I have no sympathy at all for anybody who voted No on the grounds of the pledges by Brown, Miliband, Cameron and Clegg about constitutional change, and is now whingeing about the blatant dishonour of those pledges. I cannot understand how anybody could be so stupid as to have believed them, and yet have a brain capable of sparking respiration.
Labour is interested in losing no influence of Scottish Labour MPs on any UK or English matters. It wants greater powers to English metropolitan councils which are controlled by Labour – because that will give Labour careerists more jobs and access to contracts. Those are Labours “constitutional reform” goals. The Conservatives “constitutional reform” goals are to keep Scotland’s tax on oil revenues and tax on whisky coming to Westminster, while loading greater responsibilities but no more money on the Scottish parliament, and stopping Scottish MPs voting on English matters thus guaranteeing conservative apparatchiks continued jobs and access to contracts.
Both Tories and Labour want to keep the appalling corrupt and undemocratic House of Lords for its jobs for apparatchiks, access to contracts etc.
Nobody cares what the Lib Dems think anyway.
I ask again – what did you expect?
This is the collective wisdom of Andy Myles and myself, over an excellent mackerel breakfast at Nom De Plume.
Here’s the Keiser report on the result of the referendum. They are in no doubt that an independent Scotland would have had a strong economy, and that the scaremongering was groundless.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/keiser-report-fear-mongering-from-scottish-no-voters/
(first 13 minutes)
ye see… Some Great posts here…Heartening …Thank you good souls ( mostly ) i’v been oot all weekend in the brilliant Indian Summer.
But here is Alex –
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=729558487116067
And Here… ALEX SALMOND ACCEPTS A PEERAGE
Dermot murnaghan asks alex salmond if he would accept a peerage and alex salmond answers..
Great Freudian slip at the start. 1:05 “It’s a small company,Country”
Good analysis,madness for England also. But the people who matter have all they want.
In societies of cheaters and the cheated, which is all these phony baloney (haha) democracies are, the common people invariably start cheating themselves..
And Here… ALEX SALMOND ACCEPTS A PEERAGE
Dermot murnaghan asks alex salmond if he would accept a peerage and alex salmond answers..
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204821762370038
I saw the film in Edinburgh one evening a few days after its release, bought the book that same night at Waverley Station to flick through during the short trip to South Gyle and read it right through in one go that night (bought from John Menzies kiosk, they’re now on the boycott list, run them out Scotland: http://tinyurl.com/kj8ycge is just a small part of that list). So-so film, with some stupid scatalogical and toilet humour to pad it out, when every second could have been used more constructively, it was shallow, a daft romp, Terry and June with sweary words. The book was better than expected after having seen the film, but is not long, almost just a stretched out short story. It had some stuff about orange weegie sectarianism and about racism, with a likeable mixed-race, but shallowly drawn, character -neither of these sub-plots made it into the film. After reading it I chucked it out, even long before then I no longer hoarded books once read, and had done that with Alasdair Gray’s Lanark too, so you shouldn’t read too much into that. Welsh is/was a superficial New Labour numpty, and must be have been deaf dumb and blind selectively for decades not to notice Labour’s descent into the neo-liberal abyss; his 11th hour and 59 minutes conversion to Yes right before the vote, he might as well have stuck it up his arse. I think he wrote a weaselly piece on BellaCaledonia a few days ago which I can’t find any more, but was like the Ladybird book of establishment history with some faux-Socialist afterthoughts added, which is I think the sum total of his heroic fucking effort. In his field success is not prodcut of talent or hard work. Likewise or maybe not with Andy and Jamie Murray, where talent and hard work were present in abundance. If they had went to George Square or wherever, even just once, a week, a month ago, to punt some tennis balls with the Yes supporting folk there, especially the kids, it would have made a difference, though the press would have blanked it completely, too late, so sad. I think we need no celebrity or multi-millionaire endorsements, they’re more of an embarassment than an aid. Let them offer their own accounts. Anyone coming round now or who did so belatedly on the eve of the referendum, including any ‘big-shots’, they are only of equal merit with the many complete unknowns, having nothing, who put their shoulder to the just cause, and who have in doing that acheived great things. At least they’re with us now, I hope, the more the merrier for the next push, which is the easy home straight before the finish.
The above views I might disown by this time tomorrow.
Maybe we could start an independence for England campaign. Like those who seemed more on the ‘bitter together’ side suggested. ?
