Confirmed speaking dates at the moment are
26 August St Andrews
28 August Insch
29 August Dundee
30 August Cupar, Fife
I will post details of times and venues shortly – these are all evening events. I am still open to invitations on dates around these, and indeed any daytime events. Don’t mind dashing all over the place. A number are in the pipeline already. Contact me using the button at top of page.
Have been rather unwell the last couple of days, so please forgive lack of regular posts. BBC Hardtalk interview with Anders Fogh Rasmussen of NATO made me feel much worse. Totally incapable of acknowledging the disasters NATO and NATO members have inflicted on the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union – and the BBC totally incapable of serious questioning on the point.
Get well Mr Murray. I just hope that Independent Scotland does not disappoint you as LibDems done after the election. Even the best of ideas can be completely wasted under wrong leadership.
I have different opinion about NATO. To me raise of Russia was only matter of time (judging from historical prospective). Those who thought and think that Russia can be integrated into European security, making one great judgmental mistake. Russia was forced to be European (culture wise) by their tsars but have always remained different. It has specific identity based on various culture mixes which had always viewed Europe as a threat. It will take much more than disappearance of NATO to change Russian attitude towards Europe.
Why do you bother? How many years have you lived in Scotland? Do you have any connection with real Scots? You’re as Scottish as Tony Blair (but he’s not a failed man).
From Kunt to Kant in two small steps. get well soon Craig, as for the BBC, why do you bother with them and why is the yes campaign nor looking for other, less biased broadcasters to cover the last few weeks before the referendum?
Craig,
You might want to change the order of the words in your self-description at the top – it could be construed as saying that you are a former human rights activist.
Get well and stay well, Craig.
Kant,
Craig bothers because he is a decent bloke. Why do you bother? I’m guessing you are junior PR scum. Go copy write a breakfast cereal feature.
Craig you understand the implication of the Monopoly of Violence the rest of the world knows as NATO. A useless and dangerous organisation that has long past its sell by date, yet those engaged in earning a tidy living out of the sale of the “kinetic produce” and ancillary services are intent on keeping this organisation going.
Euro zone economy grinds to halt even before Russia sanctions bite
As we debate the German economy has dipped into the negative growth territory, and as you would agree any growth levels of below 0.07 percent used to be classified as depression and considering the German -0.02 growth that is going below zero ie contracting and the German industry is shrinking, combined with the French growth of 0 percent are not being considered as “depression” but on the BBC the pundit was adamant that the good weather in Germany had got the building work done at a faster pace. Kind of Germans ate their snacks far too early story!
Fact that UK economy is reliant on EU economy, and to find the UK customers penniless and in trouble, is further illustrated by the BoE two step that Mark Carney is engaged in.
You have every right to feel unwell, it seems the world has gone mad, and sanity has left the Planet Earth when it comes to foreign policy of the USUK.
Cheer up Craig, you’re doing a good job!
Yes get well Craig and look after yourself. Don’t overdo things.
I wish you good health, Craig.
I wish there was a way for English people to declare independence from the UK political establishment!
@Merlin
There are already parties like the Yorkshire Party and I believe there is one in Cornwall/Kernow as well. It took decades to get even devolution here in Scotland despite ‘Home Rule’ having been mooted first in the mid 19thC (wars kept getting in the way). Just think, us Scots could be as disgusted by our dyed in the wool politicians as you are.
Organise, agitate, form a political party but be prepared for the fight to be long, hard and at times dispiriting. Ask Plaid Cymru and the SNP for advice. There are no quick fixes, apart from a revolution and I can’t see that either happening or being allowed to happen, the security state will see to that.
In the short term you will have the 2017 Euro In/Out referendum to win to stop rUK becoming even more Little Englander and economically depressed.
You could keep agitating for properly proportional elections for Wastemonster, which AV wasn’t. May want to wait until after 2017 for that and seeing what the environment after Scotland becomes Independent is like. Another potential fly in such ointments will inevitably be Liz the 1st and 2nd of Scotland and England croaking. This will usher in an orgy of Nationalism and ‘we must preserve as much of the past as possible’ which is always code for repression of new ideas.
Or move up to iScotland. We need people. The weather really isn’t that bad, unless you live on the West Coast 😉 and the people are much friendlier.
Merlin
What makes you think that English political establishment will be better than UK political establishment? In many post colonial independent states this hope (of having better people running their country) have turned out to be harsh. It turned out it was just about elites concentrating resources in their hands rather than sharing them with whoever foreign.
I am not suggesting that independence is bad thing (I am actually very supportive of self determination) BUT hopes of better establishment/government quite often does not materialise.
Craig, hope you haven’t been poked in the leg by some man brandishing an umbrella, have you?, anyway hope you feel better soon, says I with a worrying image, of Mr Litvinenko in my mind as I post this comment.
O/T
Harry Webb’s mansion in Sunningdales has been searched (officially), did Jenner rat him out?
Well tonight on BBC news Scotland at 6.30pm its Alistair Darling turn to be grilled by Jackie Bird, if that’s the right word. Jackie who’s only claim to mediocre fame was wearing a rather curtain like, garish dress, come top, at a Hogmanay show a few years back.
Knowing the BBC and Jackie Bird I doubt very much if Alistair Darling will be on the wrong end of a quizzing. In fact its more than likely Mr Darling will have a uncluttered dais, to spew his false union rhetoric.
@Kant 11:09.
