The collapse of the governing party of the Scottish colonial administration is a direct consequence of the Union. It shows the need for Independence.
Devolution infantilises Scottish politics. The Scottish Government budget is a massive £60 billion. But that all comes through London. The Scottish Government has no effective control on the productivity of its economy.
It has extremely limited, essentially cosmetic, powers to vary fiscal policy, excluding indirect and corporate taxation. It has no power whatsoever over monetary policy. The “Scottish government” is in essence very little more than a distribution mechanism for government revenue channelled through London.
The Scottish government is not a government in any real sense of the term when it comes to the ability to run the Scottish economy. It does however have tremendous powers to manage huge sums in spending. It has a great deal of power, and extremely limited responsibility.
Of course, much spending is not really discretionary. The NHS and Education will always need vast sums. But even little droppings off the margins of £60 billion remain huge sums of money in personal terms, and the Scottish government finds itself able to deploy life changing patronage on an astonishing human scale.
The result of all this is that devolution has created a Scottish political class at Holyrood fattened on this dripping roast, and swept into heights of vainglory by the pretence that their tightly constrained body is a national parliament, when on any rational analysis it is a slightly tarted-up regional council.
It does not control the Scottish economy, it does not control Scottish foreign policy, it does not control Scottish defence policy, it is not permitted to enable democratic decisions on the future Scottish constitution.
It is not a parliament.
So here we have this “parliament”, stuffed with MSPs who are not particularly bright, and have an irresponsible role but control immense amounts of dosh to spread around. The first thing they do, of course, is feather their own nests and build little empires.
You will recall that the first crack in the SNP wall came with the resignation of their chief spin doctor, Murray Foote, for being caught in repeated lying to the media about SNP membership numbers.
I was astonished then to discover that Murray Foote was not an employee of the SNP, but of the Scottish Parliament. Apparently the Corporate Body of the Scottish Parliament (a committee of MSPs) provides money to each political party to fund the central staff “supporting” the party’s MSPs, including spin doctors.
Parties have every right to campaign at their own expense and try to persuade us to vote for them, but I object fundamentally to party spin doctors being paid by the taxpayer to spread their lies and propaganda.
Welcome to the cosy world of the Scottish political class, where everything is cushy on the gravy train of flowing money, and the public are mugs.
As the SNP leadership election campaign proceeded, I realised that there are hundreds more paid SNP staff than I realised, 95% of them toiling away night and day to bundle continuity candidate Humza over the finishing line.
As the daily flood of twitter endorsements for Humza started to reach the bottom of the barrel, endorsements were tweeted out from people billed as “activists”.
I googled one of the “activists”, Doug Daniel, and found he is in fact full-time staff – again paid for by the Scottish Parliament. He is “communications and campaigns manager” to an MSP.
Now I don’t mind the public purse paying for MSPs to have secretaries and constituency caseworkers, but why on earth should the public pay for MSPs’ campaigners?
It is not just the SNP, of course. All political parties welcome the ever burgeoning gravy train, and seize the opportunity to employ each other’s families, their friends, thrusting young careerists and, to an astonishing degree, young people they fancy.
(The confidential report Nicola Sturgeon and Leslie Evans received on sexual harassment inside the Scottish Parliament contained over 200 allegations. They buried everything except one against Alex Salmond. There have since been numerous high profile cases of harassment by MSPs).
The SNP command the lion’s share of the money as the ruling party, and the direct political class expands and expands. Why Humza needs almost twice as many ministers as Alex Salmond did, and more than twice as many SPADs, is not immediately obvious other than to provide jobs for the faithful.
But the “direct” political class pales into insignificance compared to the massive cloud of government-funded positions in Scotland’s disproportionately large “third sector”. Pop into any bistro on Byres Road in Glasgow, and you will find it replete with people from NGOs or the “creative industries”, keeping their bills to submit to some Scottish Government branch or agency or funded organisation.
Sometimes one of these figures emerges into the daylight. HIV Scotland, the “national HIV policy organisation”, were in receipt of a grant of £270,000 per year. Its chief executive was Nathan Sparling.
Sparling is a good example of the career path available to the Scottish political class. He started off his taxpayer-funded campaign as a parliamentary assistant to Angus Robertson.
Robertson and Sparling
He then became Chief Executive of HIV Scotland – from which position he was forced to resign, and has just been charged with fraud. He is of course entitled to the presumption of innocence.
HIV Scotland has stopped operating and been closed down.
The interesting thing about this is that I cannot find any reaction from anyone – not the Scottish government who were funding them, not the HIV sufferer community, not the Terence Higgins Trust – bemoaning the closure of HIV Scotland. It is as though the “national HIV policy organisation” is not missed and was not actually doing anything useful at all.
A remarkable number of those organisations being funded by the Scottish government in this way are “policy organisations”, rather than actually delivering a service. The salaries in this part of the troughocracy are better than in the direct public service, with several effectively taxpayer-funded NGO chief executives earning substantially more than MSPs.
One remarkable effect of this system is that the Scottish government is constantly holding stakeholder consultations on policy with policy NGOs funded entirely by the Scottish government to promote the policies of the Scottish government. (You probably need to read that sentence twice. I needed to write it twice.)
One reason the Gender Recognition Reform measure has caused such political damage to the SNP is that the excessive ideological purity of the approach was continually reinforced at closed meetings between Scottish government officials and trans rights campaigning organisations funded by the Scottish government.
This kind of paid echo chamber explains how the mad, and since apparently abandoned by Humza, position of insisting that convicted rapists could self-identify and simply change sex, came to be adopted.
But my main point here is that the taxpayer is paying for swathes of trans rights campaigners. As it happens I am sympathetic in general to self-ID (though not for rapists). But I do not believe the public should be paying for this stuff.
This political-class gravy train in Scotland is massively disproportionate to the size of the country.
Gender reform is just one area where the Scottish government has wasted large amounts of money paying young activists substantial salaries to agree with them. You will find Scottish government-funded environmental groups advocating for Highly Protected Marine Areas. You will find swarms of the public funded self-righteous advocating to ban alcohol advertising.
The Scottish government estimates its grant support to the third sector at half a billion pounds.
Yes £500,000,000.
That is a stunning amount of patronage. Most of it is to excellent organisations doing very good work. But that still leaves huge scope for political patronage to policy and campaigning organisations.
Often of course third sector organisations are involved in both service delivery and policy work, including not just policy development but lobbying and campaigning. One such organisation is Rape Crisis Scotland.
Now as it happens I would support a very substantial increase indeed in government support for rape victims, though I would prefer it to be delivered via the NHS and local authorities rather than a highly politicised NGO.
I should also like to see a very large increase in resources, in personnel, training, finance and equipment, and above all priority, devoted by Police Scotland to rape cases.
Rape Crisis Scotland is almost entirely Scottish Government funded. In that circular policy making, its chief executive Sandy Brindley has played a key role in formulating and promoting Lady Dorrian’s proposals to abolish juries in sexual assault trials.
In an example of exactly the kind of highly paid circle jerk I am explaining, the official Jury Trials Working Group contains three third sector organisations funded by the Scottish government which accordingly support the abolition of juries – Rape Crisis Scotland, Women’s Aid Scotland and Victim Support Scotland.
The Scottish government do not fund any organisation that works for fair trials, so there is no NGO represented in favour of juries.
You would imagine that the highly remunerated CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, Ms Brindley, is a lovely person motivated by humanitarian concern, given that she devotes her life to campaigning for rape victims.
And yet an Employment Tribunal recently found that the Establishment hero Ms Brindley deliberately and persistently hounded a disabled woman out of her job at Rape Crisis. This is from the Scottish Legal News on the tribunal judgment:
In its decision, the Tribunal expressed concerns at the extensive role played by Ms Brindley throughout proceedings, commenting: “While the Tribunal was mindful that the respondent was a small mainly voluntary organisation, it seemed extraordinary that the chief executive of the organisation would make a recommendation that an employee be suspended, take part in a grievance hearing concerning that employee and then be present at the disciplinary and appeal hearings concerning that same employee where the employee was suggesting that the grievance and disciplinary proceedings ought to have been combined.”
It continued: “Ms Brindley appeared unable or unwilling to understand that her presence throughout both the grievance and disciplinary processes could have a bearing on the extent to which these were conducted in an impartial manner. It was clear to the Tribunal that Ms Brindley operated an invisible hand throughout both processes and her presence was not neutral.”
Assessing the respondent’s awareness of the claimant’s disability, the Tribunal said: “The respondent appeared to be of the view that in the absence of a formal diagnosis, then they were not obliged to consider whether there were any steps they ought to take in terms of the claimant’s condition. While such a position is of course wrong in law, the Tribunal was extremely surprised that an organisation such as the respondent, whose services were focussed on supporting women who had experienced trauma would adopt such a position.”
…The Tribunal concluded: “The disciplinary hearing was not fair. Further, the presence of Ms Brindley at every stage of the proceedings reinforced the Tribunal’s view that the dismissal of the claimant was predetermined. Ms Brindley was aware of the grievance raised by the claimant and the outcome and recommendations which had been made. However, she did not raise this with the disciplinary hearing as an alternative potential outcome, which the Tribunal found very surprising.”
The Tribunal was “extremely surprised” and Ms Brindley’s behaviour was “Surprising”. That is about as tough as language ever gets from an employment tribunal, but their opinion of Ms Brindley is extremely clear. She withheld information from a disciplinary hearing, and her “invisible hand” hounded a disabled woman out of a job.
I would, incidentally, be prepared to wager a sum that the £50,000 in compensation and costs that Brindley’s appalling behaviour cost Rape Crisis Scotland, will ultimately be met by public funds. Certainly not by Brindley.
Yet Sandy Brindley remains a Duchess in the enormous realm of Scottish government-favoured, public funded NGO’s, a star in the firmament of policy lobbyists with big taxpayer-funded salaries.
