Bloody hell. Read this. Brilliant.
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@Node
Suppose the referendum had gone the other way? Suppose only four out of the thirty two areas had voted No.
What if the Unionists had started crying fraud, what if Westminster told the Scots they had to keep on having referendums till they got the answer right? What if the Unionists refused to accept the result?
Right now it looks like it’s the politicians at Westminster who are the ones with integrity.
BTW if you have evidence of electoral fraud you should go to the police and have it properly investigated otherwise it’s just another internet conspiracy theory.
Geoffrey –
Cast an eye over this, and maybe gain some insight from it. Any country other than the US and a few others whose citizens are not deeply in debt isn’t contributing to growth.
In the globalist model, circulating value-added indebtedness is what makes the system work for its beneficiaries, and bugger the bubbles which burst along the way…
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/11/10/a-world-without-the-global-minotaur-why-is-the-world-economy-failing-to-recover/
Debt is wonderful. Debt is Goldman Sachs’ raison d’etre. Just don’t announce your intention to default, as that would bring it out in the open, and what you can’t see can’t destroy your trust. Geddit? I think Varoufakis does.
@ Fred
Don’t change the subject. Where’s your evidence that those people who claimed ballot fraud were shown to be liars?
“Don’t change the subject. Where’s your evidence that those people who claimed ballot fraud were shown to be liars?”
I didn’t change the subject you did.
You might be able to declare yo aren’t talking about people who posted videos claiming they showed ballot fraud when they didn’t but you can’t just declare that I wasn’t.
Have you got actual evidence of ballot fraud?
I don’t personally have actual evidence that there was electoral fraud in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, but I was certainly persuaded by Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform that such fraud stole the election.
Fred
OK, so you are only saying that some of the people who claimed ballot fraud were shown to be liars? Yes?
Ba’al,I agree that debt is wonderful,creates growth,pays for health, education,fun etc……until you default.
Dole from the US. Any weapons included in the package? The BBC talk of a ‘push for peace’. It sounds anything but that.
US Gives $16.4m In Humanitarian Aid To Ukraine
John Kerry stresses the US is not seeking conflict with Russia, but warns aggression and violence in east Ukraine cannot continue.
‘No mention was made of the possibility that the US will offer military aid to Ukraine, which Russia has warned could pose a danger to its national security and “cause colossal damage” to relations between the two countries.
Meanwhile, Britain has confirmed it will make thousands of troops available in the Baltic at short notice should a new crisis arise. The move is designed to reassure allies who fear they could become targets of Russia’s aggression.’
http://news.sky.com/story/1421917/us-gives-16-4m-in-humanitarian-aid-to-ukraine
@Robert Crawford: Don’t take it personally, Fred talks that way to everyone from whom he perceives the least slight.
And btw – I have no intention of voting “New” Labour, or Lib Dem for that matter, ever again. Not sure where you got the idea from that I was a Labour devotee.
@Bab
There are various routes:
Route 1. SNP give a confidence and supply support to Labour extracting the policies they demand, which include properly extra and actually useful powers for the Scottish parliament (cue Little Englander apoplexy and Stormont and Cardiff Bay jealousy = instability) the whole Union will seem hung on a shoogly peg and if we get those useful extra powers Scotland will become even more different and seem even more viable.
Route 2. Labour take understandable hump about the SNP whom they hate with a feral, tribal, unreasoning ferocity and remember the SNP will have just taken a slew of seats from Labour’s very birthplace off them. The result is a coalition with the party they are closest with on central policies: the Tories. Scotland seeing Labour, who went into bed with the Tories in the IndyRef climbing even further into conjugal bliss, after note, campaigning here in Scotland on the basis that only a Labour vote can keep the Tories out. Labour are even more finished, come 4th or fifth in the 2016 Holyrood elections and are almost eliminated at council level. Also the SNP will be Her Majesty’s Loyal (ha!) Opposition with all the funding and access to civil servants and PMQ’s every week and media exposure offer something like Podemos or Syriza to a jaded electorate and further stoke Scottish angst, loathing and anger into another referendum which is won with a 70% Yes vote.
