I am of course immediately proved wrong 🙂 The Conference just remitted back a motion supporting the Scottish Government’s land reforms on the grounds they are too timid. There is life in this Party after all.
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Andrew Roy, Foreign Editor BBC denies any partisanship.
He should listen to Mr Diamond’s report!
Newswatch
16/10/2015
Viewers’ comments on BBC News coverage. As violence flares up again in Israel, is the BBC ensuring that its coverage is fair to both sides? Samira Ahmed talks to BBC News foreign editor, Andrew Roy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06hhpbq/newswatch-16102015
‘Andrew ROY is the Head of News at BBC World News, the BBC’s commercially funded 24-hour international news and information channel. He is responsible for all news, including business and sports, on the channel. He also oversees the web sites and social media of BBC World News. He is also leading the expansion and modernisation of the channel’s live news output. Mr. ROY has worked for the BBC since 1987 in various capacities. In 2007, he joined BBC World News and became Head of News in December 2008.’
http://fcchk.org/event/2011-11-03-fcc-club-lunch-andrew-roy
Jonathan Cook – from within the belly of the beast.
‘Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel has illegally annexed, are subject to Israeli civil law – unlike the West Bank, where Palestinians live under Israeli military rule.
Human rights groups have long complained that Israeli soldiers in the West Bank carry out “extra-judicial executions”.
The Israeli government recently announced it was authorising for the first time the use of live-fire against Palestinians, including children, who throw stones in Israel and Jerusalem.
Israel includes a population of 1.6 million Palestinians who have citizenship, while most of East Jerusalem’s 370,000 Palestinians have Israeli residency permits.’
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/10/videos-challenge-israeli-police-account-of-shootings/
As to knowing whose side one’s bread is buttered I would like to share an ongoing experience. I am currently in my local public library because my computer has been made inoperable with a Windows 10 automatic upgrade. The problem will not be given to everybody, just we chosen few, who take them on.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154227383137646&set=p.10154227383137646&type=3&theater
I suspect the spooks are guilty. Everybody knows my Windows 10 was designed for them not us, and I wish I had never upgraded from Windows 7. I do not believe it is a coincidence that this happened within a few hours of my posting this comment.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/10/nicola-sturgeon-is-wrong-let-unionists-vote-for-unionists/#comment-557389
The MOD has been very naughty in not admitting its illegal misappropriation of Class A drugs. This was discovered by Stephen Frost while working for them. Instead of coming clean they are trying to force Stephen into bankruptcy through the massive legal fees involved in fighting his case. It is also why they do not want people funding him. So please. Do the decdent thing.
https://www.gofundme.com/fundfrost/donate
Craig, this is an important story, touched on by MSM but goes very deep. Rather than pay him the massive damages they owe him through loss of earnings, let alone tackle their own problems, the whole crooked establishment is trying to ruin him. Stephen had a moral duty, as well as a legal duty to report these missing drugs. All doctors have that same duty and it is a very good law.
It is unlikely I will be commenting as regularly for obvious reasons.
Oh dear, looks like the SNP could end up defending the status quo after all. Poor Scotland, still a colony.
@Mary – A picture speaks a thousand words. As clear as day.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=palestinian+land+loss+since+1947&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#imgrc=rF05cA2pZNn9XM%3A
Yet there are devils aka the Dead Sea trolls, here who would want us to think otherwise. Methinks they have just been taken over by Satan.
Craig,
It’s your birthday today? Many happy returns to you.
Warmest wishes,
John
Land reform…
Remembering the right-to-buy in the public housing sector prompts the thought that there seems to be no awareness that Murdo MacCrofter, having bought his land at the going rate* from his evil feudal lord, would be an idiot not selling it on if he got a good offer from an offshore outfit consolidating useable land and property investment portfolios. Or he could flog any spare buildings to holiday-homers from the SE to use for two weeks a year until this decade’s property bubble has doubled its price and it’s ready to cash in again. Or a buy-to let shark…
OK, the situation isn’t good as it stands. Like London (and anywhere investable) a lot of Scotland is owned by rich arseholes who have no need -or, arguably, right – to be there and don’t care. But the right-to-buyers are licking their lips at the possibility of splitting off, and making a killing on, the few useable bits of the Highlands (who’s going to buy barren peat moorland as an investment?), and the net effect may well be virtually to remove the indigenous populations of the area. A solution is needed. But it must be a better solution. Romanticism must play no part in it, and idealism takes no account of base human nature.
