To say that it’s been a difficult year is something of an understatement. I had a massive stroke which has left me with lasting physical disabilities which might prove to be permanent. As if that wasn’t enough the dug passed away when I was in hospital. Despite everything that was going on I managed to keep the blog going, and moreover was one of the very few pro-independence bloggers who continued to support the two largest pro-independence parties and didn’t go down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and attacking the Scottish Government in the lead up to what was possibly the most important Scottish Parliamentary election since the establishment of devolution. Equally I have refused to allow this blog to become a platform for transphobia and homophobia.
This blog continues to support and promote a progressive and inclusive vision of a pro-European independent Scotland which accepts and respects everyone, no matter what their race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. This blog will continue to focus on making the case for an independent Scotland and on criticising and critiquing the true enemies of Scottish self-determination – the Conservatives and the British Government and other apologists for British nationalism.
Due to my fragile health and the disabilities I’ve been left with due to the stroke, I have not been able to maintain the same quantity of output and can no longer commit to publishing a new blog article every day. Since I can no longer drive and have mobility problems and issues with pain and fatigue, I can no longer take on public speaking engagements, even when pandemic restrictions have lifted to make public gatherings possible again.
I have always treated this blog as my main job, and continue to do so even though my health problems have had a significant impact on my output and productivity. Given everything that has happened in the wider independence movement of late, it is all the more important that someone continues to focus on making the case for independence and attacking the parties of British nationalism. We already have an overwhelmingly anti-independence media which delights in attacking the First Minister and the SNP. That’s their job, not mine.
I remain convinced that Scotland will have another independence referendum at some point in the next couple of years. Until then, this blog will continue to publish articles which – I hope – are amusing, entertaining, and which help to educate Scotland on the need for independence. However in order to do so I need to eat and pay my bills. Due to my reduced productivity and the limitations imposed on me by my health, this year I am asking for half the amount I’ve requested in previous fundraisers. I hope to raise £5000 which will go towards supporting myself for the next year.
I’d like to thank all the regular readers and supporters of the Wee Ginger Dug , you have no idea how much you helped me through one of the darkest and most difficult periods in my life. I hope that I can repay you all by continuing to write.
Alternatively you can donate by Paypal using the Donate button below or by making a PayPal payment to weegingerbook@yahoo.com
Many thanks.
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.
We’ve had the claim that tens of thousands of people have needlessly lost their lives because of the British Government’s confused and chaotic response to the pandemic. We have seen the UK suffer the greatest economic damage due to the pandemic of any country in Europe. This has been combined with the highest death toll in Europe and a per capita death toll which is one of the highest in the world. We’ve had multiple allegations that valuable government contracts have been awarded without due scrutiny to friends and associates of senior members of the Conservative party. There have been enough instances of British Government ministers being found to have acted unlawfully that it’s legitimate to describe law breaking and contempt for the law to be official Government policy. We have had so many lies and untruths told without any consequences for the liars that we’ve lost count. The fragile peace settlement in Northern Ireland has been seriously damaged by a British government which lied its way through the Brexit process, reneged on its commitments and then tried to blame everyone else.
Yet throughout this sorry litany of venality, incompetence, chaos and deceit, no one in the British Government has ever so much as offered an apology, never mind been sacked or offered their resignation. That has finally changed with the resignation of the hapless Health Secretary Matt Hancock after a tabloid newspaper obtained CCTV footage showing the married cabinet minister breaking social distancing rules in order to have a snog with a colleague, a woman whom he has been friends with for many years and whom he secretly contracted as an advisor to his department, avoiding the usual checks and scrutiny. But that was merely another sordid example of the chumocracy that passes for British government these days. However it turns out that there is after all a line in the hypocrisy sand that can’t be crossed.
What really did it for Matt was breaking social distancing rules in order to have a snog with the woman he was having an affair with. The rules that the rest of us have to abide by don’t apply to Matt, just as they didn’t apply to Dominic Cummings. It was the final hypocritical straw that broke the weasel’s back. He survived the allegations made against him by Boris Johnson’s spurned rent-a-troll Dominic Cummings, who had accused Hancock of repeatedly lying to cabinet colleagues and the public, of presiding over the PPE debacle and the scandal of telling us that he’d put a ring of steel around care homes while their vulnerable residents were being exposed to covid from people discharged into care homes from hospitals on the advice of Matt’s department. He survived giving a lucrative government contract to a company run by some members of his family. He survived a court ruling that he had acted unlawfully by refusing to publish details of how government contracts were awarded.
But after this latest scandal,Hancock had to go. There’s no way he could keep his job after giving public funds to someone he was having an affair with, cough, Jennifer Arcuri, cough cough. Matt Hancock losing his job for having an inappropriate extramarital snog is like arresting the emperor Caligula for breaching planning regulations and not installing enough public toilets in the Colosseum. We’re now at the stage where if someone in this government made a horse an MP and then murdered their sister after impregnating her, Michael Gove would pop up on the Andrew Marr Show to glibly tell us that it was all perfectly acceptable and within the rules of the ministerial code, and besides we really ought to be congratulating him, because all those broken sea shells and rotting shellfish represent a great victory against the God Neptune, whose turn it is to be president of the EU Commission for the next six months.
Even so, the first instinct of this government was to close ranks and defend the indefensible. Which was after all only to be expected, if Boris Johnson had had to resign every time he was caught indulging himself in an illicit extramarital snog, he’d still be lying about the EU as a junior reporter for the Telegraph in between penning obituaries for the retired senior civil servants and Home Counties worthies who form the basis of that newspaper’s readership. Now he lies about the EU from Number 10 Downing Street and other people have to write the obituaries for all the people whose deaths he’s responsible for.
Those same Scottish Conservatives who were ceaseless in their demands for Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation have been strangely silent. They’re taking their cue from Michael Gove, who believes that someone ought to draw a line under the whole affair so he can take care of it, as long as that line is formed out of white powder.
