So you remember all those things that were going to be safe only if Scotland voted No last year? How’s that all working out then. It would appear that the infamous vow wasn’t so much of a vow as a serving suggestion with ingredients that Scotland wouldn’t be allowed to eat on account of us having to make do with the crumbs from the Westminster table. The vow has been called a lie, but that’s unfair to lying. Telling the weans that if they’re good then Santa will bring them lots of nice prezzies is a lie. That’s a cute and cuddly sort of lie, but if you think that Gordie Broon is cute and cuddly you’re probably the sort of person who coos at the sight of slime and snuggles with snotters. So George Osborne then.
What the No campaign did was to tell Scotland that if we were good then Santa Westminster would give us lots of power prezzies. But Santa Westminster didn’t deliver, so that was a lie and if things were left to lie there then all it would be would be a lie. Only Santa Westminster didn’t just fail to deliver, he also came and took the Lego, smashed the Playstation and hid the TV remote control while telling us that the real message of Christmas was that Scotland should be excluded from voicing opinions on the North Pole. As if that wasn’t enough he made Rudolf into a venison casserole he served up to the bankers at the Mansionhouse dinner, and then slashed the incomes of the elves and other people on zero hours contracts.
This week another broken promise joined the increasingly lengthening list of broken promises of things we were assured would only be safe if we voted No, so Scotland voted no to discover that they weren’t safe after all. We were told loudly and often that the only way that the Royal Navy would commission ships to be built on the Clyde would be if Scotland voted No. Scotland voted No but the ship building is a no too. The Royal Navy isn’t going to commission the promised 13 new frigates after all, the order is to be cut to eight, and even that number isn’t certain. 3000 jobs on the Clyde are being put at risk so that Westminster can afford to pay for its weapons of mass destruction. The reduction is because the cost of Trident has soared by £6 billion, so real skilled jobs on the Clyde are to be sacrificed for the fantasy jobs at Faslane that only exist in Jackie Baillie’s imagination. The UK isn’t keeping Scotland’s jobs safe, it’s costing us jobs, it’s making us unsafe.
The UK is like a late middle aged man with impotence. He still strives for the glory days of his youth so he spends on expensive toys that he can’t afford and lets the kids go hungry to compensate for the fact that he can’t get it up any more. This is a country which is about to go to war yet again, not because British military intervention would actually make any real difference. A few more bombs from the handful of planes that the RAF can spare won’t change the outcome of the war in Syria. The reason that the UK is going to war is because it allows Davie Cameron to pose as an international statesman. It allows an aged superpower that’s no longer a power in its own living room to pretend that it still matters in a world where it’s long since been an irrelevance. The only thing that the UK can still get up is the Prime Minister’s tongue up the backside of the US President. It would be laughably pathetic if it weren’t for the fact that people are going to die.
Last week it was the closure of the steel works which were supposed to be safe if Scotland voted No. Then it was the closure of tax offices costing hundreds of jobs, the very same tax offices that we were told needed the UK to keep alive. And the scare stories told to pensioners about the risk to their pensions if Scotland voted Yes have turned out to be true, because Scotland voted No. Scotland’s budget is being slashed. The new powers are responsiblities without power. How many more promises will unravel before Scotland realises that we were had last year. But then the Unionist parties never had any intention of fulfilling any of their promises, they were promises and commitments in the exact same way that a junkie swears blind that they’re going to change when they’re faced with the prospect of their drugs being taken away.
They’re creating a wasteland and calling it a Union. Westminster’s strategy is to weaken and impoverish Scotland so that Scots will fear that we’re incapable of making our own way in the world. But it’s not going to work. We know who has their hands on the levers of macro-economic powers, we know who’s responsible for setting overall budgets. We know who has made Scotland’s MPs second class representatives. We know who has replaced good governance for Scotland with scare stories and fear campaigns. And we know it’s not Scotland or the Scottish government. But don’t worry, we’re still going to get control over road signs.
So it’s not technically correct to say that the vow was a lie. It was a farrago of fibs wrapped up in a tissue of tall tales, marinated in mendacity, fricasseed with fabrications, then delivered with a side order of cant and served up with larceny and an assault on common decency. They can tell us until they’re red white and blue in the face that they’ve delivered the vow, but we can see what’s being delivered for ourselves. It’s job losses. It’s the loss of influence in a parliament that is still Scotland’s too. It’s impoverishment. It’s war. It’s benefit cuts and poor wages. It’s insecurity and debt. It’s Apocalypse Vow. But it’s not an apocalypse for Scotland, it’s an apocalypse for the Union.
BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE BOOK LAUNCH in Edinburgh on 24 November at 6.30pm in Power Press Bookshop in West Nicolson Street. Come along and meet me and the dug and get a signed copy!
