This blog is severely hampered by flu. I hate flu. In a globe-trotting life I have had a number of illnesses that became life threatening – peritonitis, typhoid, cholera, cerebral malaria, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension (thankfully misdiagnosed) severe arrhythmia. I was once declared dead and awoken by a cockroach eating my nostril as I lay naked on a corpse trolley in Kaduna. I refuse to die because of the thought of the people – Jack Straw, Islam Karimov, Alisher Usmanov, Tony Blair, John Reid etc – whose day I know would be momentarily brightened by news of my demise. But for sustained misery and feeling really, really awful and uncomfortable, a week with the flu, while not nearly as dangerous, is pretty well as unpleasant, at least to me.
As I lie in a sweaty bed, my thought are perhaps unsurprisingly not happy and light. I am paying keen attention to all the proposals for how to move forward the Independence movement after that check, and am struck by all the calls to reach out to No voters and bring them in.
I have no idea how to reach out to No voters because I find the majority of them stupid beyond my understanding. This is not because they desired an end result different to that I desired. That is a perfectly legitimate choice. It is because, by voting No, they are going to get an end result which is not what they wanted at all, and that was very obvious. Asking me to reach out to these unbelievably thick people is like asking me to go for a drive with someone who, against my advice, drove the wrong way down a motorway, causing a lot of people to get hurt as a result.
Through their No vote they are going to get five more years of Tory rule – which most of them absolutely did not want. And it is going to be Tory rule that lurches further and further to the right. It seems no proposition was too right wing to be applauded to the rafters by the Tory Conference.
Tax cuts for the rich. Benefit cuts for the poor. Openly declared government in the interests of multinational corporations. Censorship of the internet and severe restrictions on freedom of speech. The government intercepting all communications. Even more detention without trial. Permanent war in the Middle East. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and in consequence the Council of Europe – the first country to leave the body set up in 1946 to prevent the rise again in Europe of just the sort of proto-fascist measures the Tories wish to impose. To be followed by leaving the European Union.
All of these are direct consequences for Scotland of the No vote. This is much more profound than the entirely predictable and immediate dishonouring of the pledges on Devo-Max by Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and Brown. Brown’s call for a petition to request him to work for what he assured the electorate was already “a done deal” is beyond contempt. It should do for his reputation what the tuition fee betrayal did for Nick Clegg.
Frankly I have no interest in any devolution measures that do not give Scotland control of its oil and whisky revenues, and those are not on offer. But there were people who voted No – 23% of No voters them according to Ashcroft – because they wanted the promised pretend “powers”. Well, you are not going to get those either.
Mostly, of course, those stupid No voters acted under the crass assumption, against all modern precedent, that the opposition could win a general election from a position of just 2 per cent ahead, eight months out. And the even more incredible belief that the Labour Party was still in some significant way different from the Conservative Party.
The consequences of what is coming will fall disproportionately on the poor, with even greater escalation of the UK’s astonishing wealth gap. There will be still more damage to the social fabric that Scots hold dear.
Now there are hard-hearted right wingers in Scotland, in the Tory Party and the leadership of the Labour Party, who wanted everything that is coming in terms of neo-con policy prescription. Those No voters who are wealthy and successful and want to get ahead further on the backs of the poor, made the correct intellectual choice to achieve their ends. They are deeply unpleasant sociopaths, but they are not stupid.
But those No voters who voted No because they believed a fair and caring society was achievable within the present structures of the UK, are so stupid I am astonished that their cerebral cortex can transmit a signal that sparks respiration. They are probably not capable of ever noticing their error.
I am not going to reach out to you, No voter. You are either evil, or quite extraordinarily thick. You will forever be a long way beneath my notice. This will be the last thought I ever give you. To quote a great line from Casablanca:
Peter Lorre: You despise me, don’t you Rick?
Humphrey Bogart: If I gave you any thought, I probably would.
Iain Orr – apologies for not responding to your question(s), which I indeed missed. First–
f you have now read that – including “Begg says it is inevitable that he will be bringing civil proceedings against MI5 and the government.” – do you still think it plausible to say, as you did yesterday, that MB is “being encouraged to sing from the intelligence songsheet, and that his version of events may be approved, rather than true.” ?
