I can’t pretend not to have been disappointed by the Clackmannanshire result, especially as I am here with some wonderful people who have put months and years of their lives into campaigning heart and soul.
But the count was fascinating. Professional Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem politicians working and socialising together and dressing the same. Tory ladies in pillar box red clothes and Lib Dem councillors in Labour Party rosettes. All braying and congratulating each other in the same voices, and looking smug and very happy together.
We are not winning tonight’s battle at the moment, but the battle lines have now become clearly defined between the single establishment of the media and all the political parties, and almost half the people – so far who want an alternative political structure. This is a stage in a process, and in its clarity and scale a major advance.
“And don’t go accusing people of a disregard for democracy without evidence. Cuts both ways, Fred.”
I wasn’t.
I was accusing people of a disregard for democracy because they are refusing to accept the result of a legally held referendum.
Dear Mr Goss
I feel sorry for you, caught in a time-warp, your favorite (Soviet)Union no more, stuck in a country (that’s the UK) whose every action appears evil to you, pathetically grasping at every conspiracy straw you can…..
Your friend in need, always willing to lend a helping hand,
Habbabkuk
Well if they are unsorted ballots as claimed in the still photo and in the video footage shot by Sky, it and other footage from the same site can can be ran back to validate the claims, if they’re unsorted votes who bundled them up into same size bundles and secured them together with elastic bands. Other counts report ballot boxes opened and containing similar neat bundles, when in reality as posted into the boxes, they will be willy-nilly and random.
The level of fraud is likely large not small; it is absurd to have this ‘race’ to complete the counts, instead of methodically doing the job and having a second count, to validate the first, as a matter of routine. Why refuse to investigate, what’s the rush, why refuse to recount?
Get angry because we must get something done.
FieldingGray
Yes it’s flawed but nobody has been carted off today to a gulag. Nobody has been silenced. Nobody has been disappeared.
Were you actually expecting such outcomes?
Even if we assume that the Utube video posted by Mr Wilson was faked and that there was no vote rigging whatsoever, what about the BBC NO campaign and the UK government policy of influencing the Scottish people to vote NO by scare mongering, threats and other underhand tactics such as lying? Is that really OK by you moral yard stick or did the UK gov have to resort to putting activists like Craig in the gulag before you would proclaim their actions ‘IMMORAL’??
Johnstone – tend to agree. It’s just about time for another war to take the nasty taste away, isn’t it? When that’s safely under way we can tell the proles we’re sorry but we can’t afford to deliver on those ‘promises’ just yet, but we’ve put them on our manifesto to break after the next election.
So it goes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11098825/David-Cameron-faces-Tory-bloodbath-over-unfair-cash-for-Scotland.html
(The Telegraph. Whose Scotland editor was offered £20K by chief exec Murdoch Maclennan in the event of a big No win, and 10K for a smaller one, allegedly. (see Private Eye print edition))
Seems the Tories will win whatever happens. If the Yes side had won, they would have rushed to excommunicate Scottish MPs – result: eternal Tory rule in England. Now the No side has run they are rushing to bar Scottish MPs from voting – result: eternal Tory rule in England. Badger-killer Patterson is panting for it, along with Fox and Farage and the other covert fascists.
Post Mortem; (BBC Version). No mention of their ‘impeccable’ reporting. Surprise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29223984
I was accusing people of a disregard for democracy because they are refusing to accept the result of a legally held referendum.
They are disputing the legality. And, right or wrong, they are entitled to do so. In the interests of democracy. You don’t own the moral high ground, Fred.
“I do see a lot of bollocks from the Yessers about ballot rigging, etc.”
So you know that it was all above board for sure?
I’d say these pictures, yes vote in no, a load of crap. If the spooks where going to rig it they would rig it in a less obvious way. And if it was me i’d plant storys like those that have been circulated just so they could be shot down easily, “See! no fraud here” …Even if they where ‘real’ it could just be shwon as somthing minor.
To suggest you know is more bollocks than being honest and saying you don’t. Just from what we do know, and have seen, this campaign has been as bent as hell. All this shit about fair and above bored is crap just looking at the media conduct. But who knows how deep it goes.
I’m pleased that my city, Glasgow and that of both my parents, my former home until driven out by loyalist sectarianism, to another far away part of the country, voted overwhelmingly yes.
It is a disappointment that so many fell prey to the threats to YES.
You can scare all of the People some of the time, and some of the people all the time.
I heard about an hour of Radio 4 Toady this morning. There were reports from two correspondents in Yes majority areas. Some interviewed could not speak. They were choked up. Others were ‘depressed’. These are the dispossessed of any influence or real hope, a good many I guess with a background from the Highland clearances.
Remember the good ZBC play, when it commissioned and produced good plays in the Play for Today – ‘The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil’.
A majority, but only exceeding the Yes vote by 10%, are for the status quo which will not change.
They are the Cheviots blinded by a bit of temporary affluence. The status quoists who cannot see beyond their noses.
. So personal debt remains dominant whilst the banks run the terrible scam known as fractional reserve banking (current leverage 3% – same as in 2008 so another collapse is as likely ie they only hold 3% of tangible assets against their loans – Gideon has promised to up it to 4%!)
. ‘imperial’ wars to continue including the lie ‘the responsibility to protect’. In Libya 15,000 to 50,000 people were killed by us to create perpetual chaos and suffering
. OUR NHS will continue to be dismantled – with pretence and illusion
. principle will go further down the drain as will working for a better future for all humanity
. There will be more drones, more extrajudicial killings, more Browns, Milibands and Smoothfaces, Kleggs and even more damned ZBC bias and lies broadcast
. In this bourgeois climate the Palestinians and many others are to be left bleeding in the gutter, lips cracked and eyes sunken.
http://digital.nls.uk/scottish-theatre/cheviot/index.html
Do read it. This is why 1.6 Scots voted yes. They wanted something good for all of us, not just for themselves and the other people in Scotland.
