You can tell that the British nationalists are getting desperate. We’re now several days into the discovery that Dominic Cummings knows more about eye exams than anyone else on the planet because he inserted a sentence about it into an old story on his blog in order to prove that he was retrospectively ahead of the curve. This is a special sort of bending of the laws of time and space that only a man who’s capable of a special sort of bending of the lockdown restrictions could possibly understand. But despite all the attempts to rewrite the past, this is a scandal that’s just not going away.
Even the Daily Star, which is normally far more interested in what’s going on in Love Island, has got in the act. Although since this is a publication which generally specialises in the antics of the rich, entitled, and vacuous talking about Dominic Cummings is well within its comfort zone. On Wednesday it published a cut out and keep mask of Dominic Cummings, so that readers can wear it and sod everybody else. It’s a joke that they stole from social media, so no points for inventiveness, but for the British Government this is a sign that anger about the Cummings scandal has broken through into even that demographic which Cummings specialises in manipulating, the so-called ‘low information voter’.
More seriously however, we’re now in a UK where the police actually have to issue an official statement telling people not to drive if they think that they can’t see properly. Michael Gove, a man whose very presence in our public life constitutes a major oil spill that pollutes the environment for decades, told the press on Tuesday that he thinks that driving to test how well you can see is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. In fact he’s done it himself.
During an interview on Sky News, Kay Burley asked the Human Oil Slick about a statement from the Bishop of Leeds who had said, “Do we accept being lied to, patronised and treated by a PM as mugs? The moral question is not for Cummings – it is for PM and ministers/MPs who find this behaviour acceptable. What are we to teach our children? (I ask as a responsible father.)” Gove would only reply, “I wish the bishop well.” When an incredulous Kay Burley pressed him on whether that was all he was going to say, he added that he respected the bishop because he was a Christian himself. That’s Michael Gove there, who would have deported Joseph and Mary for being homeless asylum seekers and who thinks that money-changing is the entire purpose of temples. I’m more of a Christian than Michael Gove is, and I’m an atheist.
In a desperate attempt to find a squirrel to point at, the Brexity British nationalists on social media demanded an investigation in the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford. He travelled 620 miles, took a ferry, and spread the coronavirus in the Isle of Skye instead of staying at home in London, they harrumphed, because they’re still living in the 1980s and don’t know there’s a bridge. Actually, they barely realise that Scotland has roads. Why isn’t the media investigating? It’s a remoaner cover up. Because as we all know in Scotland, the media is always highly reluctant to publish stories that show up the SNP in a bad light. And Dominic Cummings is up there with Jesus Christ in his self-sacrifice. Michael Gove thinks so, and he tells us he’s a Christian.
Ian Blackford went home to Skye at the same time as all the other MPs went home when Parliament went into lockdown. He didn’t have any symptoms but went into self-isolation because he’d been in London and didn’t want to risk infecting anyone. He didn’t go on to develop any symptoms. Dominic Cummings went into his work even though he was living with a person who had symptoms, then left his home in order to seek childcare despite not needing it, travelled with his wife who was already ill, went to stay at his parents’ place, came down with coronavirus, then went on a jolly to Barnard Castle in order to, ahem, test his eyesight. But sure, yeah, apart from that it’s totally the same.
Meanwhile in Scotland, Jackson Carauction has been reluctantly forced to suggest, hint, imply that Dominic Cummings ought to resign. Although he’s at pains to point out that it’s not for him to tell the Prime Minister what to do, what with him being a loyal House Jock and everything. The story is dominating the news and making it even harder for his attacks upon the Scottish Government to gain any traction. No one is in the mood for listening to a Conservative preach about the mote in someone else’s eye while there’s a beam in their own that they’re driving around with in order to test their eyesight.
None of the attacks by Jackson Carauction for the Tories and Labour’s Renaldo Losevoter on the Scottish Government appear to be resonating with the public. The media in Scotland have been banging on about the supposed cover up of the infection at the Nike conference in Edinburgh and the number of deaths in Scottish care homes for weeks now, but the public still place their trust in the Scottish Government.
Even the BBC has commissioned an opinion poll, which supicious minds are convinced was done with the purpose of generating another SNPbad story, only to discover that the Scottish public overwhelmingly trust the Scottish Government and Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the crisis, and don’t have anything like the same faith in the British Government. Fieldwork for the poll was carried out before the Dominic Cummings story broke, so it’s likely that there’s even less trust in the British Government now. The poll found that 55% of people in Scotland think that Johnson has performed poorly in his handling of the crisis. Only 30% think he’s done well, despite the constant mantra of “we’re all in this together”. However a massive 82% think that Nicola Sturgeon has handled things well, and just 8% think she’s done poorly.