Meanwhile BBC Scotland, which remorselessly and ceaselessly hounds any SNP politician whom it deems to have behaved inappropriately, was very keen on Sunday morning to stress that Matt Hancock’s resignation was really a very sad personal and human story and to encourage us all to feel sympathy for the self-inflicted travails of a serial liar and hypocrite. Personally I can think of 128,000 very sad personal and human stories right now, a good proportion of which are only very sad personal and human stories because of the rank incompetence and out and out self interested greed of the likes of Matt and his colleagues. But yet again, we see that the job of the BBC in Scotland is only to hold power to account when that power is devolved and is held by the SNP. According to the Sunday Times, Hancock conducted much of his official business using a private email account so there is no official record of his communications with those to whom he handed millions of pounds of government contracts. Using a private email account for government business is not in itself illegal or proof of corruption, but it’s a bit like walking into a bank while wearing a woman’s stockings over your head. You might just be there to pay in a cheque that your granny sent you for your birthday, but it’s still going to raise suspicions that you’re up to no good.
Funny how it only becomes a very sad human story when the BBC is seeking to bury the misdeeds of the Conservatives in Westminster. Are the cosy and highly profitable deals that Matt and his colleagues have handed out to their pals and cronies very sad human and personal stories too? You’ll never learn that from the BBC.
Six Degrees of Stupidity
Greg Moodie, whose unique collage cartoons grace the pages of The National every week, is currently running a crowdfunder in order to get his new comic graphic novel published. He hopes to raise £4500 to cover the cost of printing and to continue his weekly cartoon, He says:
It’s taken years to produce this book. As well as being the writer, I’m also the publisher, editor, typesetter and cover designer. But I’m not asking you to fund that time.
What I’m asking for is the cost of printing and the materials needed to create the additional perks, along with a modest wage to continue the weekly cartoon (which has been mostly without funding since I was released from The National at the start of lockdown) for a few more months. I still believe independence is just around the corner, and this is no time to quit making fun of politicians.”
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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 nationalism has taken a distinctly toe-curlingly creepy and cringey turn, although it could easily be argued that that happened years ago, when Murdo Fraser first got himself a Twitter account and some unknown person – for whom there is surely a special padded cell reserved in the deepest and darkest bowels of Hell – told Annie Wells that she ought to consider a career in politics.
However even these mortifications on the body politic are put into the shade by a cheesy campaign supported by the Department of Education, whose remit thankfully doesn’t extend north of the border, to promote British nationalism among school children. Although you’re probably not allowed to call it cheesy because cheese is a bit too French. The One Britain One Nation campaign encourages children and schools to celebrate One Britain One Nation Day on 25 June by dressing in red white and blue and singing a song extolling the supposed virtues of Britishry. It shouldn’t need to be said that the UK is not one nation, but rather a union of the various nations who share the island of Britain and the northern portions of the island of Ireland, but it seems that this Conservative Government has decided that the best way to prevent Scottish independence is to erase the existence of Scotland as a nation, hence the recent instruction to UK civil servants and diplomatic staff to cease referring to the nations of the UK and instead to refer to the UK as a single British nation.
This One Nation One Britain campaign is the bastard offspring of C Beebies and one of those choreographed displays of loyalty that grace stadiums in Pyongyang. Perhaps we could have a union jack armband as well, and work on some kind of special salute to give whilst singing the new song and greeting others so that everyone can immediately tell if those they come into contact with are suitably patriotic. Children are definitely not to be encouraged to sing any alternative songs, such as, “I want my freedom of movement back.” or, “Help, I’m trapped on an island with right wing English nationalist ideologues with distinctly authoritarian inclinations.”
You might have thought that a campaign that claimed to have as its core aim bringing all of Britain back together in a display of cringe-worthy British nationalist exceptionalism might have realised that most schools in Scotland would have already closed for the summer holidays by 25 June, but then most exercises in British nationalism are defined and dominated by the concerns of England anyway, so the complete disregard and stunning lack of basic awareness or knowledge about Scotland is probably some sort of metaphor for Brexit. Equally you might have thought that Gavin Williamson’s Department of Education, whose official Twitter account proclaimed its support for the campaign and expressed the wish that schools across the UK sign up to it might have understood that education is not only a devolved matter under the control of Edinburgh and Cardiff, but that the independence of the education system in Scotland is guaranteed by the Treaty of Union of 1707, so this is not exactly new information we’re dealing with here.
However any campaign which starts from the premise that the ostensible union between Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland is one single nation has already got ignoring the existence of Scotland baked into its DNA, so it definitely is some sort of metaphor for Brexit. The willingness of the British Government’s Department of Education, whose remit is confined to England, to attempt to tell Scotland and Wales what to do is yet another sign that this government has no interest in respecting the devolution settlement and is hell-bent on imposing its so-called “muscular unionism”, which is simply English nationalism writ large, on all the other nations of the UK.
This is being sold to a dubious and divided public as a campaign to celebrate the, unity, strength and resilience of the UK, but what is most striking about it is its desperation. “No, really we’re fine, honest.We’re not falling to bits, not at all, that burning you can smell is a celebratory barbecue, although not in Northern Ireland because there they can’t get the post-Brexit sausages. It’s not the smell of the house burning down.”
This campaign is the political equivalent of bumping into your ex at the supermarket and telling them how marvellous your life has been since you took back control and regained your freedom, and then taking the contents of your shopping trolley full of pot Noodles, microwave meals for one and cans of industrial strength super-lager back to an uncleaned flat smelling of unemptied cat litter trays, overflowing ashtrays and unwashed socks and spending your evenings on the sofa in your underwear binge-watching Netflix and playing shootem up games on your Playstation as you try to hold back the tears. By this time you’ve sunk so low that you are no longer fooling even yourself.
