Some thoughts post-election

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Angry Weegie

It was a depressing result. I had almost convinced myself that Forbes would win as it looked as if she had done a deal when she changed sides half way through. If a deal was done, it wasn’t to make her Deputy FM as we saw later with the appointment of Shona Robison, the GRRB queen. You can see Sturgeon’s and Harvie’s sticky fingers all over that. Forbes was apparently offered Rural Affairs (I thought rural affairs were Yousaf’s speciality) which would have been a big demotion from Finance, which she wisely refused. Interestingly, I thought there were rules about sacking or demoting someone on their return from maternity leave. Perhaps they don’t apply to politicians. The rest of his gender neutral cabinet will, I’m sure, be equally interesting.

Of course, Yousaf is not afraid to play the race card. Constantly referring to himself in the election as a minority, he implied that only he of the three candidates was able to have an opinion about trans issues. He also made a statement in Parliament complaining that white people occupied most senior positions in Scottish society, ignoring the fact that the Scottish population demographic is about 96% white.

What else can we take from the election? It looks like the majority of SNP members are not independence supporters. No one would vote for Yousaf if they were, though some might have voted early for Forbes before she changed sides. Ash got only 5.5k votes, much less than I expected though I didn’t really expect her to be better than third. I don’t believe that anyone who voted for Ash Reagan would have put Yousaf as second choice. The two are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Combined with the nonsense of him saying in an interview that he was ahead on first preferences, this reinforces my view that the vote was fiddled.

Can we still consider the SNP as a party of independence? After eight and a half years of Sturgeon’s inaction and with Yousaf saying and showing every sign of being more of the same, it seems unlikely that the Scottish Government will initiate any moves or undertake any preparation for independence in the next three years. However, you can be sure they’ll make a lot of noise just before the Holyrood election.

I think SNP may lose a lot of seats in UK GE, but that will make no difference as SNP MPs achieve nothing in Westminster anyway. The real danger is 2026. SNP may lose a lot of constituency seats, especially if Alba stands, which I think they should, as the SNP are just one more devolutionist party, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work (and luck) for enough ex-SNP votes to go to Alba to get them elected in any constituencies, so we’ll have to depend on list seats to get an independence majority. And we need an independence majority because the unionists will take their chance to destroy Scotland if they’re in the majority.

It was interesting that Yousaf’s first actions were to beg for an S30 (almost instant rejection, but duty done) and to cosy up to his soul mates in the Greens. Gives a clear indication of what this administration is going to concentrate on.

I wonder if the police investigations into the missing money will continue. Will we ever find out what all the £600k was spent on? We have heard that about £200k went to keep Angus Robertson afloat until he could get a seat in HR. Is it true? It has been suggested that £100k+ went to pay Alyn Smith’s costs for his defamation of the guy in charge of the Brexit party. Is it true? And the rest? Who knows? Maybe on the alleged office refurbishment? Maybe just to keep Sturgeon and Murrell in the standard to which they had become accustomed? Whatever, we know it’s gone and after next year’s UK election, the reduction in seats will mean a corresponding reduction in Short money, so perhaps the SNP won’t have enough to keep them afloat. What then, I wonder?

This makes the election of Yousaf all the more surprising. The SNP must have expected the reaction they got and the likely fallout in terms of membership losses, so what advantage did the party get that was more valuable than the loss of money and position? I suppose we all have our own ideas. Has Yousaf agreed to keep the location of the buried bodies a secret, while perhaps the other two wouldn’t have? Who knows, but it must have been something really important to risk this level of rejection.

Where do we go from here? Is it time to write off the SNP as having any role in the independence movement or should we wait for a few months to see what happens? I think from the reaction to news of the election on Twitter, where umpteen people announced that they were resigning from the SNP and joining Alba, means many independence supporters have already made up their minds. So it looks as if we have but two alternatives. Either we decide that the independence movement can no longer rely on politicians and the people have to make it happen or we have to quickly build up a replacement to the SNP, likely Alba. Both seem fraught with difficulty, but we have one advantage. The UK GE can give us a pointer to which route is working better and we don’t really have to worry too much if we get the tactics wrong because, as I said earlier, the result doesn’t matter if more or fewer SNP MPs get elected as they’ll do no good in Westminster anyway.