With hysterical levels of hypocrisy, Brindley, who broke all procedure against her employee, is still the Scottish government’s star authority on the requirements of justice in sexual assault cases.
Their jobs may not be in Politics with a capital P, but I would argue that Ms Brindley and Mr Sparling are prime examples of Scotland’s sprawling, public funded political class, excrescences of the vast patronage wielded by Holyrood.
Of course it extends beyond the third sector. Failed Scottish politicians easily find eye-watering highly paid positions in Scottish universities, for which they are in no sense qualified. Wendy Alexander, Kezia Dugdale and Stephen Gethins are all clear examples.
Arts funding in Scotland and the capricious patronage behind it requires not just a separate article, but a separate book. One theatre in Aberdeen not entirely unconnected to the Aberdeen Independence Movement received more government Covid relief funding than the entire independent music festival sector.
So whatever happened in SNP finances must be seen in this much wider context of the morally shrivelled political culture of Scotland, of the limited power but excessive patronage enjoyed by Scottish governments and of the widespread use of public money for personal advantage of the political class.
The devolution system is a moral sink. Scottish Labour was massively corrupt in its years in power, with good old fashioned brown-envelope corruption all over Scottish central and local government in the Labour years. It was worse than the SNP.
But what really killed off Scottish Labour’s years of power was the recognition by the public that the Scottish Labour political class were interested in their own careers entirely, and had zero real concern for the people of Scotland.
The problem is that all those careerists nowadays flock in to the SNP rather than Labour. The interests of the Scottish political class once again take priority over the interests of the Scottish people.
It is a direct consequence of the fundamentally flawed devolution system, which confers power of patronage with no real responsibility for the economy.
The underlying fact is that Scotland produces vastly more wealth for government in London than the amount which is returned to Holyrood. But the producers are diverse, whereas the portion returned is concentrated into a single channel of distribution, creating that power of patronage and corruption.
Thus we have this strange combination of a poor and exploited nation but a sated and self-satisfied political class. This kind of devolution is precisely how to buy off any Scottish leadership and draw the sting of popular demand for Independence.
That was of course Blair’s open and admitted goal in initiating the devolution project. And it works.
Humza Yousaf has exacerbated all this by specifically excluding from his government those who have some understanding of the supply side of the economy, particularly Kate Forbes and Ivan McKee, and filling his cabinet precisely with those who are interested in nothing but how to control funding to client groups.
Devolution is a trap. Working within the financial ruination that is Westminster economic policy, with no monetary and little fiscal control, suffering from hard Brexit and Tory austerity, it is impossible properly to run proper public services.
Of course Scottish education and the Scottish NHS are in a bloody terrible state. Because of the grossly mismanaged UK economy and Tory austerity, they are bound to be in a terrible state. But devolution makes the SNP take responsibility for the disaster made elsewhere, and it ends up defending the indefensible and arguing that it is not quite as terrible as London.
Under devolution the Scottish government will always get it in the neck for problems made in London. Devolution is a trap. The Scottish political class accept it, and furiously defend it, because it feathers their nest.
The only escape for Scotland is Independence. The Scottish political class are bought off by the corruption of devolution.
This scenario is familiar to every student of imperialism and post-colonial studies. There is always a nominally nationalist governing caste of collaborators sucking at the Imperial teat. Those collaborators always claim to represent and act in the interests of their nation.
The balance of resource flows always benefits the Imperial capital and disbenefits the colony, but enough is “graciously” dispensed to the local ruling caste to keep them sweet.
Scotland is not in any way unique. It is a sad old story. The good news is that the people always triumph in the end and throw off both the local collaborating political caste and the yoke of foreign rule.
That London yoke is onerous. It has impoverished Scotland for centuries, and of course current Tory Westminster corruption is several orders of magnitude worse than anything seen in Scotland. I have every sympathy for those wondering why the houses of Michelle Mone and dozens of other senior Tories who profiteered from Covid have not been turned over by police.
Scotland’s people need to move forward quickly to Independence. That will probably entail writing off the SNP.
Realising that devolution and its advocates are not friends to Independence is a key step to progress.
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Craig
I know there have been policy ideas and proposals for at least forty years to conserve the habitats and species severely damaged by various fishing practices. Do you recognise that problem and if so, what is your preferred policy (given your expertise in marine issues)?
It hardly need be said that I concur with everything Craig says about devolution being a trap. It is a point I have been making for some years.
Particularly potent is his depiction of a self-sustaining cycle of corruption that can only worsen over time. Much of that corruption is low-level and might even be considered trivial. This doesn’t lessen the problem, however, but rather allows the corruption to become ever more embedded and ingrained as it fails to attract attention. Until it does!
Perhaps now people will understand the reason for my futile and almost totally unsupported campaign for a referendum in 2018. I cannot claim to have foreseen specifically what would unfold. But it was clear as early as 2015/16 that the SNP would ‘go wrong’. All organisations do if they are not managed well. I had previously calculated that September 2018 was the earliest we could have a new independence referendum. With Brexit looming, this became the deadline.
It was useful to be able to argue that a referendum should be held no later than September 2018 due to the constitutional implications of Brexit as this meant I didn’t have to say much about my conviction that the SNP would eventually ‘go wrong’. That would not have gone down well at all. Besides, the Brexit argument was sufficient. It was clear to some of us that the process of taking the UK out of the EU would create opportunities for the British state to ‘roll back’ devolution and tighten its grip on Scotland. Unfortunately, I was correct in this. As we now see.
I was also right about the fate of the SNP, even if I made no public statement of my concerns ‘back then’. The party has ‘gone wrong’ in ways and to an extent that not even I imagined possible. Which may make it surprising that where I somewhat part company with Craig is when he talks of “writing off the SNP”. It is perfectly understandable that this is what many people would like to do. The idea of a fresh start – the tabula rasa – is always appealing. But caution is required. The SNP is the party of government. It will not be possible to restore independence absent the active participation of the Scottish Government. As things stand, the SNP will be the party of government for at least another three years and very probably another eight. Which gives rise to two questions.
Can we ‘write off’ the SNP without also writing off the Scottish Government?
Can we afford to wait even three years?
In response to the first of these i would say that it is certainly possible to imagine ways in which the SNP/Scottish Government might be brought down. It is less easy to see a way to do this which is credible in the world outside imagination. And less easy still to see a way in which it could be done safely. That is to say, without serious risk of losing the Scottish Parliament to the British parties and/or some form of direct rule from London. The British are hardly short of ideas (or options) on this front.
Responding to the second question I can do no better than refer you to the recent kite-flying exercise by Lord Frost. Was it merely a kite-flying exercise? Or was it a statement of intent? Frost may have been talking a load of “baloney” even according to some of his Tory/BritNat colleagues. But can we afford to dismiss this threat? Can we afford to gamble on that threat not being real and imminent – as I would insist it has been since the UK-wide Leave vote in 2016?
Which brings me to a final question. If the threat to the Scottish Parliament is real and imminent and there is no sure and safe way to replace the SNP as the party of government before we are hit by what is threatened, what options remain to us?
Dear Craig
I fell off my perch reading your latest , the union is collapsing.
In more ways than one.
What a shining light you are, to open up this corrupt band of rogues.
Cutting right through to the rotten core, even the judiciary, which has always been corrupt and corrupted in Scotland
It’s there as crowd control.
When you look at the relatives within and their lofty titles of English state deference, any one with a single cell, can spot it.
Saw your speech outside the embassy , for Julian Assange
Another bloody disgrace, why no one in our parliament speaks out against Julian’s illegal imprisonment.
More power to your elbow.
Onwards and upwards
????????????????
Thanks Craig, interesting article.
To be honest I usually don’t pay much attention to all your work on Scottish independence because I don’t feel especially moved by the issue. Given the weight of other problems in the world for me Scottish independence is a matter for the Scots people and I wish them well either way.
But I closely followed the Salmond trial and your involvement because of my interest in justice, corrupt or otherwise, and am of course interested in the recent SNP dramas.
I would add that I worked in local government in England and Wales for nearly 30 years and particularly in Wales local corruption was a by word and something I had some personal experience of. It would not be an exaggeration to say that one was laughed at by some higher-middle managers if one gave a damn about the interests of the public.
“one was laughed at by some higher-middle managers if one gave a damn about the interests of the public”. Another useful insight that I have feared is true for a long time.
“t would not be an exaggeration to say that one was laughed at by some higher-middle managers if one gave a damn about the interests of the public.”
In my experience, all organisations tend to end up being run for the benefit of their senior management and no-one else.
Five years was enough for me. ;O)
“One remarkable effect of this system is that the Scottish government is constantly holding stakeholder consultations on policy with policy NGOs funded entirely by the Scottish government to promote the policies of the Scottish government. (You probably need to read that sentence twice. I needed to write it twice.)”
So in effect, the taxpayer is funding NGOs to tell the Scottish government what they already know, one wonders how many of these bodies and NGOs are receiving taxpayers’ cash, and they only exist on paper or there’s only one person’s name associated with them.
Is it so much what they already know as what they want to hear? I suspect it is the latter.
Eye opening, I now understand the machinery of corruption much better. The last three years has exposed it for Westminster and now I see that like the iceberg there must be much more that we don’t see. I never guessed it was so bad. No wonder Jeremy Corbyn had to be totally defenestrated, you can’t have any honesty causing a problem for the troughocracy.
For any survival-minded troughocracy, honesty is the problem. History is replete with examples of this dynamic, the latest being Corbyn; independence-focussed Scots should bear this in mind when taking thought of how to address the issue. The Emperor’s New Clothes is a story taught to children, yet strangely, more resonant in our adult world than in any kindergarten.
Troughers trough, they do it everyday and that makes them good at it – in a shithouse rat sort of way.
