Odds and Ends Monday 13th May 2024

It is probably too late – but I still can’t for the life of me write off the Tories in the English general election, given how crap British Labour and (Sir) Keir Starmer are. The polls all say the Tories are toast, if some are to be believed they face a wipe out, but there is just that part of me that can still see Starmer blowing it big time. Now it makes no difference really, especially in the colony of Northern England (Scotland), which Tory party is in power in the English Parliament, we are screwed either way but if you were a voter in the land of the colonisers why go Red Tory, just as incompetent as the Blue Tory, when you could just have the same thing.

Sunak is going to try and scare the shit out of voters in England of what is to come, now there is very little scarier than either the Blue or Red Tories for me either way, Starmer will come out with some even scarier warnings just to out right the right wing Blue Tories. Of course the scares will involve enriching weapons companies even more, taking away more of our rights, and cutting the poverty starvation benefits of the poor and vulnerable.

Honestly please please don’t vote in the English Parliament elections, spoiling your paper, or voting SNP means nothing, removing the mandate does in my opinion.

This does alarm me – not the fact that it means people take time off work, that is always going to be the right wing media coverage of it, it is what it does to people. The article is worth a read. There are no easy answers to this issue, no matter which way you look at it.

Obesity is linked to poverty, to mental health, medication, smoking, lifestyle, education, complacency, there is no one reason. Now, why does this worry me? Well, 2 and a half years ago I was obese. I was 16 stones, I got told I had high blood pressure (still do), I got told I was a heart attack waiting to happen. One of the things that was clear was that my diet was crap, I was also living pretty much a sitting down and not moving very far life, lock down was not the excuse.

I started walking every day, I started calorie counting every day, and I slowly moved to a pretty much plant food diet. I cut down my portion sizes, I stopped the chips, pasta, rice, cheese, meat pretty much. My weight is now 10.13 which is good enough for myself, but the issue is it is not easy to do. It is not cheap for a start, making your own meals from scratch is not cheaper, it is not easy, you have to learn, you do need to have enough money, you need motivation. You cannot enforce that with shame, with threats to poverty benefits, unemployment. We do need to change as a society, if we don’t many of us will die a lot younger than needs to be the case, lives will be worse but the answer lays in investment in people, in services, you just know that won’t happen.

The end is nigh, or is it? – Jockland Scotland have said that the generational investigation into SNP finances is coming to a close, just before the English Parliament elections.

Scotland’s most senior police officer has said detectives probing SNP party finances will report their findings to prosecutors “in a matter of weeks”.

Will anyone else be charged? Will the court case take place before the SNP ban jury trials? Will the trial last to 2026 just before the Holyrood Regional Council elections? Either way this has got to come to an end one way or the other as it is one of the reasons I suspect is holding back the YES movement from really getting organised, moving forward. The Sturgeon legacy in even more glory.

Vacuous is being kind – Anus Sarwar is a tube, a sock puppet of the unionists controlled by the English Parliament, England’s man in the colony.

Sarwar will give a speech today to remind us how crap it is being a colony, only he will blame not being a good enough colony as the issue.

Anas Sarwar will accuse the SNP of “squandering” the opportunities of devolution after becoming distracted by “internal divisions”.

He will pull a Starmer, he will say a lot, will have no answers, he will replace it is all the Tories fault to it’s all the SNPs fault, that the answer lays with British Labour. He will talk about how crap the SNHS is, he will bang on about poverty as British Labour always do, he will bang on about homelessness, the economy, education, division, while the only solution he will come up with is the 100 plus year abolish the House of Lords (Dead) which will never happen.

British Labour might be ahead in the colony polls for the English Parliament election but please folks just don’t take part, don’t encourage them while cementing even more our colonial status. These people are worms, they are liars, they are a leech on every one of us and it is time to remove our mandate from them, and their parliament.

Odds and Ends Sunday 12th May 2024

I don’t know which show they were watching – but that was the worst two episodes of Dr.Who that I have ever seen. My daughter and her boyfriend came up for dinner, and to watch the start of the new series.