Barking Up the Right Tree has now been published and is an anthology of my articles for The National newspaper and is being published by Vagabond Voices press, who also publish Jim Sillars. The dug is in exhalted company. None of the articles collected in this book have appeared on this blog.
You can submit an advance order for the book on the Vagabond Voices website at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993
Price is just £7.95 for 156 pages of doggy goodness. Order today!
A limited number of signed copies of the two volumes of the Collected Yaps is also still available. See below for order details.
Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.
Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for only £21.90 for both volumes. A limited number of signed copies is still available, so get your order in now! P&P will be extra, approximately £3 per single volume or £4 for both sent together. If you only want to order one volume, please specify which. Single volumes are available for £10.95 per copy.
To order please send an email with WEE GINGER BOOK ORDER in the subject field to weegingerbook@yahoo.com giving your name, postal address, and email address and which volumes (1, 2 or both) you wish to order. I will contact you with details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. Get your order in today – an ideal Christmas present!
Wee Ginger Dug 
I listened with disbelief to the GMB leader on STV news – is he not supposed to be fighting for the workers ? Be disgusted by the duplicity?
Since I don’t watch any M.S.M news I don’t know who you are talking about diabloandco, but since the heid bummer is one Sir Paul Kenny, one of the signatorys to the infamous letter urging all Scots to vote No last year, then I’m not surprised.
As far as I am aware, not one U.K trade union leader came out in favour of Scottish independence. And why would they? They are as much a part of the establishment, proved by them meekly accepting any baubles the Government of the day hands out.
While out canvassing at the weekend two, former Labour voters posed this question. Exactly what is the purpose of the Labour Party today? You could say the same about trade union general secretaries.
You’re back! I hope you had a great time and well deserved break. Really missed not having regularly posts to read though.
[…] Apocalypse vow […]
So good to have you back and on good for.
I hope someone somewhere is collecting all the broken promises and produces a free book to be given to every household in Scotland.
No votes – bought on a lie and then sold out cheaply.
It really is time for a don’t blame me I voted Yes” campaign because we are all suffering as a consequence of the choice 55% made.
Way to go guys as they say
Perhaps instead we are suffering because the Yes campaign, despite having the stronger hand, didn’t play it well enough to convince enough people to back it.
Oh dear oh dear John. No. We are suffering because many people were feart, many people believed the daily lies on their tv’s, in their daily rags. The Yes campaign was too lightweight in many ways, but no matter what they said or what the pro Indy groups of people or the Scottish government said, the WHOLE of the media was playing to the sweet sweet westminster government’s tune.
I believe that the anti Indy and unionist groups, organisations and government secret services were all employed in ensuring a win for no. By hook or by crook.
They did not have to do too much false flag stuff with the control of the corporate media. They stifled any kind of intelligent debate, no sorry, they completely and utterly silenced it, they lied and cajoled and conjured. Like magic it was, for them, a wand was waved and so was democracy for Scotland by continuing to be shackled to UKOK. The vote was considerably closer than they would have liked and they will stop at nothing to make sure that Scotland does not have a 2nd referendum. There is too much at stake, weapons, houses for their and their pals’ weapons, nuke waste dumps when Scotland is reduced to a wasteland. Etc etc.
Added to that, oil, whisky and fishing, land, castles, more land for the landed gentry, renewables, and of course all manner of resources at the ready,even quite a bit of water. Not To mention people, ie cannon fodder. What do young people have to do when there are absolutely no jobs (the Scotgov are not allowed to embark on any kind of job creation).
Yes we would do things differently now, but the fabrications, lies, falsities and scaremonegering would be rolled out again. Failing that, false flag stuff, but big style.
Next time more people in Scotland, will have been made aware of the lies, so it will be a different scenario and with world events who knows what the establishment would do to keep Scotland, they have too much to lose.
Next, undermining the Scottish Parliament, possibly talk of dismantling it. Put nothing past them.
Our ordinary friends South of the border would be quite happy, they see Scotland as too uppity and would love nowt better than to watch our downfall.
TV series, ‘The rise and downfall of Scotland’. Aye.
Sorry Helena I’m forced to agree with John, we all knew what they were like, I wrote to the OHCR in 2012 and begged them to take a look at what was going on with the media and the governments lies and obfuscations, but was given the stock answer that “only the sovereign state (namely the UK government ) can ask for OHCR oversight to ensure the referendum was fair, so we had to have the fox ask the farmer to go and get his gun before he raided the chicken shed,
In spite of that we had a campaign which the gloves never came off,
We even had the leader of the yes campaign in his very first outing on tv being browbeaten by the BBC into a public acceptance that they(the BBC) were not biased,(I marveled at that comment)I felt there was an implicit threat in that question, and felt that THEN was when the gloves should have come of and faced them down by saying “hell yes the BBC is biased”
and felt a deep sense of foreboding when Blair Jenkins said that.