The guy heading this initiative, a former senior police officer from northern England by the name of Kash Singh, whose organisation has links to Conservative MPs, appeared on GB news on Wednesday morning to promote the campaign. Even some of the presenters on a channel which is essentially One Nation One Britain for adults thought that the initiative was a bit creepy and sinister. When your British nationalism is a bit too much even for G Beebies to swallow that’s probably a reliable indication that you’ve gone a bit too far. It’s like Murdo Fraser telling you to stop making a fool of yourself on Twitter. Aquick search of the House of Commons library shows that One Britain One Nation are an ERG-backed group with ties to the hard Brexit extremist wing of the Conservative Party. This is a political movement which is as “grassroots” as the suspiciously well funded Vote No Borders campaign which burst into the Scottish independence referendum campaign amidst a blaze of BBC publicity and just as quickly evaporated away.
You don’t need a campaign to promote unity if you really are united. Under recent Conservative governments the UK has witnessed growing divisions between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Brexit remains as divisive and bitter an issue as ever. The Conservatives seek to paper over the yawning chasms that they have created with publicity campaigns and grotesque English nationalist stunts which seek to disguise the UK’s descent into authoritarianism. None of this will prevent Scottish independence, it only gives us another reason why the need for it is more urgent.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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.
They’re at it again, you can hear the sound of goalposts being shifted all the way from Westminster to Scotland. The Times newspaper is reporting that “senior Tories”, that would be Michael Gove then, are urging Boris Johnson to change the existing franchise for the next Scottish independence referendum and extend the right to vote to all Scots living elsewhere in the UK. That’s the Tories there, the self -proclaimed scourge of divisive nationalism, wanting to ensure that the franchise is based upon ethnicity and not upon residency.
Can you imagine the outcry if the Scottish Government proposed that the franchise should be restricted to people born in Scotland, excluding the estimated 400,000 residents of Scotland who were born in England? That would rightly be denounced as ethnic nationalism and a transparent attempt to gerrymander the vote but it is the same as what the Conservatives are currently proposing. They hope to make independence more difficult by extending the franchise to a large group of people who are believed to be predominantly opposed to Scottish independence. If there were reasons to believe that Scottish born people resident elsewhere in the UK were largely in favour of independence, the Conservatives would be as interested in ensuring that they had the right to vote as they were in ensuring that all UK citizens resident in the EU had a vote in the Brexit referendum irrespective of how long they had lived outside the UK.
Under the rules in place at the time, British citizens living abroad lost their right to vote after 15 years of residence outside the UK. These are people who have made their lives in their country of residence, have integrated there, and who could be assumed to be less interested in supporting Brexit. The Tories weren’t too bothered then that this group couldn’t vote, but now they want to give the right to vote in a Scottish independence referendum to a person who was born in Scotland but moved to England as a child and has lived there ever since. Their hypocrisy could not be more obvious.
We’ve heard this idea before of course, it pops up every time that someone in the Conservative party realises that their Just Say No campaign against a referendum has as much chance of succeeding as Zammo, PJ and Duncan’s Just Say No song did of persuading teenagers not to roll themselves a spliff in 1986. That went well, considering that for decades the UK has topped the European league tables for the consumption of cannabis and other drugs. We need them in order to numb the psychological impact of having to take Boris Johnson seriously.
This proposal will of course be fiercely resisted by the Scottish Government. It is for Holyrood, not Westminster, to determine the franchise for Scottish elections, and likewise it is for the parliament of an independent Scotland to determine who should be a citizen of Scotland, not the Conservatives at Westminster.
The report also mentions that those Conservatives making this proposal are also suggesting that unelected don’t -call-me-baroness Ruth Davidson be brought into the British Government in order to head the anti-independence campaign. Because foisting a member of the House of Lords on us will totally restore Scottish confidence in the quality of British democracy.
This development does however tell us a number of interesting things. Firstly it tells us that for all their Just Say No rhetoric, the British Government realises that another independence referendum is inevitable. It means that for all the mealy-mouthed equivocations of the likes of Douglas Ross, the Conservatives understand that the Scottish Parliament does indeed have a mandate for another independence referendum, given to it by the electorate of Scotland when voters chose to give MSPs representing parties promising another referendum within the terms of this parliament a substantial majority. They know that there is nothing they can do in Holyrood to prevent another referendum and that wee Dougie and his band of Scottish Tory Naw Bags are a political irrelevance. It tells us that in the political game of referendum chicken, the Tories and the British Government have blinked first.
Secondly it tells us that they are aware that they cannot be certain that the courts would side with them if Holyrood were to press ahead with another referendum despite a refusal from Downing Street to agree, which is precisely what the Scottish Government has said that it’s going to do. This is also the opinion of former Conservative MSP and professor of public law Adam Tomkins who said recently that an independence referendum organised by Holyrood could still be legal even without a section 30 order from the Westminster government. He said that Brexit-related court decisions had “muddied the waters” on a Holyrood-only referendum and that his fellow Conservatives could not simply assume that it would be unlawful.
However perhaps most importantly of all this suggestion tells us that the Conservatives and the British Government have no confidence in their ability to win an independence referendum. They have no plans for the serious and substantial reform of the UK that might be able to persuade Scotland that this country’s needs and concerns could get heard and recognised within the UK. There will be no Vow Mk II, and the so-called “muscular unionism” which is really just English nationalism masquerading as British won’t have any traction in Scotland beyond that staunch minority which would never vote for independence under any circumstances.
The Conservative proposal to extend the franchise on an ethnic basis is born out of panic and a poverty of political ideas. Even if it were successful, a Scotland in which a majority had voted for independence could not be sustainably kept within the UK on the basis of votes of people outwith Scotland. The anger and resentment it would produce would simply create a political and constitutional crisis which would precipitate independence anyway. This is a game of political chicken, and the Tories haven’t just blinked first, they’re blinking S.O.S. in morse code.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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 Tories lost yet another court case this week, after a two year legal battle SNP MP Tommy Sheppard won a ruling that the British Government’s secret polling on public attitudes to Scottish independence should be made public. Yet after The National newspaper contacted the Cabinet Office, headed by Michael Gove, asking to see the documents, Gove refused, saying merely that the British Government would respond to the ruling “in due course”, which is Tory-speak for “Only after you’ve dragged it out of my cold dead hands, suckers – what are you going to do about it? I’ve ignored plenty of court rulings before, what makes you think that this one is any different? Now bugger off I’m busy arranging an appearance on GB News where I intend to tell an audience of frothing Brexiters and Daily Mail readers that the EU has no respect for the rule of law.”
