Rees Mogg burns the union at the stake

It ought to be clear by now that when the Prime Malinger referred to devolution as a disaster he wasn’t just referring to the SNP, as Douglas Ross tried to claim in a screeching of brakes that was as about as convincing as his party’s claim to be committed to strengthening and deepening devolution.

This is because Johnson has now been joined in his denunciation of devolution by Jacob Rees mogg, who represents17th century witch burners in the House of Commons. the pretendy aristo Jacob – the vulgarian’s idea of what a posh person is like, unfurled a roll of parchment hand crafted from the skin of a virgin peasant to opine that this conservative government must undo all the ‘constitutional tinkering’ introduced under the Labour government of TonyBlair. Since by far the most significant example of that ‘constitutional tinkering’ was the establishment of devolution for Scotland and Wales, you don’t need to cast a spell using the tears of everyone whose life has been destroyed by Tory reforms of the social security system to divine what he was talking about. the Haunted double breasted suit took time out from his other job as a villain in the Beano to announce: “Under Labour, our constitution was vandalised and the whole of the United Kingdom suffered. We must undo their foolish tinkering.” This is not a statement which can be spun by desperate Scottish Tories as being ‘really’ a reference to THATESSEMPEE, although that probably won’t stop them trying.

Jacob and Johnson have between the two of them this week blown up the hopes of that not insignificant section of Scottish public opinion which isn’t entirely sold on the idea of independence but which would prefer see Scotland remain a part of the UK but with more devolved powers. In particular they’ve destroyed the ability of the Labour party in Scotland to appeal to those who still harbour a fond hope that there is still some life in the federalism fairy. Jacob has burned the federalism fairy at the stake and used its ashes to fertilise a field of poppies. Unionism in Scotland is now reduced to its most staunch and bitter core, that small fraction of the Scottish population which would like to see Holyrood abolished. The far bigger segment of more moderate anti- independence opinion now has nowhere to go. Only someone who was either delusional or deliberately setting out to deceive could now argue that devolution can be strengthened and enhanced within the UK. In fact it is now clear that the existing devolution settlement faces a direct and immediate threat to its existence.

We’ve come a very long way from the promises that were made to Scotland in 2014 in order to secure a no vote. That vote did not, as promised, secure Scotland’s place in the EU. instead we are facing the very real prospect of crashing out of the EU without a trade deal, the absolute worst case scenario which the Leave campaign assured us wasn’t going to happen. Instead of devolution being strengthened and entrenched, and no changes being made to devolution without the express consent of Holyrood, we see that it is being directly assaulted by the UK government’s Internal markets bill while senior figures in the British government openly talk about undoing the entire devolution settlement without making even a pretence that the views of the people of Scotland need to be taken into account.

The choice we now face is starker and simpler than before. It’s either independence or incorporation into a unitary Brexit state with no Scottish parliament to protect us from the depredations of the Conservatives and their cronies. Increasingly the people of Scotland are coming to realise that Scotland can either make its own destiny with independence or have a destiny imposed upon it without regard to Scotland’s needs or wants. Witchfinder Rees Mogg has just burned the union at the stake.

You may have noticed that I’ve not been updating the blog as frequently. Unfortunately since the stroke it is now taking me a lot longer to type out an article. Whereas before I could write a 1000 word article in an hour or so, it now takes four or five hours and I am left utterly drained and shattered afterwards because I am still dealing with post-stroke fatigue, which is a common issue faced by people recovering from a stroke. Hopefully this will resolve over time, but for the time being I just don’t have the energy and stamina which I had before. So unfortunately for the next few weeks and months I will have to update the blog once or twice a week instead of daily.

In some good news , I am now able to get from the living room to the toilet without relying on the walking stick. My balance is getting better and my legs are getting stronger. My own personal Michael Gove is learning to do as he is told. I am getting some more movement back in my left hand, but there’s still very little sensation or strength. However it is still only seven weeks since I had the stroke so I’m doing very well considering. There is still plenty of potential for further spontaneous improvement in the weeks and months to come. I still have some issues with a lack of attention in the left hand side of my visual field, but I’ve noticed a lot of improvement there too.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Yesterday’s man with yesterday’s answer

The Gordosaur has been at the interventions again. That’s two in the space of a week, so he’s obviously getting as rattled as a pair of Maracas on ¡Mira Quien baila! which is the Spanish version of Strictly Come Dancing. It’s getting to the point where his friends and family will need to mount an intervention to help wean him off his intervening.

