Whatever happens after the next Westminster General Election we will still have a Conservative government, although if the polls are reliable indicators it will be calling itself Labour. In his desire to attract the votes of former Labour voters in Leave supporting constituencies in England who defected to the Tories in order to “get Brexit done,” Keir Starmer has led his party on a headlong dash to the right because under the undemocratic Westminster system it’s only a few marginal Labour-Conservative constituencies which matter, no such seats exist in Scotland so no matter what Starmer claims about the importance of Scotland to him, the reality is that Scotland does not matter at all and Starmer has no interest at all in shaping Labour policies in a way that might appeal to voters in Scotland.
One after another Starmer has abandoned any policy that might appear dangerously social democratish in favour of hardline Tory positions. Gone is any opposition to the hard Brexit given to us by Boris Johnson, Labour is now a full throated Brexit party. Starmer has given up on abolishing student fees or renationalising public services. Just this week Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that a future Labour government would expand private sector involvement in the NHS in England. On Sunday Labour took steps to prove that it would be every bit as cruel and heartless to migrants and asylums seekers as the Conservatives are. Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s immigration spokesman, has announced that controversial military camps and prison barges would still be used to house asylum seekers if Labour wins the next election.
Labour is also hurriedly U-turning on its previous commitments to environmental policies following its failure to take Uxbridge from the Conservatives in the recent by election held after Boris Johnson’s resignation. Labour’s failure to win the seat was widely put down to the proposed expansion of the London Ultra Low Emission Zone to include the outer boroughs of Greater London.
The “Scottish Labour Party” has failed dismally to shift Starmer’s hardline Daily Mail pleasing policies in a more humane direction. Jackie Baillie insists that “Scottish Labour” opposes the two child cap on social security which UK Labour has said it’s not going to repeal. So currently the Labour party is urging voters in the upcoming Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election to vote Labour in order to change Labour policy. Labour’s candidate in the by election, Michael Shanks, has vowed to oppose his own party if it tries to keep the two-child policy in place. Vote for me because I oppose my own party’s policy, that’s where Labour in Scotland is these days.
Rifts continue to grow between the Labour party’s Scottish branch office and the increasingly right wing UK party, which is now considerably further to the right than it was under Tony Blair. Both Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie have previously spoken out against the cruel two child benefit cap, a policy which has been described as a machine for manufacturing child poverty. But their protests have had zero influence on braking Starmer’s lurch to the right.
Now a second rift has opened up on the controversial issue of Self-ID for trans people, Labour’s shadow equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds MP recently wrote in The Guardian that under a Labour government, trans people will need to get a medical diagnosis before being awarded a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), a shift from Labour’s previous policy which now means that Starmer is directly contradicting the position held by Labour in Scotland, which voted in favour of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill and which continues to support the demedicalisation of the process by which trans people receive legal recognition of their gender identity.
Unhappiness about Starmer’s increasingly right wing positions has been increasing amongst party members in Scotland with reports of younger party members warning that they feel “disheartened” by the party, with many considering resigning their membership. Scotland’s sole Labour MP Ian Murray has denied there is ‘disunity’ in the party. Well he would say that, wouldn’t he.
There is in fact increasing focus on the question of whether “Scottish Labour” is a party at all. Spoiler alert, it’s not. Earlier this year Anas Sarwar dismissed claims that “Scottish Labour” was not really a political party as “conspiracy theories.” Yet the Electoral Commission recently confirmed that “Scottish Labour” is merely an “optional identity mark” used by the UK Labour party in Scotland. Who knew that the Electoral Commission was a hotbed of conspiracy theorists. Eh, Anas?
In other words “Scottish Labour” is not a distinct political party, it is merely a branding exercise used by the UK Labour party. “Scottish Labour Party” also appears under the Electoral Commission’s list of “accounting units” of the wider UK party. The Scottish Labour accounting unit’s given address is not even in Scotland, it is in England, at Labour Central, Kings Manor, Newcastle, NE1 6PA.
“Scottish Labour” is essentially an exercise in deception, permitting the Scottish accounting unit of the Labour party to pretend that it has policies and an identity distinct from that of the UK party. This is what enables the likes of Jackie Baillie to continue to insist that the party she represents in the Scottish Parliament continues to oppose the two child cap on social security even as the UK party has stated that if elected in Westminster it would not attempt to abolish it. The Scottish media is complicit in this deception, rarely questioning “Scottish Labour” on how exactly it can force Keir Starmer to change tack or to demonstrate how it has managed to steer UK Labour policies in a direction more in tune with Scottish public opinion.
Certainly on the key issue of Brexit the Scottish accounting unit has dismally failed to ensure that the Labour party adopts policies which are even mildly reflective of Scotland’s overwhelming opposition to Brexit. “Scottish Labour” has proven itself to have no interest in trying to ensure that Starmer’s Labour party respects the democratic will of the people of Scotland on the crucial issue of Scotland’s constitutional future. Labour calls itself the “people’s party” but that too is merely a branding exercise as devoid of substance as “Scottish Labour”.