Today at First Minister’s Questions, Jackson tried to imply that the First Minister doesn’t remember that every death added to the statistics isn’t just a number but a human being. Along with the Labour branch office manager they tried to do a Dominic – rewriting history with the benefit of hindsight. The problem for the British nationalist parties is that the British Government is performing so poorly and so mendaciously that the only angle that they can find to attack the Scottish Government is to criticise the First Minister for not doing things differently from the British Government. Their problem is that we all know that they’d have been the first to attack her if that’s what she’d done at the time. So it’s hardly surprising that the Scottish public is choosing to ignore them.
What makes it worse for them is that by saying that Scotland should have diverged even more abruptly and strongly from Westminster, they’re only reinforcing the message that a Scotland which was not encumbered with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings could have performed a whole lot better than it has done. Once this crisis is over, there will be a public enquiry, and that public enquiry will find that Scotland has suffered because it was following Westminster’s lead. We’d be a whole lot better off not being Better Together.
And finally, here’s a video from Louis Rive, a Scottish singer songwriter living in Barcelona…
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[…] Wee Ginger Dug Not better together You can tell that the British nationalists are getting desperate. We’re now several […]
One great article after another right now Paul. Thanks for that and thanks for the music. Louis Rive with a brilliant voice, fantastic music and lyrics. And a Scot to boot!
Fantastic song, blare it from the rooftops!
If you like ‘Whitewashing’, try ‘The State of the Nation’ @louisrivemusic
Can you imagine a recruitment company advertising for a U.K. PM? Here are a few attributes they must have:
Full of self importance
IQ at least to 90
A natural liar
No ability to remember what they said last week
Devious
Disregarding everyone but themselves
Never answer a question truthfully
Work at least four days a week
Ignore legal agreements
Ignore the law
Able to recruit a team of oddballs
Sponge of others for holidays
Keep a tally of your children
I could go on.
Labour’s Renaldo Losevoter lol
my personal favourite is surname surname though Jackson Carauction is a close second haha
Well, talking about space and time, or at least speed and time, here’s an oldie, and after watching it your life will never be the same again.
Sorry about that, didn’t realise it embedded here.
Westminster was in charge of testing, and they had at that time instructed Deloitte not to share the results with Scot Gov. so irrelevant really, surely the media were aware of this. Just a thought but could this woman have been ground zero for Portugal, probably not.
Good article,thanks.
Just reading about the Edinburgh kilt , SNP baad,case on sky not the news website.
So the lady fitted kilts to Nike Delegates on February 24th.
She suffers from Asthma.
She was in contact with the delegates for 75 minutes or so.
Scotland’s first case of virus reported on March 1st.
She felt she had flu but went on holiday to Portugal.
Is concerned she wasn’t traced.
The lost slab member of parliament says this shows SNP baad.
I wonder if I would have asked the Nike and Lloyds delegates if they had had a kilt fitted?
Staff in the hotels,no tests available, UK in herd immunity mode, and still in it, we’ve all to catch it,just in numbers that the hospitals can cope with, 9000 new confirmed cases yesterday and a hospital in lockdown due to the increase in patients and staff.
Yes Edinburgh is a big city and lots of people walk around there,I remember the AUOB march, there were at least a couple of thousand turned up,according to the media.
I’m not saying that there have not been mistakes butt 9 weeks after the event smacks of something brown.
A kilt shop in Edinburgh, a city awash with tourists from Italy, Austria, Spain France etc.
All popping into tartan/kiltbshops left right and centre. But it was the Nike delegate who later tested positive for Covid-19 who went into her shop and infected her.
The identity of the delegate, patient zero, is known only to the health authorities.
At that point in time any delegates who had been in contact with patient zero and possibly been infected by Patient zero would be incubating the disease but not yet infectious. Infectivity occurs, usually, within the last 3-4 days before the symptoms appear.
The kilt hire story comes under the heading of ‘Driving to test your eyes’.
The lengths the opposition parties and media have gone to in their efforts to make this a story are truly pathetic.