So let’s decide what we’re going to do, go for it full steam ahead, and if it doesn’t work out next year, we’ve got two years to revise the strategy before the more important election in 2026.

LATE NEWS
Yousaf’s Cabinet announced. The team of all the talents – NOT. He managed (deliberately?) to insult the only two decent ministers (Forbes and McKee) from Sturgeon’s last cabinet by offering them reduced roles which they both turned down. Instead, we have a bunch of GRR pals, pretty much all of them unsuited to their roles, none more so than Shona Robison, who can only count past 10 if she takes her shoes off, Shirley-Anne Somerville, who would have been unsuited for any post, and Angela Constance, the only minister who can give Yousaf a run for failures, so bad that even Sturgeon got rid of her. None of the Cabinet will make Yousaf look bad, but he can do that all himself.

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SALVO
The progress of Salvo has been the most encouraging development since 2022. It is doing sterling work educating Scots about the Claim of Right and spelling out what it means that the Scottish people are sovereign, not any Parliament.

LIBERATION.SCOT
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Please God, don’t let this farce continue

Posted on March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 by Angry Weegie

Mike Russell said yesterday that the most important thing was the continuation of the leadership election process to put a new leader in place as soon as possible.

So, he wants to continue the process set up to make sure Humza Yousaf gets elected and to make sure the rest of the shady goings-on are kept hidden. OK, a few nasties have come out, but there’s so much more that could appear so let’s not rock the boat any harder.

Let’s just think about the current process.

Nobody knows how many members the party has (Even Mike Russell claimed not to know how many had left). But we do know that Mi Voice claimed to have received 78,000 names to be emailed just before the party claimed to have 72,000 members. Some of these members won’t be reachable by email, so just how many email members are there?

We also know that Murray Foote resigned as head of SNP media as he had learned that the 72,000 figure he had been told was wrong. We can be pretty sure that means the figure was too high, not too low.

So just how many members does the SNP have? Surely the starting point of any election is to know just how many people are entitled to vote? If we have no idea who the ballot papers went to, how can we accept everyone’s vote as genuine?

How can the election continue under these circumstances?

We also know that one candidate received advance notice of Sturgeon’s retirement and had much more time to prepare than the other two, who had only a couple of days to put together a full leadership bid.

We also know that the election timescale was fixed to give one candidate an advantage, preventing the other two from getting their message out to voters.

We also know that a budget of £5,000 was fixed for each candidate, preventing two candidates from putting together a campaign team (they had no time anyway), but not stopping the favoured candidate from having dozens of SNP staffers and civil servants working for free because they were ‘on holiday’.

We also know that SNP HQ sent out dozens of messages supporting one candidate, but nothing for the other two. And they sent out 10-15 press releases a day supporting only one candidate.

We also know that an MSP was ‘accidentally’ allowed to send emails supporting one candidate to every party member in the South of Scotland, while the other two were refused the same facility.

Can anyone really say that the leadership election has been conducted fairly and there are any circumstances where it will produce a fair and untarnished result?

How can the election continue under these circumstances? It must be stopped and rerun when all the issues have been resolved. New election, new rules.

However, it’s impossible to forget the advantage one candidate has already received. Even in a rerun, voters will still remember all the extra publicity about one candidate, so I think Humza Yousaf needs to consider his position as a candidate.

Where Vileness Lies

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Angry Weegie

Just a quick post prompted by recent events which made me really angry.

Yesterday, I innocently sent an email to my local Yes group offering to forward copies of postings from a guy who calls himself ‘smitty’, who claims to be a mole in the Humza camp. I thought it might be of interest to the members. However, it appears I made a mistake by saying that the postings were BTL comments on the Wings website.

From some replies I got, it seems that not only is Wings vile, but anyone who posts a comment on the Wings’ website is equally vile and those who replied had no interest in seeing smitty’s postings. I have to confess now that I have myself posted comments on the Wings website, so I suppose I must be one of the vile people. I’ll wear this vileness with pride.