Labour is not some cuddly and friendly party that is on your side. The reality is, if you vote “Scottish Labour”, you are voting for a right wing Anglo-British nationalist party which panders to the worst prejudices of the Conservatives from the English shires. You are voting for a party that will not repeal the two child cap on benefits or the Tories’ authoritarian legislation that suppresses peaceful protest. You are voting for the expansion of private sector involvement in the NHS. You are voting for Brexit and the continuing suppression of Scotland’s right to decide its own future. And worst of all you are voting for a system that will inevitably return the Conservatives to power sooner or later.
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Wee Ginger Dug 
Spot on.
The London based parties are pro Brexit, pro nuclear, pro taking Scotlands resources and racist.
What “proud” Scot would have the embarrassment of voting for that lot? Labour is only a name.
Independence first🏴
It’s Scotlands resources
The Uxbridge by-election summed up Labour’s position.
Their leader blaming a Labour Mayor of London for frightening off Tory voters in that constituency.
It is clear to anyone with more than one brain cell that England is a Tory country and if you want to be elected to govern the UK state,you need to adopt Tory policies.
The other nations that make up the UK state are just along for the ride.
[…] 7 Aug When is a party not a party: When it’s an optional identity mark […]
“Scottish Labour” is essentially an exercise in deception, permitting the Scottish accounting unit of the Labour party to pretend that it has policies and an identity distinct from that of the UK party…The Scottish media is complicit in this deception
How much longer are the Scottish people going to put up with this utterly undemocratic system?
Then in a General Election any votes for Labour in Scotland surely will not go towards Labour in England’s tally?
The fact that they do shows for certain they are one and the same party
Spot on in every paragraph! “Scottish” Labour have always been the biggest deception in Scotland.
Having lived through their 50+ years of total control within Scotland, I remember only too well their modus operandi: encourage dependency, in order to keep people under control; anything that gave pleasure … youth clubs, libraries, park bandstands, etc., first to be closed down … always with the excuse that it was absolutely necessary “because of the economic mess left by the previous government”. They were still using that damned excuse 25 years after taking power! Starmer already using it, to justify his rolling-back on every pledge he made to the public, to change Tory policy!
The Labour Party … an English Party operating in Scotland and Wales … is an utter sham! Always has been … and always will be. Unsurprising that so many of their members in Scotland eventually sussed them out and deserted them in their thousands and I’m sure many more will do so in the future.
With Tories/Conservatives, you know what they are and what they stand for (and it is not attractive!), but Labour pretend what they are …
they are a Party without integrity or honour … a Party that have always suppressed hope and aspiration and crushed any idea of improving one’s situation. The Labour Party of the likes of Nye Bevan is long, long gone.
Unlike regular readers of WGD the general public in Scotland are only starting to notice what Labour actually stand for and they don’t particularly like what they are seeing which is Tories with red ties on. There are also a lot of ordinary members of the Scottish branch office also seeing for the first time what Kid Starver actually represents and they too don’t particularly like what they are seeing.
Unlike the committed and elected Red Tories, Sarwar, Baillie and Murray in the branch office management, your ordinary foot soldier is less convinced and can see as well as I do that this strategy will not go down too well with your average Scot.
The Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election is not going to be the shoo-in for them that they and their media cheerleaders are trying to convince everyone that it will be.
They will have a fight on their hands to win this seat and might just be starting to feel the pressure because losing this seat to the SNP will do great damage to any prospects they have of winning in the next General election.
They are worried, or at least some of them are worried just ask their candidate for the seat Michael Shanks, he’s so worried that he is openly opposing the policies his party stand for. That tells you everything you need to know about the sham party that is “Scottish Labour”.
Labour lost nearly 50% of their support pre & post independence referendum though this had been building up due to dissatisfaction with New Labour project post Iraq war. This was aided by fact that SNP had a very visible and effective leader in AS at time.
NS was a similarly effective leader and Labour failed to gain any support from voters lost to SNP after 2014 as witnessed in 2015 GE.
With NS stepping down it was always going to be difficult to get another leader with the qualities of her and her predecessor. HY seems to be a decent guy but IMO does not yet appear to be in same league as NS & AS so Labour see a chance in Scotland especially as Westminster have denied the electors in Scotland a vote on independence. However as WGD has written Labour have a fundamental problem of trying to appeal to electorate in England and Scotland when these electorate’s priorities are diverging. To win power KS has to concentrate on electorate in England and this will lead to an increasing tension between parliamentary Labour Party and leaders in Scotland and their activists and voters here.
As an aside for many voters up here independence is primarily political and allowing the people of Scotland to have more say over their own affairs rather than being told in condescending tones what is good for them by Westminster politicians. This is a point that Penny Mordaunt and Wes Streeting spectacularly missed when they decided to go to an arts festival in Edinburgh and tell the electorate in Scotland what is good for them rather than going out in Scotland and listening to what electorate in Scotland think.