Ncuti Gatwa is obviously a decent actor, but if this doesn’t get better quickly, then I suspect my days of watching Dr.Who will come to end after many many years. Both episodes were awful, the story lines awful, barely sci-fi at all. Millie Gibson, the new companion, was awful. I’m sorry, but that was not a good performance at all, a couple of decent moments but overall very very poor. Both stories were rubbish, babies piloting a space station scared of an imagined monster made from their snot (1/10), then episode 2 the maestro who has stolen musical notes (1/10) with a fake Beatles band that offered nothing to the story. Absolute shit at best.

The death of independence confirmed – Swinney confirmed that the SNP will stick to the same failed policy that they have followed since 2015. Even if by some miracle they won a majority of colony seats for the English Parliament, nothing changes,

The cabinet secretary for the constitution, Angus Robertson, will retain oversight of the issue.

We might as well all give up now. Independence will not be gained playing by English rules in the English Parliament. A referendum is not going to happen, honestly folks do not take part in the English Parliament Election this year, we have basically got to remove our consent by refusing to take part, voting in the English election in any way just enforces our colonial status in every way.

The gift that just keeps giving – so it has started. The inevitable court cases due to the incompetence of the SNP/Scottish Trans Green Government are starting to begin, how many hundreds of millions will this cost us, how many public services will have to be cut, how many more people will become even more vulnerable as lifeline services pay for Lorna Slater,

A WASTE firm has pointed the finger at axed Green Party minister Lorna Slater for them suffering a £150million loss over the failed bottle recycling scheme. Biffa has now launched an action against the Scottish Government to recoup the cash in the Court of Session, and has named her in their legal claim.

It is long before time that we demanded the law be changed and this level of incompetence becomes a crime that politicians are held to account on. The Tories, the SNP/Greens, have we ever been ripped off by such an incompetence bunch of clowns than these. Since 2010 I can’t remember Government, and politicians, being as awful as this, criminally awful in my opinion.

Are you sick of politics? – I know that I am in most ways now. The incompetence, the lies, the waste, the theft, corruption, it really is a long list. It appears that many people out there are feeling the same now in England, and the colonies.

The main 21 reasons given are Brexit, scandals, broken promises, media bias, social media, right-wing populism, overemphasis on London, austerity, political correctness, voter fatigue, lack of representation, the environment, housing crisis, lack of NHS funding, poor education, immigration, lack of privacy, poor transport, inequality and lack of social justice, apathy, and information overload.

When I read the article, I was surprised how accurate it actually was while having no idea how we go about changing how many are feeling, the apathy that I am feeling, and have been for a long time.

Odds and Ends Friday 10th May 2024

Are we seeing the start of sanity at last – According to this article companies are starting to question the influence of organisations like Stonewall, and the impact they have had on their organisations, about bloody time.

Chief executives are beginning to realise that they didn’t quite think things through when first setting up their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, according to a co-founder of one of the UK’s most active LGBT charities, Stonewall.

Now I don’t care if someone is black or white, transgender, homosexual, or heterosexual. I don’t care if someone is a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, atheist, or agnostic. I don’t care all that much in what they believe, if they like me, hate me, ignore me, value me. I do have an issue with getting my head around people who vote Tory, and Rangers 2012 strange obsession with Dundee FC, but in the main I am not all that bothered with what people do. As long as they are not harming others, or themselves, their communities, then let them get on with it.

What I so struggle with is the political correct rubbish that has crept into our lives under the guise of so-called inclusion, of certain people’s interpretation of what equality is. I don’t do the he/him, she/her, me/it pronoun thing on my emails. I know who I am, flaws, warts, ignorance and all, so the end of this nonsense is long before time in my opinion.

Fran Itkoff, a 90-year-old woman from California who had volunteered for a multiple sclerosis charity for over 60 years, was told earlier this year that her services were no longer required after she told a colleague she didn’t understand why she needed to add the pronouns “she/her” to her email signature.