I think that may be clearer when such a case is brought. As I said, I have no wish to impugn the man, and it is certainly conceivable that he was an unwitting agent. Or that the matter is clearcut and he has been severely wronged; my hypothesis will stand or fall on the outcome. Will it go to trial? Will essential evidence be blocked? Will he settle out of court? Will other charges hastily be invented? Not yet known.
Second:
What really stinks is their abuse of the trust placed in them by the West Midland’s Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Can you suggest any way in which 38 degrees or other web-based outfits could force open to public inspection the documentation that will bring to justice those who incarcerated an innocent man for the second time?
Legally, no. But any ex-NotW hack would be able to suggest alternatives. Risky but effective ones. The ex-MP Brooks Newmark might also have an idea or two….and no, I want no part of it.
Rabbi Shalom (!) Lewis claims to be a man of moderation and peace:
Rabbi Shalom (!) Lewis claims to be a man of moderation and peace:
Skotskinorge welcome.
Craig – Your groundwork and purifying vivication in what I shall call the ‘first round’ of Scottish independence has aroused many more This guy speaks for me than you envisage.
‘Ray’ is encouraged and motivated by the 45% who still managed to vote for freedom for their country in spite of the massive English political and media interference in the election.
FORTY-FIVE percent! 🙂 reached in so little time.
You are recovering as I write Craig so now is the time to concentrate, to cement and strengthen for the next charge.
Go forward.
ROS; “Israel has hit out at Sweden’s newly elected prime minister Stefan Loefven over his decision to recognise a Palestinian state”
Israel can’t see the writing on the wall;
http://i.imgur.com/ry0oDPD.png
Daniel,
You are right about Glasgow. I live a world apart in Edinburgh so I wasn’t entirely surprised by the No vote to be honest. However, don’t give up hope. Membership of the SNP has more than trebled and the Greens (pro-independence too)have also seen their membership soar. Hopefully the Labour vote will collapse after their treachery as apologists for Tory policies during the campaign. The 2015 general election will be very interesting indeed and at the moment the SNP are leading in the polls. Also many of the No voters are already regretting it and once they see that the “Vow” that the three stooges made was just more lies, who knows?
It should come as no surprise , but Senator John McCain was in Hong Kong last week.
We should nickname him “the Torch”.
Great news that Kathy, but it will take all these new activists to work hard, show at the glowing examples of a non existing devo max how much they’d been had by Westminster, before the General election.
Don’t think that folk need much encouragement to vote for the SNP en masse, that will happen almost anyway, but to show the NO voters how much they have been lied to, the falsehoods and bluster, the threats at every step, they will use these again next year, to concentrate on that will be as important as to campaign for a cool victory for the SNP.
good luck with it
Ba’al Zevul : I agree there are uncertainties about the case Moazzam Begg plans to bring against HMG. However, it is a separate (though related) matter of public interest to know – now – not at some time in the future – what documentation state agencies withheld from the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, which caused “an innocent man” (in the view of the assistant director of West Midlands Police and of the judge, who acquitted Moazzam Begg of all charges) to be wrongly accused, charged and denied bail.
Would you be willing to write to the Home Secretary asking her to state which parts of HMG and its agencies were responsible for withholding that information? If so, I will draft a letter to Teresa May, to be sent under both our signatures as well as those on this blog or elsewhere who are also willing to sign it. I would of course send you and others a draft, so that you could improve and agree the wording. Indeed, in order to make sure that the letter reflects your perspective, would you be ready to have a first go at drafting it?
I’d be grateful to know of others who would in principle be willing to sign such a letter. There’s no point in complaining about faults we see in government actions unless we are ready to tell government ministers what we would like them to do.
I would sign it Ian, draft away, thank you in advance.
lysias 6 Oct, 2014 – 9:47 pm
Rabbi Shalom Lewis has a lovely name. The sentiment of his message is largely fine as it stands:
“I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.”
Thinking about certain politicians I sometimes feel similarly myself apart from the ‘bigotry’ and ‘eradicated’ bits. I get angry too and sometimes say things which I regret. Foregiveness I have been taught is the way forward and even if it is not in the sentiment of this blogpost, remember it is from a man under sufferance and we should try to show tolerance. Shalom means, as I understand it, peace. A Lewis, as I understand it, is someone who has not followed his father into the Masonic Lodge. Good name. Can’t argue with that.