Labour’s pitch to Scotland
*Please vote for us and we’ll do the right thing later*
There’s no doubt that in some circles that nonsense lie will work, why shouldn’t it? Scotland bought it before over and over, why not again
There are diehards religionists and those that are opposed to the independence of their own country just because, they have no argument, no logical reason, nothing that can stand up in any debate on the subject, they just are who they are and there’s no changing their minds under any circumstances because they *think* they’re British
I’ve got the same news for those folk that has always been fact, it’s only you that thinks you’re British, in voting terms it’s only England that’s UK British, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland are the minority colonies with engineered low populations so as to make not the slightest difference to any vote carried out and implemented in England, the real seat of all power
If anyone in Scotland still thinks and believes they are considered equal they only need to look at the news or sport and listen to the commentary
During this mornings womens England v Nigeria football match one commentator said “England are the target, everyone wants to beat us”
And there’s a reason this mentality exists
England perceives itself as a besieged nation by every other nation because of their own past behaviour towards every other nation, and to them Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland are no exceptions, so are nations to be beaten not co-operated with
They succeeded over 300 years ago at this and are still making sure it continues
65 countries around the world have told them this and left their empire, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland are the last and all that’s left, so like the last piece of meat England’s teeth are clamped firmly down like a crocodile in a death roll twisting and turning refusing to let it’s meal break free and get away like the other 65 dinners it already lost
Night after night in 2014 they screamed through our TVs at us, No No No Scotland has nothing, there’s no oil left, well what do we all say now, did it miraculously all come back now that they’ve issued licences to dig it up for the next 40 years
They lied through their teeth as they’ve always lied, they’ll keep on lying because they can do nothing else but lie, and they lie about everything, why? Scotland has what they need to survive and they’re planning to remove it as quickly as possible before we don’t let them, because they know eventually we’ll win, just like the 65 other countries did
Were they all wrong? of course they weren’t
“You have to vote for the traditional Labour policies they’re not saying.”
reference for the confused: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbeilmP2wY8
Top class piece. Exactly correct analysis WGD. The Labour Party in Scotland is a mirage. It has few members if any, in local branches. They will be importing folk for the Rutherglen election. They work with the local Tories and the Orange Order members here to feed the mirage of numbers.
The local SNP party is still strong and there is no infighting as beloved by the unionist media. We will return to the dark ages if Labour take control here. Folk are determined to fight to retain the seat and hold back the disaster that would befall local folk and Scotland.
I assume ALBA will say vote SNP…. . Ah but…. It’s no the right leader… vote for Jackie Baillie’s party instead. You know she and her millionaire bosses means well!!!
🏴 Independence
There are only two parties not in opposition, the SNP and Greens
All other parties are in opposition to both of these parties so will vote accordingly to make sure the SNP loses
Aye, spot on.
But surely they are patriotic Scots?
🏴
Maybe not .. as one states “ like me, are intent on spoiling their voting papers. “
Same pattern of behaviours. You would almost think they are britnats.
If it 🦆
People always believe they’re right till they’re wrong, then they don’t like to admit it or remain silent, and that’s a big slice of the population, conned over and over again by the we wuz robbed and hard done by Nivea mouthed salesmen who also never admit they were wrong…….or lying all along
Like eh Trump or Blair or McConnell, and the long list of others we could all add
Gulp. Putin: ‘Ukrainians are all one Russian family’.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230807180934/https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23707089.penny-mordaunt-mocked-uk-family-claim/
Penny Mordaunt mocked for ‘UK is a family’ claim
British nationalists live in their own bubble. English Brit politicians come north and meet Scottish Brits. They don’t actually meet Scottish people but British Scots, who of course share their culture; they’re all British, just like British N. Irish are.
Douglas Ross might don a kilt, but it seems very clear his nationality is British. He’s therefore of a different nationality to most Scots (2011, 62% Scottish only), and by choice it seems. If you only meet with people like him, you will never understand Scots / Scotland, as everyone you meet is British.
When the UK government don’t have Scottish people advising them on Scotland, but British Scots like Davidson, Ross, Jack… it will always be thus, and to the advantage of those seeking indy.
If Scots were ‘part of the same family with a shared culture with England’ – at least as more so than we might be with humans globally in general – we’d vote Tory, Brexit and against indy like, well, British people in Scotland do. We’d not be on the brink of indy either.
I note it is of course racist to suggest claim someone else’s culture is the same / not the as your own. That is only for them to decide, not you. It’s perfectly ok for Mordant to say she feels her / her people’s culture is like that of Scots, but but not that Scots people share the culture of her / her people. Only Scots decide that individually, and potentially, collectively (e.g. by political expression, such as voting against English parties and Brexit).
