William Wallace did not turn to Andrew Murray at Stirling Bridge and say “I am not fighting alongside you, I hear you’re hard on your tenants.”
A declaration of interest. At the SNP conference in Glasgow in March I was feeling very down. Having been rejected at candidate vetting by the SNP leadership, and the fact leaked to the press with resulting brouhaha, I was effectively cold-shouldered at what was a very managed loyalist mass rally. I spent a lot of time on my own and people I knew were positively walking away to avoid me.
As regular readers know I am bipolar, and I know that when I am severely depressed my perception can be wrong. But in the SNP club a few weeks later a very sensible gentleman told me he and his wife had been appalled at the way I was treated at the conference. I am pretty confident it was not a distorted perception.
Anyway, I was sitting on my own in the conference hall when Michelle Thomson came and sought me out, sat with me and chatted to me. I have no doubt that her motive was simple personal kindness. I should add that the next day Chris Law did much the same.
In Scotland we have had five days of Michelle being treated by the media as though she were the Yorkshire Ripper. The BBC, who never once managed to ask Jim Murphy about the Henry Jackson Society, have been on 24 hour Thomsonwatch, including aggressive doorstepping a la Sky News.
I am not going to set out the detail of the case here, but highly recommend that you read Wings on the distortion of the issues, and Lallands on the legal position. Both are excellent, but to me neither quite clearly delineates the most essential point.
To preface that point, let me restate that Michelle is not under investigation, and her own role is unclear.
The key point is that at no time was any vendor selling their house ripped off. This is not a case of distressed people dispossessed, and the attempts by media and politicians to make it appear that way are tendentious.
The worst that allegedly happened is this. A and B are in cahoots. Mr Smith sells his property to A for an agreed market price. A then sells to B for market price plus 20 grand. The bank gives a mortgage for this, but A quietly gives the extra 20 grand back to B under the table.
The fraud is on the mortgage company which has been tricked into giving a higher mortgage than it otherwise would have. The fraud in no way harms the original vendor. The fraud does not even harm the mortgage company provided the mortgage is paid – and there is no accusation of default. What the mortgage company has lost is that it has as security an interest over a property with a false value.
But again, unless there were a default, it has actually helped the mortgage company too as in the weird world of banking its larger loan is an asset not a liability on its books.
So it is a fraud, but not one perpetrated on poor vendors. It is a trick played on the ludicrous banking system. Clever, dishonest but not morally outrageous. I repeat again, there is no evidence or even legal accusation that Michelle Thomson was involved in any of this. But in any case it is nowhere near as immoral as starting an illegal war with consequent deaths of millions of people. Lets get a grip.
I have never claimed to be perfect. All of us have done things wrong in our past. For me the Independence referendum campaign transcended all that. It was a millenarian movement, a time when people envisaged a world renewed and more just. That phrase about living in the first days of a better nation carried enormous resonance. It was the defining moment of my own life despite coming in its Autumn. Those of us in the frontline of the Yes campaign underwent a kind of emotional rebirth. Sins were wiped clean. It was a sacramental experience, and will lead on to that better world in an Independent Scotland in short time.
It sparked England’s chance for change with Corbyn.
I don’t care what mistakes people made before the Yes campaign. By dedicating themselves to that social movement, they wiped the slate clean.
Which leads me on to Tommy Sheridan. Neither Tommy nor Michelle will thank me for lumping them together, given the very different circumstances. But the continued shunning of Sheridan by pro-Independence organisations from Rise to the SNP is ludicrous.
Most ludicrous of all is the language parroted by the left about Sheridan, that “A space containing Tommy Sheridan is not a safe space for women.” You find it here in the comment by Edward Bonobo. You find it in this article by Tommy Ball. I have had it repeated to me several times.
One answer to this is that it is even more dangerous to be in organisations that teach members to parrot catchphrases, as opposed to think.
In what way precisely is proximity to Tommy Sheridan dangerous to women? If it were true that he has a Svengali like irresistible sexual appeal – which appears to be the nub of the accusation as far as I can make out any sense from Tommy Ball’s article – then surely there is not a woman in Scottish politics not warned against it by now? Is it not rather demeaning to women to argue they would not be capable of protecting themselves from Tommy Sheridan? What precisely about being in the same “space” as Tommy Sheridan is unsafe for women? What does “space” mean in this context? Room, meeting, city? The argument about “safe space” is clearly a nonsense.
