The SNP are desperate ...

... for a debate ...

... between Cameron and Salmond, but Cameron knows that if he put a toe into the referendum pond the SNP would probably get a swing to independence, as Cameron said, the referendum is between the Scots;  the currency and EU will sink Salmond, unless he gets Cameron on camera ..... poor fools!

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent ...

wrote Calum when he left a comment at Gerry Hassan .

Hassan is of course talking down Westminster to talk up Holyrood. 

Everything bad that has dropped into Scotland is of course the responsibility of Westminster, whilst everything that is good is conveniently ignored, well that's the preferred option of the separatist agenda in Scotland, a similar programme of attrition is a constant state in Wales, our First Minister must cry into his cocoa at night trying to juggle his loyalty to both the Welsh Assembly and Westminster, because for sure, Westminster has been at the birthing of many good attempts to level society.  The scorn Hassan throws at Westminster is equal to the scorn thrown by those opposed to separation, and the upshot is, both campaigns are in fact negative despite attempts by the SNP to project a brave new world that would surely follow separation.

There should be no doubt that Scotland could separate, and, from day one, function as a new state; at a domestic level pensions would be paid, people would continue to work and pay taxes, oil revenue would underpin a proportion of government spending, just as it does today. 

Internationally there is no certainty, no guarantee the early entry to the EU would happen, no automatic invitation to join NATO, in fact it is only politicians that wish to belong to such clubs, for sure, they are political clubs for political animals, the reality is it wouldn't matter, not on day one, not for many years, so discourse on international matters are blue smoke and mirrors, to what end only the SNP and the separatist agenda understands.

So if everything functions domestically, what will change for the little people, the people with little influence except maybe on polling day ?

Alex Salmond speaks of taking decisions for Scotland in Scotland by people who only consider Scottish issues (international and domestic), a clever tack for a stumbling campaign, but will the outcomes be any different.

Nothing will change, real decisions will be taken by people beyond the reach of Holyrood; do the cogs of Holyrood know exactly who the decision makers effecting Scotland are? When Scotland votes next year, many people will hope for a "yes" result, myself included, because a "no" vote will be nothing but a postponement for a future separation.

In the grand scheme of things ...

Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor (Kierkegaard). 

 ... in the world today politics has created the "deserving poor" and the "undeserving poor", next September nothing will change, except a yes vote will empower Scottish politicians to decide who are deserving poor (or otherwise) in Scotland.

The GR8 DB8, wk1, and it ...

... is being used by Scottish Nationalists to dignify the sordid process of separation.

When Alex Salmond second in command Nicola Sturgeon spoke to the Scots, reported here, she said "you'll retire earlier with the SNP than you will remaining with Britain !"

The SNP closed the door on honest debate and confirmed to the electorate, that the candy behind this particular game is "humbug".

A few facts ...

The SNP government-commissioned Fiscal Commission also recently concluded that Scotland will soon have more pensioners per head of working age people than the UK. It reported: “It is projected that without action, Scotland’s dependency ratio will increase more rapidly compared with the UK – reflecting the particularly sharp increase in Scotland’s pension age population.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said “Pensions spending per head is already higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, and in future, Scotland will have a higher proportion of elderly people. But by pooling our resources, we won’t need to rely on volatile and declining North Sea revenues to pay the pensions of Scotland’s elderly.”

The truth ...

10% of the population of Britain, that includes Scotland, have 60% of the countries wealth.

90% of the population of Britain, that includes Scotland, are unlikely to ever earn much above the median income of £20,000.

The likelihood of these figures changing through separation is zero.

Blue smoke and mirrors, so who gains through this sleight of hand ?
.

The further up the flagpole you climb ...

... the more of your ass is exposed, words of General later President Eisenhower, so my guess he knew all about leadership, its ups and its downs.

So for the errant Plaid AM, consideration might be given to a valuable Eisenhower quotation ...

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both

Back down to earth and there is ...

Gerry Hassan (15 October 2012) wrote an open letter to Alex Salmond the Scots pretender to its political throne, the title ...

'Independence is about cultural and societal transformation'

... might generate a soupçon of interest from the political pundits scattered around the various halls of government, but to the little people the closure of Hall's of Broxburn meat factory in West Lothian has real interest, particularly the fact that the Scottish SNP led administration were unable to influence the decision making process of the Dutch owners Vion.  Impotent in the face of international business interests.

Unable to demonstrate real time leadership in 2012, what chance these very same politicians will be able transform Scotland's culture and society ...

.. absolutely zero !

Scottish independence is political in the narrowest sense, it has no benefit for the little people whose life will continue as before, in a 21st century serfdom with much the same masters !

