benn-title-father He is taking the title of his late father! FFS
http://www.ipa-involve.com/about-us/ipa-people/ Nita Clarke’s employment.
What a bunch.
Hasn’t Mother Nature done away with the Trump aberration on Scotland’s Eastern coast yet? I hoped the winter storms and the floods would have done their worst and covered the thing in sand and debris.
He is messing in US politics I see. Tea party stuff.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/30/donald-trump-goes-mainstream/
Ou est notre ami?
This is Julie Levesque who works at Global Research with Prof Chossudovsky,
She has been on a Free Gaza voyage.
Julie Lévesque is a journalist and researcher with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montréal. She was among the first independent journalists to visit Haiti in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake. In 2011, she was aboard the ‘Spirit of Rachel Corrie,’ the only humanitarian vessel to breach Gaza’s territorial waters before being shot at by the Israeli Navy. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Mary, with reference to Habbabkuk:
“I see the toddling troll got his places bottom and top of the pages. Totally puerile.”
__________________
And who got in at the bottom of page 2 and the very top of page 3?
But without attracting a comment from anyone 🙂
Charge Blair with contempt of Parliament – only then will we know if he lied over Iraq: An explosive proposal from former foreign secretary DAVID OWEN as crucial evidence from Chilcot Inquiry is censored
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2645051/Charge-Blair-contempt-Parliament-know-lied-Iraq-An-explosive-proposal-former-foreign-secretary-DAVID-OWEN-crucial-evidence-Chilcot-Inquiry-censored.html
Excuse the link 😉 – the story is worth it.
Thanks, Nevermind. But I do have concerns for the world, or even country, that our grandchildren will be growing up in.
One thing we can ALL do is get the Chilcot Inquiry properly concluded with all the evidence on show. Even a BBC Any Questions audience seemed to be almost overwhelmingly in favour of this. I know Hutton managed to get Blair & Co. off the hook regarding David Kelly, but I don’t think there will be one person writing the conclusions this time…
Ben wrote:
1st of Month bug since I updated some software to latest version. If you recall it also happened on the 1st May and will probably happen again on 1st July unless I figure out why the monthly housekeeping process thinks it needs to regenerate the web server configuration files – which wouldn’t be a problem if mine weren’t manually edited.
Oh dear, I’m not a techie Squonk. Can you not rid yourselfs of the 1st of every month and then re-date on the 5th.back to the original date? would such hellish Baldrickery work?
Gotta hand it to the old girl…!
Out of 405 comments so far on this thread, one female commenter (no names, no pack drill, eh!) has accounted for 78 – in other words, one person has been responsible for just under one fifth of all comments.
Thread’s been going for about 5 days, so that makes about 15 comments per day, spread throughout the day.
____________
Even two other regular commenters (one with a devil’s handle and the other whose initials are JG) appear to be slacking by contrast, and Herbie, Mr Scorgie and Mike are simply nowhere. Buck up, lads!
Nevermind,
The sticking plaster fix would be for me just to add an extra routine to run on the 1st of the Month after the housekeeping task finishes and have it copy over my manually edited file over the top of the freshly generated one. Before I do that though I’d rather find the reason for the regeneration in the first place – if I can’t then I’ll have the alternative “fix” in place in time for July.
Annoyingly the server is actually down again due to a hardware problem at the hosting site. They are currently working on the problem.
I’ve just managed to reach Squonk via http://squonk.no-ip.biz/blog/
Very slow, though. I’ll try to post a comment…
Uh, no, the version at http://squonk.no-ip.biz/blog/ is still on April 23… The connection timed out before the whole page loaded.
I don’t suppose BLiar has sufficient peace of mind to enable him to sit with friends and family and enjoy their company in a garden he has created as I did in my garden this afternoon. I count myself very fortunate.
He must always be looking for angles.
May 30, 2014 9:02 pm
Tony Blair seeks ‘pro-European role’ to fight rise of populism
By Jim Pickard, Kiran Stacey and Alex Barker in Brussels
Former prime minister Tony Blair©Reuters (photo)
Tony Blair is looking for a prominent pan-European role in the fight against euroscepticism as he seeks to re-engage with the British political debate.
The former UK prime minister offered his services in a “pro-European role” during a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter, just hours after the result of elections which saw a rise of anti-EU parties across the continent.
Earlier this week his office said it saw him acting as an unpaid advocate of the benefits of the EU but also of the need for it to reform itself. “He’s very interested in playing a pro-European role, which is why he has been out talking about the arguments for it,” an aide said.
/..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/930a2480-e750-11e3-8b4e-00144feabdc0.html
The comments are pretty scathing. Does he know or does he even care how much he is disliked? Probably not. A psychopath.
Crooks and murderers.
More Than 900 Workers Have Already Died Building Qatar’s World Cup Infrastructure
The International Trade Union Confederation says that if conditions don’t improve, at least 4,000 migrants will die before kick-off
By Rose Eveleth March 13, 2014
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/over-900-workers-have-already-died-building-qatars-world-cup-facilities-180950088/
Qatar Committee Rejects World Cup Bribe Claims
Fifa is under increasing pressure to re-run the vote on who should host the 2022 World Cup after new allegations of corruption.
http://news.sky.com/story/1273200/qatar-committee-rejects-world-cup-bribe-claims
Blatter and the lot of them to that cold dark island that is awaiting BLiar.