Most people are not overly prejudiced, we all have values and opinion that there are many who would argue are prejudiced, but in the main most people just don’t care, they have enough going on in their lives just getting through the day. If we are now seeing the end of this nonsense, then I am all for it. Most people understand that it is not easy for transgender people, it is not easy for homosexual people, for Muslims, for Christiane, for Jews, for ethnic minorities, but we will not create the kind of inclusive society we desire by enforcing the opinion of organisation like Stonewall on to people, by removing the word mother, and woman, from our dictionary, that is more prejudiced than the bloody concerns that many have already.

Surely we can just strive to be decent human beings.

While this is just rehashing division – on the part of the unionists there is a part of me that is equally determined to ensure that the truth of the Sturgeon years are not forgotten, in the political sense, they should never be forgiven.

The SNP’s “incompetence” in government has “hindered” the cause of Scottish independence, Alex Salmond has claimed.

While the article highlights Alex Salmond belief that the Court Case in the English Supreme Court has set back the independence cause, I would argue, will always argue, that the whole Sturgeon years were as equal a disaster on the colony than the Thatcher years, in many ways worse. Thatcher was just wrong in virtually every belief she had, she destroyed communities, destroyed people, Sturgeon destroyed faith, destroyed hope, that for myself is even worse.

“Obviously it has hindered independence when the SNP became an incompetent government in more recent years.” Mr Salmond, who left the SNP in the run-up to the 2021 Holyrood elections launched the rival pro-independence Alba Party, said there was a “litany of demonstrations of incompetence” by his successors in government.

In many ways Alex Salmond is yesterday’s man, not his fault, Sturgeon, her dangle berries, and the unionists did a job on him to neutralise his threat to their precious union, but he is not wrong is he.

A test for Swinney – can he demonstrate, with actions, that he is a reformed character now he is again First Minister of our colony? I would not bet on it personally, but this is one potential new law that does need to be highlighted.

 “It is a matter of justifiable concern to the Four Bars that the removal of juries, made up of a cross-section of the public, for rape and other serious sexual offence trials continues to be pursued in Scotland. “The evidence base demonstrating the possible benefits of such a change is narrow and there are foreseeable negative consequences., including the undermining of faith in, and respect for, the role of the jury throughout our criminal justice systems.

This attack on our democratic principles, on fairness, on duty, is yet another Sturgeon legacy that has got to be ditched. I have zero faith in the law or the courts in our colony, likewise little faith in our state police, as it is without losing any smidgeon of hope I can ever have in our systems, my rights, and my place in the colony. Honestly, Sturgeon has been worse than Thatcher in so many ways.

 

There can be no doubt

There can be no doubt – the USA/UK/EU are all complicit in a genocide according to more and more people better informed than myself. No amount of justification, fancy words, can justify that profit continues to be put ahead of life, of decency, of human rights, of principle.

No one I know supports or agrees with the actions of Hamas on October 7th last year, what they did to innocent people in Israel was a crime, was terrorism of the worst kind.

1,160 people lost their lives that day, there can be no justification for that crime, I think most people would agree with that. It is estimated that the revenge being metered out by the Israeli Government now numbers over 33,000, that is not self-defence, according to people like George Monibot, it is a genocide, and it is very hard to disagree, it is wrong, it has gone too far.

History will judge the west, in particular the USA/UK/EU, as being equally guilty for continuing to support the actions in Gaza, not because of self-defence, not because of a just war, but because of profit, the profit of the arms industry. According to a report on the BBC the USA account for 69% of arms to Israel, Germany 29.7%, Italy 4.7%, the UK a bit less but probably more about the fact ours just don’t work well enough. It does clearly demonstrate though that profit will always be put before life as long as we keep electing right wing nut jobs as our politicians, ignorant, horrific, greedy, corrupt people who just don’t care.

We have learned nothing in all the years we have been on this planet, we are no further forward than cave men in so many ways. Maybe we should all be ashamed.