I do not know the truth about the sexual shenanigans of which Tommy was accused by Murdoch. Nor do I in the least care if they were true. I have done all that kind of stuff. Often before tea. I do know that Sheridan was jailed for perjury, and that Coulson lied in court at the same trial but the judges ruled that it was OK for Coulson to lie, but not for Sheridan. I know there are allegations that Sheridan pressured other people to lie for him. I do not know if it is true, but I have had so many friends – of both sexes – ask me over the years to give them an alibi for marital infidelity I am not shocked by that. I am afraid to say that in my younger days I have asked that myself.
None of which explains the sheer hatred and bile poured out at Sheridan. This is a man who liberated poor families from the destitution and humiliation of warrant sales, who led the anti-poll tax campaign, who sparked the Murdoch phone-hacking revelations and has been repeatedly arrested and even jailed outside Faslane – trying to make the world a “safer space” for everyone. This tribute is undoubtedly true:
You supported individuals in the community; both in parliament and in the street, you were able to use your undoubted powers of oratory to press home your cause; you led the Scottish Socialist Party to considerable electoral success; and your contributions to the anti-poll tax campaign and the abolition of warrant sales will become part of the fabric of Scottish social and political history.
It was said by Lord Bracadale as he sentenced him to three years in prison for perjury in the Murdoch case.
Tommy Sheridan proclaims his innocence, but in any event he has undoubtedly made mistakes in life. But his achievements are very important, and the continued vindictiveness of the sex-negative feminists and their followers on the Left is extreme. Tommy has been to jail. Is offender rehabilitation only something the political classes claim to believe in because they don’t actually expect to meet any ex-convicts in their sphere of life? The attempt to dress the vicious vindictiveness up as warding off a present danger to women from Tommy Sheridan is intellectually ludicrous.
I shared a platform with Tommy Sheridan at Caird Square, Dundee on Sunday. I was not asked to speak until the gloaming, when 95% of those attending had gone home, but I accepted that and got on with it because I will do anything, anywhere to promote the cause of Independence. The SNP boycott of the event because Tommy was there cannot possibly be helpful if Independence is really the aim.
The Independence movement has a vast and powerful army arraigned against us. The entire British state, their corporate masters, the transatlantic neo-cons, both state and corporate media, the security services. For God’s sake, we need to be absolutely united if we are to reach our goal.
We need all of us. We must value all of us; as people, not robots. We should not be trying to project some corporate media image of a totally fake and hypocritical groomed perfection.
We have tremendously powerful enemies. We only have each other.
Our enemies lie before us. We should not look askance at our allies.
Nicola Sturgeon on the Marr Show earlier.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06jm4sf/the-andrew-marr-show-11102015
29 mins for 12 mins.
Mary
Cheers for that Link with Nicola…i’ll watch it later cos i’m going out a while..nice Autumn weather. Colours are gonna be super this year methinks.
Hope you are well
Just to say… that reporter video, has a bit of swearing, i meant say, sorry if anyone got caught out on that.
Now it looks like Michelle Thomson was doing her dodgy accounting in the referendum as well.
Ooooooh, someone complained.
Dead easy to make a complaint which will become self-referential in time, isn’t it?
That is exactly how smearing works.
Well done.
Has anyone else come across this lovely and amazing man, about to become Chancellor of Manchester University (beating Mandelson hurrah!)?
He had a terrible start in life but is giving a lot back to his adoptive country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemn_Sissay
He was on Desert Island Discs this week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gthsz
~~~~
Next week Prof Sue Black, Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at Dundee University is the guest on DiD. She must have witnessed so much horror in her post-conflict work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Black_(forensic_anthropologist)
‘You also made a new claim, which you I suspect you threw in to cover your original claim “even Healey himself in a deathbed limited hangout said it was all because they were outright duped and lied to by the Treasury” which again is demonstrably untrue as Healey made this clear many years before he died – as Lobster and Becket’s book (which was published back in 2009) both demonstrate ( although I believe Healey made the same point many years before).’