According to the ruling, the Government has 28 days in which to comply with the order to release the documents before being found in contempt of court. However it’s clear that they are not going to respond with good grace and intend to drag their heels and make things as difficult as possible.
It’s far from the first time that the Johnson Government has lost a court case and been found to be acting illegally and exceeding the bounds of its authority. This is particularly alarming in the context of the collection of laws, precedents and customs which passes for a British constitution as there are few effective means of holding the executive branch of government – number 10 Downing Street and the cabinet- to account.
With a Conservative majority of 80 in the House of Commons, Parliament is effectively nothing more than a rubber stamp, one which the government regularly treats with contempt. Just this week a normally somnolent Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, was roused to anger, claiming that the Prime Minister had misled him about the timing of the announcement that the lifting of lockdown restrictions in England was to be delayed from 21 June until 19 July. Hoyle was angry because yet again the Government had chosen to make an important announcement via briefings to favoured figures in the press instead of making an announcement in Parliament, where, in theory if not in practice it can be held to account by MPs.
That only really leaves the courts as a means of holding the Government to account. The press in the UK has shown time and time again that it has no serious interest in challenging the Conservatives. Much of the press sees its job as to act as cheerleaders for the Tories and for Brexit. The already noticeably right wing bent of the British media only got more pronounced this weekend with the launch of the G Beebies Channel, dedicated to purveying bedtime stories for those red faced angry men who seem to make up a disproportionate section of the BBC Question Time audience.
But even the courts are no longer an effective means of holding the power of an unscrupulous and amoral government to account. You cannot shame the shameless. You cannot embarrass a brass neck. You cannot dishonour a government composed of principle-free charlatans. This government has already suffered numerous legal defeats, yet it sails on regardless, safe in the knowledge that there are no real consequences for its misbehaviour. Just a few days ago Michael Gove was found to have broken the law over the way his department had handled the awarding of government contracts to a company headed by associates of his pal Dominic Cummings. The court ruled that a reasonable person would suspect favouritism – in other words finding that if it looks bad and it smells bad, it’s reasonable to assume that it is indeed bad.
Advocates for the traditional way of doing things in the UK once prided themselves on what they called the “good chap” theory of British Government. It was rooted in the patrician snobbery of the English private school system and held that government in the UK worked because it was led by “good chaps” imbued with a sense of decency, fair play and whose personal code of honour would make them resign if they were ever found to have broken the rules, so therefore there was no need for formal systems for holding them to account. It was of course always a comfortable and self-congratulating fantasy born out of English exceptionalism, but it held for decades, bolstered in large measure by that peculiarly English deference to posh “characters” with cut glass accents.
If Michael Gove were a “good chap” he’d have resigned after the court found that he’d acted unlawfully over a dubious award of contracts to friends of his. If he were a “good chap” he’d have resigned when the courts ruled that the vote Leave campaign he headed had acted unlawfully. If he were a “good chap” he’d have resigned when it had come to light that while he was hypocritically calling for the prosecution of drug users he was himself using cocaine. He’d have resigned, along with Boris Johnson and the rest of the government when a court found that these “good chaps” had lied to the queen in order to unlawfully prorogue Parliament so that they could avoid any scrutiny in the Commons of their plans for Brexit.
Of course he hasn’t resigned, and neither have any of the others in this government who have been found by the courts to have broken the law. The malignant presence of Priti Patel still casts a shadow over the Home Office despite the court ruling that she unlawfully deported an asylum seeker in order to prevent him giving evidence at the inquest into the death of another man being held in one of the Home Office’s inhumane detention centres. She’s still in office despite having been found to have bullied staff members and breached the ministerial code.
Matt Hancock isn’t going anywhere despite a court ruling that he awarded a contract to a company run by his family. He’s going nowhere despite mounting evidence alleging that he lied repeatedly during the early months of the pandemic and along with Johnson and Gove ran a government whose incompetence, chaos, and ineptitude caused tens of thousands to die of covid when they otherwise could have lived.
If this was the Scottish government and the SNP, the media and the British political parties would be screaming to the rafters that Scotland was a failed state. It’s the British state which is faIling but all we get is a collective shrugging of the shoulders and a deliberate and studied silence from the Scottish Conservatives – it’s about the only thing that bunch of know-nothings have ever sucessfully studied.
Yet if the rule of law cannot be enforced we really are in a failed British state. The problem is that the only people with the power to do anything about it are the Goves, the Patels, the Johnsons and the Hancocks who have a vested interest in keeping things exactly the way that they are. That’s why Scottish independence is vital if we want to live in a state where the rule of law is respected and the powerful can be held to account. The UK has no solution when “good chaps” turn out to be rotten to the core.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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.
It’s reasonable now to make an educated guess about what really happened during Gordie Broon’s super secret anti-independence meeting at Holyrood palace with Will-n-Kate at which they definitely didn’t how very dare you even suggest such a thing trash the convention that members of the royal family don’t try to influence the outcome of democratic votes. Because in the name of all that Nicholas Witchell holds holy, that would be blasphemous.
What they were really doing was giving Gordie Broon an unlimited supply of 50p coins to put in the broontervention meter. They’re not intervening in democratic politics at all, just facilitating someone else to do so, which is an entirely different thing entirely, and they’ll swear to that on Prince Andrew’s sweat glands.