Things are definitely changing. Even the right wing Brexity Spectator magazine has published its first pro-Scottish independence article in its 190 year history meaning it has only taken it 190 years to write about an idea that has been around since about the year 840, when according to legend the king of Dalriada, Kenneth Mc Alpine, invited The Pictish nobility to dinner and served them a stabbing and not the tiramisu they’d been expecting for dessert, thus creating the independent Kingdom of Scotland. so it’s only taken the Tory current affairs magazine 1200 years to catch up. There’s that cutting edge Conservative thought for you.

Anyway,in his latest Broontervention Gordie warned that unless something drastic happened, the UK would be consigned to the history books within ten years, and he said that like it was a bad thing. Comments which were received by supporters of independence like what he said was a bad thing because we are all hoping that it will all be over in considerably fewer than ten years.

The drastic action that Gordie was referring to is the dead horse he keeps flogging about federalism and radical change to what passes for a British constitution. That would be the radical reform that he himself vowed to the people of Scotland would be introduced and implemented within two years of a no vote in the 2014 referendum.That was when Gordie swore that he personally was going to hold the feet of the leaders of Labour the Conservatives and the LibDems to the fire in order to ensure that the promise of federalism was kept.But the second that the no vote was delivered Gordie buggered off and couldn’t even be bothered to ensure that his own party honoured his promises, he sat back and said nothing while Labour and the Tories played devolution jenga in the Smith Commission, trying to remove as many of the promised powers as possible without bringing the entire process crashing to the ground.

Gordie now insists that the UK Government should hold citizens’ assemblies, and appoint a Constitutional Convention. Such a convention, Gordie says, should “examine what are not abstract questions of interest mainly to lawyers, but – as we can see from recent events – but also life and death matters that directly affect our daily lives.” So in other words he wants to kick the issue into the long grass, and after a few years a report can be published which will have heavily diluted all of Gordie’s promises of federalism, then a bill will be published, which the Tories and Labour will eviscerate as it passes through the various stages and committees in Parliament. And then finally after a process lasting years Scotland will end up with control over road signs on unlisted roads and a promise of future powers that will have a get out clause the size of a Brexit lorry park in Kent. And all that is assuming that Boris “devolution is a disaster” is prepared to countenance starting the process in the first place. Unfortunately for Gordie there is as much chance of that happening as there is of Gordie admitting that he bears some of the responsibility for the bad faith of the better together parties following the 2014 referendum.
he’s at it again in the Guardian today. Still touting the promises that he broke in 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/20/boris-johnson-blames-devolution-but-in-truth-hes-long-been-hostile-to-scotland#comments
It’s too late, The time for the delivery of Gordie’s UK constitutional convention was in the months after September 2014, but Gordie’s abject failure then means that no one is interested now. We’ve heard all this before and they didn’t follow through. Now there is no chance as the UK has a Prime minister who openly espouses right wing populist English nationalism and who has as much interest in deepening and extending devolution as he does in working for an entire month without skiving off. Worse than that he has a deep antipathy to the existing devolution settlement and presides over a government which has systematically cut the devolved governments out – not merely of decision making processes, but which has failed to ensure that Edinburgh and Cardiff are even kept informed about UK government policies which have a direct impact upon Scotland and Wales. The existing devolution settlement is under threat from this government and its devolution destroying internal markets bill. There is zero chance of federalism. There’s no chance of this scotophobic English nationalist Prime minister surrendering any of the power that he has coveted for so long just to placate Scotland. You’d be as well expecting Aberdeenshire Tory MP Andrew Bowie to stop being insufferably smug. It’s just not in his nature and it’s not in Johnson’s either. Johnson is going out of his way to make things worse . The Conservative Party’s insane, pathological inability to step back from Brexit is driving the breakup of the UK and there’s nothing in Gordie’s proposals that will tackle that issue. Johnson himself has no real interest in Brexit, for him it was only ever a cynical device to get him into power, but now he has got that power, like all autocrats he has no intention of diluting it. Gordon Brown is yesterday’s man peddling yesterday’s solution. Gordie has become a rather desperate old man as he sees the Union to which he has such an unfathomable loyalty unravel. – thanks in no small measure to his own bad faith and broken promises. The British media is equally desperate, so they will keep trotting him out although Scotland has long since ceased to listen. In truth Brown and Johnson share an important characteristic and are more alike than either would admit. Both expended all their energy getting into number10 then didn’t have much idea what to do once they got there. They are both products of a failed and broken political system which is incapable of reform. Scotland has moved on. Johnson Brexit and Covid are the triple toxins that have killed off the UK. The only question left is how long it will take. Certainly a lot less than ten years.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