All through the campaign I waited and waited for the overwhelming counter-attack, and it never came,
Johns right, we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!
Much as I agree with you on the softly-softly approach of the YES Scotland campaign (and in particular the insipid “leadership” of Blair Jenkins) the grassroots campaign made up for it, for the most part. I think the biggest mistake many on the YES side made (and alarmingly, continue to make) is to think that the establishment were ever going to simply let us walk away through “democracy” and the ballot box. My wife’s native Ireland is a precedent for all of this and like it or not, the parallels between the SNP post-2015 GE and Sinn Fein post-1918, are alarming.
Make no mistake, while it is commendable that the YES side (both SNP and grassroots, as well as RISE/Greens et al) bounced back so quickly and emphatically, we face the fight of our lives if we are to succeed and will have to consider UDI, or at the very least appealing to the Council of Europe/UN to intervene. Don’t be surprised, however, if the establishment instigate mass civil unrest and/or annexe Orkney & Shetland (or even move the border up from the Tweed – Edinburgh & Borders were 60%+ Unionist and will likely vote NO next time).
If anyone scoffs and says it won’t happen here, think again and remind yourself WHO we are dealing with here. They thought nothing of murdering 100000’s in Middle Eastern wars, or selling arms to Israel & Saudi Arabia to instigate 1000’s more deaths.
Well said, Helena. The BritNat establishment thives on pessimsm. Stay cool, stay positive.
Missed you a lot, glad you’re back.
We should be thinking of presenting this information in small chunks to the people who voted no, Larger portions seem to be indigestible.
They may be convinced that nothing changes, that they kicked Scotland back into the corner where they think it shoud be – but they are forgetting one important thing. The Scots are now politically aware, engaged and well informed – a poisonous risk to the union. And you cannot unlearn – the knowledge is here to stay.
Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
Good to see you back and on fizzin’ form.
I hope your break was as good as you were hoping.
Nicked a bit of this in a pic and tweeted it.
Welcome back Paul. Hope the break and tour guiding went well. 🙂
Anyroads, the last week or so has been fairly grim. Y’know if you were a cynic you’d be forgiven for thinking that our ‘partners’ are setting about a programme of disabling the Scottish economy and infrastructure.
Take a look at the hardest hit sectors in the past year which are suffering from government support being removed or are being allowed to fail through inaction. Power generation, oil and gas, steel, ship fabrication and HMRC. But surely no? I mean this is better together land where our big bud wi the broad shooders would look after us when things got sticky with the economy. That was the promise wasn’t it? That only through standing together would Scotland prosper and feel all safe and secure. Thousands of job losses, thousands more under threat, that’s just a bump in the road. Any minute now, our big bud will leap into action and save the day.
Any… minute… now.
Or maybe not.
Christmas is looking fairly bleak for those who’ve lost jobs this year and those bastards either stood by and did nothing or as in the case of power generation, oil and gas, HMRC and today’s wee bombshell on the yards, had an active hand in the deal.
As for the Scotland bill? You’re bang on the money. Responsibilities without power, intended to present the Scottish Government with constitutional and fiscal bear traps. If that package is accepted and used, the end product could well be the crippling of our economy and our parliament. As it stands things are looking fairly bleak for the continuance of even the Barnett handout once DC retires to his pig farm.
We can reverse this damage and we CAN undo what Westminster’s catastrophic governance has done to our economy, but we need the help of everyone willing to see Scotland prosper. People are now truly beginning to suffer, families are going without, folk being driven to desperation and depression.
Its about that time. We need help.
Its time to put yesterday behind us, kick the recriminations into touch and reach out to those who regret a no vote from last year.
We’re all Scots and what is being done now by that mausoleum on the Thames is wrong on every level. The Scotland bill legislation, the sidelining of Scotland’s representation, the damage done to our economy and the pain being visited on all of our people, regardless of point of origin, through austerity legislation. All of this can only be stopped with your help.
Safe to say we’ll be here waiting.
Diablo
Ought we really to be surprised? Afterall, many union reps long since mirrored their WM MP and lords peers to sell their souls for the establishment shilling and deil tak their members the hindmost.
More often than not, the same greasy union and Union pole climbers.
The whole shebang of them need kicked out on their collective arse.
Oh God, how I’ve missed you.
Welcome back!
Was going to say loads about the way Scotland is being treated, then I thought f**k it. That’s how raging I feel right now.
As for no voters…aaarrrggghhh….
“Westminster’s strategy is to weaken and impoverish Scotland ”
In fairness, Westminster’s “Strategy” appears to be to weaken and impoverish the entire UK. God knows why.
Because that has always been the Establishment way and hence we live in one of the most unequal of the developed world where the gap between rich and poor is the widest it has been for 100 years.
The top 0.1% have average earnings in excess of £1 million, the top 1% in excess of £250,000, the top 10% in excess of £80,000.