*probably subsidised by the SG as well…
Murdo MacCrofter does not own any land big enough to interest an offshore investor.
Robert:
You err. Anything capable of showing a profit interests attracts sharks. The individual investments may be small, but there’ll be plenty of them: no problem for an institutional investor. You don’t address the issue of buy-to-let, which is a major one south of the border – many of these landlords live abroad. And you don’t address the visible emasculation of the communities whose interests the SNP intends to defend, by influxes of holiday homers, retirees and small investors in housing wishing to exploit the perpetually inflating price bubble by simply waiting until a cheap property (possibly let) creats an increased bank balance.
It happened with right-to-buy*. And I forgot the elderly who bought their council properties and when they died bequeathed this tradeable asset to their offspring, who having no wish to live in he sticks and before the grass had grown on the grave, flogged it. Hell, I’d have done the same.
*Interesting that this Thatcherite policy, rejigged, attracts so much support from right-on socialists, isn’t it?
” Interesting that this Thatcherite policy, rejigged, attracts so much support from right-on socialists, isn’t it? ”
Although councils have always had the right to sell their housing stock right-to-buy first appeared in the 1959 Labour party manifesto.
http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab59.htm
Funny how the troll never mentions reading a single book.
Just like he never reveals a single detail about his past.
This goes to show what went on.
Kunduz: Cockpit Crew in Doctors Without Borders Strike Questioned Legality�
Posted by The Medialens Editors on October 17, 2015, 12:32 pm
NBC News has learned that the crew in the gunship that carried out a strike against a hospital in Afghanistan questioned whether it was legal.
http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/cockpit-crew-in-doctors-without-borders-strike-questioned-legality-545354307855
DC
and a graphic report on the aftermath.
The Afghan hospital bombing: An imperialist war crime
17 October 2015
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/17/pers-o17.html
‘This week, photographic evidence of the scale of the atrocity has also come out. Freelance journalist Andrew Quilty published a series of *images showing the burnt-out remains of the hospital.
“Throughout the building,” Quilty reported, “on all visible surfaces, there were wild and sporadic arcs of bullet holes. In other places, larger rounds had penetrated straight through the walls, leaving gaps some 2 feet wide in the solid brick.” The photographs show hospital beds that have been incinerated, walls crumbling from the impact of the assault, corpses charred beyond recognition.
“Walking through the roughly 40 rooms, bodies and remains lay scattered and, in most cases, alone,” Quilty writes. “All but one of these bodies—or what was left of them—still in the facility were on the ground. Beneath one victim’s remains—otherwise indistinguishable but for a severed foot—were the white and pale blue squares of a hospital gown, almost completely intact.”’
*Disturbing photos.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/inside-msf-hospital-kunduz-afghanistan-taliban-us-attack/
12 people and a child were drowned today. Yesterday one woman and a child also drowned.
12 drown as migrant boat sinks off Turkey
http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_12-drown-as-migrant-boat-sinks-off-turkey_401802.html
So what difference are the EU’s 3 billion euros for Turkey going to make?
They will disappear into some black hole.
FM: EU’s migrant action plan with Turkey yet to take shape
http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_fm-eus-migrant-action-plan-with-turkey-yet-to-take-shape_401722.html
Was this not already known? Get together at Crawford etc
EXCLUSIVE: Smoking gun emails reveal Tony Blair’s ‘deal in blood’ with George Bush over Iraq war was forged a YEAR before the invasion had even started Smoking gun emails reveal Blair’s ‘deal in blood’ with George Bush over Iraq war was even started
A sensational leaked White House memo (bottom) shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the 2003 invasion started – despite public statements to the contrary. The two are pictured together (top) in 2001. He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals. The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the President by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a sceptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction – when none existed. In return, the President would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’.
17 October 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277402/Smoking-gun-emails-reveal-Blair-s-deal-blood-George-Bush-Iraq-war-forged-YEAR-invasion-started.html
I’m the original ‘Fred’ not impersonating anybody, OK I only post here very occasionally but the first post was several years ago. I’ve linked hundreds of Murray’s articles to advfn over the years.
I take it the Scots would want to remain part of the EU when/if they get independence? How stupid is that? For a start it contradicts the whole concept of ‘independence’, they would merely become a very weak minion of an undemocratic failing system. ‘Jumping from the frying pan into the fire’ comes into mind, good luck with that. Think of it this way as part of the UK Scotland is a far stronger minion of the globalist agenda.