The ridiculously stupid shared culture argument employed by desperate British politicians who don’t understand the meaning of culture
White people braid their hair like Rastafarians but it isn’t ever going to make them Rastafarian or Jamaican or black
We eat spaghetti drink wine and go on holiday but that’s never going to make anybody Italian if they’re not, and wearing a nice multi coloured kilt every now and again for foreigners is only a comical opportunity to do a cartoon sounding Scottish accent *fir a wee whiley, ach the noo, hoots mon it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht moose loose aboot the hoose, then the holiday’s over and they can say they’ve shared the culture Yaay!
Culture isn’t a tourist appropriation you can buy for a fortnight at the Embra festival, culture is alive and lived
Of course Scots were forced to learn and share English *culture*, we never had a choice, and still don’t, or we’d all be speaking our own languages first with English as a useful other language like all the other independent countries do, without the people that forced us to speak English then mocking the Scottish accent we use to speak it
Do we all share that English cultural experience at one time or another? I bet we do
I do like Penny Mordaunt though, bless her little moronic heart, she’s a true believer in everywhere an Englishman sets his foot shall be forever England, cue the music
I get somewhat confused by this whole British argument.
I was born on the British Isles and have ancestors from at least 2 of the 4 nations. So on the census I put my ethnic nationality as British. (In the same way as, our archipelago hanging off the coast of Europe, I’m European.) As not-UKish and not having Scottish blood I couldn’t really put anything else.
Culturally I’m absolutely definitely NOT English. (I haven’t identified as such since I was about 14. I then used the term British to distance myself from any suggestion of Englishness.) Therefore I identified culturally as a Scot. Ethnically I can’t be, but by living the culture for almost 40 years now I reckon that culturally I can. Although it can be a little wearing hearing myself tarred with the same brush as The Colonisers.
Perhaps we need another name. (New Scot doesn’t really cut it). How about Natives and Gone Natives?! 😀
My Mum was English, my Dad Scottish, but my blood doesn’t know any of that stuff because blood can’t think, I was born in Scotland but babies don’t know that stuff either, they just know who Mum and Dad is, and this is where the uncomplicated part comes in
You choose whatever and whoever you want to be, live it and nothing else matters
Folk who talk blood and soil are bonkers style nationalists, nobody gets to choose where or to whom they’re born, but you do get to choose the rest of your life
My sister was born in Wolverhampton, not one soul in our family considers her as English, she’s the same as the rest of us, a Scot because that’s who she chooses to be
I have nephews and nieces born in Scotland, living in England with children born there and all are Scots because they want to be
Ethnic identity is not the same as national identity, although they are strongly correlated.
As per the census, these are how a person feels / sees themselves (only racists try to decide them for other people). This will depend on multiple factors, potentially including where people were born, how their parents / family identify, where they live / have lived, how they see them selves culturally etc. It is a complex picture.
You seeing yourself as ‘ethnically’ (family roots) British makes sense based on your reasoning. I would see myself as ethnically Scot-Irish rather than British for the same. My parents are not ‘British’ and neither were my grandparents, so it’s not really something I’ve ever identified with, either in terms of how I see my familial roots or how I now identify in terms of what is my home country.
However, I appreciate why a good proportion of people in Scotland feel British, ethnically and/or in terms of national identity. It’s for the same reasons I feel Scottish / Irish.
It is important in understand things as, ultimately, Scotland only exists because Scots to. If nobody identified as Scots first and foremost, there’d be no Scotland. The Scottish nation is it’s people; the flower of Scotland. Scotland just happens to be the land they have historically called home. Scots come from England, Wales, Ireland, the USA… What makes them Scots is they see Scotland as a nation and feel it’s their country (now), and not just a region of a greater Brengland.
We Scots understand the British / English well because we watched their telly, read their newspapers… have to live with their political decisions. By contrast, it seems obvious to me that the British / English by don’t understand the Scots. But then how could they? At most they can watch twee ‘British Scots’ TV. They don’t actually have any mainstream Scottish media to learn about Scotland from. And why would they even if that existed? We Scots are basically forced to learn about English / British culture / politics because there’s not much else to watch as we are not allowed our own media; that remains a reserved matter.
Then you have Penny Mordant etc getting advice on Scots from people who come from Scotland but see themselves as British… surrounding themselves with such people when they come here. It means they don’t visit Scotland, but North Britain. So they go away as clueless about Scotland as they were when they arrived.
It’s like a Spanish Central government delegation to Catalonia only meeting with people their who identify as Spanish rather than those who see themselves as Catalonian. They will never understand they latter by doing this, and they will go away thinking ‘we are all one Spanish family’…. which was my point.
Scotland is a bit weird like this because it is sort of two countries in one in terms of national identity. But Scots by far dominates (3/4 pick that if forced).