the priority

Well, now, if nothing else, we know where Johnson and the Tories draw the line. It turns out that there are after all some outrages that they will not tolerate. It’s not the highest death toll from Covid in Europe, They’re fine with that. It’s not that they dole out lucrative contracts to their pals even as the UK suffers the greatest covid related damage to its economy of any state in Europe, they’re fine with that too.
It’s not even the dysfunctional farce that the test and trace system has descended into in England after the Tories farmed out the contract to some of their private sector pals. Nope, that is, apparently, just fine and dandy. No, the real line of outrage that Johnson will not tolerate anyone crossing is calling his girlfriend by a childish school playground name. That’s the moral atrocity that led to the PrimeMalingerer demanding the resignation of self-proclaimed super forecaster Dominic Cummings, who apparently couldn’t forecast that the unstoppable force of his entitled arrogance would eventually collide with the immovable object of old Etonian entitled arrogance. Although given the performance of the Johnson government this year it’s now clear that Cummings would struggle to forecast going home alone in a taxi after going out on a date wearing piss stained jogging trousers.

Immediately following the loss of the guy he’d hired to run the country, The Prime Malingerer did what any resolute great leader would do at a time of national crisis, He buggered off into self-isolation to hide in a fridge because he got exposed to the coronavirus after proving himself incapable of following his own health experts’ advice to hold meetings over Zoom unless a face to face meeting was absolutely essential. Although since we have a government of zoomers you’d have thought that particular piece of advice should have been easy to grasp, even for a prime minister who holds more food and drink than a shopping trolley but who unlike the trolley lacks a mind of his own.

I have just spent over a month in hospital after suffering a life changing stroke and during all that time as I lay frightened and scared and alone in a hospital bed I wasn’t able to see my husband or my mother. But Bozo the Clown can invite a covid positive Tory MP round for breakfast so that they can discuss new ways to screw over the poor and enrich even more of their pals with lucrative contracts which those of us who are being screwed over are going to have to pay for.
We all know that Serco test and trace isn’t working but it’s suddenly working enough to give Johnson an excuse to disappear during the week that he’s supposed to land a Brexit deal. Not that he really needs much of an excuse. If Johnson put even a fraction of the effort into doing his bloody job as he does finding an excuse to skive off, he’d still be widely reviled as an incompetent buffoon, but no one would question his efficiency.

Despite the many crises that the uk is facing, not only is this government pressing ahead with its crazed , divisive and damaging Brexit, it chose to squander even more precious time by devoting the weekend to a schoolboy spat about name calling, egos, and petulant oneupmanship.

And now a series Scottish MPs from this party of greed avarice and right wing xenophobic populist English nationalism have taken to social media to decry calls for another Scottish independence referendum, hypocritically claiming that that their focus is on rebuilding Scotland and healing division, all the while continuing their pursuit of a Brexit that Scotland doesn’t want and deepening the far more significant social divisions between the rich and the poor, the kids with full bellies and those who go to bed hungry. The only reason Scotland needs rebuilding is because the Tories wrecked it with their ideologically driven austerity and their war on the poor. So Douglas Ross and Andrew six chips Bowie, spare us the sanctimonious hypocritical claptrap. We need an independence referendum in order to escape you and yoursocietal wrecking ball of a party for good. You are the divisions we need to heal from. As Barack Obama said, “when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk.” or you just give them a softball interview slot on the BBC.