I’m a firm believer in true ‘independence’ for the UK, with or without Scotland, ‘we’ have a slender chance to achieve that with the alleged referendum we have been promised by a liar..
ISIS Fighters Could Gain LEGAL Entry Into EU, Thanks to Europe’s New Schengen Visa Deal for Turkey
October 16, 2015 By 21wire 4 Comments
21st Century Wire says…
It doesn’t get any more backward than this. Potentially, this is the dumbest move yet by bureaucrats in Brussels.
Turkey is set to pick up a few big sweeteners from Brussels if ‘tries’ to stop refugee flow into Europe – even though it’s nearly impossible for Ankara to actually come good on its lofty promise to ‘contain’ the large refugee flow through Turkey into the European promise land.
It’s true that Turkey has accommodated roughly 2 million Syrian refugees, and is said to have spent over nearly $8 billion on the crisis thus far.
What they are not telling us however, is that Turkey has been the primary facilitator of the Syrian conflict, mainly by hosting terrorist and ‘rebel’ training and equipping for tens of thousands of fighters since 2011, as well as providing a continuous safe haven for terrorist fighters – freely coming and going over its southern border with Syria.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/10/16/isis-fighters-will-gain-legal-entry-into-eu-thanks-to-europes-new-schengen-visa-deal-for-turkey/#disqus_thread
Fred
Think about the Irish. Before the Euro, Irish monetary policy was more or less dictated by circumstances controlled by the Bank of England where the Irish Governmnent didn’t even get through the front door. In the Euro, they at least get a seat at the table. It isn’t everything but it’s better than nothing.
“…serving on the Council (Boule) was a real educational experience for Athenians, who allowed themselves to be instructed by those *who were serving for the second time*”
_____________________________
So our Transatlantic Friend is unable to reconcile the completely random selection process for the Council he’s always gong on about with his sudden claim that some members served a second term on said Council.
Very random, that! 🙂
Our Transatlantic Friend complains (about yours truly):
“Just like he never reveals a single detail about his past.”
______________________
Perhaps I’m just less boastful than you?
And feel less need to use my details to lend spurious credence to what I write….?
” Before the Euro, Irish monetary policy was more or less dictated by circumstances controlled by the Bank of England ”
Ireland disconnected from sterling in 1978. Now their monetary policy is dictated by circumstances controlled by the ECB and they have no control over interest rates or the money supply which are set to please the Euro’s larger and more powerful economies.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/ireland-budget-germany-leak
Patrick Honohan is a member of the governing council of the ECB https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/decisions/genc/html/index.en.html
The formal link with sterling might have gone in 1978, but that did not disconnect the Irish economy from the UK. Decisions by the Bank of England on intenest rates etc all had immediate effects on Ireland which only found out after they had happened
And as your Guardian link makes clear:
The reality is that Ireland ceded control over its own finances when it was forced to tap the bailout funds late last year.
If you ask someone for money they want to know how you are going to repay it
Bevin, the book is by Jenny Uglow, and is called In These Times, Living in the UK during Napoleoin’s Wars, 1793-1815. The review is published in the November 5, 205 issue of the NYRB.
That’s what I thought of Brougham until I started reading The Times back then
You should read my two- volume biography of him.
While a Benthamite capitalist, he still helped get rid of the Old Tories, the slave trade, and slavery, while getting Parliament to adopt the Reform Bills, repeal the Corn Laws, save of leaders of the Newport rising, and those of the “monster meetings’ in Ireland, and colonial self-rule, plus all kinds of judicial and legal reforms, and the establishment of UCL. T
hen there were all the cases he represented as a barrister, and decided as a judge,
The efforts were so demanding that he became a drug-addict in the hope of keeping up.
Did far more than any of his contemporaries.
they at least get a seat at the table. It isn’t everything but it’s better than nothing.
WBO, in my view the seat the Irish have, like the rest, is a deck chair on the Titanic. The EU is a political/economic experiment isn’t going to end well. Does Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland really have ‘nothing’? Or are they doing fine without it?
Thanks for the link, Kempe. I was aware that Labour had toyed with the idea. But the context was rather different, wasn’t it?
At the last count there were seven million households in Britain with no bath, and over three million sharing or entirely without a w.c. The Tories have tried to induce private land lords to improve their property by means of public grants, with very small success. Labour’s plan is that, with reasonable exceptions, local councils shall take over houses which were rent-controlled before 1 January, 1956, and are still tenanted. They will repair and modernise these houses and let them at fair rents. This is a big job which will take time and its speed will vary according to local conditions.