I have my own views on vileness and where vileness lies.

In my opinion, true vileness in the Yes movement can only be found in the SNP leadership who have, for the last eight and a half years, used independence as a marketing tool with absolutely no interest or intention of actually delivering it. During that period, nothing has been done to bring independence closer, no campaigning, no preparation, nothing.

In fact, there is an argument that the SNP leadership have actually sought to prevent independence while pretending to support it. Surely, no party supporting Scotland and Scottish independence would ever have ignored so many opportunities, would ever have concentrated solely on controversial and divisive policies, would ever have sold our offshore wind future to multi-nationals for buttons, would ever have ignored the opportunity to improve the island ferry services, would ever have appointed known unionists in senior party and government positions and all the rest.

Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, John Swinney and virtually 100% of the elected members of the SNP are only in it for the money. They have no interest in delivering independence because it might mean loss of an income that most would have no chance of replicating in the real world. These people have probably destroyed the chance of independence in my lifetime. No other leaders of the SNP have ever had that accolade.

Using the same criteria as with Wings commenters, everyone who still supports the SNP must also be tainted with vileness. After all this time, how can anyone support the leadership’s vileness without some of it rubbing off. (As an aside, any SNP member who votes for Yousaf in the current leadership election is only voting for a continuation of their vileness.)

So, is there a difference between Wings and his commenters and the SNP leadership and their supporters. Yes, there is.

If you think Wings and anyone who has ever commented on the Wings website are vile, you are at liberty to ignore them. They are, after all, only expressing personal opinions which can have no lasting impact on the rest of the world. These people have no power.

However, the same cannot be said of the vileness of the leadership of the SNP. These people have power. They cannot be ignored. Through their control of the SNP and the Scottish Government, their vileness affects everyone in Scotland. It affects unionists, who are happy with the lack of progress on independence, though they pretend not to be. It affects independence supporters, who are increasingly distraught as they see opportunity after opportunity slip by.

So, who is the more vile? Is it those expressing personal opinions on a website that you can chose to ignore, or is it those who have the power to force their vileness down the throats of everyone in Scotland?

Each of you can decide for yourself.

Puppet on a string?

Posted on February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 by Angry Weegie

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

He said it was 1984, but George Orwell could have been talking about the SNP between 2015 to 2023.

Or perhaps it was Hans Christian Andersen that got it right when he wrote (and I paraphrase) the SNP have no clothes.

For years now, the SNP leadership has been asking members to ignore what was happening, or not happening, to ignore what they were doing, or not doing, and continue to believe they were working towards independence. Party members must believe the party is working towards independence, even if all the evidence appears to prove the opposite.

The 2015 UK election, with 56 out of 59 seats for the SNP was not the time. The 2016 EU referendum, when Scotland voted remain, but England voted leave, was not the time. The 2017 UK election, when the SNP again gained a majority or seats, was not the time. The 2019 UK election, when the SNP again gained a majority of seats, was not the time. Concentrating on the GRR Bill to the exclusion of any effort to advance independence was because it was not the time.

Ah, but, the lack of any obvious signs of action was countered by the party by telling members that Nicola had a “secret plan”. Sturgeon had a plan that had to be kept so secret that it could never be revealed to anyone, not to her colleagues, not to her close friends, not to the members of the party and certainly not to the Unionists. The “secret plan” was a sure-fire winner, but only if it came as a complete surprise to everyone when it was finally revealed.

Then came the resignation and it appeared that Sturgeon had failed to share with anyone the details of the “secret plan” before she resigned. With her no longer in charge, how would the party be able to implement the “secret plan”? That’s when all the years of conditioning of the party faithful really paid off. The resignation is all part of the “secret plan”, said the faithful. The Unionists will be wrong-footed by this unexpected action, said the faithful. They won’t know how to react, said the faithful. Independence is certain, said the faithful.