RD/Tony M- Healey has been saying, at least since his autobiography was published in 1989, that the Treasury figures which formed the basis of his loan request to the IMF were incorrect, but he has never AFAIK stated that the Treasury willfully deceived him- they just ballsed up their calculations on the size of the PSBR.
Healey repeats this claim in this interesting interview from a couple of years back (the interview is also interesting for the fact that it reveals Healey to be open to the prospect of Scottish independence, and now to be in favour a UK withdrawal from the EU)-
http://www.holyrood.com/articles/editors-note/still-raising-eyebrows
What does Thompson do with these many properties? She rents them, fueling house price inflation through a mechanism you were denouncing as immoral a few posts back. And that this immoral end is achieved through defrauding a bank is fine just because she was nice to you? Your moral compass is spinning so hard it is a wonder it does not take off.
Many can be more than one ie two or it can be on hundred, can you specify how many is the “many” you have stated?
Further what is the going rent for the said properties?
MerkinOnParis : 11 Oct, 2015 – 12:14 pm : Dead easy to make a complaint which will become self-referential in time, isn’t it?
Whilst the Electoral Commission is quick to investigate a single complaint against the SNP, it is curiously uncurious about flouting of impartiality rules by the state broadcaster, or Unionists illegally knowing the result of the postal ballot.
An excellent article and particularly the support for Tommy Sheridan. In my view he was a tremendous asset to the Independence movement. His speeches were very important and I am sure led many Labour and other people to vote YES.
The SNP are definitely their own worst enemy at times and the YES campaign managers were even more so. Not only did they deny Tommy they also denied and are still denying Wings over Scotland and other strong Indy supporting bloggers. They didn’t and still don’t seem to have a clue about Social Media and how to use it to best advantage. And it is so afraid to upset the Media staus quo.
JSD, thanks for your ‘notes from the field’, most helpful. And KOWN too, good advice.
Back to the post, lest I help to digress too wildly from it, I was thinking yesterday about the rehabilitation of middle-class offenders. I realised I am minded to forgive Sheriden for his mistakes, and for perjury too if necessary, because I am broadly in sympathy with his socialist principles. I feel in the judge’s oration above a note of genuine admiration, and a sense that he knew a good man was falling from grace.
If this is accurate, then perhaps – just to put the cat amongst the pigeons – we should be as willing to forgive those on the Right for similar crimes? I am thinking of Jeffrey Archer here, of course. I’d agree the corporate media are brazen in their reversal of the situation: public forgiveness can only be bestowed if you’re in the right club. But that others are hypocritical does not mean that we should be too.
A bit of clarity on the Michelle Thomsom, saga, pushed relentlessly by the unionist propaganda media.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/once-more-for-the-folks-at-home/#more-76341
http://wingsoverscotland.com/what-were-told-and-what-we-know/#more-76369
Still no media frenzy on this story though, no unionist main news bulletin about this one, those hypocritical b*stards at the BBC think people don’t notice things like this.
No wonder the Red Tories and the Blue Tories in Scotland are in freefall.
——————————-
Regarding Michelle Thomson, and the relentless media coverage.
This Labour fiasco has been going on for 18 months yet it hasn’t received even a modicum of media coverage, a ideal example of unionist media bias.
Activists have called in police after getting fed-up waiting for party bosses to investigate how £10,000 went missing from local Labour party coffers.
The Evening News revealed in July last year how Labour had launched an inquiry into the Edinburgh Eastern constituency party after the cash disappeared.
The seat is the one where Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is due to stand in next year’s Scottish Parliament elections.
Local party treasurer Karen Rennie was suspended from the party while the inquiry was carried out and remains suspended today.
But the investigation has dragged on without any result and now a group of local members has approached the police.
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/police-probe-missing-10-000-from-labour-party-coffers-1-3907487
Furthermore I haven’t heard the Tories or the LibDems pose one single question on the matter to Kezia Dugdale at FMQ’s……oh the hypocrisy of it all.
That’s a good link (@12:43pm) and interview Old Mark, I hadn’t seen that, thanks.
Worth quoting some bits, from the horse’s mouth, it’s almost confessional.