Scotland, not the Tories will decide for itself what its priorities are, and increasingly Scotland is coming to the conclusion that its priority is to ensure that it can protect itself from the callous cruelty, greed and selfish arrogance of the Conservatives, who offer us nothing but misery and grief with a side order of Empire nostalgia, wrapped up in bunting and garnished with a poppy. There’s only one way we can do that and at the same time secure our future as a normal European nation. independence is the priority.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

going home

I was intending to have a wee rant about John Major today, but – bugger that, I have other news, it’s been one month to the day since I had the stroke, and there’s Good news – I am getting home tomorrow, a week early. because they are very pleased with my progress, I’d like to thank all the fantastic staff here at Stobhill, the nursing staff and the physios and the Occupational Therapists, -thank you so much for getting me my life back. I’d also like to thank everyone who has sent a message of support. And huge thanks and appreciation to everyone who has contributed to the crowdfunder to help me find a new home more suitable for my changed needs. Knowing that so many people were rooting for me and wishing me well is what gave me the strength and determination to work hard in therapy and focus on getting better My recovery is due to all of you and I will be forever in your debt. Thank you duggers, you are amazing.

Theyare organising an ambulance crew to get me up the stairs tomorrow, but with a bit of patience and assistance I will eventually be able to manage them myself. I’ll be using a wheelchair for a while as my mobility is still very restricted, but the physio assures me it will only be temporary. Now the next phase of my journey to recovery begins. We will be getting the flat on the market and starting the search for a new home. None of that would have been possible without you. So over the coming weeks and months I will be focussing on making the best possible recovery, because we have a better Scotland to win and I intend to play my part in the campaign ahead. It takes more than a stroke to shut me up!

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

British nationalist Trumpery

This week, the Scotland Secretary Alister Union Jack,breezily asserted that his party, which hasn’t won an election in Scotland since the1950s, wasn’t going to ‘allow’ Scotland to have another independence referendum for possibly another 40 years. By which time Alister will be in his late 90s and most of those who voted against independence in 2014 will be as dead as the Johnson government’s claim to be a competent administration already is.

In response to this petulant denial of the right of the people of Scotland to decide their own future Nicola Sturgeon tweeted:
As we’re seeing across the Atlantic just now, politicians who rage against democracy don’t prevail. Let’s not dignify this rubbish. Instead let’s keep making and winning the case for independence. Power doesn’t belong to politicians – it belongs to the people. and this is unarguably true. it matters as little as Douglas Ross’s promises to stand up for Scotland against Johnson if Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond had sworn a solemn vow on the front page of the Daily Record on faux parchment paper that they would not seek another referendum until all the weans that Johnson admits to had weans of their own – which they most certainly didn’t but while certain BBC journalists seem happy to to propagate the myth that ‘once in a generation’ was an actual promise made by the Yes campaign or the SNP? it was not a thing that actually happened. Yet even if it had happened it doesn’t matterbecause no politician in a democracy can bind the hands of the electorate. Yet that is exactly what the Tories are proposing to do, on the basis of a mere six chips seats in the House of Commons they are taking it for themselves the right to tell the people of Scotland what we can or cannot vote for. They are not, as they so misleadingly and mendaciously claim, holding the SNP to account, they are limiting the democratic right of the people of Scotland to choose the form of Government best suited to their needs. And if that is indeed the case then Scotland must ask itself if this really is a union because if we are to be forbidden from asking ourselves if we wish to remain in this so called union then it is not a partnership in any meaningful sense of the term. It is a set of shackles on Scotland’s dreams and aspirations.https://twitter.com/docrobperry/status/1325104687377510402