I normally hate to appeal to any crude nationalist sentiment. But you know, ‘sigh’ They are such a drain, all living of benefits and giving us jib, holding us back. Making us sort out all there oil. And the Welsh, don’t get me started. A lot of em still speak welsh! How disrespectful is that?
Seriously though, comparing Wales to much of England the mixing of cultures works far better, I wonder why. Asian, Chinese, not an issue. Full on welsh accents and comfortable in the community.
I get now the attitude many have about some ‘British’ . It’s an identity from a colonial past and carries with it a whole lot of baggage.
I want separation from Britain. !England for the English!. Cricket… erm, and all that stuff, it’s ours I tell you. Pilfering foreigners.
Haa Tony…
No you wont…Don’t disown wise words….. There is something going on that millions can’t see… Zest is On AGAIN
@Phil
21 Sep, 2014 – 4:46 pm
You should read what I said more carefully.
I do not disagree at all about the power of local community ventures, but this is much larger than that as it is about building a sovereign state .. from the grassroots upwards.
Mary is right to mention the Swanage Railway project, years and years of purely local endeavour in the making, but finally triumphant, re-laying the tracks that had been ripped up following Beeching and ultimately re-connecting the local community to the British Rail network at Wareham.
@Mary
21 Sep, 2014 – 8:08 pm
Never had you down as a Dorzett lass! One of the most beautiful counties of England.
“The above views I might disown by this time tomorrow.”
A policy I like. A whole 24 hours is a long time.
Actually it’s not a bad piece, only one or two things in it I found wanting or which I think caused me to question my own beliefs:
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/08/labour-pains-labour-of-love/
Time in the last few weeks has been so compressed, that keeping track of it got lost, his conversion clearly wasn’t quite as dramatically last minute as I supposed, and the article didn’t come so close to the wire; I’m rather caustic towards everyone since the result, these last few days and ill-considered rants are a great way to vent some of the anger, rather than taking it on the toaster.
I’ll climb on to the fence and let others form their own view. Billy Connolly however, don’t get me started, what an arrogant plonker.
yea, well, I wonder how much pontificating…. stuff i’m reading.
A lot of these people have a fair bit of money and influence, but are they giving up time, money, column space? to those funky young grassroots people. No, they would not spare them a quid unless someone was watching. .
Sorry but iv lost any belief in the generation that failed to do anything but for themselves, let’s not kid ourselves they are all of a sudden some kind of community supporters. Be honest, they would be seen dead in a community.
People who do stuff, you don’t see them, because they are empowering others. Most have little money and it would be hard to find out about them because it’s not a goal.
they would not* be seen dead in a community.
John Goss, 20 Sep 12:39 pm:
The Gravatar to display is identified by the screen-name and e-mail address submitted with the comment. Your screen-name has to be displayed, of course, so to protect your Gravatar you need to register it under an e-mail address that you never publish.
apologies if the following has been discussed already. i feel, like craig, that the No win is too big to simply blame fraud – tho i still believe there was big fraud in the postal vote.
returned to a piece about why there would be no exit polls for the referendum.
the article is full of contradictions & guess-work, when surely the matter should have been much clearer. of course, if the MSM pay for & carry out the exit polls, it probably doesn’t matter tho, if Yes were winning at the actual polling stations on the day, it might have made the postal vote count look even more suspicious.
19 Sept – Guardian: James Ball: Scotland independence referendum: with no exit poll isn’t there a democratic deficit?
The absence of an exit poll means we’ll be robbed of a post-vote analysis of how this momentous referendum was decided
They’re collected by large numbers of researchers standing outside polling stations and asking tens of thousands of people how they voted – as well as collecting a little demographic information, such as age, gender, race or social class…
Why no exit poll for such a momentous and consequential vote? The first possibility is that no one thought the vote would be close, and so deemed it as not interesting enough to be worthy of the spend.
More likely, hopefully, is that the broadcasters were afraid of the consequences of a poll being wrong…
But it’s not on election night itself when we will miss having an exit poll. Today, Scotland is making a momentous decision, which could end the 307-year history of the union – and because there’s no exit poll, we’ll all be guessing when it comes to working out how the decision was made. We can’t, of course, use the actual ballots for this as they’re anonymous.