You can be ethnically French or German or Scottish or English or anywhere that’s a country, but where is the country of British? To me that’s like being from Narnia, or as Theresa May put it “a citizen of nowhere”
The mythical identity of British was something nobody signed up to or asked for, it was an English political decision to force it upon people in an all for one one for all Musketeery comic book approach to what they decided was their great pretendy unity of identity
According to England’s unity arrangements folk that still have passports declare to the world they are from the mythical country of British, and that’s legal?
All the European passports state the country of origin right on the front, British passports never had that and still don’t, we’re *allowed* to call ourselves whatever we want but right on the front of that passport it legally says we’re something else
except oddly enough for Northern Ireland, it does use the word great on being this British thing though, so are we all happy with that then? feeling equal are we?
They did it to subsume us as nations out of existence like the Borg collective, where resistance is futile
Some people feel British and do wish there was one unified Greatbritainland. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they respect that others don’t share that wish, and e.g. desire Scotland to be it’s own country standing equal to others. I know many people who are exactly like this, and they are not the enemy of Scottish indy.
Nope, as you elude to, it is likes of Penny Mordant who force an identity on people that are the problem. There is a ‘British family’ in the sense of those freely choosing to share that identity. Most people in Scotland don’t share it though, or at least it’s just a description of Scotland’s political / governance situation and nothing more than that to them.
Would a Labour run Glasgow City council do the same if Starmer asked? He does plan to run with this Tory policy. Questions, questions…
https://web.archive.org/web/20230807202641/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66431715
Glasgow City Council reject asylum seeker barge request
Odd that it doesn’t say ‘SNP Glasgow City Council…’ or ‘Scottish Glasgow City Council…’ as the BBC love to use such prefixes for negative stories. Why is it not even at least, e.g., ‘Proudly Scottish GCC’?
This is a first :
Labour candidate states ” Vote for me as your Labour candidate and I promise to oppose Labour party policy .”
Do you think this will catch on ?
They’ll promise faithfully to change after they’re elected, I’m 74 and in my living memory and my Dad’s before me they never have, but they will promise, they’ve always done that
Nothing in politics shocks me anymore…but this shocked me……….
“Jimi Hendrix’s 8 yr old niece (when he died) now rules supreme.
She effectively determines what you see on video regarding Jimi.
Perhaps of no matter to some…….but
Where there’s money there’s lawyers, and lawyers will *help* you get more money to pay those lawyers, then leave you bankrupt paying other lawyers to get your money back from the first lawyers
It’s the circle of life, and death, Disney doesn’t make films about that
I decided to read some other blogs to see what’s going on this morning, when I say blogs I mean graffiti with punctuation, and the btl comments were like leftovers from plague of the zombies movies, and the so called bloggers are employing the same tactics as the BBC by deliberately avoiding the truth and facts and concentrating on the not known as a space to insert rumour and lies
And we know what happens when there’s a space, zombies fill it up
Illegal wars, financial fraud and tax evasion. Westminster unionists caused the mass migration. Then refuse to take responsibility for it. They blew the world to bit, along with the US. Eternal war.
People who support Independence need to go out and vote. 50%+. A higher turnout. March to the Polling station. Take another with them. Easy.
Getting insulted by unionists does not help their cause.
Control and divide.
I consider British as being the same as Scandinavian.
However,you won’t hear many Swedes,Norwegians or Fins calling themselves as Scandinavian.
The British/UK state is a multi national entity which is being run by Westminster as a unitary body whose culture and laws reflect only the interests of England.
To all intents and purposes,the UK is simply England by another name.
However,in order to stop the natives of the other nations from revolting,they have to adopt various pretences that they have some say.
Hence the deception of “Scottish” Labour etc.
They really should include Perfidious in their title if they want to be honest with people.
Slightly OT, an interesting and reflective piece by Ellie Gomersall on the recent stooshie over heatpumps in the media https://archive.ph/Xb1gu
What has become alarmingly obvious over the last 30 years is the insidious power wielded by lobby groups – Their ability to alter if not dictate government policy is bad enough, but when they deliberately set out to sway public opinion against what is in their interest, in favour of the commercial interests of their client, it is fundamentally dangerous, particularly with a media who have lost all regard to honest or decent journalism. Dare I mention Brexit ?
In the article, to be fair to Gary Robertson (for once), in his disastrous interview with Willie Haughey, he didn’t attempt to rescue the man from the hole he was digging for himself, but that his entirely false claims went on to be cited in bulletins and other broadcasts thereafter is deeply concerning.
“Scottish” preceding “Labour” is as much a deception as “Conservatives” or “Sun” or “Daily Mail” etc., and has been facilitated by the media in Scotland for as long as the SNP began gaining prominence.
Labour in Scotland are struggling to keep supporters (and some MSPs) with principles on-side as cracks appear from Kid Starver forcing the party further right. Old Labour has been neutered by lobbyists, ‘think-tanks’, strategists and London politics, there is no coming back from that in Scotland, whatever the outcome of the by-election.
“Labour in Scotland” is a much better title than “Scottish Labour”. 🙂
Labour Minora.
😂 Better still!