Surprise Surprise Who should leap to the defence of The Tories denying Scottish democracy but the BBC’s very own, ahem, impartial political editor Laura Conservative sources tell me, Kuenssberg. Well I say surprise, That’s surprise as in The Tories have outraged public opinion again, but to everyone’s surprise Baroness don’t call me baroness Davidson is nowhere to be found. Or surprise as in- to the immense surprise of the viewing public The Prime minister gave a speech during which he told numerous lies, none of which Laura called him out on

The BBC’s ‘impartial’ political editor replied in a way which managed to miss the point entirely, saying: One US politician making wild allegations about fraud is obviously not the same as another in the UK hardening their opposition to another kind of poll taking place which the UK government has the legal right to permit or not. And here we see yet again the BBC uncritically repeating the attack lines of the Tories as though they were established facts. It is not a fact that Scotland can only have another vote on independence with Westminster’s consent. The only fact is that the lawfulness of a consultative referendum without a Section 30 order has never been legally clarified. And it is certainly the case that a Scottish plebiscite election on independence would absolutely be lawful. But you’d never know any of that from listening to the BBC.

it is however a fact that the BBC is to opposition to Scottish independence as Fox News is, or rather was, to Donald Trump.Over the past couple of days even Fox News has been treating Trump’s claims with an appropriate degree of scepticism, We can only dream of the BBC ever doing the same with the anti-independence claims of British nationalism in Scotland.Trump had Fox news, the BBC is ForUKs news.

Mesnwhile the favourit political comic of Tory Brextremism, The Spectator, responded to the legitimate claim that by denying Scottish democracy with a risible piece from Matt Kilcoyne, the deputy director of the Adam Smith Institute which used tactics direct from the Trumpian playbook to assert thait was Nicola Sturgeon who is not so different from Trump. The Adam Smith Institute is of course one of those shadowy right wing ‘think tanks’, which the BBC likes to trot out as neutral and objective whenever it publishes something which The Tories hope is damaging to the independence cause.

The article was exactly like a Trump speech, rambling exercise in self pity and victimhood claiming founded on baseless assertions an lies, such as the following claim”for Sturgeon, there is no societal ill that cannot be blamed on the English. Just recently, she enjoyed claiming, without any evidence, that coronavirus was spread to Scotland in the summer by the plague-ridden English”. This is, as anyone who has been paying attention knows, complete and utter bullshit , The First Minister has resisted demands to close the Border to visitors from England, and has never blamed outbreaks of the virus in Scotland on The English, but that doesn’t suit Matt’s victimhood seeking narrative. Clearly opponents of independence have adopted another tactic from the Trump playbook. They have given up trying to appeal to the middle ground and are now playing solely to their constantly shrinking base

now I am just waiting for a Spectator article from Stephen Daisley telling us why a Biden presidency, Or indeed a two for one offer on square slice in Morrisons means that it’s all over for the SNP – it was over for the Trump Presidency when the election was called for Biden just as Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was giving a press conference in the car park outside the four seasons landscaping company in Philadelphia. Rudy stood in front of a chemical waste warning sign and uttered baseless lies that the American media has now resolved to ignore. Would that the Scottish media were aswilling to be sceptical of the claims of British nationalism. But no.Today we have the Herald warning us that Scotland can’t get rid of Trident and then go on to join NATO despite the fact that in the late 1970s Spain did exactly what Scotland is being told is impossible. Spain got rid of the American nukes at the U?S base in Rota near Cadiz and a couple of years later went on to join NATO naturally there was no mention of this clearly germane information in the Herald piece, which instead acted as an uncritical platform to amplify the claims of an opponent of independence. 2014 called, it wants its scare story back.

It transpires that Trump wanted the press conference in the four seasons hotel and had already Tweeted out the location when the hotel refused to host the event and Trump’s staff desperately cast about for a way of saving the shameless one’s face. so they settled on the car park of a run down landscaping shop in a seedy part of town, situated between an adult store selling dildos and a crematorium.It turned out t be a fitting end for Trump’s presidency, right next to one place where you can go and get fucked and another where you go when you die. British nationalism in Scotland is going the same way. It has become risible, pathetic and a bit of a joke which is unable to accept that the game is up.