Something Different

Thatcher (may she rot in hell) Wins Again

Thatcher must be doing a morris dance in her pit in hell – Now that the SNP have gone and crowned Tory John Swinney leader of the British SNP.

SNP’s depute leader, Keith Brown said the party had received an “immediate lift” on the doorstep after Mr Swinney put his name forward to replace Mr Yousaf.

How is that working out? According to the Sunday Times poll, the SNP would win 29% of the vote, while Labour would take 34%. Professor Sir John Curtice told the paper that meant Mr Swinney’s party would hold just 15 of its 43 seats with Scottish Labour winning 28.

Mentalist Scottish Trans Green Party Leader Patrick Harvie has made clear that they expect the new SNP leader to pursue “progressive” policies including a “watertight” ban on conversion therapy.

Doesn’t matter what experts like Hilary Cass say, of course the likes of Swinney won’t even be held to ransom by the likes of Harvie as Swinney supports all this rubbish anyway. Nothing changes with the coronation of Swinney, Kate Forbes proved to be the busted flush that Wings said she was, and no one had the balls (excuse the pun) to stand for leader of the poisoned chalice.

Thatcher has turned all the so-called big parties into Tory Parties, no wonder the City of London (the real colonising Government) are not worried by a Starmer win, or a Swinney coronation, the Tories remain in power in London, and in the colonies for years and years to come. No wonder I won’t be voting later this year, there is just no point.

Odds and Ends Wednesday 1st May 2024

Rats in a sack – So the Sturgeon woke crowd of Gilruth, Blackford, Flynn, Brown are all pushing for the SNP John Major in John Swinney as the next Sturgeon mantra candidate for the poisoned chalice that is leader of the SNP, while Scottish colony voters allegedly prefer Kate Forbes, who would maybe be every so slightly less awful.

While I appreciate that colony politics have been dead for a few years, the next week or month or so are going to be torture having to put up with this bin mess. I really hope the motion against the Scottish Government goes ahead, that Alba grow a pair, vote against the Scottish Government, and that the Greens don’t do what they normally do, chase the money and give their support to this regional council.

The colony needs an election I think now, the last 9 years of this level of incompetence needs to come to an end. Not that any future regional council will be any better voters need to see that there has got to be route and branch change at all levels of our governance in the colony, and in the colonizing English Parliament. England and the colonies are broken beyond belief, England will continue to sink quicker than the Titanic, colony voters need to see that we have one option left, independence, it is going to hurt to get to that point but we really cannot afford to wait any longer.

‘We stand ready to work with new leader’ – This is one of the reasons I left the Alba Party. What I thought when I became a founding member was that at last we would have a party in the colony that would put independence front and centre, would not play the games, play by British rules, in British systems, and all that English pish about stiff upper lip and alleged fairness.

The Alba party would not offer any support to any political party that was not serious about ending our colonial status, that the needs of the colony would come first, over the needs of the people leading it. I am no political analyst like Robin McAlpine, or the other new media bloggers, very few of my predictions ever come true, but this stuff, while maybe being part of the political process, is why I just have little faith in any of the politicians any more.

What is Alba for? From the offer of a pact on voting with the SNP, to this crap, the party might as well be called the SNP Light Party, half the calories. No wonder, our colonial status is all but guaranteed for the next 50 years at this rate.

No, but it is on life support – “Independence feels frustratingly close,” Humza Yousaf proclaimed Monday as he resigned following the collapse of his government.

But for those dreaming of an independent Scotland, it feels as if nothing could be further from the truth.

You can read the article here and it is worth a read, is a fair assessment of where we are right now, and is line with what many new media bloggers, or the ones with the blinkers off, have been saying for a long time.

“If the SNP lose the election in Scotland, the debate on independence stops,” one veteran SNP MP, Tommy Sheppard, has said or written on many occasions.

With two crucial electoral tests facing a new SNP leader within the next two years, the reality is that the outlook can always get worse for the independence movement.

