I declare this blog an EU referendum free zone. There are several reasons for this:
a) I gave my views in the broadest possible manner a couple of days ago.
b) I live in Edinburgh. I am entirely confident I shall be remaining in the EU, one way or another
c) I refuse to campaign alongside the Tories, even if other Tories are campaigning the other way
d) Incredibly, the appalling Will Straw has been appointed to head the Remain campaign, his sole qualification being that he is the child of the UK’s second most famous war criminal and shyster.
That is my last word on the subject till 24 June.
“Yes that was then and now is now and for now the SNP are Unionists standing shoulder to shoulder with David Cameron.”
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Fred your mischief making comments fool no one, except perhaps those who don’t pay attention.
The SNP want to stay in Europe, even so, they’ll never share a podium with Tories who also want to remain in the EU. The Tories especially north of the border are toxic, I’m pretty sure David Mundell could vouch for that.
If you recall Fred, it was Labour and the LibDems who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tories, the result at the GE, one Labour and one Libdem MP left in Scotland.
Even those two won by slim margins.
“Go look for yourself”
Unable to support your own lies.
“an independent Scotland would be able to deal directly with the EU”
I don’t see the appeal of giving up substantial representation in the UK parliament for an insignificant bit part role in the EU project. It seems so disempowering.
““Go look for yourself”
Unable to support your own lies.”
If you can’t remember your nastiness towards poor imprisoned Muslims I’m not going to help you.
“I don’t see the appeal of giving up substantial representation in the UK parliament for an insignificant bit part role in the EU project. It seems so disempowering.”
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So what you are saying is that it’s better to have 56 MPs at Westminster who are constantly out voted on many issues.
Where as independence would see no Scottish MSP’s out voted at Holyrood as we’d have control of all political and fiscal levers.
Hmmm…..
Where is the condemnation from EU as a body, or from its parliament, of UK and Polish for example, full participation in and encouragement of the installation of neo-fascists, Russophobes and criminal oligarchs into power in Ukraine? Or is such a government for Ukraine acceptable as not so dis-similar from our own Westminster setup of that of US puppet Poland? There should be minimum standards of acceptability for inclusion in the EU, membership if it is to mean anything should mean meeting a certain and high standard, the bar of membership is somewhere around gutter level.
If the EU had any credibility than they should be kicking these rogue nations out without ceremony, into deeper international ignominy and disgrace. I don’t care, as a Scot, to be a member of any club that would even consider having the UK as currently constituted, eligible on their record of serial war crimes and genocide alone.
“substantial representation in the UK parliament” ? Go on, you’re having a laugh, and in the process making yourself look (more) like an utter tool.
Neither side deserves to win in the U-KOK referendum, neither has a convincing or credible argument, Scotland will decide on its own after Independence the terms of our association with our European and Scandinavian neighbours and friends, but events are moving faster than the glacial pace of change from feudalism and servitude in the UK can keep up with, the EU might solve the dilemma for us, hopefully by abolishing itself, as the comparable Greater England project is spectacularly doing already, though it has taken several hundred years for that to reach its zenith, it is the end-times of English and latterly US-colonialism. And we can get on with the business of doing business with Europe’s and the rest of the world’s countries and improving their and our citizens lives in the process, otherwise, what’s the point of it, what is it or has it all been for, certainly not to concentrate more and more of the common wealth into the greediest and the fewest unchosen elite’s murderous hands.
“And it is highly unlikely that European countries will see their borders change anytime soon.”
Tell that to Mr Putin and Mr Goss or the pragmatic pacifist as he shall now be known.
Quite the Comrade Vyshinky Mark 3 aren’t you Mr Goss – the accusations you make must be true because you say them, you arrogant twat! Yes you really should read Darkness at Noon.
“So what you are saying is that it’s better to have 56 MPs at Westminster who are constantly out voted on many issues”
Better than being nothing at all in the EU, yes.
“Where as independence would see no Scottish MSP’s out voted at Holyrood as we’d have control of all political and fiscal levers”
Except those controlled by the EU, ie the important ones.
“Better than being nothing at all in the EU, yes.”
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MJ
What on earth are you talking about as a sovereign nation independence would give Scotland a voice in the EU, something it currently doesn’t have.
At present Scotland is represented by a UK officials on many matters.
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“Except those controlled by the EU, ie the important ones.”
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Yes that’s correct, but Scotland wouldn’t need to go through Westminster first, by removing that needless layer of bureaucracy the Scottish government will be better equipped.
Tony M., “Where is the condemnation from EU as a body…”
Funny you should ask.