Perhaps Sturgeon intends to whisper details of the plan into the ear of the new First Minister, always assuming that the person elected as leader of the SNP does actually get elected as First Minister. Obviously, the best way to be sure that would happen is to elect someone the Greens approve of. Of the three candidates, only one is certain to to carry forward Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘legacy’ because you can be sure he (och, I’ve given the game away now) has no ideas of his own, as, like most of the ministers, he’s been doing what he’s been told since he was appointed. Obviously, he’s the only one that will be acceptable to the Greens.

Not to worry, the Greens have plenty of ideas and you can be sure they’ll blackmail the SNP into adopting them. Of course, you could wonder about a cunning plan to destroy the Scotch whisky industry in the guise of the reduction of alcohol use, about a cunning plan to reduce the choice of bottled and canned drinks available in Scotland, about the destruction of the Scottish oil industry, about the reduction in car use by allowing roads to deteriorate to the point they become unusable and about the destruction of the Yes movement by concentrating on women with willies to the exclusion of independence. Are they prices worth paying for Green support?

But that’s what we’ll get if we elect Yousaf as SNP leader and First Minister, because he’s pledged to continue with all Sturgeon’s policy initiatives to keep the Greens onside. Is this the fresh thinking that nearly everyone says we need? Given his performance as a minister, do you think this would be a good choice as Yousaf’s campaign song?

Finally, here’s a view of where Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government are at. This was written before the resignation but clearly shows that ministers in the Scottish Government who have all been repeating Sturgeon’s utterances and telling everyone they were sacrosanct will now have the same difficulty as Sturgeon trying to reconcile their previous statements with today’s understanding.

In the leadership election, for pity’s sake, all you SNP folk, don’t vote for someone who’s pledged to change nothing, who’s going to continue the madness of the last few years. Vote for someone who will really bring fresh thinking to the job and bring the SNP and the Yes movement back on track.

Bastard Banksters

Posted on February 21, 2023 by Angry Weegie

And so the banks join the energy companies in screwing us over with the enthusiastic support of Westminster. Screwing the public is now so standard a business practice, that nobody expects it to be different.

Grouse Beater

The banks our money helped save in 2008, the useless bankrupt departments, as well as the healthy ones in surplus, and no crooked banker jailed, are stacking up the profits at our expense. We watch as they remove local free wall tellers and entire branches, leaving urban districts and villages without banks, a financial hub, pushing us to use the Internet to gain access to our own savings. The poor have no computers, the elderly little understanding of Internet use.

Politicians on the right, emboldened by a seventy-eight Tory majority in Westminster, are calling for regulations to be relaxed again. The writing is back on the wall, this time eon lit. The banks are taking us to a second disaster. We tend to shy from taking a close scrutiny of bank developments other than to complain of their disappearance, leaving us to the loan sharks and superstore profiteers.

Scotland has…

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Gender Reform – an MSP’s view (final)

Posted on January 12, 2023 by Angry Weegie

Unfortunately, I have little to add to my previous postings as, not surprisingly, I have had no further reply. However, I do have some further comments about my MSP.

Her reply to my first email made two points, GRR was in the manifesto (self-id wasn’t) and it was the “right” thing to do (opinions vary on that).

The SNP line has consistently been that the changes are just administrative and don’t affect the position of women. They have said that perverts, paedophiles and rapists will do their perverting, paedophiling and raping anyway and they don’t need to pretend to be women to do it. Of course, they came to that view by refusing to speak to women’s groups and by ignoring all evidence to the contrary presented to them. It’s easy to ‘know’ you’re right when you ignore all evidence that shows you’re wrong.

My MSP is Clare Haughey, who is Minister for Children and Young People in the Scottish Government, having previously worked in the SNHS as a mental health nurse.

How can anyone with a background in medicine come to the view that the simple act of putting on a dress and a bit of lippy changes a man into a woman?

How can anyone with a background in mental health come to the view that a man who thinks he’s actually a woman has anything other than a mental health condition?

How can anyone with responsibility for children and young people come to the view that it’s in their best interests to pass a law that allows perverts, paedophiles and rapists free access to children and young people?