This week I won’t be blogging much as I am getting close to the point where I can be discharged from the hospital so it is really important that I give my full attention and energy to rehabilitation and working with the physios and occupational therapists.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

walking and chewing gum

There was no landslide against Trump, which was disappointing. There may not be a final result for a week or two. Although at least Biden seems to be ahead, so all is not lost Despite four years during which the mango Mussolini, The Dumpster fire dictator has provided abundant evidence of his selfish stupidity, his compulsive lying, his whining petulance, his reckless disregard for anyone other than himself, his racism, his corruption and lawbreaking, the hard- on he has for dictators, and his utter unsuitability for public office yet, millions of people are prepared to put their mark next to his name on the ballot and say, “yes! I’ll have me four more years of that.

not that things are much better on this side of the Atlantic. in fact , for Scotland they are, in many ways, worse.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the corruption ,incompetence, and venality of the Conservatives, they still enjoy a lead over Labour in UK wide opinion polls and if there were a General election tomorrow they’d still be returned to power with a majority. We are expected to share a polity with people who have seen for themselves the vile,evil,xenophobic racist,corrupt, lying, conniving multicoloured chaotic and shambolic dipshittery that is the Conservative party presided over by an entitled clown and yet are still saying,”I’ll have me some more of that, and Scotland, you’re going to have some more of that too. This is now the argument for the Union. a vote against independence is a vote to have your government chosen for you by people who don’t care about truth, who are happy to condone corruption and croneyism, who don’t even care about basic competence. who think that compassion and humanity in government is a sign of weakness. All that they seem to care about is two world wars and one world cup, poppies, bunting and up yours Delors. in the space of six short years we’ve gone from’We love you Scotland, stay with us as a beloved partner so togther we can punch above our weight on the world stage to a international pariah , estranged from Europe which is effectively a banana republic, only without the republic, and after a no deal Brexit probably without any bananas as well.

health update: Just a short blog article today because I have been busy with physiotherapy and I am knackered. the good news is that I can now get to the toilet walking with a stick and with just one nurse to assist me instead of needing two of them to wheel me in. Unfortunately this afternoon I was a wee bit careless and had a fall.it was entirely my own fault. Thankfully no damage was done but it was a salutary reminder of my current limitations. I am getting good movement back in my left leg, but have very poor proprioception- which is the awareness that we all normally have of where our limbs are. I have to consciously think about what my left foot is doing and visually check to ensure that it is correctly placed and positioned.This afternoon I got distracted and forgot because I was more interested in gabbing, so my foot wasn’t placed properly, and my knee buckled. I need all my powers of concentration in order to walk with a stick, it’s getting easier the more I practice but at the moment I am quite literally unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. If nothing else this would qualify me for a job in Johnson’s cabinet, however I am not actually a complete and utter selfish and self serving bastard, and that is the main qualification for the job.

The good news is that the doctors have given me a provisional discharge date. All going well, and if I continue to improve and keep the physio happy I hope to be allowed home around the 18th of this month. I’d like to give a huge thank you to all the wonderful staff here at Stobhill hospital, and to all the many people for their incredible outpouring of love and support. It really has given me the strength and resolve to get through this, and to know that no matter how bleak things felt at times, there was light and love waiting on the other side. Thank you from the bottom of my heart

typos, sorry, there’s going to be a lot of them while I learn how to type all over again, please be patient.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

last bell for the Tories

It is a singular fact about the mal-administration of the performance artiste whose stage name is BorisJohnson that the arrogance of British Government ministers is inversely proportional to their ability to actually do their bloody jobs. nowhere is this more evident than in the office of the part time Prime minister himself, especially with regards to the great touselled bloviator himself and to his alleged eminence gris Dominic Specsavers Cummings.As opposed to the oleaginous Michael Gove who’s an eminence grease. this mob of arrogant blowhards have now been forced to put England back into lockdown having failed to foresee a second wave of the virus despite everybody and their granny warning them for months that a dangerous second wave was on the horizon, so much for the supposed super-forecasting abilities of Dominic Cummings. it is now clear that Dominic would struggle to foresast a nippy arse after eating a red hot chicken vindaloo. the new lockdown was announced in a shambolic and much delayed press presentation given by Johnson, which if nothing else taught us that we are governed by idiots who don’t even know how powerpoint works and who couldn’t even manage to ensure that their confusing graphs were formatted correctly for the screen. This came as a surprise, even to those of us with a particularly low estimation of this Government’s abilities, because we had all thought that graphs were the only thing that opponents of Scottish independence were any good at.