I feel sorry today for Craig especially. I hope he does not go into a deep depression but would understand if he did.
Four-hundred thousand votes short. 800k postal votes surfaced with analysis?
Trowbridge H. Ford
Yes, I agree that the spooks did very well. Because of the surge in the Yes vote I think they switched a lot of Yes postal votes to make sure.
I agree the trolls are out in big numbers here. But of course the security services have to keep a check on Craig and his followers just as they have to bar him from the media.
Never said anything about nuclear weapons, only the use of specall attack submarine lasres on the floor of the sea bed where the plates joined to cause a serious earthquake, if it proved necessary – what GCQH proved unnecessary by determining the voting before the polls even opened.
Bye, bye, and this time I really mean it, as the site is just is just dominated by trolls with closed minds.
The SNP had observers at the count. Are they calling for an investigation?
I understand the ballot papers were numbered at the polling stations. But were the postal votes numbered?
Ishmael: So you know that it was all above board for sure?
No, but that is a completely different standard of evidence you are now asking for. To prove a negative.
I’ve already said that the best evidence for that is the dog that didn’t bark, specifically the vote invigilators such as Craig Murray who was at Clackmannanshire.
Instead, our evidence for rigging appears to be a wee housewife on a looped video and a guy in a dayglo jacket apparently very leisurely and very openly trying to pencil in 100,000s of ballots without anyone noticing.
I’d say these pictures, yes vote in no, a load of crap.
Exactly, and that’s what we are saying.
a guy in a dayglo jacket apparently very leisurely and very openly trying to pencil in 100,000s of ballots without anyone noticing.
I mean, don’t you think that people who rig ballots actually get the ballots prepared in advance if they were to do that kind of thing?
It seems to me, even it the best case, this was won by terrorising the elderly with fear.
This is not democracy it’s inhumane manipulation. It’s how they have managed to keep the drug war going , and terrorist war, And whatever other regressive fucking war they want in a society that should have moved past this shit long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G81tJI2Pls
Stay Ruth stay gotta out number them!
“If the spooks where going to rig it they would rig it in a less obvious way.”
Yes, they would, Ishmael. Postal votes for example. But until or unless there is solid proof I am happy to accept the result. George W. Bush was out of office before it was discovered that Karl Rove had rigged his election result. We in the west are not immune from dirty tricks.
“I think they switched a lot of Yes postal votes”
Where are the exit poll results? These will be the best indicators of whether much vote-rigging went on.
John
And I can not help but wonder what might have been the current state of the Earths biosphere if Gore had indeed been justly elected?
MJ – here’s an exit poll issued at 10.30 last night. No doubt this was rigged too.
http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/18/yougov-referendum-prediction/
The standard practice of the scoundrels pushing the Democracy brand is to steal votes, ie to take out the votes of their targets; missing, spoilt, postal ballots. All the while stuffing the boxes with their own votes.
There should have been a call for observers to scrutinise the process. This vote is far too close to be left at the mercy of the current bunch of selected weasels ruling the roost from behind their well barricaded positions.
Hard luck Scotland, what a different day this day could have turned out to be?
“They are disputing the legality. And, right or wrong, they are entitled to do so. In the interests of democracy. You don’t own the moral high ground, Fred.”
Well they are disputing it in the wrong place, the Electoral Commission or the police are the places to report electoral fraud, not some Nationalist blog.
What would you know about morals?
Fred; I would think this result makes you happy. Rejoice and move on mate.
What a glorious morning!
Now then. Round one is over. Having learned that it’s no-holds-barred with gouging and rabbit punches and fishhooking and stomping and kicks in the nuts, now you can begin to fight back properly.
The fighting will be dirtier now. Of course there will be calls to cut you out of “English” decisions, such as those affecting City power, and lots more jeering and contempt. Naturally the British state is going to give you a few black eyes. Like any abusive partner, they were seething at having to abase themselves so you’d relent.
The way to get out is to demand what NATO satellite Britain cannot give: rights and rule of law. Stick up for that and you’ll be shit through a goose. Specifically:
* sharpened focus on non-derogable rights at SHRC and in the NHRI International Coordinating Committee. Look at Britain’s disgraceful cowardice in the US torture debate – Britain is a state that can’t even conform to the Convention Against Torture.
* Formal legislative acceptance of the Santiago Declaration. The specific provisions of the right to peace would cripple British complicity in NATO aggression.
* Standing invitation from Scotland to UN special procedures. No it’s not foreign policy, it’s domestic, human rights may be foreign policy to you but it’s domestic policy to us.
* Write the Rome Statute verbatim into Scottish law. You can’t submit it, yet, but you can comply with its central pledge, to end impunity. Making Blair a fugitive will cheer you right up.
Lots more you can do along this line. Human rights are terribly subversive.
“Fred; I would think this result makes you happy. Rejoice and move on mate.”
Nothing has happened, everything was just the same this morning as it was yesterday morning.
So I will continue to argue against tribalist bigotry and Nationalist fanaticism today just like I did yesterday.
“here’s an exit poll issued at 10.30 last night”
Thanks but that yougov poll wasn’t actually an exit poll.
Did the SNP not think to commission proper exit polls to verify the result? Madness.