Maybe if everyone in Scotland was able to join the troughocracy (gasp, Socialism) and benefit financially, it would then resemble Yugoslavia (where everyone worked on the trains or the buses or was in the army etc.) then we could be sure NATO would come along and break it all up. Problem solved (not).
Troughocracy for me but not for the thee.
Early Noughties, we were at a party where we met a woman who knew Scotland’s pre-devolution power network intimately and described in detail a multi-faceted elite whose corrupt self-interest transcended their face-value politics. It was a revelation and filled with enough detail to know it was reality – she completely explained Labour’s pre-devolution decades of inaction, they were completely, greedily enmeshed in this self-serving network of landowners, judiciary, police, civil servants, politicians, media, quangos etc.
We went home knowing Holyrood was doomed…
My uncle, Tory Tom, a migrant living in Stornoway, was against devolution because it would be another tier of government and nothing more. I was vaguely for it on the grounds that anything that weakened the Westminster regime was a good thing. Looks like I got the worst of all worlds.
One aspect of this thesis troubles me. There is undoubtedly a linkage between the political-class gravy bus (bus being > appropriate than train following that infamous Tweet) and Scottish universities, but to what extent is this controlled by Holyrood as opposed to Westminster?
The individuals cited are Wendy Alexander, Kezia Dugdale and Stephen Gethins.
Before getting into specifics let’s look at the apparatus that controls tertiary education in Scotland.
Are we to believe that the Education Committee of the Scottish Parliament micro-manage university appointments? Holyrood oversees the distribution of funds. How universities operate day-to-day is devolved. In the two decades since its launch, the Scottish Parliament has hardly been in the position to weave itself into the complex web of patronage that exists between the state and the tertiary education sector. Holyrood acts through the British Civil Service (there being no Scottish Civil Service).
Wendy Alexander, post politics, boarded the academic gravy bus South of the border (London Business School). This seems fair enough as her educational background is in managerial wonkery. Alexander’s Scottish positions are “upper management” with no teaching responsibilities. To be fair, she appears to have concentrated full-time on the education sector since being kicked out by the electorate in 2011.
Kezia “four salaries” Dugdale is a different matter. She entered the orbit of the University of Glasgow as Director of the John Smith Centre for Public Service after resigning from Holyrood in 2019. The JSCfPS operates as an associate of the University of Glasgow. The JSCfPS is a registered charity that never publishes its accounts. It hides under the umbrella of the university; “well, if the University of Glasgow is above board, then so must be all its associates”. The accounts of the University of Glasgow including “consolidated unincorporated” entities has an income of £930m. Now why an outfit that runs the strap line “Promoting Trust in Politics and Public Service” would purposefully hide the source of its funding, I leave to your imagination.
In 2022, Dugdale was made Professor of Practice in Public Service (a fact curiously omitted from her Wiki). Dugdale has no PhD and the citation of teaching experience is “assistant supervisor”. This has all the hallmarks of a bonus from Thames House. Why MI5 would deem a performance bonus appropriate for a court-certified cretin is baffling, but with a budget of £4 billion, they ain’t watching the pennies.
Stephen Gethins was taken in by the University of St Andrews, School of International Relations an indecently short time after losing his Westminster seat in 2019. Prior to joining the SNP as a SPAD, Gethins was employed (indirectly by the US State Department) at an outfit called NGO Links, running political influencing operations in the former Soviet republics. Gethins’ appointment at the University of St Andrews bears the fingerprints of Vauxhall Cross. Gethins has since acquired a PhD which seems reasonable given the time elapsed and the potential for him to have been teaching for three years (unless he was up to his old tricks in the former Soviet republic of Georgia).
Good comment as usual, Father, but with all due respect, I think that you (and/or the courts) are being unfair in describing Kezia Dugdale as a ‘cretin’ – unfair to the actual cretins that is, who, despite suffering from the deleterious cognitive effects of severe iodine-deficiency (as well as other deficiencies), could still generally manage to feed themselves and their families from the nutrient-poor soils of the Tyrolean Alps, something I don’t imagine KD could do, even if you furnished her with a lifetime’s supply of iodine pills beforehand.
I am aware of the universal misuse of the term cretin.
Perhaps my opinion of Dugdale is tinged by the green eyed monster.
I estimate the known income of the Dugdale / Gilruth hoosehold at £246k.
This is before the unknowns of weekly column in The Courier and monthly column in The Times.
They also rent out rooms in an Edinburgh property to a MSP.
The gravy bus may be morally repugnant, but it’s nothing if not luxurious.
Thanks for your reply Father. Don’t forget too that, despite pledging to give all of her fees for appearing on ‘I’m a Celeb…’ (circa £70k) to charity (specifically a charity that supports people suffering from the disease that her best friend died of), KD actually pocketed the lot.
@Vivian O’Blivion, the same Kezia Dugdale who pronounced on a Scottish Independence course that the Scottish general public were too stupid to understand or too petty to care about (light paraphrasing) constitutional matters?
Have re-read this article. It highlights something I’ve only ever seen elsewhere in the Scottish Review (it was a particular bugbear of the late Kenneth Roy) or on Robin McAlpine’s site: the incestuous and self-serving nature of the Scottish Establishment. It’s not a subject I’ve ever seen covered in print or the broadcast media. What I have seen celebrated in print is this:
* The strength of running Scotland is everyone who matters knows everyone else, which means you can shortcut the usual red tape with the personal touch.
Of course that also means:
* The weakness of running Scotland is everyone who matters knows everyone else, which means you can bypass the usual safeguards with the personal touch.
There’s really only two things an independent Scotland has to worry about.
1. relations with the rest of the UK,
2. making sure the feckers mentioned in this article don’t run it as their own personal fiefdom.
“2. making sure the feckers mentioned in this article don’t run it as their own personal fiefdom.”
I would say that it is highly likely that, if not the ones mentioned, some other feckers will run an independent Scotland, and they will probably be sympathetic to the similar feckers who run the UK.
…. Well, that’s my subscription earned for this month. ? Strong stuff Mr Murray, hear hear! (.. here here?)
I have a memory, admittedly hazy now, of Donald Dewar making no bones about the purpose of devolution during the phase of developing it. The intention to spike the guns of the growing independence movement. I don’t remember the exact electoral conditions of the time (97-2000) but it must have been apparent to the Labour party that their iron grip at all levels of Scottish politics was loosening and that of the SNP was increasing in support. I remember thinking that the parliament was a wonderful step forward and that Holyrood would be the wedge that would open and force open the door to independence. The rest is history. Serial failure. I had forgotten the optimism until recently that accompanied the start of the Holyrood adventure but the memory of Donald Dewar’s political aims has returned in the last few years and Holyrood now has the appearance of a great, artificially inflated, and barely functional administration. Looking at the detail of many controversies (ferries; smelters; seabed leases; A9, A96 M8 road projects; GRR) reveals a catalogue of breathtaking ineptitude and incompetence.
The urgent embrace of a very shaky transgenderism ideology was hugely politically inept, in that its very insecure and contested philosophical foundation suggested a policy of ‘wait and see’ (never mind the cautious/conservative population) would be more prudent – let other larger political entities make the errors and then proceed cautiously using lessons from elsewhere – to inform a policy area which contradicts the foundations of our laws and technical understanding over thousands of years.
The idea that Scotland could be in the vanguard of such an abrupt social evolutionary change, in a delicate and difficult non-intuitive collective (human) understanding of such fundamentals as sex, reproduction and identity and the legal principles that govern the matter seemed ludicrous and hubristic to a degree that defies credibility. In itself, this attachment to spurious ideology is very informative of the background quality of the individuals who had ascended through the political system.
I think the widespread adoption of this ideology in the SNP (and SGP) speaks volumes about the calibre of the people that have entered our devolved political system – largely opportunist bandwagon jumpers and highly strident zealots, easily bamboozled. The barriers to entry are low – the depth of understanding required is not a barrier. The weakness of the Scottish political structures has almost certainly emboldened factions within the general Scottish political environment to exploit this state of affairs. Many of these individuals are poorly read and have been notable for very narrow perspectives and low levels of integrity.
This mirrors the same situation that the Labour era was notable for: the levering of weak people into positions they were not able to sustain. Can this be an accident? It amazes me that certain individuals now prominent within SNP and gov circles are known to be easily manipulated and don’t have any of the characteristics of integrity and intellectual strength that should be the foundations of representation in a democracy.
This post raises many thoughts which will no doubt be explored over the next few days.
“It amazes me that certain individuals now prominent within SNP and gov circles are known to be easily manipulated and don’t have any of the characteristics of integrity and intellectual strength that should be the foundations of representation in a democracy.”
I don’t disagree, but I have to ask if there is a country in the world of which the same thing could not be said, as is said here of Scotland. (It’s not a rhetorical question, and I’m hoping that the answer is yes, but I don’t know of an example.)
OK i get your point and I too cannot think of any place with a good representative democracy. Bhutan may have some attributes but I believe it is a monarchy with absolute powers I supposed naively that Scotland might be a trailblazer in this respect but it has buckled under pressure and covert influences.
I used to think that the ideas of the late Murray Bookchin might have been an answer but I think it would be too difficult to operate according to his ideas in the context of the rampant consumerism and self interest that dominates our culture at the moment, to the exclusion of more benign ways of existing.
I think that a moment of reckoning is fast looming in the form of environmental breakdown when difficult choices will be forced on us. The trajectory of that process has been endlessly speculated about. At the moment the UK and its constituents are avoiding the hard questions and UK TORY government is implacably avoiding the topic with all its energy, because the remedies are in blank opposition to the neoliberalism we are captive to.
“…that should be the foundations of representation in a democracy.”
I think you’ve answered your conundrum. What democracy? ;O)
” the levering of weak people into positions they were not able to sustain. Can this be an accident? I”
No. Twice would be coincidence but there’s the LibDems and the Tories to consider as well.
