I was about to go into my box at the Lyceum Theatre last night when I received a text that there was a pro-independence demo on at Holyrood. So I abandoned my hosts (I did not feel quite as bad about this as I had stood for pre-theatre supper), fled the theatre and positively jogged down to parliament. I passed most of the demonstrators leaving on their way home, saltires draped over shoulders and Guido masks on top of heads. But there were still a few hundred there when I arrived, listening to unpractised speakers telling their very real stories: the independence cause continues to be a genuinely popular movement. One young demonstrator told me how proud they had been as they marched down the Royal Mile, with pedestrians homeward bound after a day’s work spontaneously stepping off the pavement to join the march, and the bars emptying. I then watched the fireworks bursting over Edinburgh.
I said a while back that if we won independence, I would move back to Scotland. Well, independence is now so inevitable I am indeed moving back, and have been flat-hunting. This is now an Edinburgh blog, and I hope from this weekend will have its Edinburgh home.
Lewes has been much in the news lately. Yesterday they were going to burn an effigy of Alex Salmond, and then didn’t. It is a conundrum why a town which genuinely retains the most radical popular political traditions in England, also is the most fervent place of practice of the reactionary art of catholic effigy burning. They vary this now by burning protestants, too. Cameron and Clegg have been done. I think my fellow Scottish Nationalists who got very upset about the potential Salmond burning were perhaps overreacting. The mistake of the members of the Lewes Waterloo Society was to fail to realise that Salmond is not merely another self-serving member of the political class; the selection was not based on race.
The tradition of burning Guy Fawkes reflects the undeniable fact that there used to be a genuine popular enthusiasm for parliament, which was seen as a bastion against Papal despotism, even long before the large majority of the population had a vote. Nowadays Parliament has become a very different kind of symbol. It symbolises an highly oppressive, authoritarian, narrow political class which shamelessly makes money at our expense, while furthering the interests of vast corporations which enforce the low wage economy and astonishing, ever growing, wealth gap.
The natural instincts of most people today lie with the man who tried to blow up parliament.
It is truly remarkable that, while the BBC and rest of the mainstream media gave hour by hour coverage of the democracy movement protests in Hong Kong, there was virtually no coverage of the violent and brutal treatment, over days, of the Occupy Democracy protest in Parliament Square in London. Nor any mention that there was far less democracy in Hong Kong under British rule than Chinese.
In Lewes, I once spoke to a flourishing political society which claims a direct descent from one founded by Thomas Paine himself- a vivid reminder to us in Scotland that there is a native radical tradition in Southern England, deep underground and waiting to be rediscovered. Lewes also has as its MP Norman Baker, one of the most decent men in politics, who recently resigned as a junior minister over the government’s entirely illogical “war on drugs” – illogical not least because of the drug habits of so many MPs. My current host, Hugh Kerr, when an MEP once made a speech in the European Parliament where he pointed out that many members were voting against drug liberalisation with whom he had personally participated in drug taking. An example of the excessive honesty that led to Hugh being forced out of the Labour Party.
Norman Baker was the subject of many vicious pieces in the mainstream media following his resignation. The crime of daring to think outside the box on drugs, and even worse crime of disagreeing with right wing nutjob and media darling Theresa May, meant that Baker had to be thoroughly monstored. But the most disgraceful and cowardly of all these attacks came from the Guardian of state stooge Alan Rusbridger. This is simply an appalling piece of journalism.
I have met Norman Baker a couple of times, and had a very entertaining conversation with him about Murder in Samarkand on Lewes railway station. The subject of UFO’s never came up. Indeed, if you google “Norman Baker, UFO” you get hundreds of media stories, all of them put out following Baker’s resignation and very evidently put about by Theresa May, for whom the Guardian is but a sounding board. In fact Norman Baker did once suggest in parliament that UFO cases deserved proper official investigation, which seems a perfectly rational view – and as the British government has, over decades, amassed thousands of files on UFO sightings, a view clearly widely held.