“If we had had the right figures, we would never have needed to go for the loan. It was the most difficult period of my life getting the Cabinet to go for it. The Public Spending Borrowing Requirement [PSBR] estimate was horrific and when I was Chancellor, the PSBR was the key to policy but the estimates on the PSBR were always wrong in my time and in my first three years, they [the Treasury] enormously exaggerated the gap and my last year, they didn’t even realise we were going to have a considerable surplus in tax. They were all guessing what would happen and their guesses were wrong and I didn’t realise that until after it had happened.”
Interesting too is this: “I was offered the job as the head of the IMF when we lost the election but I didn’t want to live abroad without the family and I felt I couldn’t uproot them so I didn’t accept”
“I think we did underplay the value of the oil to the country because of the threat of nationalism but that was mainly down to Thatcher. We didn’t actually see the rewards from oil in my period in office because we were investing in the infrastructure rather than getting the returns and really, Thatcher wouldn’t have been able to carry out any of her policies without that additional 5 per cent on GDP from oil. Incredible good luck she had from that.”
RD you’re just quibbling now about emphasis used and paraphrasing/summation, what he was saying or said later in life differs greatly from that he said at the time.
And yes the IMF loan terms did stipulate cuts hence the pay battles, and privatisation.
Brian, Pie is a comedian / satirist surely, but very funny. He has done other similar skits, which are on you tube.
James Morton contestant in a previous Great British Bake Off. Morton, wrote a column for the Sunday Times in it he said, this about English NHS debt and cuts to come.
Much has been made about its impact on consultants, but the 7-day NHS proposals in England amount to little more than a huge pay cut for junior and trainee doctors.
Already many are talking about leaving the NHS, for Canada or Australia and the private sector.
I’m in Scotland, and therefore I am protected due to devolution. But I feel it is my duty as someone who is mildly in the public eye and entering the medical profession to talk about it.
https://archive.is/Eh37d
Ironically Morton was a Better Together proponent, echoing the doom and gloom and the collapse of the NHS and public services, in Scotland, if Scotland became independent.
Better Together spun lie after lie, now it’s coming back to haunt them.
“RD you’re just quibbling now about emphasis used and paraphrasing/summation”
No I am pointing out your lie about marketization being a demand of the IMF in 1976 – and your equally false claim that “even Healey himself in a deathbed limited hangout said it was all because they were outright duped and lied to by the Treasury” – which I’ve pointed out was incorrect as has Lobster and Old Mark.
It is very easy to defame the dead and you should apologise.
And Lobster pointed out it was a re-run of a stunt pulled on Ramsay Mac in 1931, as did Tony Benn, circulating the relevant papers to the whole cabinet. What we have is an ‘impartial’ civil service hoodwinking the elected government, who in turn hoodwinked the country. They didn’t just get their sums wrong, they lied.
And were already negotiating with the IMF behind the government’s back.
I’m not disagreeing with Lobster’s account.
How many British military personnel are there in Afghanistan under the guise of Operation Resolute Support?
‘A spokesman said: “We can confirm that at approximately 9.10am this morning a convoy of UK military vehicles on a routine road move as part of the NATO Resolute Support Mission in Kabul was struck by an Improvised Explosive Device.”
Resolute Support is a NATO-led mission to train and assist Afghan security forces and institutions, following the stand-down of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) last year.’
UK Military Vehicle Hit By Kabul Taliban Bomb
The MoD confirms a UK military vehicle was struck by an IED in Kabul this morning in an attack aimed at foreign troops.
http://news.sky.com/story/1567426/uk-military-vehicle-hit-by-kabul-taliban-bomb
Another one of those silly names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_Support_Mission
‘12,000 personnel’ with ‘spokes’ and ‘hubs’. No, Not a cycle race. Part of the ‘Global War on Terrorism’. What nonsense.
How showing a Edward Snowden slide, can be bad for your career.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/10/i-showed-leaked-nsa-slides-at-purdue-so-feds-demanded-the-video-be-destroyed/
Why be boring?: “The Lobster account of the IMF programme is interesting, also for what it leaves out. It was not only the lack of investment in manufacturing that prevented the UK following the German economic model. The Trades Unions also had no interest in playing a constructive role either (as seen in their reaction to the Bullock report on industrial democracy) because they were in the grip of people who believed that this was just going to delay the imminent proletarian revolution.”