“… As the SNP leadership election campaign proceeded, I realised that there are hundreds more paid SNP staff than I realised, 95% of them toiling away night and day to bundle continuity candidate Humza over the finishing line… ”
Not trying to be sarky, Craig, but do read the Denton’s document, if you haven’t already. It applies right across the board in all areas of politics, in every public institution, in all government-funded organisations, the Cicil Service, etc. It is pernicious. The Scottish government exhibits every one of the traits and recommendations of the Document. It is far, far more than simply gravy trains.
The Head of Rape Crisis Scotland employed a male (intact) to head up its Edinburgh centre – against the law. He lied comprehensively in his CV – also against the law. Nothing was done then or has been done since, and that larping male is still there, still trying to offer advice to traumatised women, traumatised by men, one of whom he is. She also led the shrill chorus against Alec Salmond, completely outwith her remit. She has spoken out ostensibly against women’s rights in favour of men’s rights. She has become an all-rounder go-to person for any and all comments on any and all topics and issues.
None of what has happened to the SNP could have happened or would have happened had the party (and the odious Greens) not been totally captured by the sanctimony and self-righteousness of the ‘woke’ faction, pushed, in the background, by Stonewall and its Scottish arms and funded from America. They are not daft wee boys and girls who want to play at being the opposite sex. They are highly dangerous cultural Marxists and Queer Theory proponents who decided to infiltrate the ruling party in Scotland before spreading their poison outwards to the rest of the UK and beyond. And, no, it’s not conspiracy theory. Check the facts, folks.
I despair that even some of our best and brightest still do not see it, blinded by human decency and the siren call of those transsexuals who went before them. This lot are not transsexuals in any way resembling the old-school ones, who, albeit they were not a threat to females because they were fully ‘transitioned’, nevertheless held the door open for this lot to sneak through. Enough. Unless we end this infiltration by the far left of every institution, we can kiss independence goodbye because it will be worth nothing if this lot take over – and they will move from the SNP to whichever party takes over from it, Unionist or Nationalist.
LornCal, what is a “cultural marxist”? I have just spent some time looking this term up and there seems to be as many definitions of the term as there people using it. I’ve spent most of my life hearing the term “Marxist”; vaguely assuming this meant something related to income distribution and the ownership of the means of production but never knowing more and feeling no urge to know. Now you tell me there are “cultural marxists”; so what do you mean by this?
Other than this phrase, your post is clearly enunciated and I am in no doubt of the direction of your thought.
The term “Cultural Marxism” refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory
Even less reason to doubt where LornCal is coming from.
Thanks for a definitive answer, Reza
No, not my interpretation, Reza. This manifestation of the cultural Marxists is the far left. I am of the Scottish, nationalist, broad church, soft left, not the right, but I abhor both the ultra left and the ultra right. I’m a democrat, I hope.
Both the ultra right and the ultra left (and I’m not referring to anti semitic anything in any shape or form) are the extreme ends of the left-wing and right-wing parties. The cultural Marxists, as I see them – and, as I said, it is my interpretation – is that they are hell-bent on overturning Western, democratic, liberal societies via an ideology, in this instance, that is primed to confuse and disrupt and undermine. I have done a fair amount of research into this ideology and its roots – and there is a wealth of information out there – and little that is happening now has been accidental.
I’m not saying that Western, liberal democracies are perfect – they are far from that – but I believe that they are the best we have that allows human existence in its manifold examples of a broad church approach. Again, that is changing as technology envelops our societies, but that is for another day. The ultra or far right is the extreme of the Tory party, while the ultra or far left is the extreme of the Labour party, but each is the opposite side of the same totalitarian coin, and the ultra left’s efforts inevitably ushers in the right, which grows more and more reactionary in response.
Under the influence of this ‘woke’ ideology – and its infiltration of the ruling Scottish political party (the centre of power) was no accident either, and, under its influence the SNP grew more and more authoritarian and top-heavy, cutting out the membership to a great extent, introducing all kinds of stonewalling techniques.
Cultural Marxist is less about monetary redistribution – although that is part of it, I suppose – as it is about the redistribution of ‘equity’ as opposed to equality. What they want is equity at every level – which is fundamentally impossible, while equality is a good principle to adopt. Equality of opportunity does not always – indeed, rarely – lead to equity. Only in very defined circumstances can equity work: equal pay for equal work, for example. If you apply it to everything, you will end up with grave inequality because some groups in society will have to have their rights removed or curtailed in order to satisfy equity for another. The perfect example is the ‘trans’ versus female rights. If men are also to be considered women, then the rights that women fought for over many, many years become worthless, yet that is what equity would mean in this area: inequality all over again for females.
So if it has nothing to do with Karl Marx why call it cultural marxism? Why not call it after who ever invented it. It just creates confusion for political ignoramuses like me – your posts seem full of passion but you are doing your words a disservice and lessening their power to persuade by including such shibboleths. The term makes me feel like I am being talked down because I don’t know anything about Marxism. Is this your purpose? I sense it isn’t, but?
I would live happily at the bottom of any society that was equitable – which I would descibe as no one getting shafted – literally or figuratively – that’s just my very crude definition of an equitable society. I am aware that philosophically the issue is much more complicated, but I leave it to others to cogitate about.
I live in dense working class inner city area and the parents round here take no shit off anyone. They banded together and they collectively tell the schools what the score is. Maybe things are worse where you are? Surely to most people, the idea of men in women’s changing rooms is beyond crazy. I have yet to hear a logical explanation why all women should suffer because some men feel a certain way.
You are far from being a political ignoramus, useless eater. Your posts are always succinct. No, I am not a Marxist although I will allow that Marx got a lot right. They are cultural Marxists’ because they apply Marxist ideas to society at large, across the board. I also was born into a working-class environment and I certainly take on board what you are saying, and I do agree that, from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, working-class life was more than bearable.
That was as a direct result of the war and the men who fought and came back, refusing to be fobbed off with second best, and the women who kept the home front going, and who were not prepared to accept second best either. However, we can look back on the working class through rose-tinted spectacles: a lot of domestic abuse went on; a lot of husbands and fathers (by no means all) kept back a large part of their wages and spent it on drink. Women were hardly subject to equality or even equality, and working-class politics have always been edged with small ‘c’ conservatism.
Equity would mean a ruthless redistribution of everything, which, as I said, is impossible to sustain without great inequality. Human beings can be given equality of opportunity – and should – but they cannot expect equity because we are not all the same. Marx himself was notoriously dismissive of his wife, leaving all the domestic chores to her – hardly equity. Just as the wealthy require a ready supply of ‘servants’ to do all the dirty and hard work, so did, and probably still does, the working class.
They are very often female, and childbirth and child-rearing creates even more inequality via biological sex roles as women become less able to work and earn money, and lose out on the best-paying jobs and promotions. I am in favour of women being able to raise their children, but we do not really have the societal structures in place to enable them to do both child-rearing and work efficiently and without penalty. In other words, you can’t have it all ways.
Yet, this is exactly what ‘trans women’ want: to be women, but to still have all the in-built advantages of being men. For example, the late Jan Morris, an employee of the BBC had no reduction in his salary when he ‘transitioned’, yet every one of his female colleagues earned very much less than ‘she’ did. I do not believe that he/she ever spoke up on behalf of the women, who, only very recently, were awarded equal pay (actually, equity, or parity, in this instance – equal pay for equal work).
True equity between males and females is impossible because of the disadvantage that childbirth bestows on females – unless we reach a point where children are grown in labs and raised by non-human drones. A form of this – the kibbutz – was pioneered for child-raising in Israel, but abandoned because it proved to be a failure in this area. Only a complete overturning and total destruction of society as we know it would make ‘cultural Marxism’ possible, just as the same would be required to make Marxism work (neither would, in reality, given the human experience, because there would always be ‘losers’ – almost inevitably females in both instances). That is why it is called ‘cultural Marxism’ as opposed to monetary Marxism. Not having a go at Marxism. No system that humanity has devised works for everyone.
LornCal
What feature of this infiltration strikes you as being ‘far left’?
If it’s anything to do with the security services, in the manner suggested by Vivian O’Blivion above, it’s unlikely to be far left.
It is far left in the sense that that is from where it emanates, from the equity warriors, but, even as it pushes for equity, it creates inequality, and it also ushers in a right-wing reaction to it. The women’s organisations fighting this stuff are not right-wing; they are fighting for female existence and rights. The far right response to the far left is always reactionary, used as an excuse to bring in more and more draconian measures. The SNP fell into the trap, as it appears to step into so many traps of its own making, the S35 challenge just being the latest.
The far left pushes for equity and creates inequality, provoking the right. It knows it is doing this but refuses to learn the lessons. Each is as bad as the other and just as totalitarian in outlook. Putting the power of the porn industry aside, and the easy access to extreme porn today, all ’empires’ and societies disintegrate in the same way: extreme and perverted forms of sex in the general population (usually of males, as now) herald the impending collapse.
Prohibitive laws (those against PUBLIC, as opposed to private, sexual self-indulgence, which, in liberal societies is no one’s businesses unless harm comes of it) become a target and calls for their destruction are made – precisely what is happening now, too. Also, the young are deliberately confused and used, as is happening in our schools with ‘gender’ as opposed to ‘sex’ being offered as the norm. All public sector Scottish schools, I believe, are subjected to the Scottish ‘trans’ ideology and parents are basically excluded from the process of ‘gender identity’ of their own children.
I’m not trying to be alarmist. I am telling it as I see it (and as many, many others see it). The UK will collapse because these are the signs that it is collapsing already: we have swallowed this bilge like thirsty camels at a watering hole in the desert; and it means to subvert the entire West, before it moves on to China (gender clinic already established there), et al. Its roots are, indeed, in the corporatist, global economy, funded by American billionaires (all this may be checked) but it is of the left, the far/hard left, which always, but always, does the groundwork for the right.