There is a beautiful Jewish chant I have sung in a round several times. It is called ‘Shalom Chavarim’ which is moving. This will give you a flavour with translation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkjZhXzBpoc
Peace.
Iain Orr writes
” There’s no point in complaining about faults we see in government actions unless we are ready to tell government ministers what we would like them to do.”
___________________
That is correct. I should be interested to hear how many of the people on here actually sign such a letter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I would of course send you and others a draft, so that you could improve and agree the wording. Indeed, in order to make sure that the letter reflects your perspective, would you be ready to have a first go at drafting it?”
___________________
I read that as an invitation to Ba’al Zevul to provide a first draft and should be interested to hear whether Ba’al accepts the invitation and does so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nevermind has obviously a different understanding since he replies to Iain Orr as follows
“I would sign it Ian, draft away, thank you in advance.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is really a bit of a test case for the willingness of various vociferous commenters to stick their heads above the parapet and actually do something more concrete than just sounding off on this blog, both in terms of taking the initiative (drafting the letter) and signing.
I look forward with interest to Iain’s feedback on progress.
Get well soon, Craig. But despising of people is a sign of weak person. You should have done a better job of turning No viters into Yes voters. It’s not their fault you did not offer them the same vision and hope that the No campaign did.
I don’t think I have ever met the bloke, though I have met someone who looks exceedingly like him…but I don’t live in Essex…why on earth would he be here..Does he like live rock music…well…it doesn’t seem so…he seems to know almost nothing about the subject…though he does get invited to gigs to speak and do radio shows…at rock festivals..or so he claims..
Chris Spivey is not your average guy..He is a builder and tattoo artist from Romford. He is completely open about who he is, and he writes some extremely strong stuff on his own website…and he was arrested again…tonight…
They didn’t have an arrest warrant, because so far as I can see…despite being incredibly offensive to The Queen and David Cameron…he hasn’t actually broken any laws…or ever been charged with any crime…
So they kicked down his front door..and also came through the back windows…knee in the back cuffed from behind…and I know his crime…he dissected the latest beheading video…and wrote “where are his teeth?”…the fake head on the fake body…Rita Katz..forget to provide the dentures…and he gets arrested for that????
Are we already living in a Fascist Police State??? If so…why didn’t they completely and utterley ignore him..he would have had no oxygen of publicity…
What are these neocon morons on?
Are they our government????..Blimey…The Thought Police.
Tony
nevermind, there’s a future still
Thanks. Well 45% for Yes is quite a substantial minority and given that there was probably some vote rigging going on,I am still hoping.
Tattooing is a crime, donchaknow Tony?
Lower in mandatory sentencing than say skateboarding or reading the newspaper with skepticism, but still a crime.
He turned up again tonight, I am almost certain that it is his mate..(he wasn’t there)..he may not even still be alive…
I Reckon He leaked it from The BBC…no one else would have the access except him…
He was The Archivist…you know he saves and catalogues everything the BBC broadcasts live…
He was a very naughty boy
I doubt I would have the courage to do that…what he did was awesome…He leaked the live BBC recording of The BBC News to the internet…
Jane Standley was just standing there (she is of course completely innocent)
Look Behind
It is Still Standing There…in your live broadcast in New York on 9/11
They haven’t demolished The Soloman Buildings Yet
WTC7
little bloke..I hope he is still alive…he didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t lie..They all work for the BBC.
Tony
Thanks for these comments. Here is a draft. Grateful for comments and improvements
“Dear Home Secretary
We write as UK citizens who share your wish to uphold the rule of law and to bring to book any person or organization that perverts the course of justice in the UK.
The case that concerns us is the Crown Prosecution Service and the West Midlands Police stating that if the relevant information had been made available to them, they would not have brought charges against Moazzam Begg. He is a UK citizen who has been described, in this context, as “an innocent man” by the Assistant Director of West Midlands Police.
Respect for the rule of law by all in the UK would be greatly enhanced if you were to name those responsible for withholding this information from the CPS and the West Midlands Police. We do not ask that the content of the documents be made public if, for good reasons, they are classified.