Since having his meeting with a pair of extremely rich and over privileged aristocrats who think that the union between Scotland and England is their personal possession, Gordie has scarcely stopped Broontervening. It’s as though he’s suddenly realised that the consequences of his failure to ensure that his Vow was kept are coming home to roost. He’s not shut up since he met with them. Last week, in what was presumably an effort to peel off voters in Scotland who are keen to get back into the EU but who are not yet sold on the notion of Scottish independence, Gordie promised, nay, vowed, that he wouldn’t stop campaigning for the UK to rejoin the EU even though there’s about as much chance of that happening as there is of Nicholas Witchell popping up on the BBC news and saying that Prince Andrew and his sweat glands need to be kept well away from your teenage daughters.
Then on Sunday the Gordosaur popped up to tell us that unless the independence debate gets sorted out, we are facing fifty years of conflict between Scotland and England. Of course an obvious way to sort out the independence debate would be for Scotland to become independent. As he did so he dismissed the entire Scottish Constitutional debate as squabbling, as though what we’re really dealing with here is a pair of kids fighting over whose turn it is to use the laptop and not profound questions about the governance of Scotland and what the nature of Scottish nationhood really entails within the framework of a British state that still presents itself as a union. In so doing he unwittingly illustrates the nub of the problem, the consistent infantilisation and trivialisation of Scotland’s concerns and interests by proponents of British nationalism.
However that’s not the kind of resolution that Gordie has got in mind. It’s the independence debate that is the root cause of all the problems and the best way for those problems to be solved is for the independence question just to go away and disappear, quite possibly to wherever it was that Gordie went to after the No vote in 2014 instead of ensuring, as he’d vowed, that the leaders of the British political parties kept the promises and commitments that they’d made in order to secure that No vote.
The way he wants to sort it out is for the Labour party to become the major party in Scotland again and for Boris Johnson to willingly give up some of his power and ‘facilitate’ a forum of the nations and regions of the UK in order to crate a forum where issues can be discussed in a systematic way. This is the UK constitutional version of solving an overcrowding issue in your home by counting the number of dirty plates and cups piled up in your kitchen sink and then playing those numbers on a lottery ticket. The difference being that there is actually a quantifiable chance that you might strike lucky and your numbers come up whereas there is no chance at all that Boris Johnson and the Conservative party would ever subordinate the power of Downing Street and their majority in the Westminster Parliament to anything decided by this proposed new forum.
When asked on the Sophie Ridge show on Sky News on Sunday to spell out exactly what the Labour party in Scotland ought to do in order to recover its former dominance in Scotland, we got meaningless waffle, a lot of humming and hawing and a very large serving of SNPbad, but nothing concrete. By this time it ought to be obvious to everyone except the editorial staff of BBC Scotland news that the chasm between Gordon Brown’s mythology of himself and what he’s actually capable of delivering is as vast as the distance between sincerity and whatever oily platitudes that might come out of Michael Gove’s mouth on any given occasion.
The tragedy for opponents of independence is that the Gordie shaped plausibility free void is the closest that the UK has to joined up thinking on how to prevent Scottish independence. We get reheated promises about thinking about setting up commissions to examine the possibility of federalist jam at some unspecified point in the future. What we never get is anything detailed or concrete, and certainly not any realistic or convincing mechanism for the delivery of the federalist jam. The fact that they keep trotting out Gordie like some broken down old racehorse who really ought to have been sent to the glue factory many years ago is because they’ve got no one else.
Apart from Gordie and his amazing federalism snake oil, there’s only scare stories, threats, plastering union flags on everything, and the repeated asking of questions that have long since been responded to along with the insistence that the SNP doesn’t have an answer – like banging on incessantly about the currency of an independent Scotland when the SNP has said repeatedly that Scotland will continue to use the pound until such time as it’s in Scotland’s interests to make alternative arrangements.
It’s because there are no other options that opponents of independence will keep putting their 50p pieces in the Broontervention meter even though Scotland has long since ceased to listen. When neither side is listening to the other any more that’s the clearest sign anyone could ask for that this supposed union is dead and over.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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.
Whenever you see that Neil Oliver is trending on social media it’s like getting a phone call at two o’clock in the morning. You might not know what it is exactly, but you already know that it’s going to be nothing good. On Friday the bold Neil was all over Twitter, trying to stir up something to allow him to feel victimised before the start of his new show on the British version of Fox News. GB News, headed by that other full of himself Neil, the Andrew one, has been launched because, not satisfied with their possession of the majority of the print media, right wing Brexit supporting and anti-lockdown controversialists needed yet another platform from which to megaphone at us all about how terrible it is that they’re being silenced.
This time Unionism’s favourite walking advert for hair care products and dodgy takes on history was opining about how lockdown was the biggest mistake in the history of the world. Yes, worse than the Bengal and Irish famines, worse than the Holocaust, worse than the imperial dick waving that led to the First World War and the deaths of millions, worse than the Armenian Genocide, worse than the massacres of Native Americans and indigenous Australians, worse than the Holodomor and the gulags, worse than the Atlantic slave trade, worse than centuries of religious war and hatred, worse than colonialism and the Opium Wars, worse than China’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They are all but trifles compared to the suffering endured by poor Neil and Lawrence Fox because lockdown meant that they couldn’t go to the pub and couldn’t push a shopping trolley around Sainsbury’s without having to wear a facemask. They’re the real victims here, well, them and Tim Wetherspoons.
These are the kinds of truths we’d be missing out on without GB news and its tousle haired presenter. Who needs public health experts when you have “archeologist, television presenter and man guaranteed to make a million supporters of Scottish independence scoff simultaneously in derision” Neil Oliver? Personally I have a feeling that giving Neil Oliver a platform may be the biggest single mistake in world history, and while I am no historian, I suspect I may not be alone in that assessment. Neil’s expertise begins and ends with him asking the director to tell the camera operator to do the shot of him standing on a rock and looking windswept and interesting as his hair tousles in the breeze.