Ah, but you are being alarmist. The number of transwomen said to be invading women’s spaces is minimal, most of whom are chemically castrated by hormones, far far less than the number of women in my institute alone daily invading the supposedly safe space of the men’s toilets. But we’re not supposed to complain.
And you completely miss the real problem of transgenderism these days, which has been the vast numbers of women in the gender clinics (100x the number of men) seeking treatment for transition to male. It was a problem that was poorly, and wrongly, treated in the Tavistock. Teenagers are not adults, and shouldn’t be given life-changing, permanent treatments, which they may well regret later.
None of which has anything at all to do with the far left. Indeed “cultural Marxism” doesn’t seem to have any meaning at all, other than as a term of abuse for people the right wing don’t like.
My understanding was that “cultural Marxism” was a crafty anti Semitic term used by conservatives, centrists and the faux left. Marx was Jewish of course, and historically many left wing activists (like Rosa Luxemburg and Ralph Miliband) were also Jewish. Jews were regarded as suspiciously intelligent, educated and politically engaged, usually on the left. Hence the supposed slur.
” The number of transwomen said to be invading women’s spaces is minimal, most of whom are chemically castrated by hormones, far far less than the number of women in my institute alone daily invading the supposedly safe space of the men’s toilets.”
Given that, despite the coverage given to such issues, this is the first I’ve heard of this, forgive me if I am a little sceptical. Some evidence (please, not The Guardian or Telegraph or Daily Mail) would help.
“But we’re not supposed to complain.”
Sez who?
Sorry, Johnny, but I do not believe that this infiltration has anything to do with the security services or with the British State. This is very much bigger than either, and certainly far bigger than Scotland. Every country in the West is now being infiltrated by this ‘woke’ lobby. The smaller, or secondary, countries were the first to fall, then it moved on to the bigger ones: Canada to the States; Scotland to the UK; New Zealand to Australia, and so on, albeit the large entities did have their own, initially less radical, homegrown versions. The threat is to all, not just Scotland.
What a load of hysterical nonsense.
Countries have ‘fallen’ to the ‘woke lobby’? Indeed?
Are they currently lying in ruins? Formerly proud citizens, now dressed in rags (at least, the survivors), as they scurry among the rubble of their former cities?
Doubtless you were heartened by Kid Rock, blasting away at Bud Lite beercans with an AK-47, because the tranny Dylan Mulvaney has a deal with them.
Personally, I cannot think of a single problem this ‘woke’ culture has caused me, let alone threatened my entire country, less still likely to bring down civilisation.
The best you could come up with seems to be a male BBC employee who transitioned, but retained his male privilege of a higher salary. Laws already exist to mandate equal pay for equal work, and your lot were screaming at the time that _that_ was going to be the end of civilisation.
Global map of every country that has escaped rule by London. As far as I’m aware not one has ever considered it a mistake and wanted to go back.
https://twitter.com/amazingmap/status/1647289451750604801?s=20
The ruling cabals may not have ever wanted to go back once they found their feet at a superior trough. Plenty of the average citizens did, as they found the infrastructure and security crumble around them.
You’re saying the love for British rule among the colonial masses and wretched of the earth is underappreciated?
Reza, the “Bwana” is correct – you are just moaning.
“Bwana” can I have my daily whipping now, please?
They shall never take Rhodesia from you “bwana”
Just to add a further point, Craig, which supports your depiction of the absurd use of patronage in order to create a fictional consensus for ill-considered policy. The large payments made to tiny pressure groups, often explicitly set up for the purpose, in order to claim support, and incorporate their ‘research’, has resulted in those SNP approved groups exerting influence way beyond their dubious and unevidenced claims to represent sectors of society. As Iain Lawson has detailed, the SNP changed their internal processes so that those very same people were parachuted on to the NEC and other bodies, put up as election candidates over long serving party stalwarts, and generally treated as conduits for the imposition of policy over the heads of members and the public.
It is an extraordinary use of patronage and the payroll in order to force conformity to the leaders’ clique as well as silencing criticism or debate, or even questioning. It is a classic strategy of demagogues – use patronage to make everybody around you dependent on your and your favour, ensuring loyalty, silence and the expulsion of any threats to your power. Only a complete overhaul of the chains of accountability, transparency and accountability can change it. No Scottish administration should need the astonishing amount of paid advisers, PR people, and galaxy of flunkeys that Sturgeon created in her image.
Good post Ian
” the SNP changed their internal processes so that those very same people were parachuted on to the NEC and other bodies, put up as election candidates over long serving party stalwarts, and generally treated as conduits for the imposition of policy over the heads of members and the public.”
All of which neutralises the SNP as a threat to the integrity of the British State. Perhaps some people who want to preserve the integrity of the British State have had a hand in this. Just a wild stab in the dark.
If the SNP changed their internal processes were the membership asleep at the time? Perhaps if they were conspiracy theorists they would have seen it coming.
>> The good news is that the people always triumph in the end and throw off both the local collaborating political caste and the yoke of foreign rule.
But they don’t though, do they? The most that happens is that one set of scumbags gets replaced with another.
“…..one set of scumbags gets replaced with another.”
If this was true we would still be back in medieval times, tugging our forelocks. Progress is real but gradual, punctuated by violent bursts of induced political change, often two steps forward, one step back but the arc of history is clear on this issue – at least to me.
Have faith and never dwell in despair; as the vengeful basilisk Margerat Thatcher once said “There is no allternative”
“Progress is real but gradual”
Unfortunately, so can regress be. We have already regressed to late C18th levels of governmental corruption and many of the gains for the common people after the two world wars that were won after the two world wars when a significant number of them had been trained to kill, have already been lost. Inequality is heading back to levels not seen since the C19th and there is no prospect of any shake-up that will halt the process.
I’m not sure we have regressed quite that far; the old rotten boroughs were a highly specialised solution, to a very particular state of affairs. As far I recall, some of these poltical constituencies had very, very few voters, possibly even none. We are not there yet.
“..there is no prospect of any shake-up that will halt the process.”
We will have to disagree here; when I look out my window I see the inverse of the above statement. The “process” of things being shook up is already well entrained and I see a new world being born in front of my very eyes, you say tomato and I say to-mato…….
The electoral process may have been improved, with candidates no longer bribing voters, but the party system means that the process of government is much worse. Back then, speeches had a function: to sway MPs to vote for your motion. There were no party whips, but the government of the day was not averse to buying votes when it needed to. That was the sort of corruption I was talking about, also the sort of patronage that Craig writes about in his post.
“I see a new world being born in front of my very eyes, ”
So do I, but not in the UK.
Keep your eyes peeled, you may yet see what I see and if you don’t who gives two hoots – it is all merely opinion anyway, so no loss to either party.
I thought the original comment was referring to Craig’s decription of decolonisation – which was and is a global phenomena not a British one.
“I thought the original comment was referring to Craig’s decription of decolonisation – which was and is a global phenomena not a British one.”
So did I, but you have to admit that it was fairly common that the colonists (one set of scumbags) were often replaced by a repressive dictatorship (another set of scumbags). What we call democracy doesn’t really work even in the country that invented it and that’s after hundreds of years of fine-tuning. It’s a bit much to expect it to work at once on a country on which it is imposed after centuries of having different systems of government.
In the field of evolutionary biology a theory was developed in the recent past called “punctuated equilibrium”. One definition is
“Punctuated equilibrium is a theory that states that evolution occurs primarily through short bursts of intense speciation, followed by lengthy periods of stasis or equilibrium. The model postulates that nearly 99% of a species’ time on earth is spent in stasis, and change happens very quickly.”
According to this theory then, the evolutionary process is not a gradual drip-drip-drip but one of highly uneven rates of genetic change.It is my belief that we are going through one of these “..short bursts of intense speciation..” in this present moment.
” but you have to admit that it was fairly common that the colonists.. were often replaced by a repressive dictatorship..”
Yes, what of it? The point is that the locals could say “she/it/he (delete where appropriate)may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” That surely is the relevant point concerning decolonisation, no?
I ask again, why mention Britain when the context was the whole wide world?
“What we call democracy..”, I call oligarchy.
Tomato, to-mato?
German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock was castigated for her lack of maths in demanding that any approach from President Putin could not be entertained until he turned 360 degrees.
However this article shows how the political process can indeed operate as a closed 360 degrees system. If independence is the best way of breaking into that then bring it on as quickly as possible.
Isn’t the behaviour you describe typical of all political organisations or should I say organisations run by politicians. Once elected their only goal seems to be re-election. Look at all the western democracies, US, UK, France etc. elections always end the wishes and voices of the electorate. The quangos, the NGO public institutions all run by the ‘great and good’ and unaccountable to the public. The odd resignation is a form of human sacrifice to divert scrutiny from the passengers on the gravy train. Devolved institutions are more visible but reflect the reality of the political culture they inherit. Electoral reform and coalition governments don’t seem to make a difference. Perhaps, reducing the electoral cycle might provide a chance for change
Sturgeon’s spell is broken and people are seeing both her leadership in perspective, and the SNP’s apparatchiks for what they are. In the cold light of Humza’s new dawn, few are liking what’s being revealed.
One of the unwritten rules of politics is…never criticise the electorate…but I’m not a politician so that’s irrelevant. It’s increasingly clear, that Scottish pro-independence supporters really screwed up by mindlessly giving both votes to the SNP. Alba could and should be poised as a viable alternative, and had the list vote been leveraged – as this very blog urged – they would be. The SNP’s #BothVotesSNP campaign will now likely result in the Scottish Labour party; a party that under this leadership is to the right of Jim Murphy, Kezia Dugdale and even Tony Blair, being the main beneficiaries of this SNP turmoil, and with it a possible SNP vote share collapse. To see independence slip from the grasp of supporters simply due to mindless voting is both stupid and tragic in equal measure. And if the SNP are facing a long electoral decline, it could be decades before electoral conditions are ripe again. Assuming a Holyrood majority will simply come around again, could be akin to waiting for your football team to gain top flight promotion, only for twenty years to pass.