And that’s before we take into account the absolute insanity of the Scottish Government discussing proposals to allow children as young as six to make life-changing decisions about their bodies, leading to a life of drug-dependency, infertility and mental and physical illness without having any discussion with a medical or psychological professional.

And that’s before we take into account the absolute insanity of the Scottish Government discussing proposals to turn any discussion with a child or young person about this into a crime. Parents who only want the best for their child become criminals and can have the child removed. Doctors who point out the implications of the child’s decision become criminals and can perhaps have their licence removed. If a girl says she wants to be a boy or a boy says he wants to be a girl, then that’s fixed for life and nothing can be done except to encourage and affirm this ‘decision’. Any other discussion would be considered conversion therapy and would be illegal and ‘perpetrators’ become criminals.

You don’t believe this? Read the report from the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices on the Scottish Government website, a group appointed by the Scottish Government to get the answer they got. Read it here.

So why would someone with Clare Haughey’s responsibilities and background do this? The answer is, of course, is going to be money. She wants to keep her job and her salary and to do that she can’t disagree with her ‘glorious leader’. To disagree means being cast out into the back benches, being deprived of her ministerial salary and, likely, being deselected for the next Holyrood election. So, compared to that, what does it matter if a couple of million people get disadvantaged or even harmed.

It’s amazing what you can persuade yourself of when your income may be affected.

Balanced Budget – who wins?

Posted on January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Angry Weegie

One of the constant refrains from the Westminster government is the need to balance the budget, i.e. restrict spending to the level of income. This is constantly used as the excuse to impose austerity on the general population, although, of course, austerity applies only to us plebs, not to MPs, who can vote themselves larger increases in salaries than the rest of us can ever hope to get and can claim expenses of the sort most of us can only dream of.

But that is is a mere pittance to what government friends and the top 1% make (and what MPs can make after they retire from their lifetime of serving the public – 🤣)

For example, there’s the £37bn allocated to the UK Test and Trace system. No one really seems to know how the money is being spent and, in any case, it has produced no discernible improvement in pandemic outcomes (see this from the Commons Public Accounts Committee). Most of that money seems to have gone to private companies and individuals and there’s more billions given to friends and colleagues of MPs to supply PPE, without using sensible (or even any) purchasing rules. Much of it turned out to be useless and is now costing more millions to store before costing even more millions to be destroyed (and we’re not just talking about Michelle Mone here, that’s the tip of the iceberg).

Then there’s the generally accepted statistic that billionaires worldwide (that’s people worth more than $1,000,000,000) increased their wealth by 54% (that’s more than $540,000,000) during the pandemic, sparking renewed calls for a wealth tax. See this report from CBS News. How did your finances do in the pandemic? In the UK, Westminster would only introduce a wealth tax if there were enough loopholes in it to allow all the really rich to avoid it. Their money is all hidden away in tax havens anyway.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen what $540 million looks like, it would create a column almost 37 miles high. When added to the existing billion, that would total 105 miles. Of course, that’s just the minimum entry qualification to the billionaires club. If you were Bernard Arnault, currently the world’s richest man, you would have to contend with a stack 11,130 miles high. That’s almost 25 times as high as Ben Nevis. Billionaires must be really grateful for electronic money.

Recent events are highlighting just the difference between Westminster’s treatment of their mates and the plebs. With government-created inflation running at over 10%, Westminster are refusing to even discuss sensible pay rises for workers who only a year or so ago were being applauded (some with weekly government sponsored gratitude sessions) for risking their lives keeping the country running. You would have thought the government would have been only too happy to reward these important workers with a decent pay rise. Perhaps, having given so much to all their mates, they’ve got nothing left? Aye, right!