 

Kevin Maher of the Times ...

... Monday 30 Jan 2012, wrote ...

...... the realisation of an independent Scottish nation (What about the North Sea oil revenues? The military bases? The political transition? etc.) is actually a quasi-bureaucratic smokescreen. The fundamental truth, unpalatable to some, and certainly to Alex Salmond, is that nationalism is a meaningless ideological crutch that has little relevance to our age and to the modern global village that we inhabit. It is, in short, so yesterday’s pizza.

... he also quoted Victor Gollancz, the British publisher of George Orwell who ...

... when he wrote to his grandson in the 1950s warning him, "Nationalism — national egoism, thinking in terms of one’s nation rather than in terms of humanity — is evil because it concentrates on comparative inessentials (where a man lives, what sort of language he speaks, the type of his culture, the character of his ‘blood’) and ignores the essential, which is simply that he is a man."

When you compare current nationalist politics both north of the border, and here in Wales, with the sentiments of Gollancz, politics is full of shit ........

She's moving if the SNP win the ...

... referendum, the first of many !!!!!!!

MICHELLE MONE, one of Britain’s most successful women entrepreneurs, says she will move her lingerie empire from Scotland to England if the Scottish National party wins a referendum on independence.

The creator of the Ultimo underwear range is the first prominent Scottish business figure to announce plans to leave an independent Scotland which, she believes, would be unable to sustain itself without higher business taxes and a rising cost of living.

Mone, whose Glasgow-based company, MJM International, had a turnover of £42m last year, said independence would make her the “saddest woman ever” and claimed to know of several other high-profile entrepreneurs who would follow her lead if Scotland broke away.

“I am so passionate for Scotland but I have to say that if we do become independent, I will move. I will move my business and I will move personally . . . I love Scotland but, under independence, I would have no choice.”

She added: “I don’t think we can survive on our own and I think it would be really bad for business.”

Mone, 40 — whose push-up bras were worn by Julia Roberts in the film Erin Brockovich and who has modelled her own lingerie — also took a swipe at members of the Scottish parliament.

“Would you trust them to run Scotland as a business? No, is the answer . . . Why would you trust these guys, all they do is fight in parliament with their big egos. I would never trust any of them. It’s too much of a gamble,” she said. 

Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, warns the public, English and Welsh taxpayers would have to bail out an independent Scotland if it went bust. He said that if Scotland maintained monetary union with the rest of Britain, the Bank of England could end up acting as its lender of last resort.

Sunday Times 29 Jan 2012.

Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland ...

.... Margaret Curran, said she believed it was not right to create "second-class MPs" based on "which part of the UK they come from, or because they come from Scotland".


She added: "To understand this issue properly, we need to understand the nature of devolution"


"Every person elected to the House of Commons has a responsibility not just to their constituents, but to the UK as a whole"

"That is a fundamental principle of devolution that decisions are taken in the right places to reflect our different nations that make up the UK, but that our House of Commons operates together as a country. It strengthens Scotland and I think it strengthens the whole UK."

Would the SoS expect the SNP to do anything other than exclude the UK from its thoughts, I don't ...

Crazy men and crazy ...

... women, compare the list with politicians.

• grandiose sense of self importance.
• preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance.
• belief that he/she is special and can only be understood by other special people.
• requires extensive admiration.
• has a sense of entitlement, favourable treatment, automatic compliance.
• exploitative, takes advantage of others to achieve his or her ends.
• lacks empathy.
• envious of others, believes others to be envious of him or her.
• shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.

 "Diagnostic criteria for narcissistic disorder", from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic ................ Medical Disorders.

Find any five of the pervasive pattern of grandiosity from the list and discover a certain grandiosity.

Consider Alex Salmond ................... or other leaders from history, .... and we vote to give these latter day Nero's power.

... you can forget nationalism in Wales, if ...

... the other political parties use the same techniques Plaid has used to manipulate the political conversations over recent years.

The methodology is quite simple, create a "modern day heresy", does anyone remember the term "unionist" used in a political context much before the beginnings of devolution, "anti-welsh" is another creation to beat the heretics of welsh politics, of welsh nationalism.

The "separatist agenda" of Wales uses "identity politics" as its primary means of leverage in its relentless pursuit of independence, as J.S.Mill wrote in his "On Liberty", "a tyranny of public opinion" may flourish even in the "absence of legal constraint or coercion" (in the 21st century Wales this public opinion is very noisy yet very small in numbers).  In Wales the three other political players have unwittingly provided Plaid Cymru with the tools to further their stated aim of independence from Great Britain, and the singular most powerful of these tools in the armoury of separation is that of "difference", all of a sudden the peoples of Wales became part of an illusion of an oppressed people under the heel of Westminster, as if different to the people of any other region of Britain.