The real problems for the UK were, firstly the commitment to pay off the wartime debt to the US and secondly, the enormous expenditure that was made on anti-colonial and other Cold War adventures.
It was this waste of resources which prevented Britain not only from building a strong economy but also, as you rightly point out, from making the obvious step forward out of capitalism into popular democracy (what you, and old bolshevik, no doubt, call ‘the proletarian revolution’.
To blame to TUC, as toothless a body as was ever run by the likes of Cannon and Deakin, Woodstock and other right wing Labour party types, for sabotaging industry on behalf of revolution is the sort of rubbish that would have made Beaverbrook blush.
Fred
11 Oct, 2015 – 10:49 am
“The Electoral Commission, which polices the rules on campaign expenditure, has confirmed it will examine a complaint about the influence of Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive, over pro-independence group Business for Scotland, which Thomson led.”
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1618238.ece
……………………………………………………..
Well it is an article in an anti-independence paper Fred. It makes no mention of the person/persons who made the complaint.
There are many mischievous unionists around that just want to cause trouble for the SNP.
Let’s wait for the outcome of the examination.
RoS @ 3:11;
Scratch a democrat, find a fascist. All this twaddle about electing the right people is balderdash. We need a new system.
At the very least the selloff of BP (half a billion’s worth was sold off by Labour immediately around ’76 at a tremendous loss to the tax-payer, after the taxpayer had poured in far more in R&D and infrastructure) assets still producing vast profit even now 40 years later) was part of the IMF deal. Lobster #61 says the crisis was ‘manufactured’ by the Treasury, I think the lead villain at the Treasury was Harold Lever. No doubt sir or lord now.
The Electoral commision is a farce there were numerous blatant serious breaches of their rules by the unionists and by the UK government during the referendum period. Their reputation is already in tatters.
“Well it is an article in an anti-independence paper Fred.”
People keep posting links to Wings or The National without it being pointed out they are thoroughly well and truly biassed every time. How come whenever I post a link to a reputable mainstream newspaper somebody always tries to discredit it by claiming they are anti-independence?
Even more astonishing (Baron!) Lever was actually Labour politician, another bankers’ trojan horse, wanting to privatise everything in sight even before the Tories got the idea.
You have to reach para 5 to learn that in the last 11 days, the Israelis have killed 21 Palestinians.
‘Indeed, in the last 11 days, Israel has killed 21 Palestinians, several of them minors, and wounded hundreds, a significant number with rubber or live bullets. These numbers include stabbers who were shot on the spot in self-defence, but also those shot at during protests – an all too common phenomenon – as well as an alleged stabber shot at point-blank range by police at a moment when it appears he didn’t pose a direct threat to anyone. Netanyahu has also vowed to increase and expedite home demolitions – a method that Israel’s own military has concluded is an ineffective deterrent. He has promised, too, to make broader use of detention without trial for suspects, even though Palestinian hunger strikes have proven to be one of the most effective non-violent tools for challenging this inhumane and illegal policy.’
Israel’s domination of Palestinians makes violence inevitable
Mairav Zonszein
The latest round of attacks is shocking, but no anomaly. There will never be quiet as long as one group of citizens are forced to live without rights, and with no way out
11 October 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/israel-domination-palestinians-violence-inevitable
No solution is suggested.
“Whilst the Electoral Commission is quick to investigate a single complaint against the SNP, it is curiously uncurious about flouting of impartiality rules by the state broadcaster, or Unionists illegally knowing the result of the postal ballot.”
If Unionists had known the result of the postal ballot then it wouldn’t be the Electoral Commission to investigate, it would be the police, it would have been a criminal offence.
Police Scotland did conduct a year long investigation and reported “no criminality has been uncovered”.
http://www.markpack.org.uk/134800/no-prosecutions-after-scottish-referendum-postal-vote-investigation/
17% of BP went in 1977 under Callaghan and Healey as part of the IMF conditions for a loan they didn’t need, or want, taken as a result of a stunt pulled by the Treasury. I don’t know why I wasted my time replying to you RD, my re-collections were substantially correct.