You’d think as they revere Dominic Cummings as being such a smart man and genius strategist that they might have suspected maybe he’s not as smart as they thought he was after burbling out that pile of stinky garbage the other day, or maybe that a man cannot possibly be that smart if he attempts to change his Internet history without realising a kid with an Amazon fire tablet could suss that out in seconds
It demonstrates the total lack of competence and understanding of anything at all that they, Westminster, can’t do without this man and what does it really say about the so called Prime Minister’s intelligence if the smartiest man in Westminster (Cummings) is a bit of a dummy in the brain box category
Michael Gove the Christian, sounds very moral and upright doesn’t it, but Michael Gove the Christian is a different kind of Christian compared to the good clergyman who exposed some of their nasty doings so clearly on SKY TV, no, Michael Gove the Christian is the Orange Lodge type of Christian and that’s an altogether different type of Christian as we in Scotland know well
What this years selection of top Tories is are populists, and it doesn’t take much intelligence to be one of those, after all if Trump can do it anybody can, that’s how they sold Brexit to the people of England, they find the lowest common denominator opinion held by some and inflate it like a gas filled balloon use their friends in the media to advertise the dire consequences of not listening to what they say and and predict the grim reaper scenario that will descend upon those not prepared to *take back control* from whomever they deem is the enemy who they claim is in control
A simple message to put out? Yes, but here’s the important bit, you couldn’t sell it if you didn’t already have control in the first place
The Corona virus is exposing their big flaw, they’re not in control and the people can see it and they don’t want to buy it
A thought regarding the BBC Scotland commissioned poll. Donalda MacKinnon is indebted to Nicola Sturgeon big time for letting her of the hook when she (MacKinnon) demonstrably lied in covering up the Menthorn Media scandal.
Your thought is something along the lines of the BBC’s MacKinnon commissioning the poll as a favour to Nicola Sturgeon? She then instructed Ipsos Mori who they should poll so that they would have a huge lead over the Tories and Johnson and make Sturgeon look good, just not a 100% lead as that would look stupid and nobody would believe it.
A huge debt paid back by the license payer for letting MacKinnon off the hook for some scandal or other in the past. Hmmm, you could be on to something right enough?
Just a thought.
Top Gear has suffered for some years since the departure of May, Clarkson, and Hammond.
Perhaps a recasting would help. Obviously Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson, but we need a turd, er third….who should it be?
Another TV show I understand to be in the works is the Cummings and Goings of Boris. Not sure if that’s on the travel channel, or just a late night French channel with bad lip sync.
Oh, well.
Back to real life, if you can believe this is all really happening.
The virus came from the south. Not NIke – 8 people.
The first case reported in London in January. First case in Scotland in March.
The virus came from the south. Heathrow hub. If Johnston had locked down sooner A month sooner. There would have been less deaths in Scotland. Scotland not so high a death rate. Locked down in March. The SNHS better funded and more prepared.
The Tories cut NHS funding and were not prepared for the pandemic coming despite being warned about it. They ignored warnings. Dominic C bringing it North. Ignoring safeguards. Cumbria was already affected. Then they went to hospital there spreading it about. Having taken the virus north.
Nike had nothing to do with it. It had already come from the South because of the Tories. They were spreading it about.
The Tories all in it together breaking the Law. Breaking the Laws that they make. D. Day. Dominic day head for the beach and spread it about. The ignorant Tory voters. Cutting NHS funding.
It was Westminster UK Gov responsibility to contain a pandemic. Not a devolved issue. Despite Scotland doing better in the circumstances.
Westminster should have locked down sooner to stop the spread. Not gallivant all over the place. Westminster Cabinet and Johnston got it by not taking sensible precautions.
From Wiki :-
“Laszlo Bíró’s innovation successfully coupled ink-viscosity with a ball-socket mechanism which acted compatibly to prevent ink from drying inside the reservoir while allowing controlled flow. Bíró filed a British patent on 15 June 1938.”
We know it as the BiC Biro, named after the Clichy company who mass produced this model in Europe.
We all use them. You can buy a box of ten for buttons these days. They come with that distinctive plastic top, with a wee clip so that you can tuck it into your breast pocket. They come in blue, black red and green ink. There may be other shades.
Gordon Brewer uses his blue biro as a prop, when Yes Butting Hang On A Minute talking over any good news or cogent argument from any guest who shows even the slightest inkling to favour Self Determination for Northern Britain.
Wednesday’s BBC Scotland politics was a tired old mish mash. Care homes..Sturgeon ‘desperately’ sent hundreds of pensioners to their deaths by discharging them from hospitals to Care Homes. Miles Briggs was seen quizzing Jeanne Freeman, and Cartlaw’s ‘National Scandal’ at FMQ got a reprise.
Jason Leitch was lambasted about the ‘guy in Orkney’ doing a Cummings and swanning off to his home on the Black Isle.
To be fair, NS reply to the drivel from Carlaw and the others, and Jason Leitch’s observation that, well, The Brewdog had travelled to his house to work at the BBC, prompted Yes But to cough into the hand holding his ubiquitous biro.