Meanwhile Gordon Brown, that other well known opponent of Scottish independence, and avid attention seeker has also been making his own desperate bid for relevance this week. Gordie told people in England that he won’t give up the campaign to get back into the EU, although he’s pretty determined to stop the campaign to rejoin the EU which has the best chance of success. Gordie’s declaration was met with enthusiastic approval from pro-EU campaigner in England who don’t have the same experience as people in Scotland do of hearing Gordie make promises about things that he thinks people want to hear and then buggering off when it comes to doing anything about it.
The uncomfortable truth for Gordie is that there is only one realistic and credible campaign to rejoin the EU anywhere in the UK and that’s a campaign that Gordie is implacably opposed to, to the extent of roping in members of the royal family to provide a touch of glamour that the shambling Gordie could never supply. This is of course the campaign for Scottish independence. It’s realistic in that Scotland is the only country in the UK where there is a large and substantial majority who are opposed to Brexit (greater even than the anti-Brexit majority in Northern Ireland). It’s also realistic because despite the fantasies of British nationalists who want to convince themselves that Spain would veto a Scottish application to join the EU, a claim that has been debunked more often than a Vow from Gordon Brown, the EU would welcome an application for membership from a Scotland which has consistently shown itself to be in tune with EU values and goals. On the other hand the EU would regard an application from the UK to rejoin with considerable distrust and suspicion. The UK spent its entire period of time as an EU member as a fully paid up member of the awkward squad, constantly demanding special treatment and privileges. Very like the complaints of a GB News presenter about lockdown, come to think of it.
Before considering an application to rejoin from the UK, the EU would want to know that the UK was going to be a constructive and cooperative partner, all the more so because the UK’s obstructionism and disregard for agreements reached during the Brexit negotiations mean that Westminster has burned through what little sympathy and patience that EU members had left.
At a very minimum the EU is going to want to know that the UK isn’t going to drag it through Brexit MK II shortly after rejoining, all the more so because it is highly unlikely that the EU would agree to the special treatment and opt-outs the UK enjoyed the first time round.
As a very minimum the EU will want assurances that there is a substantial and significant majority of UK voters in favour of membership – much as currently exists in Scotland. 52% vs 48% just isn’t going to cut it. Considering the lamentable state of the media in the UK, that’s going to be an uphill struggle, one which is just about to get even more difficult with the imminent launch of the right wing pro-Brexit and avowedly British nationalist GB News, which will no doubt pump out a diet of victimhood seeking exceptionalism, telling its listeners that the UK is the victim of those vile Europeans.
If you do want to get back into the EU and have your rights as a European citizen restored, the quickest and most reliable way of doing so by far is to campaign for Scottish independence. Gordon Brown’s claims of campaigning to get the entire UK back into the EU have as much credibility as his Vow.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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.
Broontervening is Gordon Brown’s favourite activity these days, apart from hiding in storm drains and handing out balloons to pensioners. It allows him to tell himself that he’s still politically relevant, a delusion in which he’s ably assisted by the Scottish media and especially the BBC. We’ve been hearing a lot about him since the Scottish Parliament election produced a large majority of pro-independence MSPs because the holder of the title of most incompetent and inept Prime Minister before the last three has now managed to secure a royal warrant of appointment for the jar of invisible jam that he’s determined to flog to the Scottish public. He’s now the official royal family’s approved and appointed purveyor of federalist fantasies and anti-independence promises that he has no power to keep.
But hey, at least we can now spread his invisible jam on some Duchy Original scones, hand crafted in Balmoral by Will-n-Kate as their contribution to the Great British Please Don’t Leave Us Scotland Bake Off. A contribution which in no way contravenes the long standing British constitutional conventions that the royal family doesn’t get involved in attempts to influence the outcome of democratic decisions to be made by the electorate, that Prince Philip wasn’t a racist, and that Prince Andrew never sends inappropriate text messages to teenagers.
Shortly before Gordie had his nothing-to see-here meeting with Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge in Edinburgh, he had announced that his think tank Our Scottish Future was to be converted into an anti-independence campaigning organisation, although to be honest it was always more of a wishful thinking tank than an organisation aiming to develop realistic policies with any chance of implementation in the real world.
As he made the announcement Gordie held a press conference during which he unveiled the results of an opinion poll he had commissioned which claimed to identify 40% of the Scottish population as “Middle Scotland”, people who he said are neither staunch unionists nor committed to Scottish independence. These are the people Gordon Brown claims will decide the future of Scotland and are the group which his rebranded Vow generation organisation hopes to appeal to. The poll didn’t try to identify what percentage of the population doesn’t immediately sigh and go: “Oh bugger off with that reheated auld guff, We’ve heard it all before and you did hee haw about it when you promised it to us in 2014, you discredited charlatan in clown shoes,” every time Gordie creeps out of his crypt and starts to make promises about federalism, but it’s certainly a great deal smaller than 40%.
It later transpired that Gordie’s poll had in fact found that there’s already majority support in Scotland for independence, although this finding was buried away on page 91 of the report. Respondents to the poll had been asked to rate their support for Scottish independence on a scale from 0 to ten where 0 represented strong opposition and ten represented strong support. It was only some time later that it came out that 55% of respondents had placed themselves between six and ten on the scale, indicating support for independence. Only 38% had placed themselves between zero and four, indicating opposition to independence. A further 8% had rated themselves as a five, suggesting that they are undecided on the question.
It also later transpired that the 40% figure quoted by Brown as representing his so-called “Middle Scotland” was in fact made up of everyone who had placed themselves anywhere on the scale between two and eight. Brown sought to present this group as being essentially undecided on the subject of independence, although as we’ve seen his own findings show that only 8% of respondents placed themselves at a five on the scale. We have also seen that people who placed themselves at between six and ten considerably out-number those who put themselves between zero and four. That means that once the 8% of genuine don’t knows is removed just shy of 60% of Brown’s supposed Middle Scotland will be composed of people who rank their support for independence at between six and eight on his scale of zero to ten. In other words these are people who are already leaning – in many cases heavily leaning – towards voting yes in a future referendum.