That’s not very nice now is it Kant, you’re acting like a right Kant, aren’t you, now if you’d compared, Cameron, Brown, Jimmy Hood or even Johann Lamont with Blair or as he’s better know B-liar, with regards to “Scottishness” we may have taken you more seriously, as it is well, Kant, we must disregard your punchinello like remark, unless of course,you’re Kelvin Mackenzie in disguise.
US, NATO and Israel united against Islam
Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center, posted on Twitter: “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionist who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name.”
http://rehmat1.com/2014/08/14/dutch-official-isis-is-a-zionist-plot-to-demonize-islam/
Rehmat
One only need to dig little dipper and look at the Vahobi movement. Although, that time it was not much about discrediting Islam as much about struggle between European powers and Ottoman Turkey.
Good Muslims of course will turn their face from ISIS, some (like you suggested) will try to exploit them against West/Israel, and only very few will look at the very root of the issue.
Uzbek in the UK.
It is the terrible state of the current dominant political establishment I would like to be liberated from, not from the UK as such. There is a faint illusion of democratic choice but seemingly nothing of the kind in reality.
Is there a single Scotch person who was genuinely in the no or undecided camp who has been persuaded to vote yes by the blogging of Craig Murray, an Englishman born and bred, living in England whose sole known paid employment was as an employee of the United Kingdom. If so, perhaps they will tell us why.
Or is the whole point of this blog to persuade sensible Scots that only truly crazy people are for busting up the UK so that Scotland can become an entirely insignificant pawn of the undemocratic EC and NATO to which it would undoubtedly come to belong after a vote for independence?
Last sentence: Should be EU, not EC.
Canspeccy: for me it was the suggestion that No voters were Zionists who supported bombing Gaza and were also sympathisers with the Orange Order and sectarian violence. After those revelations my concerns about currency and fiscal matters just faded to insignificance.
Mary
I know you deplore word play on the word “cock” and have sometimes castigates me for it, so I was wondering if you had anything to say about the word play on the word “cunt” (cf at 11h15 – Nevermind, and at 15h58 – Republicofscotland)?
Canspeccy
Paid employment
Oh I also worked as
Games Room Attendant Aviemore Centre 1974-77
Barman Badenoch Hotel Aviemore 1977
Underwriting clerk Guardian Royal Exchange St Andrews Square Edinburgh 1978-9
Assistant manager Carrbridge Hotel Carrbridge 1980
President Dundee University Students Association 1982-4
Before moving to London on joining the FCO
Indeed I was born in Norfolk. My father, Robert Cameron Brunton Murray was born in Johnstone Terrace, Edinburgh right next to the castle. He was posted to Norfolk in the RAF where he met my mum. That is why I was born in Norfolk.
Whether you consider me a Scot or not is of no interest to me. I consider myself a Scot and that is what matters. I shall certainly be entitled to a Scottish passport post independence.
Good for you, you are far too magnanimous, and prepared to answer that odious canspeccy whose vomitus white supremacist drivel finds the independence of Scotland as a threat to the current dreams of the zionist scum , thus the overtures and the insults.
Barman Badenoch Hotel Aviemore 1977
The Badenoch hotel, Aviemore. Good God, what a hideous structure in the midst of the Highlands.
There was nothing like that in Aviemore the year I traversed the Lairig Ghru (’56). I hope when you become a minister in the Scotch government you’ll make sure the monstrosity is torn down and replaced by something in decent Scotch granite. If so, I’d think about applying for a visa and re-visiting the place provided that I’m still fit enough to scale a Grampian or two.
Fascinating, Fedup, you apparently advocate the break-up of the UK to satisfy the nationalist ambitions of the Scots while designating as exponents of “white supremacist drivel” those who oppose the genocide of the English through suppression of indigenous fertility through state instruction in non-reproductive sex combined with mass immigration of philoprogenitive aliens with an alien culture and, in the case of many, a settler mentality.
Some who comment here certainly think strangely. But then one wonders about some of them whether they could pass a Turing test.
@MJ
for me it was the suggestion that No voters were Zionists who supported bombing Gaza and were also sympathisers with the Orange Order and sectarian violence.
So you think that you think that those who oppose the breakup of the UK are Zionists, intent on reigniting sectarian violence in Ulster? How strange!
And the thing is, even is Scotland separates you’ll still have Scotch Zionists for Ian Paisley, so how will independence help in any way?
But at heart, admit it, it’s the promise of an extra fifty quid a week from Scotch Oil that really motivates you; although the reality will be sadly disappointing since by the time the Scotch government has set up it’s foreign ministry to accommodate Craig and others and all the other departments it will need the extra fifty quid will already be spoken for — while it lasts, which is not long as the oil revenue is in irreversible and rapid decline.
MJ
“Canspeccy: for me it was the suggestion that No voters were Zionists who supported bombing Gaza and were also sympathisers with the Orange Order and sectarian violence. After those revelations my concerns about currency and fiscal matters just faded to insignificance.”
___________________
MJ, I think I can help.
Just as the medical condition of paranoia by definition has no fixed “boundaries” or “frontiers”, so certain commenters on here are unable to separate Scottish independence No voters, Zionism, the Orange Order, “fascism” in Ukraine and so on; in their minds, these are all inter-connected manifestations of an all-encompassing conspiracy against ….what?
Couldn’t believe my ears, when on the STV news at 6pm, Professor Ronald MacDonald claimed that Scottish Independence would cause the stockmarket to CRASH!!!!.
I know Professor MacDonald, is a supporter of Better Together but,this is dangerous scaremongering at its worst.