If the polls turn out to be wrong, and yes wins, we won’t know whether it’s because 16- to 17-year-olds, given the vote for the first time, turned out en masse, or whether it’s because of a last-minute change of heart among pensioners (who currently lean towards no)…
*****For the sake of saving a few tens of thousands of pounds, we’ll never really know why the vote turned out the way it did. We’ve been sadly short-changed.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/scottish-vote-no-exit-poll-democratic-deficit
*****so i was wondering how come we heard so much detail about the voters after the poll, and couldn’t believe it was because of Lord Ashcroft! no doubt you all know this, but i didn’t til now.
Post-referendum election poll
2,047 adults who voted in the referendum were interviewed online (831) or by telephone (1,216) on 18 and 19 September 2014. Full data tables are available at http://www.LordAshcroftPolls.com
http://www.conservativehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Lord-Ashcroft-Polls-Referendum-day-poll-summary-140919.pdf
do i trust Ashcroft’s post-vote poll? LOL.
10 Sept – Lord Ashcroft’s Scottish polling: mums, dodgy sums and naked politics
A new “super poll” from Lord Ashcroft, the former Tory Treasurer, on Scottish independence which discloses a headline-grabbing 40% gap between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ has rather backfired…
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/scottish-independence-blog/2013/sep/09/scottish-independence-scotland
Thank you, Fed up. “Sample ballots” were opened days before the 18th. Ruth Davidson said this on TV, just after the polls closed.
Correction, that was RepublicOfScotland, not Anon1 who felt ashamed of voting No.
Powerful response by Alex Salmond in that second Dermot Murnaghan interview clip… “the rocks would melt in the sun first, etc…” Looks like he will certainly not disappear down the Neil Kinnock route, but will fight on. Clearly been heartened by the 10000 new SNP members.
WHY COULDN’T THEY SEE THE OPPORTUNITY?…
1. Ditch the £
2. Keep OUT OF the Euro – allowing Scotland to extend fishing grounds, where possible, to 200 miles build up valuable fish stocks (like Iceland)
3. Create own currency, the ‘Nevis’ or the ‘Nessie’ – essentially backed by Oil / Hydro Electric Power! / Huge Wind Farms / Increased Fishing Capacity!
While oil/hydro/wind would have been filling the coffers, the new government of Scotland could have used the cash flow to MASSIVELY drop tax rates for companies & citizens, and basically becoming a ‘ low tax magnet’ / ONSHORE tax-haven like Luxembourg / IOM / Monaco / Andorra …. the surge of new companies basing themselves in Scotland might more than have compensated for reducing tax rates and provide a broad & firm financial base for the ‘Nevis’. They could have attracted hi-tech companies from across Europe, permanently. The oil revenues would have bought them the time to set this up.
With OIL, GAS, FISH AND MALT, an independent Scotland wouldn’t need to worry about finding trading partners in Europe!
BUT NOW …
Even if there was to be another independence referendum in 10 – 20 years, there probably won’t be sufficient oil revenues available to help the Scots make a go of it. It really was a one-time opportunity to stand on their own two feet.
I’m not a Scot but I could cry for their loss.
Billy Connolly however, don’t get me started, what an arrogant plonker.
Mate of Brian Wilson. Say no more.
O/T:
I see Tony Blair is exuding slime all over the media this morning regarding what he would like to do to ISIS. Wearily predictable and platitudinous as ever -even Huffpost is getting a bit tired of him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/21/tony-blair-islamic-state_n_5858154.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
(Nauseating content partially mitigated by photographic evidence of Blair’s growing insanity)
*You* cannot uproot this extremism unless *you* go to where it originates from and fight it.
Hmmm. Unless it’s Zionist extremism, and *you*’re pretending to find a peaceful solution, hey? But what he meant was –
*We* have to fight groups like Isis.
Right you are, Tony. Here’s a rifle. Off you go. *We*’re right, but a rather long way, behind you.
What is most disturbing about his last few publicised inanities is not their content. It is that they have been lifted directly from his self-publicising websites by lazy journalists who don’t seem to realise that Blair is rather less qualified to make ex-cathedra statements on international politics than they are. F’r instance, Tony has not twigged even now that there isn’t going to be a two-state solution to Israel-Palestine, ever. Or maybe he has, and is maintaining the fiction that this will happen in order to keep his sinecure Quartet Representative scam – which opens a lot of other doors for him.
@Adam: Simple… fear of the unknown.
The oil will still be there in 10 years time, and its price will be even higher. After the fear there is the Imperial Masters voice… now step into line and forget your fanciful ideas and dreams! I am heartened to see that Alex Salmond, for example, has no intention of stepping into line.