A person who places themself as an eight on a zero to ten scale of support for independence has already pretty much made up their mind on the subject. What they’re not going to be is a person who is going to change their opinion just because the second in line to the throne and his wife are going to spend more time at Balmoral and provide the press with a few more photo ops in a tea room in St Andrews where they’ll be photographed spreading their scones with Gordie’s patented and royal appointed magic federalism jam.
It speaks volumes about the utter cluelessness and tin ear of the British establishment that they think that a suitable response to the demand from Scotland that the promises and commitments of 2014 that won the referendum for No should be respected is :” Here, have some more Prince William in a kilt and a duchess in a designer frock.”
What Gordie Broon’s Middle Scotland” wants is that this country should have been listened to during Brexit negotiations and that its vote against Brexit should have been taken into account when the British government was deciding what kind of Brexit it wanted. But that didn’t happen. What Gordie Broon’s Middle Scotland” wants is for the British government and the Conservative party to keep its promise that no changes would be made to the devolution settlement without the express consent of the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland, but that’s not happening either.
Goordie Broon and his pie in the sky promises of federalism can’t change any of that. He had his chance in 2014 when he made his Vow, he swore to us that he personally would ensure that the leaders of the anti-independence parties kept their word. And then he buggered off and did nothing. Yet now, spooked by an increase in support for independence that only happened because of Brown’s own lies, arrogance and complacency, he’s popping up with a clueless pampered pair of royal idiots whose sense of entitlement is exceeded only by his own to provide a bit of glamour to his transparent deceit. “Middle Scotland” is not going to be convinced.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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 Conservatives, and indeed the British establishment in general, are clearly at a loss for ideas when it comes to frustrating the growing demand in Scotland and Wales for independence and calls in Northern Ireland for a referendum on Irish reunification. That’s the only possible explanation for why they’ve ramped the hysterical unionism up to Desp-Con- 5. That’s how desperate the Conservatives have become. Over the weekend it came to light that the British Government’s big idea to frustrate Scottish independence is to instruct British government staff and UK diplomats to stop referring to the four nations of the UK and instead to refer to the UK as a single country. According to a report in the Sunday Times the idea came out of a meeting chaired by Boris Johnson which was looking at ways of strengthening links between Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
This is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that gets you to the pinnacle of the British state. If no one ever mentions that Scotland exists then it can never become independent. This is the genius that an expensive Eton education gets you. It’s the political equivalent of sticking your head under the duvet when you hear a strange noise downstairs in the middle of the night and hoping that it might just go away. It’s like telling the EU and the rest of the world Scotland? Eh? What’s that? Sorry, you’ve got the wrong post-imperial construct mate. Nothing to see here except a single nation state.
It’s all a very far cry from the grandiose claims of the Better Together campaign back in 2014 when it told Scotland that being a part of the UK allowed Scotland to “punch above its weight” and achieve a global prominence that would otherwise be beyond us. Of course it was always a nonsense, being a part of the UK doesn’t make Scotland more prominent on the world stage, it makes Scotland invisible.
Anyone with a basic familiarity with another country knows that people abroad habitually refer to the UK as England and its inhabitants as English. In Spain, a person from the UK is usually referred to as inglés. In a recent news report on Sky news about the effect of the covid pandemic on tourism in the north of France, the reporter interviewed local business people who told her in French that they had relied upon tourists that the English language subtitles told us were British, but the word coming out of their mouths was clearly anglais. Now we discover that this isn’t simply a lack of awareness on the part of people in other countries, it’s also official British government policy. Perhaps they are hoping that people in Scotland will simply forget that Scotland is an ancient nation whose parliamentary union with England created the UK. It seems to be the closest thing that they have to a plan to bolster the UK and prevent independence.
There’s certainly nothing coming out of Downing Street that comes close to a plan for reforming the structures and institutions of the UK, despite the fact that it’s widespread alienation from those structures and policies in Scotland, and the other nations of the UK, which is driving support for independence. There isn’t going to be any such plan either, because that would mean surrendering the one thing that the Conservatives prize more than business opportunities for their friends and donors, and that’s the absolute and unchallenged power of the Conservative occupant of Downing Street.
Instead of meaningful reform what we get is denialism – the so-called muscular unionism which seeks to plaster union flags on everything and to assert that there’s a single British nation and implicitly deny the special status of Scotland within the Union which was the bedrock of traditional unionism. Or what we get are cosmetic exercises such as the plan for Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge to spend more time in Scotland telling us how much they love us. Because having an extremely wealthy and over-pampered pair of aristocrats patronising them is exactly what the average Scottish punter feels is missing from their life.
We learned this weekend that following their meeting with Gordie Broon, who must have told them that the “precious union” ™ was well and truly gubbed even with his latest attempt at Broontervening, the closest thing that the Royal family have got to normal humans Will-n-Kate are being “deployed” to save the union, as though they were combatants being sent on a military campaign to subdue the restless natives in a remote corner of the Empire. Which is exactly how Downing Street and the Royal Household see it.
What we can expect to see being deployed in this campaign include a wardrobe of extremely expensive designer frocks, a considerable quantity of kiltage, and several thousand megatons of radioactive BBC weapons grade sycophancy. They’re trashing the convention (which admittedly was only ever a pretence) that the royal family don’t meddle in democratic politics in the hope that they can prevent Scotland from voting to extricate itself from Brexit. I don’t seem to recall them going around the UK in 2016 on a pro-European charm offensive. Their silence then was deafening.