Sheppard is one of the many things that are the problem. Now unlike Sheppard who seems to think the independence movement, and the debate belongs to the SNP, I agree with Politico that things will get worse before they get better, the years that we have been set back by Sturgeon and her gender warriors is unforgivable, but once we do sort ourselves out, when we get the likes of Sheppard and Sturgeon gone then the next serious and organized push I believe will be the one that ends our colonial status. May not be in my lifetime but I retain a belief deep down that it will happen.

The answer never lays with George Galloway and the Workers Party – the man is a political parasite of the worst kind in every way.

Andrew Murray is correct when he says, “the establishment has certainly worked to create this democratic depression, not least by extinguishing anything that might stimulate even a modicum of hope.

We know that the media, all the politicians in the British Parties have done their best to not only make it difficult for poorer and less engaged people to vote, but in true Thatcherism they have created an environment of fear, and of worrying where the next meal comes from, how to get through the month, to the extent that more and more people will not vote in the English general election later this year, let alone the English council elections tomorrow.

Sky news found in their recent poll that 49% of people never trust politicians any more, 56% don’t trust the Government, 73% believe that politicians don’t care what voters think. Pessimism doesn’t even begin to explain those statistics, it is what the English (British) state does.

The fog of pessimism and inertia hanging over British politics will not be easily dispersed, and dispersal will not be the work of any one politician alone but of the initiative of mass movements.(Andrew Murray)

The answer for myself doesn’t lay in socialism but in social liberalism, I have believed that since at least 2015, I even vote for a Liberal councillor in local elections as he is a good councillor, because I look at those elections differently, and because deep down I am a still a social liberal who doesn’t have a true national social liberal party to vote for.

Social liberalism believes in collective liberties and rights that favors social welfare and justice. Social liberalism believes in things  like taxation, regulations on individuals, groups, and businesses, but more in an effort to ensure social justice and social welfare via government for all. Social liberalism believes in a bottom up approach where power is devolved to the lowest level not the highest.

That is what I believe can save politics moving forward but sadly unless we are willing to open our minds, embrace this old idea of fairness, then power in the hands of few, the tool of fear, will continue to win the day and we will all continue to lose and be worse off for it.

It makes no difference – it’s over

It makes no difference – it’s over – will he or won’t he? Does anyone really care any more?

My phone started getting hot last night very late as the story emerged that Humza Useless may well resign today as the First Minister of the North Britain colony, I never actually looked at the texts until this morning, needed the beauty sleep. When I started to follow the story a little, I nearly spat out my Egg Mayo Pita bread when Jenny Gilruth was mentioned as a potential replacement, just when you thought the madness couldn’t get any worse, well folks only Lorna Slater would be worse than Gilruth. Gilruth is yet another Politics student who has worked their way up the SNP greasy poll, no life experience to speak of, as in having a proper job, and her list of failure is an equal to Humza Useless.

Just when you thought the SNP had reached their bottom, well, it is clear that their bottom is a never ending pit of useless. The simple fact is it is over for the SNP in the Regional Parliament in Edinburgh. We can either have the useless SNP, or the equally useless British Labour Party overseeing the colony, either way the colony is screwed for the next few years at least to continue the last 400.

Now, Alba needs to decide what they are – or they might as well give up the ghost as well.

If Alba, and Alex Salmond, are serious about being the alternative to the SNP then there can be no olive branch, or yet another one from Alex Salmond. There is a part of me that suspects that if the SNP were willing to welcome Alex Salmond back he would jump at the opportunity, either way Alba has to decide what it wants to be, or it may well be over for the party also. I believe that they need to be clear and say that they will not support the SNP as they are no longer an independence party, that the SNP can join an alliance of the yes parties on equal terms with all the others, while coming up with a strategy that can move the yes debate forward.