Every tenant, however, will have a chance first to buy from the Council the house he lives in; and all Council tenants in future will enjoy the same security of tenure as rent-restricted tenants.
That ‘first’, to my mind, indicates that the sitting tenant of a substandard house would be able to buy it as an alternative to being shifted out and the house modernised by the Council. There was to be no statutory requirement for the Council to sell its housing to its tenants other than that. And, in any case, it was first implemented by Thatcher, not in the context of freeing housing from slum landlords and making better housing more available for renters, but with the intention of promoting a housing finance boom. There was no parallel programme of replacing cheap rental stock, with the result we see today. So I’ll stay with ‘Thatcherite’.
Pile the pressure on your MP
Stop the War is asking its members and supporters to urgently step up the pressure against bombing Syria by lobbying local MPs. Lobbies of MPs and particularly Shadow Cabinet Ministers are being organised at MPs surgeries across the country.
The government is fixated on getting a vote to bomb Syria. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has been touring the TV studios again in the last few days to outline the ‘logic’ of bombing a country already aflame with civil war.
http://news.sky.com/story/1571655/fallon-uk-must-strike-syria-despite-russia-fears
Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn too has been pushing the argument for intervention. This despite a vote against the government’s bombing plans at the recent Labour Party conference and Jeremy Corbyn’s long record of opposition to foreign wars. Stop the War has issued a statement condemning Benn’s move.
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/why-does-hilary-benn-want-to-bomb-syria-the-most-bombed-country-on-the-planet
Lobbies are being organised in Barrow, Bolton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Harrow, Hammersmith, Leeds, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newcastle, Norwich, Wolverhampton and a number of other towns and cities. Where they have been publicised they are attracting a lot of interest.
Contact us for more information or organise a lobby of your MP’s surgery and let us know the details.
Please lobby your MP online now as well. Use our model letter to write to your MP. It takes just one minute. Please also share this link far and wide.
http://act.stopwar.org.uk/lobby/stopbombingsyria
Scotland v Australia: The thing about clichés, stereotypes and epithets, and what makes them – though unfair – so wounding is that there is sometime a grain of truth in them.
The reaction of the tabloid press was to be expected. The ungracious performance by the Greig Laidlaw the Scottish captain and the Scottish coach after their defeat by Australia plus the comments of some retired Scottish players brings to mind the term “Whinging Scot”. Sure the Scottish captain and coach were entitled to appear gutted but not to act as they did.
I am an Australian supporter and hence naturally biased in Australia’s favour. In response to the churlish Scottish reaction and annoyed by the Australian’s performance I am moved to “take off the gloves”.
If the Australians had lost that match they would have deserved to because it would have THEM that lost it. OK let’s admit that for such a lowly ranked team the Scots did put the Australians under some pressure by turning up to play the game. They also managed to get within kicking distance of the posts on some occasions to allow for penalty goals and the 3 of the softest tries that an Australian team has ever allowed.
Yes Craig Joubert should have relied on the TMO for the decision made in the last 5 minutes of the game. But please!! the game was played over 80 minutes. Why was Scotland in a position to win at that stage?
Well multiple UNFORCED errors by the Australians and 4 or 5 penalties which even the pro Scottish colour commentator said were “harsh” code for should not have been given.
Scottish supporters were np doubt happy that Joubert picked up a slight knock on when Australia had scored a try to put the game away.
I also agree that the yellow card was a “harsh” decision but – really – only one try was scored in that period and Australia was seemingly able to score at will against 15 Scots so may well have scored in the 10 minutes that Scotland was down to 14 men.
Also Foley was off his kicking game and Greig Laidlaw was radar like – sure that’s how things go but realistically without Foleys failure, the numerous unforced errors [and some forced errors] and the harsh penalties that went against Australia Scotland would have been blown off the park.
If Australia lost sure Australia would have rightly blamed themselves but would have been gracious enough to praise the gritty Scottish performance etc.
But given many Scots behaviour I have ungraciously advised you where Scotland actually stand in world rugby rankings and have invoked the epithet which fits in this case.
Rugby World Cup 2015: ‘Craig Joubert wrong to award penalty’
Referee Craig Joubert was wrong to award a crucial 78th-minute penalty against Scotland in Sunday’s World Cup quarter-final defeat by Australia, says World Rugby.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/34576756
The statement
http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/news/115761