However, we cannot believe that it would ever be in the public interest to prevent the public from being aware of which people or organizations had by their actions or failure to act been responsible for false accusations being brought against a UK citizen. Such information should not be withheld because the issue is or might be the subject of a separate court case.
That this information was not given to the police and the CPS is already a matter of public record. For the public not to know who was responsible for misleading the CPS and the police would make it impossible to institute reforms to improve justice and respect for the rule of law in the UK.
Thank you for – as we trust – agreeing to make this information public, thus upholding respect for the rule of law in the UK.”
as the Hong Kong Project winds down (surely even the MSM is bored with it by now), the oligarchs are preparing their next move!
heard Bill Browder/Hermitage Capital Management on BBC World Sce last nite, ranting on and on about how Putin can be brought down in a popular uprising, despite his 85% popularity rating, and here’s Khodorkovsky today!
Bloomberg: Khodorkosvky: Hard to See Peaceful Putin Power Transition
It’s hard to imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin surrendering power peacefully, said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tycoon who spent a decade in prison.
Putin missed his chance to give up power in a peaceful transition, Khodorkovsky, 51, said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York today…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-06/khodorkosvky-hard-to-see-peaceful-putin-power-transition.html
watch this space!
Khodorkovsky can suck on a rock. he probably felt Putin was too tough on oligarchs, and sought to fund someone more friendly to this avaricious swine.
Putin is no angel, but neither is this asshole.
They let Chris Spivey out…this time he didn’t have to spend the night in jail.
Tony
Moazzam Begg has just been on Radio 4’s Today and is worth a listen
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z
The interviewer was the usual interrogate him like a terrorist stuff. Try to put words in his mouth so he has to say he’s against this against that. Interupting and not listening. Schoolchild standard of interviewing.
Begg offered to help with the hostage Henning but the government weren’t interested. So much for them claiming to be doing everthing they can…
O/T. (Apologies).
FROM JEWISH CHRONICLE 3rd October 2014
RAF USING ISRAELI TECHNOLOGY TO HIT JIHADIS > by Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem.
In his speech to the UN this week Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned that there were “common interests” between Israel and the Arab States attacking Islamic State [IS] in Syria and Iraq.
But the traditional foes have more in common than a series of shared objectives: some of the jets being used by the US- led coalition against IS rely on Israeli technology .
The RAFs Tornado GR4s, which began carrying out missions against IS this week, were carrying dark- green pods, fitting snuggly beneath their fuselages.
Those attachments are part of the Litening III missile guidance system, manufactured by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.
Litening contains a number of sensors which allow the weapons system officer sitting in the Tornado’s back seat to assess and acquire potential targets while flying over enemy territory and attack them with Paveway laser guided bombs.
RAF officers have acknowledged that the Litening has been crucial in enabling the ageing Tornado fleet to carry out precision attacks over Afghanistan and Libya as well as Iraq.
On the current Iraq mission, where the Tornado has been tasked with hitting mobile ‘targets of opportunity’ in the desert, Litening is essential for locating these targets in real time.
The Ministry of Defence has also ordered dozens of the pods, costing around £1million each, for its much newer fleet of Typhoons.
British Army units operating in Afghanistan have become increasingly reliant on Israeli Elbit Hermes 450 reconnaissance drones.
In recent weeks the new Watchkeeper WK450, a more advanced version of the Hermes, has been deployed in Afghanistan by UK forces. Watchkeepers are built in the U.K, but as a senior Israeli officer said, “The British don’t like to talk about it, but these are Israeli factories, run by Israeli managers.” Another piece of Israeli hardware, extensively used by UK ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been Rafael’s Spike NLOS [non-line of sight] missile, code-named “Exactor”, the missile can hit fast-moving targets when air strikes are not available.
Iain:
The last-but-one thing May, or any Home Secretary, will do, is release the names of anyone in MI5 or other intelligence units to the general public, for any reason whatever. The last thing being that she would admit her shame and commit seppuku in the classical Japanese manner. You can hope – but it’s not going to happen. Sorry.
Iain,
I agree with Ba’al on this. Our politicians are elected dictators and have been for many years. They are very much under the influence of spooks who are answerable to nobody. It’s a good letter if it was being sent to a reasonable person. Theresa May is the most unreasonable woman in parliament since Margaret Thatcher.