This SNP unravelling obviously has implications for England too, with a general election likely in May 2024. Scotland could hand a deeply unappealing, right-wing reactionary Starmer-led Labour party, a majority, and thus allow Streeting and his private healthcare financiers to run riot with the NHS in England.
The conflicted “mental health” charities in England are often pathetic at actually understanding/representing/delivering for people with psych/neuro diversity (broad sense). As often is the almighty underfunded NHS and the spidery network of private individuals claiming to be “therapists” for anything under the sun. Yet in order to help some people the system is almost prepared to ban words signalling what sex someone is, in the way that would be needed by most people in order to keep within their own sexual orientation.
I think a common theme is the constant gap between evolutionary background and social science. Partly for good reasons but partly for bad reasons.
I was going to mention the same thing, but didn’t because I was afraid it would be too far off-topic, and it’s such a hobby horse of mine. (If I weren’t so depressed, I’d write a book about it!)
Another subject I wanted to comment on, but was also afraid might be too far off-topic, is the apparent disparity in the treatment of State pensioners between Scotland, where they generally have to pay large Council Tax bills, and England, where they are protected by some sort of statute from having to do so, even though for everyone in England except pensioners, payment levels have been left to the discretion of local authorities ever since the abolition of Council Tax Benefit and its replacement by Council Tax Reduction (which in England is also known as Council Tax Support), some time around 2012 or 2013.
I only learned of the disparity recently from someone I know who lives in Edinburgh (and who, at my suggestion, went to see Craig leaving Saughton!), and I’m still a bit hazy about the details. I’m sorry if I’m going on too long about it; also if I’ve got any of the facts wrong. I still find it hard to believe, and indeed I hope I turn out to be mistaken.
I cynically suspect that pensioners in England are protected because they form the backbone of the dominant Conservative party.
I’m surprised that nobody in Scotland seems to be up in arms about this. One line of propaganda seems to be that pensioners need to be reassured that their pensions are not threatened by the prospect of independence for Scotland, and the emphasis seems to be on how mean England is, because of the UK state pension being so much lower than in other countries (except South Africa).
One Scottish government Web page (https://www.gov.scot/news/help-with-council-tax-bills/) even has the nerve to boast, “The Council Tax Reduction (CTR) scheme is unique to Scotland and helps people on low incomes save an average of £750 a year on their council tax bill. Those eligible can also save up to 35% on their water and waste charges.” – thus blithely reversing the actual direction of the financial disparity!
Most State Pensioners in England still have to pay Council Tax in full, Twirlip (although they can get a 25% discount if they’re living alone). It’s those on Pension Credit that don’t have to pay any.
The State Pension is much more generous in France, for example, than the UK – but, as Macron knows, that state of affairs will soon become completely unsustainable. Anyway, is it just me who finds it quite amusing watching leftists and anarchists trashing French cities in order to convince the authorities to transfer even more money confiscated from landless workers to the home-owning bourgeoisie?
Sorry about the depression. If you’re not already, I recommending taking pills, these pills: multivitamins & minerals (1 per day); vitamin D (25 micrograms, 1000 IU) (1 per day, especially in winter); omega-3 fish/cod liver oil capsule (1000 milligrams) (1 per day) or 15 grams per day of milled flaxseed if you’re vegetarian/vegan (it has to be milled or it won’t be properly absorbed). Also going for longish walks (especially when the sun’s shining) should be beneficial, particularly at this time of year.
“..as Macron knows, that state of affairs will soon become completely unsustainable..”
Yes as long the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; however if the rich became slightly less rich, it would be eminently sustainable.
It’s not so much that the rich are getting richer, but how they are doing so. In the C19th, by and large, the rich got rich by adding value. Now we have financial capitalism where every penny gained for the rich is a penny lost to the poor, because finance adds no value. We have ended up in a large scale version of Mark Twain’s apocryphal village where everyone survived by taking in each other’s washing. That’s why “that state of affairs will soon become completely unsustainable”.
“.. by and large, the rich got rich by adding value..”
The “value” they added was produced by the traffic in slaves, the traffic in opium on a intercontinental scale and wars of colonial appropriation. Since these resource transfers are no longer available to the degree they once were, we have “financial capitalism” which is merely the same ideology applied to the home country.
Apparently, a rate of return of 6% per annum is required by capital to maintain it’s own existence.
“..every penny gained for the rich is a penny lost to the poor..”
This is just as true of capital’s activites in the 19th century; the only difference being back then the victims were the indigenous Africans, Asians, Americans and Australians. That is quite a list, no?
It is quite odd to hear global rapine decribed as “…adding value…”; though I suppose, they would say that wouldn’t they?
Therefore I conclude if the rich became slightly less rich, pensions and a decent retirement age would be eminently sustainable. Do we agree now or shall I go on?
“It is quite odd to hear global rapine decribed as “…adding value…”;”
That’s because I wasn’t talking about global rapine. Sure there was a lot of zero-sum gain, just as there is now, but it wasn’t all zero sum. A good deal of wealth was created for rich and poor alike by manufacturing or transporting things that people wanted at a price they could afford. The Industrial Revolution, remember that?
“This is just as true of capital’s activites in the 19th century; the only difference being back then the victims were the indigenous Africans, Asians, Americans and Australians. ”
They were victims, largely, of land grabs by the colonists. That wasn’t the only thing that capital financed, by a very long way.
You need captive markets to sell all those manufactured goods – without these you ain’t got nothing, unless you count useless widgets as useful. This is why india and China were the alpha and omega of Empire. We didn’t colonise China, we raped it and created a 100 million heroin and morphine addicts along the way. That is a whole lot of free money as long as you don’t mind the tens of millions of dead bodies – which capital didn’t and doesn’t – these corpses are known, in the trade as “externalities” – nice word for a dirty business.
“Externalities occur when the production or consumption of a good, causes an impact on third parties not directly related to the transaction.”
“They were victims, largely, of land grabs by the colonists.”
But Bayard whose colonists, eh? That is the question. They weren’t German or French, were they? They were from the UK. The colonies did what they were told, until they didn’t. The white colonies benefitted from “Imperial Preference”, the non-white colonies were raped and appropriated, it is a very well-known phenomena, particularly to the victims.
Therefore I conclude if the rich became slightly less rich, pensions and a decent retirement age would be eminently sustainable. Do we agree now or shall I go on?
What is your problem with decent pensions and early retirement ages?
“You need captive markets to sell all those manufactured goods ”
What, today, is China’s captive market?
“We didn’t colonise China, we raped it and created a 100 million heroin and morphine addicts along the way.”
Before the West ran out of silver, fortunes were made from the fair trade of tea from China. The fact that some scumbags then began to replace silver with opium does not negate that fact. Not all fortunes were or are made simply by taking from others.
“They weren’t German or French, were they? They were from the UK”
I suggest you do a little homework. Yes, there were German colonies in Africa, as there were Belgian, Portuguese and Italian ones. Most of north west Africa was colonised by the French (why do you think they still speak French?) except for the bit that belonged to Spain. That’s just Africa. The French, Spanish and Russians also colonised large parts of North America and the British hardly got a look in in South America.The USA, Spain and Germany also colonised the Pacific and south-east Asia and the Japanese colonised large parts of China.
“Therefore I conclude if the rich became slightly less rich, pensions and a decent retirement age would be eminently sustainable. Do we agree now or shall I go on?”
For pensions and a decent retirement age to be sustainable, the poor need to become richer. That does not necessarily involve the rich becoming poorer, except when you have an extractive economy, where there is no new wealth created and one man’s gain has to be another man’s loss. Due to the replacement of industrial capitalism by financial capitalism, that is the way that most western nations are heading. It doesn’t have to be. The increasing disparity in wealth between rich and poor is a symptom, not a cause of the malaise. Getting rid of the symptoms doesn’t cure it.
Thanks for your reply UE. I’m afraid that to achieve an equitable, sustainable future for the vast majority of people in the Western world, it will take more than just the rich becoming slightly less rich. The problem is the wealth is becoming more and more concentrated (mainly accruing to the over-65’s), and younger, poorer people are being prevented from creating new wealth for themselves. As for France, even in the unlikely event that the Socialists regain power anytime soon, expecting around 30 million working people on average salaries of 30,000 euros to support 20 million pensioners with average state pensions of 20,000 euros per year from age 62 – as well as paying for schools, hospitals and everything else – is for the birds.
By the way, British merchants didn’t kill tens of millions of Chinese people by selling opium to China because it’s very difficult to fatally overdose by smoking it – people pass out before they stop breathing. Also, Imperial Preference led to a tariff regime that favoured colonies of the British Empire (both white & non-white) over the rest of the world. Finally, in a low-inflation environment, a 6% rate of return on capital is perfectly sustainable.
To listen to you two defend the superrich is most amusing!
I am in agreement, you should go on.
(On depression: I’ve tried a few of those remedies, but I’d better not go off on a tangent about it! The topic of the “mental health” system in general is genuinely political – and a massive scandal – but it’s hard to find a proper place to discuss it.)
On Council Tax: perhaps, then, it’s not that State pensioners in Scotland are particularly hard done by (hence the lack of an outcry), but rather that I am particularly fortunate in the borough where I live, because I am not on Pension Credit, but nevertheless I do get full Council Tax relief. (It seems to be calculated by the Council using a similar or identical formula to the one used for Pension Credit.)
I’m sorry about the digression, which seems to be even further off-topic than I thought at first.
Twirlip maybe start one of those forum “thingies” that Craig Murray provides for further discussion of topics raised on the main page. I would both be interested and believe I could contribute, having great experience personally and socially of the issues of mental health. I would do it myself but as yet I don’t know how the trick is done.