I’m not sure which I’m more in favour of or more relaxed about. The latter is short term pain for longer term gain.
Then there’s the Brexit referendum in 2017. Recent polling shows Scotland becoming even more pro Europe while England goes the other way. LOTS of permutations for Union loosening there regardless of how it goes. Just the Little Englanders in the campaign will repel many Scots.
@Clark
I have sort of replied to you in the independence rally thread; and apologies for the delay (knackered computers, and all that).
Now, who would like to be stuck in a lift with Fred?
“OK, so you are only saying that some of the people who claimed ballot fraud were shown to be liars? Yes?”
I’m saying that reports of irregularities have been investigated by various official bodies and they have concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud.
There were isolated incidents, like voter impersonation in Glasgow but then Glasgow did result in a rather high Yes vote compared to the rest of the country.
Baal
Are you keeping up with the Greece situation? I’ve been too busy and can’t find much good in the time I have.
I see the ecb have made a “technical” (presumably meaning non-democratic) change which I understand moves Greece closer to running out of money. I’d appreciate any info/links/speculation if you’re so inclined. Are you seeing a default on the horizon?
Mad Bad Jim Murphy, is sooo,confused by the SNP surge that all he keeps spouting is, “A vote for the SNP is a vote, that lets the Tories in.” due the Tories achieving more votes.
Old snake eyes Murphy though forgets Darth Vader, aka Gordon Brown, scurried about like mad in 2010, trying to put a government together, even though Labour had 48 seats less than the Tories.
In any event, polls suggest that this year a hung parliament, looks the most likely outcome, as neither Miliband nor Cameron are, lauded by the public in general.
And a hung parliament would be a parliament in which a large SNP delegation a lot of power. Unless there is a Tory-Labour coalition government. But wouldn’t that kill Labour’s prospects in future elections the way the current coalition has killed the LidDems’ prospects?
“had a lot of power”, that should have been. This site needs an edit function.
“And a hung parliament would be a parliament in which a large SNP delegation a lot of power. Unless there is a Tory-Labour coalition government. But wouldn’t that kill Labour’s prospects in future elections the way the current coalition has killed the LidDems’ prospects?”
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Lysias.
I must agree with you there,a Lab/Tory coalition would surely be bad for Labour’s future prospects, a working example of this, in my opinion, is the current Lib/Dems, coalition with the Tories, surely they’ll crash and burn in May.
It was the fact that the Irish Nationalists were needed to form a majority after the election of 1910 that led to the final passage of the Third Irish Home Rule bill.
Glen.
I don’t know where you get the idea that I think you are a New Labour devotee? The thought never entered my head.
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RobG.
Me! I would like to be stuck in a lift with Fred.
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Fred.
A cunt is a useful thing, not to be fucked about with!
Is global capitalism so exhausted that it would use war with Russia as a fillip? We’ll have our answer if the US decides to arm the Kiev Nazis. It has spent decades war-fighting somewhere in the world, so maybe it’s time for the big one.
Mary, it did occur to me that ‘war’ should be substituted for ‘peace’ in that BBC headline. Dark is light in the world of doublethink.
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
Apologies, that should have been ‘Western’ capitalism.
Are you keeping up with the Greece situation?…
Not really, Phil. There’s been a good deal of sound and fury around the election, and I’ve been waiting till it settles down. Forced to guess, I’d say Varoufakis will pull off something original based on his understanding of the realities of the situation, which is unique. How much he will have to compromise his beliefs to do so, and how much latitude he has for reimposing fiscal order on Greece, are still open questions.
I’d add that although his ‘Minotaur’ is America, it’s more readily identifiable as a transnational network of self-assembled interests, and the EU is unlikely to be his only opponent if he diverges from the reigning economic writ. It’s in the air.
I like the idea of a hung parliament (discussed above) but are there enough lamp posts? 😉
Mary, there’s a difference between “hung” and “hanged”.