The latest complaint from the branch office of Labour is that taxpayers money was used to pay for former FM of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon and staff to sit in VIP lounges at airports when waiting for public flights
Apparently the Labour branch office are fine with Rishi Sunak and all his predecessors taking private jets and five minute helicopter rides to wherever they want at any time at the cost of multiple £thousands of taxpayers money
The Labour branch office spent taxpayers money on FOIs to demonstrate their lack of respect for their own country and the offices of state therein, thereby indicating that Labour obviously have no wish to rise to these offices of state, or that if elected to senior positions of office they would wait at a bus stop or stand in the airport public queue
We’ll all remember they said that if the time ever comes that the Scottish electorate lose their minds and vote for them
Aye, Michael Marra appearing with free amplification provided by Andrew Picken of HMS James Cook Inc.. The framing of Andrew’s “Civil servants in Scotland made 58,000 bank card transactions” needs a little further reading to find it’s between Sep 2019 and Aug 2022, clearly going for big numbers rather putting it in context of almost 3 years, usually a Lib-Dem speciality or the Herald.
John Robertson has been having fun comparing the 14.5 million with the 1.5 billion handed back by Dewar, McLeish and Jack McConnell, and in his latest https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2023/08/08/single-uk-government-department-spends-50-times-as-much-on-credit-cards-as-scottish-mandarins/ puts a UK perspective on it, and neer a mention of yoga or nail polish….
So apparently every registered voter in the UK has just been doxed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66441010
“The Electoral Commission said unspecified “hostile actors” had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers, from August 2021.”
This is really really bad. Names, Addresses & DoB, the trifecta of impersonation fraud.
Eh ?
“…hackers accessed copies of the registers it (EC) was holding for research purposes…… for conducting checks on political donors”, “..but said they were secured as soon as possible after the attack was identified in October 2022″…
Note in particular ‘copies’, the 10 month delay, and the bizarre justification of ‘conducting checks on political donors’…
Enter the ‘unseen’ enemy despite the lingering odour of “eau de latrine”, made in London…..
[…] Source […]
Apparently Jackie Baillie votes snp.🤭
Naw the registers have been tampered with.
That actually raises a serious concern. Our votes aren’t entirely private, when you vote they give you a numbered slip to write it on, this number being noted alongside your name. If you have this list and access to the boxes then you can see who voted for who. It all comes down to whatever disposal procedures they have for the ballots, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that being anywhere good enough.
Last vote this list was still being done on paper but it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the output of it gets digitally scanned for archive.
Is this how Ruth Davidson knew the results of Indy Ref 1 before anyone else?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29569585
As far as I know there were no police tents in her front garden or TV cameras to watch this investigation. I demand a recount!
They’d need a tent for her hoose a tent for her and wide angle lens on the camera
I believe she knows some burly men though
Weird Nicola Sturgeon was at Holyrood every Week answering questions. Never went on holiday. Went to London a few times.
The unionists are galavanting all over the world on airforce jets and otherwise. How did Sunak get to California? Asia etc.
The unionists were buying voters details from Facebook. Gerrymandering and breaking data protection Laws. Targeting people.
Nicola Sturgeon was also denied consular support by Jeremy Hunt because they said she had no business talking to foreigners in Brussels
Hunt meant officials of the EU of course
While we’re on the subject of foreigners, a footballer of Cameroon origin that plays his football in Switzerland was denied a visa by England’s UK Home office to travel with his Swiss team to Glasgow to play an international match against Rangers football club, all the white players were apparently OK to travel, they’re foreign also I expect
Apparently , he is actually Russian !
Unfortunately for him and his team , unlike the many , many Russian oligarchs in London , he has not seen it prudent to contribute ( openly or otherwise ) to the Tory Party coffers .
How stupid is that ?
The UK is now a place where money talks above all else . Putin himself would be accepted if only he would put his money where it would do most good – in the hands/pockets of the London Elite !
I heard that many in the Swiss football team are Armenian and that explains their improved performance for some reason. Can’remember source ATM.
As the thread has moved on I will post this here for you all.
If this doesn´t make you laugh out loud you should check you pulse as you might not be alive.
Dreadful and hilarious and factual all at the same time
Labour branch office MSP Jackie Baillie was appalled by the Scottish civil service expenses card spending until BBCs David Wallace Lockjaw pointed out that per head of population Wales spends more on expenses
At that point Jackie Baillie turned red faced, had to regroup her brain, swallow a Greggs pie and condemn the Welsh civil service as well
At no point did Lockjaw or Baillie seem interested in finding out what the English civil service spends on their expenses credit card, one can only imagine they feel that that’s all fine and dandy whatever it is
If one were to reach for a conclusion to that one would have to think Labour branch office MSP Jackie Baillie just doesn’t like devolution, the same as her boss Sir Starver and his bosses the English Tory party don’t like devolution, then one might conclude she has no business accepting wages from Scottish taxpayers for sitting in the devolved Scottish parliament that she wants discontinued
Meanwhile as the media have a field day chastising the former First Minister of Scotland for civil servants spending £7 on Fast-track and wasting another £30 on lounge access for her instead of just working in Wetherspoons like normal people.