Until recently it was difficult to extract from Plaid its intention of separation, its outpourings spoke of the far distant future and couched in terms such as "full national status for Wales", today however there can be no doubt of the intentions of this troublesome political party, read here.

So what can we expect from the politicians at our Assembly, we might expect the full weight of government and opposition resources brought to bear to create a new "politics" to counter Plaids "identity politics", it might be "politics of equality", rid Wales of its crachach and its disproportionate influence, or it could extend out into the communities as "inclusive politics", it might be the "peoples of Britain" reject the politics of separation.

There is a place for Westminster in this very serious game of "political rounders", there is a need to encourage enterprise and the entrepreneur, the only way to counter nationalism of the real world is to create a better alternative, it might be the "British Enterprise" zone, an inclusive concept to promote the projects and businesses that will create a better world for ordinary people.  What place is there for Plaid and the SNP when the pay packet is thicker and young people have jobs ?

I wrote recently of the intolerance of Jack, I was wrong to suggest there is no place for the Jacks' of this world, we need the Jacks' of this world as a demonstration of the sick world such people would have us inhabit, a world of exclusions.

The separatist agenda are reaching out for the next set of enabling tools ...

• devolution of police and the justice system
• devolution of broadcasting
• control over our natural resources
• control over energy
• powers to set taxes

... this list is consistent with nationalist politics, it seeks to constrain the "independence of the individual", it is consistent with the "I know best" politics of subservience.

Just before I sign off, a word to the able-bodied citizens who maintain our streets and car parks, if you use a walking stick you cannot hop over a large stretches of standing water, the only option is to walk through the damned water, I know because my torn cartilage of the knee gives me a temporary disability, I have stopped hopping over water.

Scotland and the Union, a reply to Alwyn ap Huw …

Alwyn wrote:

I am not sure that I understand the point that you are making John. The name of what is left if Scotland leaves the UK is irrelevant, what concerns me is what sort of political entity it will be.

I agree in part, when Scotland leaves what remains might be called “peppermint blue”, it will be a similar geographical area as it was before the union, plus a small area of Ireland. Great Britain is not a remainder, it is the “whole number”, the remainder is in fact Scotland following the division by the “Scottish separatist agenda”, mathematically the remainder is the indivisible part following division, some scots might disagree as whether Scotland might be further divided but that is a particularly Scottish debate.

The name is important because it underpins the politics that remains post Scottish independence, so whereas “peppermint blue” is a sufficient label, it fails to carry over the social glue that is so essential to the remaining body of politics. And after 800 years of togetherness (some less than generous might refer to a certain colonial nature of the relationship) there will be a sufficiency of social glue shared by the peoples of the reborn Great Britain that the political entity will remain by and large as it was on “SI – 1” (Scottish Independence minus 1 day).

In summation, whilst a name might be irrelevant, in the case of “Great Britain” it is the pot that holds the history which is of course a large part of the shared social glue.


Alwyn wrote:

At the moment all of the political parties seem to be ignoring this issue. Even if, as you seem to suggest, the remainder just carries on as if nothing has changed, political movements need to work out how to insure that happens – it's not going to happen automatically.

With both Labour and Conservatives becoming Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservatives the preparations are well underway, I believe Alex Salmond has influenced these changes, and there is little doubt that Scotland will become Independent Scotland amongst the great and good of Edinburgh and its political classes.

Myself, I agree with the political sentiments.

Alwyn wrote:

I would agree that there is a body of opinion in England that believes that Scotland should bugger off and close the door behind them (this is not the official policy of any political party as far as I know); what confuses me is your support for them; because most of those who express such an opinion also want Wales to bugger of too – but you are opposed to Welsh independence.

There are two parts to the question:

I support the body of opinion which believes Scotland should be encouraged in its quest for independence, probably for a different reason. Much as a gangrenous limb is amputated because of the profound effect it will have on life itself, Alex Salmond has created a gangrenous political conundrum, a brilliant strategy that forces the other political parties to follow his yellow brick road. It’s too late to do anything other than set them on their way, so as a pragmatist I will help set the tables for a farewell street party to welcome a new British future.

With regard to the independence movement in Wales, it’s a very different animal; its feet are stuck in that social glue I wrote about earlier. If somehow you were able to raise the game plan to a similar level that exists in Scotland then the democratic process would kick in, but in my opinion the shock of the Scottish separation will galvanise the body politic minus Plaid in Wales into action that counters Plaid and benefits the peoples of Wales, and the primary players will be supported by their Westminster partners in crime.