Thanks for your reply Twirlip. I’ve investigated further into Council Tax reductions and it turns out that councils largely have carte blanche over who they offer discounts to. In most UK council areas, people of pension age with less than £16,000 worth of savings and/or property (usually people on Pension Credit) get a 100% discount – but people who are unemployed with no savings, and were getting just £75 a week on Universal Credit etc (less if under 25), have to pay a proportion of it. (The highest I’ve come across is Leeds where they’re expected to pay 25% – a third of what a single person in a similar property but with a well-paying job has to pay – but then there are plenty of robbing bastards round there, with the council seemingly being no exception.)
In general, I’d say Scots do quite well out of Council Tax: six of the ten lowest-charging UK councils are in Scotland. (The rest are in London, the second-lowest being Wandsworth where my brother lives – £800 a year for Band D. That’s pretty nice, but then houses round there generally cost upwards of half a mill).
Even if taking the supplements that I mentioned in my previous comment hasn’t helped with your mental health, it’s worth continuing to take them as they’ll very likely be helping with your physical health.
The layers and layers of troughers via NGO’s, Universities and other dubious bodies that are making a good living for doing virtually nothing but reinforcing the SNPs mantra, the web is vast and deep, and I was shocked when I imagined the sheer size of it.
It’s going to be difficult to cut such a huge network of troughers used to money for nothing from the public purse; in my opinion the corruption is so vast that some of it will never see the light of day.
But it all begins with removing the gatekeepers in the SNP.
It’s not too dissimilar to the giant palettes of cash dropped by transport carrier planes in Iraq, Afghanistan & Ukraine. 95% disappeared into thin air. Small portions of it eventually traced to condo developments in Dubai, Algarve etc.
You mean like this.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/trading-with-the-enemy
As for Scotland I’m flabbergasted at the amount and depth of corruption in such a small country, of course the country is treated as a colony by Westminster, and, and it’s usual for the local colony’s government to come to some sort of arrangement with the coloniser’s government that includes widespread corruption which is tolerated at great expense to the locals, as long as the status quo remains in place.
You’re right and they have many more suckling off the teet in Scotland than in Ukraine. They need the graft to be spread as widely as possible.
Bourgeoisie
So what you’re trying to say is that everything is tickety-boo in Scotland the Politically Corrupt?
I heard recently that AI has been applied to the human voice, with startling results. Illness, in all of its multifarious manifestations, is diagnosable by having a robot listen to a sample of your voice. Immediately, the government realised they could end the sacred doctor patient-relationship, saving billions and making the NHS a very attractive proposition to the carpetbaggers, whose articles of association stipulate the only legal consideration they must obey is delivering “value” to their shareholders. Apparently, the AI is infallible, so whether you have scrofula, syphylis or shingles “it” will know. No more bunking off work or school with food poisoning – progress isn’t always a blessing but you all already knew that, didn’t you?
In the clandestine, rarified world of black ops, wet-work and plausible deniabilty, the maelstrom of “events, dear boy events” is kept from inferno and collapse by polygraph machines or if you prefer the more the prosiac rendering, lie detectors. Their widespread use by the security state explains how lies can leveraged and weaponised without threatening the wielders of this infernal method. MacMillan’s “events dear boy….” are synonymous with the popular, contemporary term “narrative control”. There has been no discussion regarding the wider use of this “truth technology” in society at large yet with the advent of second generation AI; this discussion can no longer be put off. If “it” can tell you have leprosy, after seconds of your speech, “it” certainly will be able to discern that you are a lying mofo; maybe a mobile app, something like a guitar tuner app.
So, imagine a political party called, hypothetically, something like the Anti Lying Bastards Associates party. This party could embrace new technology and make all of its representatives submit to open, public lie detector test of a very basic nature. At the constituency level this could presented as an anti-corruption jamboree – a child friendly auto-de-fe, complete with whelk stalls (to boost the local economy). We wait, with baited breath; our representative passes the test with flying colours, hurrah they are not bent! A large celebration ensues, many over-indulge their favoured poison. The festivities persist until the wee small hours; democracy is genuinely celebrated at the constituency level and in the morning, hag-ridden by hangovers of biblical proportions, we could hazily assert our good fortune that we didn’t live in North Korea, or America or Britain, where democracy is a sham. Just a thought.
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Frim HIGNFY:
The Treasurer for the SNP == “The Dundee Fruitcake”.
Anyways, while Sturgeon was FM there were 3 camps – the pro-Sturgeon, anti-Sturgeon and the majority probably who just cared about Indy – whether for or against. Now she’s gone there’s no reason to continue the feuds, though a small number will still cling on like clingfilm. Which often doesn’t stick where it’s supposed to. Kind of like fibreglass, frankly.
And Yousaf seems more interested in by-elections and just about anything else, so Indy isn’t on his list of interests for the forseeable. Look at his twitter and see if you can find the word.
Which means now is the time for open discussion rather than partisanship.
It’s a hugely depressing piece, insomuch as there are no easy solutions to this institutional corruption, corruption that grows like moss, when a single party and/or leader has uncontested power for too long. Single party English councils that rarely to never change hands are full of stories of awarded-contract nepotism; backhanders to councillors and other assorted bribery and corruption. I’ve long favoured PR for English council elections, as power sharing would go some way to disinfecting these corrupt fiefdoms.
Similarly, much of the SNP’s current malaise, seems down to a lack of internal party democracy and transparency with members. Kate Forbes is absolutely correct in urging Yousaf to take this crisis very seriously, and be seen to be making major changes. This is potentially an existential danger for the party. A sheltered clique around Sturgeon seemingly ran the SNP in their own interests, as if it were their own personal property; indeed Peter Murrell had to be prised out, and Sturgeon seemed highly involved in wanting to avoid scrutiny and transparency. The rot is always from the top.
” I’ve long favoured PR for English council elections, as power sharing would go some way to disinfecting these corrupt fiefdoms.”
The easiest way of making local councils more representative would be to change to multi-seat wards, but leave everything else the same.
English metropolitan districts – the most obvious corrupt fiefdoms – have long had multi-seat wards. In the vast majority – the councils holding elections by thirds – only one seat per ward is available at each election. Even where there is a whole council election, multi-seat wards do not produce more representative councils. If there are, say, three seats, each party fields three candidates and every voter has three votes. If the three candidates are in the top three places, the party wins all three seats. That’s how FPTP works.
Split votes do happen, especially if one candidate has a personal following. Multi-seat wards also make local politics less confrontational, because if you can see that you might pick up the second or third vote you have less reason to campaign negatively against the front-runner. Split votes though are not PR and not an acceptable substitute for it.
“Even where there is a whole council election, multi-seat wards do not produce more representative councils.”
That is because “every voter has three votes.” Multi-seat wards only produce a more representative council if every voter has only one vote. Three votes for three seats is simply FPTP unchanged: incumbent ruling parties can field as many candidates as seats and be sure of winning them all. If every voter has but one vote, parties cannot field more than one candidate without running the risk of splitting the vote and losing to a party that fields a single candidate, or an independent.
In that scenario, what wins are the three most popular opinions, but the result does not automatically reflect by how much they are popular. In a three-seat ward with four candidates, one (perhaps incumbent) candidate could poll 70% and three candidates 10% each. To prevent this, the party would need to field an additional candidate in the hope of both polling 35%. Unaided, voters would have no way of guessing which one to vote for to ensure both are elected, so the party would have to canvass for different candidates in different parts of the ward. That could have some benefits in making local politics very local. Different socio-economic zones could be targeted by candidates representing different shades of opinion within the party. Over time, parties would work out which wards were worth the risk of multiple candidates and which were not.
“Similarly, much of the SNP’s current malaise, seems down to a lack of internal party democracy and transparency with members.”
And yet they used to have lots of internal democracy but somehow that was engineered away. Someone must have looked very closely at that democracy and devised a plan to get rid of it. I wonder how many man-hours such a project would require, how much that would cost and who would fund it.
I’m sure Vivian O’Blivion mentioned a budget of 4 billion up-thread; so that is a whole lot of billable hours.
“Vainglory is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game”
Treading on Stuart Campbell’s teritory there?
God, I love your writing! You are of course entirely correct, save only to say that independence by itself will not cure this centralised, political-class corruption..
The actors will change but greed and corruption remain, as is the case with the ANC in South Africa.
Lovely, lovely piece, though
Africa is experiencing greater change, at a greater speed than it has since “the Scramble for Africa” in the back end of the 19th century. Their leaders can look east or west The colonial image of Africa is now dead in the minds of the continent’s people – go and read what Africans are saying themselves – it’s very clear in the blogs and news website that I browse.
The East faciltates infrastructure, the West facilitates exploitation, Africans are aware of this.
As for “.the case with the ANC in South Africa.” Did you really think the stolen gold and diamond mines would yield themselves to their rightful owners? South Africa is feeling these “winds of change” just like the rest of the continent.
Change is coming, and in our lifetimes.
Agreed. There are other contributing factors, though.
Well, yes, it should be. I studied neocolonialism in North–South relations in international politics. The Scottish economy serves its imperial masters by, for example, producing arms and excuses for doing so.
Well, it’s hardly a steel gin, though, since our host’s own posts of the subject show devolved parliaments being the springboard for independence in 80% of cases.
Yes, the increasing corruption of the SNP was predictable and predicted, but is also a vital lesson that copying and tinkering with the British imperial model (say, party politics without a hereditary monarch) will produce such disasters and corruption. We need a new system of politics built up from first principles (what is a government for) and directed at the greatest and most immediate problems we face today, largely the human-caused collapse, eradication and poisoning of planetary living systems.
With a radically different constitution, an Independent Scotland might achieve something like Costa Rica’s reported reforestation just for starters. #biocracynow
You started well but I couldn’t let this Sleeping Dog lie.
The political situation in the west now is grotesque and corrupt, but IMO letting the green mafia near anything that requires intelligence or real data-driven policies is just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
The whole green agenda is totally corrupt and will bankrupt and destroy the progress and improvements that mankind has made over the last thousand years. And the corrupt green agenda is currently stifling research into future technological progress. So, pinning mankind’s future on these nutters is going to end badly.