Our Prime Minister Sunak takes his kids for a meal at Disneyland.
Disneyland is not in California. In Florida
Maybe you should let Disney know they are not where they think they are.
https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/special-offers-deals-discounts/
So, to understand this correctly, for British / English parties, ‘Scottish’ is an ‘optional identity mark’, but as far at they’re concerned, British isn’t an optional identify mark for Scots / Scottish parties? Instead, we are British until such time as England might give us permission not to be?
This is the very definition of discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic, namely national identity and/or a philosophical belief in Scottish nationhood / independence. There’s a common name for this and it stars with an ‘r’.
Well duh. SNP drop has mostly gone to the greens / others such as Alba, which means in a GE, this would be expected to go tactically back to SNP, is simply due to no Green candidate.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230809112612/https://www.thenational.scot/news/23710961.john-curtice-gives-verdict-snps-position-scottish-polls/
…He (Curtice) added that while Labour have benefitted from the fallout around Truss’s short-lived tenure as PM, their rise had no discernible impact on the SNP and was primarily at the expense of the Conservatives…
Yep, this is extremely serious for Labour. It’s as bad as England where their apparent commanding poll lead isn’t turning into election victories. Even with (compared to Sturgeon) a less popular SNP leader after a somewhat factitious leadership campaign, a finance scandal being shoved in people’s faces including high profile arrests, Labour are failing to take the SNP vote, instead mainly just gaining from the Tories. Like the DUP and UUP fighting over an ever diminishing unionist share in the NoI.
And the Yes share remains statistically half the population ‘tomorrow, no questions asked’, backing this up. Labour are not winning back SNP-Yes backers, which is what they need to do if the union is to have any hope. But it’s too late because that 49% (very conservatively) Yes first thing tomorrow are dead to the UK. they’re Scottish, not British. They philosophically believe in an independent Scotland whoever is in charge of it, no matter the currency, EU statues, economy… The same reasoning the peoples of other countries the world over a back indy come rain or shine.
The union is now fighting a rear-guard battle as the inevitable retreat continues.
Nicola’s book is already terrifying the opposition both in England and Scotland
What will she reveal? will she tell all? will she put the record completely straight?
I doubt it, but I bloody wish and hope she spills the beans on all of what many of us already know, she doesn’t have to be cautious now, they’ve tried and are still trying to trash her, it’s about time she did the trashing big time
I very suspect we’ll be hearing about the dropping of the Police Scotland investigation this week, immediately prior to Sir Iain Livingstone retiring tomorrow.
He’s being replaced by a temp until 9th October so maybe they’ll stretch it out until then. But with Livingstone’s statement to the press last week I’d put my money on tomorrow.
factitious = fractious. The wonders of autocorrect.
Still, factitious is not a word I can recall ever using, but lets go…
‘It is clear from the evidence that the concept of one, UK-wide British culture / family of nations ‘identity’ is largely factitious’. 🙂
Byline Times article on UK effort to stifle independence including from the unelected HoL
“This is about who we are, and how we carry ourselves”
Attacks on Scottish democracy grow in intensity, tone and frequency, writes Martin Roche
https://tinyurl.com/m4ms8akx
Article from the Irish News.
Starmer will vote against Irish Reunification.
Seems the colonial master is also willing to break the Good Friday Agreement.
In a limited and specific way.
Red tory.
Private Eye says that the National Grid is largely owned by foreign investors such as America’s Blackrock and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. In the 5 years to 2022 the National Grid paid shareholders nearly £9 billion. Meanwhile, hundreds of renewable energy projects are on hold because it has not invested enough in transmission infrastructure to connect them to the grid.
The same applies to England’s water companies, they’re owned by a Gulf state and Chinese consortium that bought England’s water if memory serves for around £62 billion then they borrowed £65 billion back on them thereby still owning owning the asset while paying themselves dividends as shareholders but absolving themselves of the responsibility of actually running it for the benefit of England
Do we suspect the Tories and Labour knew that would happen? of course they did, because the backhanders to government Ministers was always going to ensure the right people owned everything and the dividends would always flow clean and laundered, unlike England’s water
You’d think Scottish Power which has its headquarters in Glasgow was a sizeable Scottish company. Well it was at one time while it was part of the state owned Scottish electricity supply companies just like Scottish Water still is, now though it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Spanish utility firm Iberdrola.
The Tories politicians steal our assets and flog them for pennies to the crooks in suits leaving all of us worse off. And yet there are still chumps in Scotland that vote for these lying, thieving and corrupt bar stewards. Labour support these policies too and will just carry on from where the Tories have left off. We can do better, much better.