Baker’s other great sin is to believe David Kelly was murdered. Well, I think it is very probable indeed that David Kelly was murdered, and so, I suspect, do a very large percentage of the population. If the establishment is truly so confident that David Kelly was not murdered, it is remarkable that they refuse to have an inquest and allow a jury to decide the question in the normal way.
Norman Baker’s true crime was not to be a fully paid up member of the political class. He had never been a special adviser or political assistant. he had some hinterland, other interests, and did not confine his thinking within the tiny sphere of neo-con orthodoxy beyond which the corporate media will declare you a nutter. Politicians must all look the same, and Theresa May and Nigel Farage are now the only acceptable templates.
@Node
you still didn’t answer my question.
But the point I was making was that Ba’al’s threats of ridicule may work on the feeble minded sheep but my advice to all is to ignore him and all those like him. When election time comes vote for a candidate to represent what you want not what the Ba’als want. Negative campaigning is one of the things that crept in from the USA that I consider a detriment to democracy and everyone working constantly to demonize every party bar their own results in governments elected by default rather than sound thinking.
according to the ICT paper “Trawling for Tor Hidden Services: Detection, Measurement, Deanonymization” presented in 2013 by Ralph-Philip Weinmann, Alex Biryukov & Ivan Pustogarov at the University of Luxembourg.
selectively quoting:
Ralph-Philip & colleagues were not only able to detect & profile “the baddies” using Tor, they noticed that this represented exactly 50% of Tor traffic & hidden service, the rest of the Tor was used by pro-democratic groups, journalists, people-who-needed-reasonable-anonymity sexually/politically in their particular regime. It is important to recognise and remember that fully half of TOR is measurably used by “the good guys”
Fred , your MP is just as twisted as you are.
Two years after backing the outrageous unfair Bedroom tax, Clegg n Co shafted their coalition partners and voted against it.So don’t bleet on about being a free thinker!
And as for where the SNP were,they were trying to wrest the country free of Westminster and their unfair tax.
@Mary 1:19pm “Tor is home to thousands of illegal marketplaces, trading in drugs, child abuse images as well as sites for extremist groups.”
The BBC really do not know what the are talking about.Tor is a browser and is not home to
anyone or anything. Tor allows the user to browse websites anonymously. It is not committing
any criminal offence. The NSA like to call people who use Tor Domestic extremists and to use it a criminal offence .
DonnyDarkSoul (re the Kuwaiti hate preacher)
“The guys a loony because he’s preaching about a past as if it was last week..”
_______________
Exactly. And he’s preaching in the here and now.
This Muslim hate preacher is as bad as the Israeli rebbes people on here quote from time to time.
As your fellow Troll YouKnowMyName said, it’s always good to hear both sides of a story! 🙂
“Fred , your MP is just as twisted as you are.”
I asked where the SNP MPs were for the affordable Housing vote.
I haven’t had an answer.
They just send in the Nationalist Blackshirts with personal abuse instead.
That is the sort of party people should avoid voting for.
@Dave you are close, but recently the network of Tor servers has evolved such that there are a few thousand websites/services where the server instead of being “.COM” is sending data using Tor protocols from addresses ending in “.ONION”
In any case, it wouldn’t have made a jot of difference if all 57 varieties of LibDem had stayed away from the Westminster vote. The majority against was 75. And I bet they’d checked that out beforehand…still, I’m looking forward to the Libdem *beigeshirt* selling his party’s effectiveness at obstructing Osborne, Smith and whatsherface-who-took-over-from-Gove’s Victorian policies.
When election time comes vote for a candidate to represent what you want not what the Ba’als want
But if it isn’t what Fred wants, FOAD, eh?
‘Negative campaigning’, I hear you say, Fred. ‘Personal abuse’.
Not like this, though:
They just send in the Nationalist Blackshirts with personal abuse instead.
‘should not be voting’ for said Fred, the free spirited guy.
If anybody wants to deliver a protest vote they have one party to vote for.