According to the Sunday Times the royals are taking action because they believe that the politicians are losing Scotland and the Windsors think that the union is theirs. It’s another tone deaf London and Anglo-centric view on how Scotland can be “managed”. Apparently what is needed in order to save the union and prevent Scottish independence is giving some posho unionists with titles and Highland estates more opportunities to dress up like Harry Lauder. Not so much “Stop Your Tickling Jock” as “Stop Your demands for an adult conversation about British constitutional politics Jock. ”
Most independence supporters see independence as the best route for long term improvements to Scotland’s democracy, economy, climate, and socialequality. This ploy is the antithesis to all of those things. It’s the very definition of elitist and out of touch. It would be harder to find a better way for the British state to show that it’ not listening and it doesn’t care.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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 the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales participated in a four nations summit meeting chaired by Boris Johnson. Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill were also in attendance. The meeting had been called by Downing Street following the results of the elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments last month. Feeling the need to look like he was doing something after elections which produced a record majority for pro-independence parties in Scotland, Johnson called the summit ostensibly so that the leaders of the devolved nations could discuss covid recovery with the British government following repeated criticisms from both Nicola Sturgeon and Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford that Downing Street has sidelined, marginalised and ignored.
However that wasn’t the real purpose of this supposed summit. Like those TV adverts where cosmetics companies make the carefully worded legalese claim that their expensive product can visibly reduce the appearance of wrinkles, this summit was called by Downing Street as a cosmetic exercise to visibly produce the appearance of listening.
It was always clear that nothing of any substance was going to come out of the meeting. Yesterday’s summit was postponed from last week after Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford both wrote to the Prime Minister’s office to complain that the proposed agenda for the meeting was vague and ill-defined. But then you don’t really need a detailed agenda when the purpose of the meeting is simply so that you can go ,”Yeah right whatevah” and then brief to the right wing British press that you were being constructive and cooperative but there’s no reasoning with those beastly separatists, it’s all the fault of Thatessempee for being divisive.
As predictable as Michael Gove evasively sliming his way through an interview on the telly, following the meeting Nicola Sturgeon reported that “nothing substantial” had come out of it. However both Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford, who is most certainly not an advocate for Welsh independence took advantage of having access to Boris Johnson’s ear, if not his attention, interest, or sympathies, to warn him that his Government’s power grabs at the expense of the devolved governments risked the break up of the UK.
The Conservative Government has shamelessly used Brexit, which Scotland didn’t vote for, as an excuse to hollow out the devolution settlement, which Scotland did vote for. The British Government’s UK Internal Market Act unilaterally gives Westminster governments the power to make spending decisions on devolved areas and to override and ignore any objections from Holyrood or Cardiff despite the fact that all the major anti-independence parties, including the Conservatives promised during the independence referendum campaign that if Scotland voted no they would ensure that no changes could ever be made to the powers of Holyrood or the devolution settlement without the express consent of the Scottish Parliament. Funnily enough we don’t hear much from the Scottish Conservatives about that when they’re pontificating about the need to respect the result of the referendum.
Following the meeting the First Minister said: that she and the Welsh First Minister had made it clear that ” If we are to have good faith discussions about working together where we can then that’s not helped by the power grab and the UK Government trying to muscle in on devolved spending. ” She added: “We then had a discussion that shared some experiences around Covid, but the proof in the pudding of all of this is going to be whether it has an impact, whether it changes any of the decisions of the UK Government that impact on the devolved nations. ”
Meanwhile writing in the Guardian newspaper, Alex Niven, a university lecturer and author of a book advocating greater powers for the English regions and decentralisation of the British state, argues that there has been an astonishing lack of thinking in England about what will replace the current model of the British state.
Those of us who support Scottish independence are acutely aware of the need to formulate plausible and convincing arguments for independence. Considerable work has already gone into these by organisations like Common Weal, Business for Scotland and Believe in Scotland. However Alex Niven has pointed out that there is scarcely any awareness in England, never mind serious work, about how England would need to change if some form of union with the other nations in these islands is to survive. This is absolutely crucial because even though anti-independence politicians like Gordon Brown are constantly trying to promote federalism as the antidote to Scottish independence, without widespread support for this idea in England, it’s a non-starter.
For their part the Conservatives appear content to complete their transformation into an avowedly English nationalist party and have no interest whatsoever in embarking upon radical constitutional changes which would limit their power in England just to keep Scotland happy. They know that they only need to entrench themselves as the party of English interests in order to secure their power at Westminster. For the immediate future they are content to stall and delay the inevitable confrontation between Downing Street and a pro-independence Scottish Parliament which has a commitment to deliver another independence referendum within its five year term, hence the summits with ill defined agendas which were never designed to produce concrete outcomes.
The Tories have no intention of going into the next independence referendum campaign with a revised offer of union to put before the people of Scotland. They are relying on the hope that they can stall long enough that some magic event will intervene and defeat independence for them. Apart from that they are relying on scare stories and fear mongering and cosmetic exercises like meaningless and toothless summits, royal visits and plastering union flags on everything. As Alex Niven has noted, deep down the Conservative party has accepted that the Union is a busted flush. They’re just hoping that the soft noes, nd the undecideds, the waverers and the home rule advocates in Scotland – Brown’s so-called Middle Scotland – haven’t noticed that the the “muscular unionism” the Tories hope will replace traditional unionism is really just a version of the right wing xenophobic English nationalism which led to Brexit writ large. The Tories’ big problem is that in the absence of a plausible version of a reformed union, “Middle Scotland” won’t be able to ignore it.
NEW MODERATION POLICY
In the wake of recent events I am determined that this site will not become a home for bigots and conspiracy theorists. They will not be welcome here. Moderation is the most stressful part of running a blog, but this site is going to continue to make the positive case for independence. With this in mind as of today a new moderation policy is in force.
Anyone who attempts to use this site to post hatred, bigotry, or conspiracy theories will be banned. If you attempt to insult and abuse anyone you will be banned. This site has a zero-toleration policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
If you intend to spend the next four years undermining the SNP, the Scottish Government and the pro-independence parties that the great majority of independence supporters voted for, you can do so somewhere else, because you’re not going to do it here. The reminder that has regularly appeared on this site is not a serving suggestion. It will be rigorously enforced. If you don’t like this rule – there is a small x at the top right of your screen. Click it, close this page and go elsewhere.
This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.
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Wee Ginger Dug 