He’s done that several times now on programmes. Coughed into his hand, the hand holding the ball point.
I presume that there is a BBC lackey cleaning up after each broadcast. Let’s hope that they have full PPE.
Oh what short memories they all have. The scenes of hundreds of Covid victims in Italy and Spain, lying dying on mattresses in make shift tents because their HS and hospitals could not cope.
Not one of the Better Together of Dead Tree Scrolls or Brewer and his broadcast attack dogs had anything to contribute to tackling the early stages of the outbreak in Britain.
They did what they always do. Report salaciously on the daily body count.
I repeat: Would any Scots citizen have preferred that Carlaw Leonard or Rennie led the Scottish Government when this crisis erupted?
It is just too ridiculous for words.
The pandemic is as catastrophic as any war, yet, these Fifth Columnists are still clogging up the works as we fight to get through this.
They are fifth columnists, determined to make political capital at the expense of their fellow citizens lives.
They are evil pure and simple.
Paul, you are on a roll. Keep it up, for all our sakes.
How any Blue Red or Yellow Tory can call themselves a Christian, but cut the income of the poor, the elderly, the infirm and the young, to award JK Rowling with a 5% tax cut must have their God rumbling with rage. Not in His name. I’d suggest that Gove is the Devil’s spawn.
Aye Jack
Love it when I see the journalists like a herd even around cummings,he was right to point out how close they were to him BUTT he was very close to others in pictures around downing street.
Then we see the media reporting from various locations around the world, travelling with the camera man,the sound man, the equipment and interviewing strangers.
Remember the opening of the nightinggale in london, no social distancing then. then we see them asking the same question that’s just been answered, very intelligent.
Even carlos has to work from the script in hollyrood.
Cumbria is a hotspot even now,it’s essentially a farming area apart from the Atomic Energy facility and the Submarine Builder.
Have they got large numbers of foreign contractors? The death rate is over 200 a day.
It will probably feature as an item on one of those banal ITV Morning chat shows:- ‘Eamon Holmes and the Curse of the Poison Pen’.
I watched, no rubber necked, some of Johnson’s car crash grilling by the WM Liaison Committee live on BBC.
The man is clearly a blithering idiot who has had no briefing on any of the aspects of Government strategy during the current crisis. He was making it all up as he went along.
What must other countries think when they see this shambles of a man with his outrageous Poundland mop head of bleached hair blustering and bluffing incoherently under pressure?
One ‘ouch’: Pete Wishart referred to ‘the nation’ meaning the UK.
Pete you are an SNP MP. Your nation is Scotland.
I noted the ‘Breaking’ stories at the Footer while Johnson melted into a greasy spot under intense hostile grilling before our very eyes.
Barnier has offered the UK a two year extension to Brexit negotiations. Gove has already declared that we Leave 31/12/20, no ifs buts or maybes.
Christ, if we can’t persuade our fellow Scots that Independence is our only option now…or will they wait until they have to pay £80,000 for heart surgery?
WE don’t need to cut off our No’s to spite our Yes. The Brits are doing the campaigning for us.
Looks like we have entered a completely different dimension a fantasy land that only these unionist MSPs have access to ,
Alice in wonderland on steroids doesn’t come close , hindsight, foresight , up sight , down sight every fn sight possible , it boils down to whatever steps are taken to minimise the harm to anyone in Scotland it’s the SNPs fault for not anticipating , predicting , crystal ball gazing soothsayer involvement , tea leaves you name it these well paid waste of space brain dead stains on the carpet , will have something to say , yak yak bloody yak .
Maybe the yanks can do us favour by organising a friendly fire F16 air strike and Rentokil can remove the Vermin .
Tory Media. Run by Tories. Controlled by Westminster Press Office. Appointed by Tories. Johnston. Some of them are breaking ranks. The Tory losers.
The corruption is getting so bad the Tories are breaking rank. To try and save their own skin. Johnston will have to go?
Any Westminster leader who opposes Independence for Scotland has to go. An omen. Who wants the poison chalice? Next May refused. Nicola is still here.
No one watches Brewer. They hide the viewing figures. Abysmal. No wonder.
The Press are now hiding the readership figures. Abysmal. No wonder.
People would rather access the internet for information. No wonder.
Deluded Gove calling himself a Christian after criticism for the Bishop. Rees Mogg and Duncan Smith an embarrassment to society. Killing people off. How low can they go. Now getting found out and trying to cover up. Johnston -3.
Peter Bone an arch Brexiteer wants Dominic C to go.