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/uks-special-status-deal-eu-means-russia-will-remain-enemy/ri12967
The US is using its British puppet regime to try and squeeze more war mobilization from the EU, on which is grip is not so tight.
Where is the condemnation of EU or any of the other Liberators of the oppressed and the Democratisers of the universe?
zionistani thugs in uniform electrocute blindfolded Palestinian for fun, laugh while filming
https://www.rt.com/news/332742-israeli-soldiers-electrocute-palestinian/
“Tell that to Mr Putin and Mr Goss or the pragmatic pacifist as he shall now be known.”
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RD.
Well what did you expect, when you organise a Western backed uprising in Ukraine, did you expect Putin and Russia just to meekly shrug their shoulders and say okay.
You know fine well, what I mean.
That is it Fedup, if the EU collective is not and not destined ever to be, has no aspiration, to be an exemplar, neither in rhetoric nor practice, of moral behaviour, then what is its actual purpose. Mere industrial economies of scale and thus less diversity, competition, and through that in due course bland uniformity and complacency, means someone else will always do it better and cheaper. A walled bastion, looking superiorly down upon and seeking to disadvantage, waging economic and in due course inevitably more visceral warfare upon those sorry outsiders, the rest of the world.
The destruction of and depopulation of North Africa to provide future Europe with huge-scale solar-electric farms and steam generating solar heat concentrators, to reduce reliance on most definitely depleting hydrocarbon resources is one example of the EU’s cynicism and of member states abhorrent disregard for human and social costs outside their hermetic world. We though oughtn’t to get smug, to the elites we are as expendable as Libyans are for example, in the name of progress.
Who is for the
Hogarthian Tory little Englander with his vernacular and ramshackle ways, and
who is for the sophisticated debauched card playing eurocentric palladian Whig?
Who is funding who?
And on funding. What is the consensus here on the story about the Kremlin funding the right wing in France?
“I really don’t get this ‘Scottish independence, remain in the E.U.’ thing. Am I missing something? Is that not an obvious contradiction?”
It’s easy to get. The Scotch Nationalists are a bunch of Commie stooges. They seek incorporation within the antidemocratic European Union of Socialist Republics, which is the exact opposite of independence and means having an open border allowing immigration of any number of of Euope’s 500 million people plus sundry “refugees” to complete the ongoing destruction of Scotland as a national entity. What’s difficult to understand about that?
fwl. “What is the consensus here on the story about the Kremlin funding the right wing in France?”
Why should there be a consensus? It was a commercial loan.
Sorry, didn’t get the nuance quite right. “Kremlin” means Russian commercial bank. Standard autocratisation of an enemy you are trying to demonise.
good link, thanks Wehrwirtschaft and welcome. Just reading ‘wir sind die Guten’ and am beginning to fully understand why NATO is pushed into expansion. Its aims have been taken over and it should be abandoned for a EU peace and defence force of sorts.
NATO is being used to forward the neocon TTIP economic sphere by other means than secret talking in back rooms, by violence In Maidan, in the air, and by using a country hopeful for change, hopeful to get away from their autocratic oligarch leaders and unrepentant exploiters of the past and manipulate its aims and objectives by using their worst excesses, right wing fascists to destabilise the country and Parliament.
History will show the prepared way Russia is being undermined and driven towards exhaustion.
As yet NATO does not want to force a confrontation, but the arms dealers, the Wehrwirtschaft, have it, conventional war is too lucrative then to get out of hand….
Laguerre, I am not demonising anyone. I read the story in the Times and I asked for any comments here, but Laguerre your touchy on the topic. Thanks for confirming it was a commerical loan. We all know there is a cold war on and how countries try to manipulate dissent.
Nevermind; “by violence In Maidan”
Indeed, without which the “popular overthrow” of the legitamate Government would never have occurred; funny that.
Anyhow the evidence is becoming harder to dismiss that it was instigated by those seeking regime change;
http://bsnews.info/study-proves-maidan-snipers-were-western-backed-oppositions-false-flag/
Richard 21 Feb, 2016 – 7:11 am : I really don’t get this ‘Scottish independence, remain in the E.U.’ thing. Am I missing something? Is that not an obvious contradiction?
fred 21 Feb, 2016 – 10:00 am :“The only thing that really matters to them is their hatred of England.
@ fred
Who are the “them” you refer to, and can you support that statement with evidence rather than your own prejudices, because it looks to me like a stupid, shallow, racist, unsupportable, untrue generalisation?