Even I’m shocked at just how far the corruption has spread. To allow a critical piece of national infrastructure to be sold off for profit and allow the service to deteriorate is absolute stupidity. In Scotland we pay the highest rates in Europe to connect to the grid. Are those charges going straight into the pockets of shareholders?
Lunacy.
They used to sell human beings, but newer and better financial opportunities always come along if you’re in the right place
And where is that place?
Here are the details about the National Grid plc, a multinational company
https://www.common-wealth.org/publications/national-grid-ownership#:~:text=National%20Grid%20plc%20is%20a,across%20the%20US%20and%20UK.
Just skimmed through this and it is appalling. I’ll read it properly in the morning when the brain is working! Thx for posting.
The Scottish Power pensions are 2 schemes.
The latest one is defined contribution
The older one is defined benefit.
The old one is said to have a ‘Black’ hole in capital as too many are living too long.
Iberola are pulling in huge income but are reluctant to make good the ‘Black’ hole.
A comparative small amount to ensure the older scheme was ensured viability, the profits are off to Spain.
So, like the least favourable pollster of all for Yes finds this:
Again.
Again, from the worstest worse of all the worse polls for Yes/SNP, SNP support solid, with Labour utterly failing to gain from them, but only from the Tories, two peas in a pod as they are.
So are some tories moving to labour as their 2nd Home?
Zac (Baron) Goldsmith might be able to tell you.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/top-tory-and-boris-ally-zac-goldsmith-very-tempted-to-back-labour-at-next-election/ar-AA1f0S0t
That’s news from today so Labour are winning support from all the wrong people.
Completely O/t but hopefully a further sign of the cementing of our own ‘entente cordiale’ (ask Mrs S_S if you don’t know) between our two nations:
Scottish woman, who has never had a formal language lesson, wins Welsh Learner of the Year
09 Aug 2023 3 minute read
A woman who hails originally from Scotland and has never had a formal Welsh language lesson, has been named Welsh Learner of the Year at the National Eisteddfod.
Alison Cairns, who lists her hobbies as kickboxing and shearing sheep, was honoured in a special ceremony on Wednesday on the Pafiliwn Mawr stage, following what the adjudicators said was “an excellent competition”.
In all 29 individuals were interviewed this year, with learners from Wales and beyond nominated. The other three on the shortlist were Roland Davies from Llanidloes, Manuela Niemetscheck from Bethesda and Tom Trevarthen from Aberystwyth.
Alison Cairns originally comes from Perthshire in Scotland but now lives on a farm near Llannerch-y-medd on Anglesey with her partner Sion and their seven children.
[…]
(And no, she’s not MY partner – this is another Sion. We’re ten-a-penny in Cymru …)
https://nation.cymru/news/scottish-woman-who-has-never-had-a-formal-language-lesson-wins-welsh-learner-of-the-year/
____________________
And in other Welsh news:
https://nation.cymru/news/mark-drakeford-confirms-he-will-quit-senedd-at-next-election/
Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford has confirmed he will leave the Senedd at the next election.
Mr Drakeford has previously said he will stand down as First Minister before the end of the Senedd term in 2026, although no firm date has yet been set to choose his successor.
But the First Minister has now confirmed he plans to leave the Senedd, where he currently represents the Cardiff West constituency, at the next election.
[…]
_____________________
Now, despite being Leader of ‘an accounting unit’ in Cymru, he is going to be missed by at least me.
He’s always come across as a decent man
I read the Common Wealth article on the National Grid, posted by Legerwood upthread, which was very interesting if hampered by their misrepresentation of why prices of oil and gas rose in 2022. But I won’t go into that. So when was the National Grid privatised? The answer is 1990 when all the regional electricity companies in England and Wales were sold.
Later, the Scottish industry was sold, as were the generating businesses National Power and Powergen and also the National Grid.
British Gas was privatised in 1986.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48284802
There was a debate in the HoC on 31st October 2022 moved by Martyn Day (SNP) “Public Ownership of Energy Companies” in response to a petition to renationalise the energy companies. Margaret Ferrier was the first to speak during Martyn Days excellent introduction.
But most interesting, for its factual content and reference to the Common Wealth report, was Richard Burgon (Lab):
… and so on.
What is the current Labour Party policy on renationalising the energy sector? They were clearly committed in October 2022. Has Sir Kid Starver changed the policy?
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-10-31/debates/D2E93BD7-1A0E-40FA-8829-0B3D9412F589/PublicOwnershipOfEnergyCompanies#contribution-7B217130-2B5D-452E-85F2-D7B4A8FF3031
I see the Labour Party candidate thinks if there is a public mood against Brexit he would maybe support the “U.K. “ in returning to the eu.
What a load of manure.
Scotland is pro -eu and has been ignored by labour who like their Tory bidey-ins support Englands little englander stance removed Scotland out of the EU. The province of NI now has the advantage over Scots businesses by having a direct link to the eu.
Labour puts England first and foremost.