... when you read of the Scots Nats Party calling ...

... for all Scottish assets of the Crown Estate to be devolved what exactly is the aim.

Angus MacNeil SNP Scotland Office ...

"The announcement of these record profits reinforces the case for devolution of the Crown Estate so that Scotland can manage its own marine assets for the benefit of our people.

It cannot be the revenue as The Crown Estate exists to ...

... benefit the taxpayer by paying the revenue from our assets directly to the Treasury; and to enhance the value of the estate and the income it generates.

... therefore Scotland gains all the revenues generated through the block grant, in fact it gets a better deal because the English, NI and Wales taxpayers give the Scots a bigger share of the UK tax-take, so what is the North of the border separatists agenda.


The same SNP politician gives a clue when he says ...

"Yet it is the Crown Estate Commissioners (CEC) who grant leases for offshore projects and there is no obligation on the CEC to work in partnership with our economic development bodies.  Scotland's seabed and marine natural resources are a vital part of our economy and offer the greatest opportunity for growth."

... so it's not the money, its the separation of the UK state, and once one part of the physical State is achieved, the rest follows as surely as "night follows day".


Last month Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, listed the return of Crown Estate assets as one of six demands that his Government wants added to the Scotland Bill ...

... if the separatists north of the border have The Crown Estate devolved, then there is little point waiting for Independence, best give the Scots a nudge ...

... when David Melding says England and Wales cannot ...

... survive separated from Scotland, we know the writer has an agenda, this career politician is no political nihilist, he has a single vision for the political future, a federated Britain.  You can read his latest argument here.

Has there ever been a country that has been de-constructed and then reconstructed into a federated political unit, I don't think so, I do know of countries de-constructed into new political units we call countries, the USSR being a recent good example.

One of his arguments seems to be "devolution" is "federalism", but a federalism without dotting the i's and crossing the t's, or as he put it "Devolution divides sovereignty without the girdle of a constitutional settlement."

His arguments, although plausible are fundamentally flawed, Scotland was lost to the Union at devolution, devolution was the lazy politicians answer to unhappy politicians, if you step outside the circle of politicians, and their activists, devolution is irrelevant to daily life, except in Scotland where the SNP consider devolution to be the precursor of independence, and have over many years created a parallel universe North of Hadrian's Wall, today the Scots separatists probably have a critical mass sufficient to carry the day for Scottish independence.

There are two options, fight the separatists for 50 years or help them on their way today so that the remainder of us can get on with life.  There is no benefit from the distraction that separatists bring to our world, a world where we have comfort in stability;  let the Scots go, watch the SNP victory parade that takes them from our shared jurisdiction we call the Union, into the very large arms we call Europe.  For the little people of Scotland there will be little change, for the rest of us the background din of separatist vitriol will diminish to a vague historic murmur.  Let us help them on their way, tell the Scottish people at every opportunity that independence for Scotland is their best option for their future, help Alex Salmond march his people to this new future with Colours flying, drums beating and bayonets fixed.

Back to Melding, he wants to fight Salmond and the SNP to protect the Union as it is just now, he calls for a "Convention for a renewed and federal Union", note the term "federal", the man believes that more hot air is going to quieten the Scots, it is not a renewal we need but an exit ticket for Alex Salmond with a well prepared exit strategy for what will remain ... and remember, if the Union could win the day against separation, Salmond and chums would still be beating their drums creating a distraction only he needs.

... and what would remain following separation with Scotland, 90% of the population who have probably not heard of David Melding nor his ideas for a very shaky future, and a shift southwards for things political.

So for Melding's political epiphany .....


                                                 
















... BULL****.

Let us all raise our glass to Scotland and wish them "bon voyage", and to Salmond and chums, lock the door on your way out please ......

Look into my eyes, look ...

...  into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes; the words of illusionist Kenny Craig from the BBC series Little Britain.

Scottish Illusionist Alex Salmond is preparing the way for separation through illusionary events, he intends to create an official holiday around Saint Andrews day, the Scots Patron Saint, putting Scottish history at the centre of its schools curriculum, and the promotion of the ancient Scots and Gaelic languages, as if it isn't hard enough to understand a Glasgow accent currently.  It is all smoke and mirrors in an attempt to bolster Scotland's national identity in the run-up to the 2014 sporting events when Jowls Salmond intends to petition the Scots people for independence, it's not a problem Alex, you are asking the wrong people, you should petition the British people as a whole for Scots separation, your wish will be our command.

Whilst back at the green green grass of home, Wales, the separation ball has been kicked into the long grass of Plaid Cymru Alun Ffred Jones' Arfon (partition-in-waiting) ......

..... the long goodbye .....