Fred: “There were isolated incidents, like voter impersonation in Glasgow but then Glasgow did result in a rather high Yes vote compared to the rest of the country.”
OK, so now you’re saying that some of the people who claimed ballot fraud were telling the truth? Yes?
Perhaps some Gladio shenanigans if Greece deviates too far from the script.
Greece already had its Gladio shenanigans with the Colonels, whose rule I believe is still very unpopular in Greece.
I happened to pay a visit to Greece during the rule of the Colonels. I remember a taverna I visited in Athens had a sign hanging on a wall: “Breaking dishes is prohibited by the police (το` σπα`σιμο απαγορευ`εται υπο` τη~ς αστυνομι`ας).” This kind of petty-bourgeois moralism was a lot of what the Greeks hated about the rule of the Colonels.
Yep we will have a dirty damned election and all those hopeful new SNP members, many of them Yes Campaigners will have to put everything on ice, hope, Independence, champagne for whoever wants to go into coalition with the SNP, Yes representation within the SNP Westminster hopefuls, all that is very cold now and playing with the big boys is hot, so they can’t be rumbled by internal democracy, have to have a tight ship ….
I’m beginning to think that this squabblin’ isle does not deserve a fair voting system and its not going to get one from the SNP either, keep the English in their Yoch, as long as Scotland is OK, a sure way of reverse diplomacy, were you are guaranteed to get the backs of people up who had nothing bad at all to say about Scotland, because a selfish notion of wanting it all
In sofar, I agree, Britain is going to hell in a hand cart. Bollox to the elections.
“I’m not talking about the silly videos of YES votes in the NO pile, etc, which conveniently discredited more serious accusations.”
Conveniently…
A Node speciality – the conspiracy within a conspiracy. In this case the conspirators created silly videos to divert attention from the real conspiracy.
Welcome to Node’s World.
There is a view that the Greek Syriza party are a safe pair of hands, a controlled opposition, unlikely to deviate from a pro-EU line and thus encumbering the Greek people with near perpetual indebtedness for loans for which the country and its people have nothing to show, the out-going elite having exfiltrated the lot into their own private accounts, leaving the rest to meet the gruelling payback schedule. Once daily interest repayments raised from the tax base leaving the country exceed that expended internally, if not already the case, things as they say can only get much worse. The UK is not far off from that same position, government borrowing is only increasing the principal, and adding to the interest burden, but the money borrowed is of course mere fiat money and not being returned to the economy in any meaningful way that can stimulate demand, especially not demand for domestic products or that can stimulate exports. The new Greek government, which is a minority administration, with support from a small scary rightist party, but equally committed to abandonment of needless and unnecessary austerity to repay or indeed to borrow more from the vampire EU central bankers i.e. to default, renegotiate or write-off impossible debts, to repay only a percentage, as is the predominant Syriza -facilities available for companies, corporations and individuals in bankruptcy/sequestration which should then of course be a legitimate option for the co-operative endeavour that is a nation or country, possibly more so entitled than a floundering company should be extended such ways out of their mire of often crooked financial calamity. This is all hypothetical money, no person is actually ‘owed’ it, those who loaned it merely conjured it out of thin air at the click of a mouse or key, all national debts of all nations should at some point, will at some point inevitably have to be repudiated.
The test of the new Greek government’s balls will be whether it will go along with continued or even increased EU and thus US frankly insane mandated sanctions against Russia (and also Iran), they shouldn’t and nor should any other countries except maybe Poland and the Baltic nations, as their inculcated Russophobia precludes them ever behaving rationally, but demographically they will soon cease to exist and their blustering irrelevance can be safely and wisely already discounted, before they drag us all down with them.
Russia is better shape than it has ever been, is almost serenely unassailable economically, morally and militarily, and compared with Yeltsin or any of our oligarch friendly leaders in the west, Putin is justifiably not just a Russian hero but worldwide a cut above the craven crooked rabble that our systems promote and produce to lord it over us.