Party politics has failed and Fred has not seen it yet, he believes that his MP votes for his concerns when he has been lobbied by various multiple commercial interests, all for their own specific bottom lines, so don’t get dreamy eyed about politics now.
British politicians are like chickens at the moment, nervous little backbenchers who wail about their leader and crave for strong men, all for their own selfish reasons, nothing do with the Fred’s wishlists out there.
Camerons a whimp who lost it over Europe, Farrage is a banker who will retire soon after the election, Clegg is another banker who puts his flag wherever the wind comes from and Ed Milliband will loose over 35 of his MP from Scotland.
like I said there is only one single party to vote for, they will not be allowed on TV, as their not liked, are too serious, so now you know what to vote for.
Ah, and ignore our very own specific by free spirited Fred, he’s an individual who does not need recognition he says.
We seem to be in some sort of agreement about the preacher and his preaching Habbaslow
So do you agree that treating anything from 2 or 3000 years ago as if it had any significance today is lunacy ?
Fred , as opposed to you that calls anything you dont agree with Nazi, Black Shirt, Nationalist. At the same time Rangers supporters running around Glasgow with Union Jacks and Mussolini style salutes are fine.
The SNP MP’s were in Scotland Fred,campaigning to get rid of not only Bedroom Tax but the bunch that voted for it,including your MP that now has changed his mind as obviously you have too.Liberal party seems to be the perfect choice for the Bi Polar crofter.
You deserve each other.
“But if it isn’t what Fred wants, FOAD, eh?”
I haven’t said that.
You just made that up, pretended I had said it. People should be able to express an opinion on politics without fear of intimidation or ridicule.
That has been my stance all along. That is why I never make personal remarks about people on the blog unless they make personal remarks about me first.
When people do attack me for expressing an opinion then they leave me little alternative.
So I will be voting Liberal at the next election and if you don’t like it you know what to do.
The political role of the national security deep state is to suppress dissent that is expressed outside the two-party system. Peace activists, civil libertarians, environmentalists, even animal rights activists, are treated not as American citizens exercising their Constitutional rights, but as “domestic terrorists”.
I honestly don’t know what would happen if an elected government attempted to dismantle the power of the national security state or of Wall Street. I would like believe that the American commitment to freedom and democracy is such that the elected government’s decisions would be obeyed.
In Latin American and Middle East countries, efforts by elected governments to tame the power of the military and police organizations has been met by military coups and assassinations. And the power to engage in surveillance and covert action opens up possibilities for blackmail and for infiltration and subversion of opposing groups. There are precedents for the latter in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
The federal government is at the mercy of banks because, even though it has the power to create money, it finances its operations by borrowing from those banks. All it takes is for banks to “lose confidence” in Washington’s policies, and the cost of government skyrockets.
When President Andrew Jackson tried to destroy the power of the Bank of the United States, its president, Nicolas Biddle, deliberately brought about an economic depression. Jackson prevailed, but the struggle really was the next thing to war. If a future President tried to follow in Jackson’s footsteps, I think history would repeat.
http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/our-elected-vs-our-unelected-governments/#more-53632
Good but very rough outline of options for those citizens disgusted enough to endure the hardships that would follow. It’s not the World Andrew Jackson faced however.
@Nevermind
I just look at the candidates and choose which I think is the best one to vote for. This time unless things change before the election it will just happen to be a Liberal. Next time or if I lived in a different constituency it could well be someone from another party.
Is that so difficult for people to understand?
Ba’al; WRT to your early morning comment…
“Give me a sec to count. In my lifetime the Soviet Union and latterly the Russian Federation have had nine leaders. Stalin’s death elevated Malenkov and then Khrushchev, and the banishing of Khrushchev led to Brezhnev. Then came a pair of forgettables, then Gorbachev and on to the ever-inebriated Yeltsin (whom one wants dearly to forget). For 15 years, counting the Dmitry Medvedev interval, Vladimir Putin has held the wheel of the Russian bus.