We also discovered this weekend, as if we didn’t know already, just how this so-called union really works. repeated requests from both the Scottish and Welsh governments and Northern English mayors for an extension of furlough payment scheme to protect jobs and incomes were rebuffed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak when Scotland Wales and much of Northern England needed to go into stricter lockdown. However the second that London and The Southeast of England needed to go into stricter Lockdown, the cash magically became available. For all these years many of us in Scotland had thought that the fact that bad weather only became newsworthy when it affected London even though it was blowing a gale in Scotland was merely a metaphor for the UK. But now we find that it’s actually an operating principle. And on Monday we discovered that the cash would only remain available as long as England needed it. What was that about pooling and sharing? A union isn’t worth the name if the UK is only willing to assist Scotland in a crisis if London and the South of England are experiencing the exact same issue. Shouldn’t it be the job of Alister Jack, ostensibly the voice of Scotland in th British Government, to intercede with the Chancellor to ensure that furlough funds are available for Scotland when Scotland needs them, and not just when London needs them. You would think so, but Alister has other ideas. useless and self-serving oneswhich are about trying to undermine and subvert the democratic will of the people of Scotland but ideas nevertheless,Still we should be thankful for small mercies, all those British nationalist zoomers on social media who were demanding Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation because she’d shut the pubs have all shut up now that England has gone into an even stricter lockdown. Were they not the same folk who were insisting on a UK wideapproach to lockdown. If they were actually sincere then right now they’d be demsnding more severe lockdown measures in Scotand too, but since they’re not doing that it is safe to assume that the only motivation they ever had was trying to score some cheap political points off the Scottish Government in the vain hope of putiing a brake on the increase in support for independence.
Douglas Ross has been strangely quiet about all this, although when I say ‘strangely what I really mean is entirely predictably. given that in every photo that appears of him Douglas looks like he is auditioning for a role as one of the evil Chimpanzees from Planet of the Apes is now reasonable to wonder if, when the Scottish Tories were looking for a replacement for Surname Surname, What they had in mind was someone who combined in equal parts the qualities of Cesar the unprincipled and power hungry leader of the Ape army, and Lee Evans the rubber faced comedian. Because if that is the case they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams with Douglas, whose unprincipled willingness to do anything for power is matched only by his clownish incompetence.Douglas has made a career for himself in football which consists of watching from the sidelines, not getting directly involved and occasionally waving a flag, he’s now hoping to repeat the the trick n his political career too.
Today, Cesar Evans delivered his big speech to save the Union, during which even he managed to sound bored.It was the usual collection of platitudes and blame shifting thst we’ve all heard so many times before he claimed that devolution has been “found wanting” during the coronavirus crisis and the pandemic has “exposed its weakest points. eh naw Douglas, it’s your Tory British government that has been found wanting. the end of his speech was interrupted an alarm bell which still managed to sound more human and engaged than Douglas did. it was the alarm sounding the end of the British state and the end of the Conservatives’ malignant influence in Scotland.

typos, sorry, there’s going to be a lot of them while I learn how to type all over again, please be patient.

I have set up a crowd funder in order to ensure that I have a home that is suitable for my changed needs following my stroke you can donate directly to the crowd funder on gofundme by clicking the following link, https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-rehab-fundraiser?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B2300-co-team-welcome

Alternatively you can donate by Paypal, using the donate button or log into Paypal and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or just click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. If you would prefer to donate some other way, e.g. by bank transfer or cheque please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for further details. Once again thank you all so much. You are giving a practical demonstration of the better more loving and caring Scotland that we are all striving for.

You can help to support this blog with a Paypal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button. If you don’t have a Paypal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.