@Ba’al: Blair’s “growing insanity” has been reported for months. Must be the size of a planet by now! Or has he just turned into another very rich media personality, like Jeremy Clarkson.
Or has he just turned into another very rich media personality, like Jeremy Clarkson.
He seems to have modelled himself more on Bill Clinton, and often goes to the same gigs. I think Clinton donated to one of the Blair enterprises. Clinton’s actually less political. Blair’s principal functions are 1/ to divert international aid to needy dictators (for a kickback usually involving setting up a local office. This is derived from the aid, not the discctator, which allows him to claim the dictator isn’t paying him) and 2/ to facilitate the entry of large corporations, with which he has formal (JP Morgan) or informal (BP) ties, into needy dictatorships. Naturally he needs to maintain a high profile; if no-one had ever heard of him, he’d be a very poor tool for globalists, and in addition, he’s a narcissist with a pathological misperception of his actual abilities.
Initial contacts with likely dictators are often made under the guise of his charitable concerns, notably his Faith Foundation. A glance at its website – purporting to promote interfaith harmony shows that it is little more than a front for globalism and shares many of its views on Islam with AIPAC.
Thank you for the opportunity to expand on my visceral loathing of the man.
Peacewisher, some good news of peace amidst all this conflict. Agreed borders on Eastern Ukraine. And Putin does not want the region. Not for the first time have the fascist thugs been defeated. The Yanks and NATO have created another divided country. Death and poverty is their gift to the world.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-is-defeated-in-ukraine-status-quo-truce-lines-agreed-donbass-separatists-we-will-build-our-own-country/5403357
I think the referendum result as published was basically genuine. I believe this because of the number of people I’ve met who only changed their minds to Yes in the final few days before the vote, and people I heard saying they’d be voting Yes but were upset that the rest of their family intended to vote no – and this is what I’ve been hearing in Glasgow, where Yes was (and still is) at its most popular.
Yes voters were more visible as they had a message of optimism and progress to project. What did No have? Fear of change, timid adherence to a status quo acknowledged to be flawed by nearly all normal people – it’s not much to shout about, is it?
“Is this your Stalinist way of hinting I was responsible?”
I’ll ignore the Stalinist nonsense. I take identity theft very seriously. No I do not think you were the culprit but cannot say who I suspect. Whoever it was who stole my identity is staying silent.
@Ba’al: This has been going on for 7 years now and he just gets richer and richer. He’s taking everyone for fools including those needy dictators and corporate expansionists. His kids will be very rich, and so will his grandchildren. Isn’t this the way it worked for centuries. There seemed to be very welcome blip in my earlier life, when senior political figures saw it as unethical to cash in on the obvious benefits of public office. Since the late 1970s our once-proud society that has gone into the gutter, helped by The Sun, and more recently the BBC. The New Scotland is offering a bit of the Old Britain, ironically.
What was actually agreed, minus the hippy commentary:
http://www.dw.de/donbas-to-get-very-limited-self-rule/a-17926099
GR’s supplied link, John, says this:
Weil die USA Russland im Kampf gegen den IS-Terror brauchen, hat auch die G20 Spekulationen ad acta gelegt, Russland in der Weltgemeinschaft zu isolieren. Der Konflikt um die Ost-Ukraine wird demnach als regional eingestuft. Die Regierung in Kiew und die Rebellen haben sich in der Nacht auf eine Pufferzone als Grundlage des Friedensplan geeinigt. Die aggressive Politik der EU gerät damit weltweit ins Abseits.
Raw Google translation here – Nevermind may care to tidy it up, but you can see what’s missing: nothing about the OSCE, and the inserted comment – Moreover, “Americans and Russians agreed behind the scenes on a division of the Ukraine. – is just that. Inserted without attribution.
Because the USA Russia need in the fight against terror-IS, the G20 speculation shelved laid to isolate Russia in the world community. The conflict on the Eastern Ukraine is therefore classified as regionally. The Kiev government and the rebels have agreed on the night of a buffer zone as the basis of the peace plan. The EU’s aggressive policy gets so most marginalized.
John, I’ve told you about Global Research (Press TV, RT, etc, etc..) But do you listen?
Adam: totally agree. I’m not a Scot either but it was obviously the way to go.
When the dust has settled the pro-independence movement will need to take a long, hard look at the SNP and ask why it was putting forward such a fundamentally flawed agenda, one that was not even offering real independence and which was clearly guaranteed to fail.
Peacewisher Yes. Blair’s just one metastasis of the cancer. What’s the cure?