Of all these figures only Stalin, and only in his post-“Uncle Joe” years, has been vilified to the extent of the current Russian leader. The question is obvious and I hope not too complicated: Why?
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/07/the_new_york_times_doesnt_want_you_to_understand_this_vladimir_putin_speech/
Why? He’s not the poodle they wanted.
No Fred. more mythology from you. You attacked me otherwise you would never pop up on my radar.You attacked a few others that supported the camp you didnt.
Fred; If I ever faced untenable odds I would want you on my side. 🙂
“No Fred. more mythology from you. You attacked me otherwise you would never pop up on my radar.You attacked a few others that supported the camp you didnt.”
Then you will have no problem posting the link.
Fred : FOAD RC
Sick of your nonsense.You spent a good two months abusing everyone including Craig that supported Independence.I am certainly not alone in feeling the way I do on this blog.
You are a racist anti Scottish w****r that goes out of his way to paint the SNP and its supporters as some kind of right wing Nazi Falange.Its rubbish and you know it.
You have produced nothing to prove otherwise.
So give it a rest.
@Fred
“you still didn’t answer my question.”
I don’t know the answer to your question. Maybe the SNP were too busy actually doing something about the problem to bother with a meaningless Westminster pantomime.
I do know that the SNP have taken very effective action on affordable housing.
I do know that without LibDem support for the Tories, there wouldn’t have been an Affordable Homes Bill in the first place.
I do know that the carefully selected topic you chose as a demonstration of your MP’s principles looks to me more like typical Westminster party politics. Your ‘principled’ MP voted according to the whips’ instructions. He may or may not have agreed with them.
100% of Tories voted for it.
100% of Labour voted against it.
100% of LibDem voted against it.
Therefore all the other minority parties acting together couldn’t have changed the outcome.
And since this seems to be an important issue to you, please answer my question: Who has done more for those those in need of affordable housing – the LibDems or the SNP?
Lobby: Obama blackmails Khamenei on ISIL
http://rehmat1.com/2014/11/07/lobby-obama-blackmails-khamenei-on-isil/
@DoNNyDarKo
Criticising political parties is what we do here, being abusive to other posters is something I don’t do except in response to them being abusive to me. Craig I can make an exception for as he is the subject of discussion rather than one of the participants.
So if you claim otherwise just post the link.
“I don’t know the answer to your question.”
Fair enough.
Fred: “Fair enough”
…but I answered it as best I could. Now you do the same for me.
Who has done more for those those in need of affordable housing – the LibDems or the SNP?
Fred
You’re free thinker, I almost fell off my chair with laughter, I’m surprised you even have a brain cell considering your BNP NF EDL UKIP and Orange Order tendencies, not forgetting your God save the Queen BS, stick to breeding sheep Fred.
We know you loathe the SNP and people who support them, come the next GE you’ll loathe us even more when we run riot taking Labour seats.
“Who has done more for those those in need of affordable housing – the LibDems or the SNP?”
I don’t know the answer to your question either.
Fixed your statement for you, Fred.
“How well Labour do in Scotland will depend a lot on how much the Scots want to see an end to the neoliberal government an Westminster. It’s up to them. I’ll be voting Liberal.”
Scottish folk have realised that they can vote for the Westminster party, or not.
A police officer killed a man with an axe,after he reportedly blasphemed, against companions of the Prophet Muhammed, while in custody.
The victim has a history of mental illness , this comes on the back of a Christian couple who were brutaly murdered on Tuesday for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Koran.
The country in question is the Quasi-lawless state of Pakistan, which is jam packed full of unstable religious zealots
Thanks for your polite reply, Fred.
Fred: “I don’t know the answer to your question either.”
I’ll help you then.
The SNP “are now two years into a five-year target of delivering at least 30,000 additional affordable homes. They have already completed almost 12,900 additional affordable homes.”
So, who has done more for those those in need of affordable housing – the LibDems or the SNP?