Meanwhile the bottom 90% earn an average of less than £13,000.
But of course we’re all better together…
New World Order, John. A world of slaves to serve the global kleptocracy.
5 less ships to built on the Clyde…this is good news????….WTF!
Welcome back!
It’s so good to read you again.
Hope you had a great break!
Paul, excellent observations (as usual).
My take on the developments mirror yours, in that lie after lie is exposed to the people of this country.
The next step is the most important, in that we need to reach out to the “soft” NO’s and invite them on board YES.
No recriminations with respect to 2014.
We can prove YES spoke the truth and that is one thing that makes folk mad …. when they realise they’ve been lied to and made to look foolish because they believed the lie.
All of us who believe in Independence must reach out, if we do then the goal is within our reach …. within 2 or 3 years !!
Scotland is being asset stripped before our eyes. There will soon be very little left and that’s what the establishment wants. We’re being well and truly screwed. Welcome back.
Exactly C G. Brainwashed and asset stripped. And it will continue ad infinitum unti we can achive our independence.
How proud all those No voters must feel. They know their place. Being treated like crap, and loving it.
Welcome back Paul and I hope you had a great break.
In the face of a constant barrage of negativity it is really difficult to know just what affect it is having. Certainly it frustrates me and makes me very angry. But what affect is it having on others. Are people swallowing the lies or becoming more aware of the reality?
The most recent polls suggest that support for the SNP is holding and that is a huge positive. Sometime in the relatively near future – within a few months – I would hope to see a real turning point where SNP support would start to rise again. Call me over-optimistic but that is what I am looking for. Evidence that people have had enough of being lied to and are seeing through the lies.
However committed we are we only can lead the horse to water ……… We have to have the patience to accept that. We have to stop beating ourselves up for failing to win in the past against virtually insurmountable odds. We have to acknowledge that the face of Scotland has changed and is changing but our task of freeing Scotland is going to take time and absolute resolve.
Just a few short years ago Slab would, without any effective opposition, have been taking the shilling and browbeating the Scots into submission on behalf of their UK masters. Alcohol, football, sectarianism, poor health, early death, suicide, violence and low self-esteem, were just some of the unsavoury markers of Slab Scotland. Today the markers are genuine improvements on all fronts and a Slab opposition that only survives because the unionist media is giving them 24/7 oxygen.
It’s a very difficult time right now but we have to pick ourselves up, etc.
Which is why we need the wee ginger dug.
I suspected that the Brit establishment would punish the Scots for uppityness. It would have happened either way. But under independence, Scotland would have been moving away from a’that.
Great to see you’re back, Paul!
It seems pretty obvious that DC and his side-kick have decided to bleed Scotland dry in the hope that we’ll never be able to cut them off in the future. We have to get out of their mess before we’re too weak to make the effort. They’ll miss us but there’s one thing sure, we’ll never miss them.
Great to have you back Paul and hope you enjoyed your break. Slightly off topic! Trade Union officers are often part of the establishment. Well do I remember Lord Robertson when he was plain George Robertson, full time officer of the GMB. And forgive me for not taking the man seriously but having witnessed him running up a corridor chased by 20+ shop stewards and asking management to help him. In my life in industrial relations I met many good Union officers but I met a hell of a lot who used the union to get into Westminster.
Welcome back Paul and it was good to meet you at the YES bar.
My son enjoyed his chat with you and it looked like Ginger enjoyed my ‘Jumbone’ treat.
Glad you were able to spend time with your new pal and thanks for signing the book.
The day after the referendum Commonweal had written in an article that it would take a year to 18 months before most would begin to realise that they had been cheated.
The polls are showing a steady 50-50 at the moment and the cuts haven’t even begun to bite yet. There are roughly 30 % who will never vote for independence, therefore about 25 % are are open to persuasion.
Indyref 2 will be interesting. The mood will be different. Yes will be starting off somewhere around the 50 % mark as opossed to 30 % last time. The Tories can no longer count on Labour and the Libdems to front their better together campaign as both parties are now as discredited as the Tories themselves. The same lies and promises will not be as effective second time around. Give it time. There are many no voters out there with eyes and ears. few of them are stupid. We need only persuade a half of the 25 % and we are home and dry.
Blair Jenkins. Hmmm. OBE, ex-BBC, all for ‘softly softly’, mismanaged the official central campaign, NEVER challenged the lies when given an opportunity, stated openly that BBC NOT Biased!
Now, I try NOT to think in conspiratorial terms, but really? THIS guy was considered the best person to lead the most important campaign in Scottish politics EVER!?!
I will leave others to come to their own conclusions, but Black Ops, Mole, Plant, 5th Columnist – use your own definition, but had it not been for the massive and enthusiastic local response YES would have been lucky to reach 30% (a figure that the NO side expected. I wonder why?)