However Scotland votes in this largely rUK-only referendum, which is entirely a Cameron and the Tories affair, in which the Scottish vote will not even register a ripple on the turbulent whole, would not be binding on the Holyrood Parliament and indeed the Scottish Government formed. It’s not our referendum, it’s England’s primarily, for them to decide, for and amongst themselves, I don’t want to distort their exercise of democracy.
Scotland voting to remain in, in this UK-wide referendum, gives the Scottish Government less, not more, less negotiating power in dealings with the EU over continuing membership. Continuing membership could not ever be on existing terms as negotiated and contrived by past successive UK governments, our terms for membership for our farmers, our fishermen, our industries and our latent exporting businesses, for Scotland and for Scotland’s people. Scotland voting in this referendum to leave the EU, or voting split near 50/50 gives the SNP (certainly) team the best position, as they can walk away or have the option to do so, and put the deal on the table to a Scotland-only referendum, it puts the people back firmly in charge. A tidy majority in Scotland for remaining in puts the Scottish negotiating team in the weakest position imaginable, going in to the conference room naked.
The options for membership given to Scotland: “take it or leave it”, when really they want us badly and we ought to play hard to get, rough wooing will not enamour them to us. We’re a traumatised country already consequent of the past and expiring union, so future foreign entanglements we’ll be going into with eyes wide open and the full approval of the people, and hoping generations to come will think too we made the right choices, this time and from then on.
I’m not sure if lemmings can read this, but if so the sheer drop over a cliff edge is that-a-way. There’s a worrying strand of thought, taking flight o’er the land. It goes something like: “oh look how awful the OUT side are: Gove, Grayling, Duncan-Smith, not like that nice moderate Mr. Cameron who wants us to stay IN’. Cameron hires Gove, Grayling, IDS to do his and his party’s ideological dirty work, wet work in the case of IDS, chose them to do the jobs they are in, because he agrees fundamentally with their extremist viewpoints, for which they take the flack so nothing too unsavoury sticks to moderate (as in barking mad head-chopping moderate like them) David Cameron.
Just because the henchmen doing his bidding are awful doesn’t mean their boss is too?
Are people really prepared to take such an absurd proposition as a basis to vote IN?
Cameron’s deal was margely to continue to allow the whorehouse that is the City of London – his real employer, of course – to continue to behave in the manner to which it has become accustomed. This assurance that the banks will not be regulated and will contineu to be money-launderers for global crime is the most important aspect of the ‘deal’ and it is not being talked about at all in the mainstream media. Instead, as always, ‘migration’ is the great distraction. They are all pimps.
Suhayl has nailed it, as usual.
Hello Suhayl, nice to see you.
You’re saying then banks for which London political parties and politicians are simply fronts, most certainly wanted and still want an out vote, as the EU had them in their gun-sights, but Cameron stands in their line of fire, as a imperfect human shield. So the EU is stymied for the moment, and the looting goes on, with added alacrity and a devil-may-care disregard for harsh consequences which others, not they, must bear.
Manufacturing industry and producers want in, but want low wages, no rights, harmful conditions, self-flagellating desperate pools of cheap, near-free labour, banks want all that too, but The Queen and the Blessed Margaret forbid the EU might ask to see their falsified books. Both want to have their cake and eat it too. Profit, booty and control motivates both sides, the proles role for both is to be milked. In the battle between these two, over the last forty plus years, from Barbour to Osborne the banks have prevailed in almost every instance. They will not be satisfied with the scarecrow Cameron being all that stands between them and the long arm of EU law. Cameron will be left hanging out to dry, hoarsely squeaking insincerely the stay-in case he is forced to make but does not agree with, the 0.01 percent want out and out we will come. The nexus at the top is more between the banks and the security services, the more prominent a politician, the less real power they actually have. Cameron is behaving as loser already. The EU being cast and spun as champion of the common man against powerful banking and corporate interests is patently absurd, it is obvious that the EU is fully in the pocket of same interests and oppressors we’ll soon be told by Son of Project Fear, it purports to oppose.
The goal, our goal must, can only be to frustrate the machinations of that unaccountable unseen all-powerful elite -we the public they think largely manipulable irrelevancies, lets not pretend any of this has even the remotest relation to real democracy or that democratic values feature much or have deep roots, here, in the member countries of the EU, or in EU institutions themselves, democracy is a plaything to be bandied around before rubber-stamping the unspeakable. Every aspect of how this will play out has been gamed methodically by the originators of this referendum, it would not be taking place if there was any chance we could upset their plans by it, or even find out what that plan is.
At last it all becomes clear.