Rats in a sack. No honour among thieves. People are raging, angry and annoyed. No wonder. That didn’t take long. Less than a year. A complete shambles. Another fine mess they have got into.
Suddenly the Brits are all test and trace. Like a bolt out of the blue it is going to happen from 9.00am tomorrow. If it wasn’t so very serious it would be hilarious. They don’t have a bloody clue what they are doing.
Where is the feedback from their super duper testing on the Isle of Wight? Where is their super duper app? Am I to assume it didn’t work out? Then I get told that they have been trialling there new super duper ideas in Sheffield. In f/ing Sheffield!! Now they are going to roll it out all over England, tomorrow at 9.00am. (or 9.30/10.00/2.00pm or whatever if Cumings has any involvement in it).
Why the rush? Oh yes – Mr Cumings.
Sumbdy gae that dug a biscuit ffs.
Cummings surely does take the biscuit.
Barnard Castle? Ha!
When Labour MSP James Kelly’s pigeons all flew away if he’d known then what he knows now he’d never have opened the cage, but I suspect that’s the fault of the SNP Transport Secretary
Reblogged this on New Scotland and commented:
First opportunity ditch the lot of them…
Matt Hancock revealing details of England’s test and trace strategy which starts from tomorrow, those that have tested positive today will have all their recent contacts traced and they and their families in their household will be told to self-isolate for 14 days.
That will be the advice and according to Hancock “they must follow that advice to stop the spread of the virus”. Oh dear, maybe he better reiterate that message to the Prime Ministers chief advisor and all the members of the cabinet who appear oblivious that the rules apply to them too.
I got that wrong on the household having to self isolate if you get a call that you have to isolate it only means you, Hancock just said so in an answer to Robert Peston. That’s clear then.
Any word about their wonderful app?
Yes there is some news tonight. It doesn’t work, just like the Prime Minister.
“Tensions came to the fore after it became clear that a mobile phone app trumpeted by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, as being ready to launch nationally “mid May” was beset with technical difficulties. There is now no set date for its launch.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/englands-coronavirus-tracing-plan-beset-by-conflict-and-confusion
You lot aren’t buying this ‘pandemic’ scare are you? Surely not especially since the peak of the virus was 8th of April.Such a vibrant April with Venus shining like the Queen of the night yet we were all ‘locked down’.A snappy piece of prison terminology that .Any sign of a release date from our Dear Leader? This ‘lockdown ‘ gives corrupt First Minister a political advantage over the Scottish people while we are under house arrest.Hello Dr Jim. Any sign of a plan for Independence from the First Minister yet?
Have you got your face mask and your tin foil hat love?
A pity the dog didn’t eat the biscuit.
Bored with Mings over Scotland?
Think dogbollocks more like…
Tracking and Tracing is a STASI wet dream. Check out U.K. Column News.
“You can tell that the British nationalists are getting desperate” is missing an “increasingly”, but otherwise your snapshot is absolutely on the button.
I’d always maintained systematic lying and propaganda games would eventually become too obvious for Scots while England remained hypnotised, yet here we have the Bishop of Leeds representing a fairly substantial chunk of Yorkshire’s finest (short of divine intervention) saying “Flock you” to the government and the devil incarnate bats it away with the arrogance of his breed, the systemic cancer at the root of democracy.
It’s not about Cummings, it’s about a rotten democracy where Cummings fits in, where Pennywise gets elected and becomes PM with a cabinet of clones/clowns and a media obsessed with portraying Pennywise or his clones as normal to protect the status quo, it’s failing.
The twee performances of “Carauction” and “Losevoter” or frankly the many scurrying to mine some crack in SG’s composure and professionalism have never more transparent, and despite British politics dying in front of them the barstewards resist inhumation, and the world looks on and shakes it’s head.
Morality and honesty still matters, even if the government of the day seek to avoid it like the plague.
Apart for his support for cummings how can he stand there and say this,
because it’s written down for him to say,
no need to think
Have a look at the card.
You get contacted by the tracer.
You self isolate for 14 days
IF you develop symptoms ,book a test, your household is on a 14 day isolation.
Positive test , start NEW 7 day isolation but
your household completes its original 14 day isolation.
Negative test You complete the 14 days,your household is free to move in the community.
That’s clear then,nothing about the period where you can pass it on to your household..
Sky’s rigby says the doris couldn’t answer questions on right to remain.
He’s supposed to be running the show.
Great article and hope my song gives it a soundtrack
It sure does. One of the dugs is wagging her tail resoundly as she lies on the floor in preparation for a wee dance.
Great article right enough Louis. Add to that your fantastic music … singing voice and lyrics.
‘Carauction’ 😂😂