Excoriating stuff from Paul Flynn on Chilcot. How about the worm called Peter Jay? (remember him – the smoothie ex son in law of Callaghan)
http://paulflynnmp.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/05/peter-jay-and-the-chilcot-shits.html
Other posts there too, inc one on Rory Stewart whom he supports as the new chair of the Defence committee and one on the Scottish referendum.
Obomber will not appreciate this. No gratitude! Nor will McCain.
Bowe Bergdahl’s Father on Twitter: “I Am Working to Free All Guantanamo Prisoners… ameen”
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, June 1, 2014, 9:02 AM
Former Taliban POW Bowe Bergdahl’s father posted a disturbing tweet following the release of his son yesterday by the Taliban.
Robert Bergdahl tweeted:
“I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/06/bowe-bergdahls-father-on-twitter-i-am-working-for-release-of-all-gitmo-prisoners/
Clark,
The alternative DNS address currently points back to the old Amazon server with an old copy of the database. I’d decided that if the new squonk server was down for more than 4 hours I’d restore the latest backup to the Amazon server and point squonk.tk back there. I was just about to start the process when the VPS fortuitously came back online.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
1 Jun, 2014 – 2:20 pm
“Out of 405 comments so far on this thread, one female commenter (no names, no pack drill, eh!) has accounted for 78 – in other words, one person has been responsible for just under one fifth of all comments.”
So what Habbabkuk?
Mary’s posts are interesting and politically relevant.
Whereas yours are mere slimy ejaculate from a useless tosser.
Wonder if he has a few counters missing on his abacus! Since he made his pointless comment, I have added another 4. Including those, I have contributed 19.9% of the posts here which I hope have been mostly informative.
He, the RI, on the other hand has made 56 contributions, ie 13.4% most of which are inane and insulting.
But who’s counting?
Bilderberg
RT gives us the real agenda.
Bilderberg actually talks nukes, euro nationalism and… Barack Obama – leak
http://rt.com/news/162740-bilderberg-meeting-leak-agenda/
The Guardian version
Bilderberg on Ukraine: military chiefs, arms bosses and billionaire speculators
A gathering of those who stand to make a killing out of knowing where and when the bombs might fall, how many and on whom
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/31/bilderberg-ukraine-summit
Balls was late and lost his pass!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/30/ed-balls-bilderberg-video_n_5416543.html
Nevermind Congratulations… hope all is well… And cheers for photos comment over At Sqounk… the image you liked was about 6 feet high… there is another of that one with the Live Katana on it…
Peacewisher congrats to you too…
Busy with everyone’s petitions…
Cheers Mary..38 degrees is at 161,740 signatures
Peacewisher… No Nato Military exercises in Ukraine at 4,096 Eh ????
Doug… Meriam Yehya Ibrahim…at 735,906…
Cheers folks
now to Bliar, bush n Chillcot
i see Peace wisher was ahead of the game on this one
Chilcot’s comic opera hiding Bush-Blair lies distracts us from looming disaster in Syria
British and American policy has been to pretend that we support the “moderate” military opposition, but this no longer exists inside Syria. The anti-Assad rebels are overwhelmingly dominated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), formerly al-Qa’ida in Iraq, Jabhat al-Nusra, the official representative of what the Americans call al-Qa’ida central, and some other jihadi groups. Only one Syrian provincial city out of 14 has fallen to the opposition. This is Raqqa in the east of country, which is today held by Isis, who recently crucified some of their opponents in the main square.
Obama sees the problem, but his prescription of what to do is only going to exacerbate it. He will avoid direct US military action, but will outsource support for the rebels – now too toxic for the US to arm directly – to countries such as Turkey, across whose 510-mile-long border with Syria extreme jihadis pass without hindrance. The situation is not without precedent: after the overthrow in Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, the murderers of more than a million of their own people, by the Vietnamese army in 1979, the US, China and Britain backed Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, and recognised his government as Cambodia’s true representative at the UN. It was subsequently revealed that the British covertly gave military training to armed groups associated with the Khmer Rouge.
The jihadi insurgent movements in Syria are the Islamic version of the Khmer Rouge who, like their Cambodian predecessors, dominate the rebel-held enclaves. Moreover, Isis has seized much of western Iraq right up to the western outskirts of Baghdad. Iraqi security forces are capturing sophisticated weapons from Isis originally supplied by US and British allies to supposed moderate rebels in Syria.
The potential for disaster in Syria in 2014 is, in many ways, greater than in Iraq in 2003. In this growing crisis, the Chilcot inquiry comic opera is playing a small but ignoble role.
Full piece @
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/the-comic-opera-hiding-the-bush-blair-iraq-secrets-distracts-us-from-the-looming-disaster-in-syria#.U4uFONJdWqg
Agree with 99% of this post but Danny Alexander’s “huge arse” is confusing me. Is his arse that huge? When have you seen it Craig? I haven’t and have no wish to, but i’m guessing its probably no bigger than yours (or mine), though i am pretty fat these days.