More success would be be likely if we wrote to individual MPs. Unfortunately Cameron can push through parliament his warring agenda with barely opposition from MPs of all parties. And that after Iraq! We’ve got what we did not vote for: a crock of shit. Changing procedures is the only way to get proper representation and that is what needs to be done across the political spectrum.
Currently London (Central Office) selects candidates for local constituencies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/news/vote2001/hi/english/voting_system/newsid_1166000/1166514.stm
That’s why Tony Blair and Jack Straw’s spawn are approved in the Labour Party. There will be no more fiery characters who get there on merit, like Dennis Skinner and Eric Heffer when the remaining few are dead. This is all because of the selection process. I can remember a time when individuals from the constituency could be selected by the constituency party. All that has gone. They have to go away on courses to see if they are pliable enough to bend over for the whip before they are selected now.
Until that is changed there will be no progress. As things stand the Zionist/neocons have the whips in their hands and pockets. It matters not who is in power. Writing to Theresa May is a waste of your time Iain. It will go into the cylindrical filing cabinet.
Morning Ian and Ba’al. I think that todays R$ interview/interogation, again, of Moazzam Begg is crucial to this. In it he said that he approached the Home office and MI’s when Mr. Henning, who was cleared by a sharia court, with a view to help, as he had been to Syria and knew people around Baghdadi and his men.
The transcript should be available and its becoming clear that the British Government actually assisted IS by not contemplating any other means of getting Mr. Henning free. This will not go down well with his grieving family.
The draft is fine, but I feel that you should have a listen again on JE’s link and reconsider the facts as we now hear them to be.
speak later.
BTW. should you want to do this off this blog, I would agree.
If you are not contemplating to sign such a letter to her, John Goss, or anybody else for that matter, it is on a specific issue we all condemned for years now, then please try and keep to it.
I do not need to be told that we are living under a regime, thank you.
I don’t even see it as the malevolent influence of the ‘spooks’. If you don’t have clandestine people to do the very necessary dirty work of any state…all the other states do, and you’re at a considerable disadvantage. They’re employed precisely to do the kind of thing a normal citizen can be prosecuted for. They’re only going to apply for the job if it is accepted that they won’t be prosecuted. Or identified, since if they are known they can be subverted, compromised or, as thousands of spy novels remind us, killed. Obvious, really.
Some sort of oversight is provided by the ISC:
http://isc.independent.gov.uk/committee-members
and, to exhaust the legal avenues of enquiry, it might be possible to get this to clarify the reasons for the botched prosecution of what may be an innocent man. It would be necessary to get some MP’s interested in the case to start the process, I think, as the ISC doesn’t deal with individual complaints. But the material of interest would still not be available to the public, or even to Parliament: a redacted report might be available.
Failing a whistleblower, you’re on a hiding to nothing, IMO. Even a police whistleblower (pun unintentional) wouldn’t be much use – he might point you to the right corridor in MI5 HQ, but he still wouldn’t know the relevant names.
Marvellous bit of spleen venting and highly justified (a compliment coming from a kiwi ex Pom non-Scot who really hoped for all the reasons you did that the Scots would do the right thing and ditch the corrupt influence of Westminster but feared that they wouldn’t.
I just wish I could express myself so well.
John, the vote in Parliament was to get approval to bomb Iraq but the debate was all about Syria.It has always been about the domino that has failed to fall.Cameron has since said he does not need approval to suddenly change direction and hit Syria. IS,ISIS,ISIL or whatever they are branding themselves this week are helping the agenda by hitting spots on the Turkish border.NATO only need Turkey to be attacked for the whole alliance to begin sending their American made weapons to explode on Syria.Our illustrious RAF shall suddenly switch from bombing one pick up truck a day to taking out radar installations and air defences.The US will switch from bombing oil refinieries to bombing the infrastructure that still stands in Assad held Syria.Turkey’s forces will march in to hold the territory and the Kurds will be singing “hit me baby one more time” as ISIS,IS;ISIL retreats back to Iraq awaiting on orders from Washington. Job done.No Arab airforce or army from Saudi necessary.
Wesley Clark predicted it would happen and it is. It doesn’t matter who is behind it,Westminster blindly follows, Spooks,PM,Uncle Tom Cobley n all.