And let’s not forget the actual reality: The UK’s contribution to ‘climate change’ is totally negligible and Scotland’s is even less. So why are we determined to destroy our country and economy, “the greatest and most immediate problems we face today”, for no benefit whatsoever when we could actually be improving the economy and the lifestyles of the population at no detriment to the climate? Total madness.
I’m sure SleepingDog can and will answer for themselves, but I would like to point out that, just because many are shouting that Anthropogenic Global Warming poses “the greatest and most immediate problems we face today”, does not mean to say that, outside climate change, there are not great problems with the ecology of this planet, “the human-caused collapse, eradication and poisoning of planetary living systems.” being some of them, specifically the capacity of the planet to grow enough food to feed its human population. Most of these problems are being largely ignored while we concentrate on reducing the amount of CO2 we emit.
You may be right, but:
“The UK throws away around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year – even though 8.4 million people in the UK are in food poverty.”
and:
“Each year, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion in food thrown away each year. Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted.”
The problem is maybe one of over production in certain areas and bad distribution of what we produce ? A lot of the (third world) countries that suffer from poverty and insufficient food always seem to have enough to buy arms whilst selling off their natural assets to the west. IMO, it usually all comes down to: corruption, incompetence and crime.
You’re right though about CO2, a minor gas, but essential for all life.
A quick way to vastly reduce poverty in Africa would be to bring it inside the Common Agricultural Policy. Oh, hang on, it was formed to keep African produce out except for commodities sent as Danegeld. Silly me.
SB: ” You’re right though about CO2, a minor gas, but essential for all life.”
So is water, but would you put your head in a bucket of it for a couple of hours?
Sadly, SB, your expertise on this subject is less than impressive. Forgive me for not taking your word on it. You can tell us what sort of studying you have done if you like, making you so able to dismiss accredited scientists with years of study on the matter?
“The problem is maybe one of over production in certain areas and bad distribution of what we produce ? ”
I suspect that the main problem is the same one that causes so many of the ills in our society and that of the US: a surfeit of underemployed lawyers, which has produced a litigiousness which means that it is much safer to throw away perfectly good food that has passed some fairly arbitrary “best before” date than pass it on to someone who might sue you if it is bad. The whole idea of “best before” and “sell by” dates is to protect food retailers from such sueage and, as an added bonus, persuade people to throw away edible food and buy more.
B: “Most of these problems are being largely ignored while we concentrate on reducing the amount of CO2 we emit.
”
That’s what we’re doing, is it?
So we’re concentrating so hard on this one thing – reducing emissions – that they have risen every single year by a substantial margin, other than during the Covid pandemic (which – amazingly enough – is another thing that global warming denialists are/were in denial about, as a general rule).
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
Every single country in the world continues to increase emissions, except for the EU a year or so back (pre-pandemic) which managed an astonishing 0.1% decrease.
That’s some solid ‘concentration’ to the problem we’re seeing, wouldn’t you say? Good thing we’re not just ignoring it!
So you reckon that reducing emissions of CO2, a gas essential to all plant life, is a more important activity to devote our resources to than addressing the “collapse, eradication and poisoning of planetary living systems”?
What makes you think these concerns have to be mutually exclusive?
In any case, given the utter lack of anything but lip service to the whole notion of reducing CO2 emissions, I am at a loss to see why you think that ‘effort’ is rendering us incapable any of other action.
Perhaps you could explain your position a little further?
“What makes you think these concerns have to be mutually exclusive?”
Possibly they don’t have to be, but that is how it usually turns out. The popular cause of the week/month/year/decade is the one that is taken up generally to the exclusion of all others. Sure, there are still groups that are concerned with pollution, deforestation, habitat loss and ecological destruction of all kinds, but they are not the ones grabbing the headlines, are they? Pollution, for instance, used to be very much the popular cause and real results were achieved in having cleaner rivers and seas, something that is now going backwards while all the marching and protesting is about something else.
Certainly, they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Take deforestation, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions – all can be benefitted by eliminating meat from the diet. Happily, such a move also addresses very genuine concerns about animal welfare, habitat and public health.
That’s just a quick summary of just one problem/ solution. You’ll often find addressing one problem also has very positive side effects, quite in contrast to the notion that we are somehow obliged to ignore every other problem.
“Take deforestation, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions – all can be benefitted by eliminating meat from the diet.”
whilst at the same time vastly exacerbating both species and habitat loss and soil degradation. Grazing animals on grassland is a natural activity. Ploughing that grassland up to grow crops isn’t. In any case animal husbandry isn’t responsible for polllution or levels of methane in the atmosphere, except to the extent it has been industrialised, given that there are less animals in the world now that there were before man stopped being a hunter-gatherer.
Not sure I can entirely agree, Bayard.
Eating meat was not an every-day, if not every-mealtime activity in the way it often is now. Grazing cattle or sheep is not a harmless, natural activity – it comes with the price of a barren landscape. Sheep are an ecological disaster, and very expensive for the taxpayer (whether they eat meat themselves or not).
A huge proportion of crops, at least half, are grown for animal consumption. That is hugely inefficient, given that animals are effectively protein factories in reverse. The lives of factory farmed animals (the majority of poultry and pigs) doesn’t bear thinking about.
Taxpayer subsidy to the meat industry is disproportionate to the requirements of people’s nutrition, and subsidy to any other industry.
Methane production from the vast numbers of cattle worldwide, solely for meat production, is extensive. The land they occupy, and the crops to feed them, comes largely at the expense of forests.
I do wish you would look into some of this instead of simply pronouncing on the issue.
Stevie Boy, maybe true today post-Empire, but in the past we polluted and then some. The worst of it is the precedent we set.
Don’t do as I do, do as I say.
I don’t believe in shooting myself in the foot for something that happened before I was born ! We can all learn from the past and ensure we don’t repeat past mistakes but the UK preaching to the rest of the world about pollution is, IMO, rank hypocrisy. Look at the sewage we currently pump into our rivers and the sea, look at the environmental damage all those EVs and windmills cause and the child labour they use, what about the fact that only about 10% of our recycling is actually recycled and how much is exported ?
There is so much more we can do to really help the environment and it won’t cripple the economy or put the people into poverty. All this green climate BS is just virtue signalling by the morally corrupt and the mentally feeble lemmings. I despair of where we are heading because it won’t help us or the planet.
I don’t have any knowledge of the green agenda or of any political response to environmental degradation, so I can’t offer an opinion on your concerns. Now you have alerted me to these issues, I will look into them but starting from such a low level, it will take me a while to catch up with you, have patience, I usually get there in the end – very much the tortoise and not the hare.
“The UK’s contribution to ‘climate change’ is totally negligible and Scotland’s is even less.”
I don’t doubt it.
I wasn’t blaming you, I was saying there are two problems with the above statement.
The first being this country has created vast amounts of pollution. Time didn’t begin when you were born (except for you of course!). The UK faces great hostility from other countries who, by hook or crook, are trying to catch up with us. Who wants to live without toilets and running water? There is a fundamental problem telling other countries not to destroy their environments when we have destroyed ours (and many other countries’ environments as well). This problem is known as hypocrisy.
I thought you would have liked “Don’t do as I do, do as I say”. I read all of your posts carefully and thought this would appeal to your blunt, common-sense approach. As for shooting yourself in the foot, where did this come from? Certainly not from me.
As far as I can see, the West’s Greens (given their conversion of Atlanticist support for Nato etc) is actually to create a situation where the world is burned to a crisp, extinguishing human “civilisation”, and then hoping that green shoots will appear in the wasteland. They’re as crazy as the rest of the political/economic establishment.
I suspect the green agenda is simply a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing plot, much like the covid lockdowns. When these allegedly ‘progressive/left-wing’ policies make the poor poorer and the rich richer, we know what kind of politics that comes from – and true to type these evil people try to blame the Left.
The SNP is rotten to its core.
“Angus Robertson was given ‘secret’ £33,000 wages top-up while SNP’s Westminster leader.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/angus-robertson-was-given-33-000-wages-top-up-while-snp-s-westminster-leader-0k3xq6gt6
The Keystone Cops aka Police Scotland have given Sturgeon and her clique ample time to hide or destroy any incriminating evidence, they even postponed a live investigation to allow their puppet (Yousaf) to be elected with the aid of the enemy of Scottish independence GCHQ.
“THE whistleblower who triggered a police probe into the SNP’s funding and finances says there should be an inquiry into how the force ‘dragged its feet’ in pursuing the case – while he became a hate figure.
He first lodged his complaint with police over two years ago, in late March, 2021 over how funds raised for a second independence referendum campaign had not been ringfenced and had been spent on other things without permission.
He says it was met with initial resistance before he had to lodge another with the police in January this year over what he believed was a lack of progress in the case.
In the meantime he says he was accused of being “a traitor to Scotland” and of trying to destroy the Humza Yousaf-led SNP.”
https://archive.md/2023.04.23-063427/https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23473019.snp-finances-whistleblower-calls-inquiry-police-response/#selection-1679.3-1707.125
Re my above comment the police are now seeking burner phones and sim cards that are involved in the SNP investigations.
https://archive.is/0PLs6
Republicofscotland when I saw the photo of Humza Youssef in the article I instantly thought “deer… headlights”. Obviously the photo was chosen deliberately but still. The eternal face of roadkill staring at me.
Of course, they all look the same when you glance in the rear view mirror; whether they have been squashed flat or are lying there twitching and you are already halfway on the way to somewhere else. I would not like to be where he is. Co-opted politicians pay a high price for their ambitions – the siren song of prestige and power meets the complete loss of street cred. Despised by those who co-opt them and those they betray.
Craig says give him a chance; there may be more to him than my dismissal above suggests. Do you have any thoughts?