Did the interview with Patrick Harvie bring about this so-called crisis, maybe yes maybe no, I would suspect that it is a combination of the whole list of failure since the Sturgeon took over coming to a head. Maybe even the most diehard carrot eaters have had enough, can see the writing on the wall. Useless potentially going is just like squeezing one plook on your chops, there are a hell of a lot of plooks on the chops of the SNP that need a good squeeze, then washed away with some serious clearasil before the SNP can even think about the long road to recovery.

Underwhelmed

As the news, the blogosphere, Scot Goes Pop – everyone and their auntie goes into meltdown I am somewhat underwhelmed by all the goings-on the last day a bit.

Who is Ash Regan? Alba holds the balance of power, blah blah blah.

I just can’t get myself all that excited by any of it to be honest. My son, friends, have been texting, Useless will resign, there will be an election, the Government will fall. I responded that I hadn’t really been following it, and that I did not think that Useless would resign, and he hasn’t. This meltdown because the SNP ended their unholy alliance with the Trans Scottish Green Party is way over the top, but also shows how much of a dead cemetery Scottish Politics have been for a long time.

I get this is the most exciting thing to happen since the Sturgeon resigned, and Police Jockland set up their Duke of Edinburgh weekend camping tent on the Sturgeons’ lawn but is it just me or is it just another non-event pretty much in a regional council that is full of non-events, not to mention non entities.

There is not much I can add really, Wings is doing minute by minute updates trying to wake up the dead embers of the independence movement, good luck to him. I’ll have a coffee and play football manager on my PC for an hour or so while I try to get used to my new varifocals that are being a pain in the arse.

It’s Shite Being Scottish – But

Reading the various blogs, and listening to some podcasts, and even sadly watching the Patrick Harvie interview at the weekend, I know I am a masochist, it got me thinking of the Ewan McGregor scene from Train Spotting.

It’s Shite Being Scottish – now it is very very funny, but sadly very very true right now. Maybe that scene from Trainspotting should be our rallying call to a better future.

Now, hold yourself back, it is not all doom and gloom, I know coming from me lol. But when I think back to around the start of 2013, feels like a lifetime ago, I wrote about what I wanted to see for Scotland (my colony)

My Scotland

My Scotland will be an independent Scotland where people succeed not on who their families are, or which family they were born into, but on their ability.

My Scotland will be a democratic Scotland where every vote counts, where there is no unelected second chamber, or unelected head of state.

My Scotland is a Scotland where people don’t rely on food banks to feed their family, and being foreign is not a crime.

My Scotland is a Scotland where the ability to learn is not based on the ability to pay.

My Scotland is a Scotland where social justice, and fairness, are at the heart not the bottom.

My Scotland is a Scotland where freedom of expression is encouraged.

My Scotland is a Scotland where the media are honest, and trustworthy, not propaganda arms of the government.

My Scotland is a Scotland where young men and women are not sent into illegal wars.

My Scotland is a Scotland where everyone is valued.

My Scotland is a Scotland where politicians represent the people, not themselves or the party.

Now I may have become more apathetic in my 55 years, more intolerant of politicians and no voters, definitely of Tories, but I still feel the same way, I still want the same things, maybe even more today than I have ever done. While we are at the lowest point we have been at since Thatcher, we can’t lose sight of what we can be. When I listen to people like Lesley Riddoch, and hear them start to get the real state of where we are right now it actually gives me hope that we will sort ourselves out, maybe not soon, but we will.

When people like BarrheadBoy are abandoning the political parties and embracing abstentionism, embracing a voting boycott in some ways, understanding that Rangers 2012 are stinking, there is hope. When more and more people are telling me they are not voting at all in the English Elections there is hope, when Police Jockland look like they might actually be getting nearer to the next stage of their investigation into SNP finances, there is hope.

I might not blog all that much these days, I depress you all enough, but there is still hope that as things continue to get worse, as the UK (England) continues to become more trapped in its past, as more people see that no matter who controls our colony it’s shite being Scottish, there is hope that sometime soon enough people will decide that if we are going to be shite we might as well be shite on our own with no one else to blame.

Not giving up.