Anyway, back to balancing the budget. I was pointed recently to a list of all the countries arranged by income (thanks Macalba). What I noticed from the list was that I had to go down to the 53rd biggest country in the world (Qatar) before I found one who had a budget surplus. (Qatar, of course, has all that oil income, no doubt making it easy to run a surplus. If only Scotland was in the same position.) That’s the 52 biggest countries in the world, all running a budget deficit (and that includes the UK). In fact, top of the list, the USA, the country our government is always seeking to emulate, had, in round figures, a deficit of $4trn on an income of $6trn. To paraphrase Mr Micawber, annual income 6trn dollars, expenditure 10trn dollars, result happiness. I think that’s roughly what he said. By the way, Scotland is not included in the list, not even as a dependent territory, though, if included, Scotland (around $75bn income) would rank above New Zealand (40th – $72bn) and very close to South Africa (39th – $76bn).

So why Westminster’s fixation on a balanced budget? We all know Westminster does nothing that doesn’t benefit Westminster, so what’s the point? Well, as I’ve said, a balanced budget is the excuse for austerity, so perhaps the question ought to be – what’s the point of austerity?

Handing out less money to the plebs must mean there’s more left for the really deserving rich. So, is this the reason? Is it just, as the Four Preps almost said in a song I liked as a teenager:

Musical Interlude

♫ Eliminate the proletariat
More money for you and me ♫

(What do you mean, you’ve never heard of the Four Preps. You obviously need educating on the finer aspects of pre-Beatles American popular music. Listen to a song from them that also references other famous groups such as the Fleetwoods, the Hollywood Argyles, the Platters, the Four Freshmen, the Kingston Trio and Dion and the Belmonts. You can listen to it here on YouTube. For best experience, imagine each group as your favourite bunch of MPs/MSPs. “Gosh, Angry, how old are you?“)

Back to the serious stuff.

Or could there be a more sinister reason? Are the Tories really intent on taking us back to the early twentieth century or even the late nineteenth when workers had no employment rights, when your job and your income were dependent on doing exactly what your boss told you and when you could be sacked on a whim if you showed the faintest sign of being a nuisance or if you wanted a living wage?

Other legislation planned by the current Tory government includes banning strikes in certain industries by imposing legal minimum service levels (how long before it becomes everybody) and removing or revising EU based benefits like holiday pay, maternity/paternity leave and maximum working hours. Another Brexit benefit?

Is the attempted imposition of below inflation wage increases, the cuts in real-terms benefit levels and the relatively relaxed approach to huge increases in energy and food prices just part of a softening-up process to make us plebs even more grateful for the pittance in wages or benefits we’re getting than we already are? Remember that the UK is already a low wage economy, with the lowest levels of benefits and pensions in Europe and many families in the UK dependent on foodbanks to survive.

Foodbanks are a fairly recent phenomenon in the UK. First opened in 2000, the numbers have grown to over 2,600. How long will it take before we’re all dependent on food banks, except, by then, they will be funded through charitable donations from the rich, because none of the rest of us will be able to afford it. Makes you think of Victorian times. I hear that Tories are even considering reintroducing workhouses. I wouldn’t put it past them.

With almost two years to go before the next election, there’s loads of time left for the Tories to do untold damage. Even if we get a Labour government at the next election, who would put money on them reversing the worst of the Tories’ excesses. After all, they’ve been promising to abolish (or reform) the House of Lords for more than a hundred years. Anybody notice a change? Oh yes, there are even more Labour peers. By the way, does everybody know that the Lords is the second biggest legislative chamber in the world, second only to Chinese National People’s Congress.

In any case, if the Tories throw a few goodies to the electorate before the election, who’s to say they won’t get back in. But, no matter who gets in, the balance in a balanced budget is always against you.

And by the way, with so much to look forward to, I hope you all have a great New Year. 😉

And if you want a song from the same era, why not try this, Tommy Steele’s Independence Movement anthem to Nicola Sturgeon.

Will 2023 be a guid New Year?

Posted on December 30, 2022December 30, 2022 by Angry Weegie

Last year, I blogged about what should happen in 2022 to bring independence closer. It’s important to realise that they were not predictions because, if they were, I would have had a pretty poor score. Nostradamus would have little to worry about. For those brave enough to want to imagine what life would be like if these non-predictions came about, you can read the wish list in full here.

In 2021, Sturgeon’s reason (excuse?) for delaying independence was Covid Even though so much was possible during a pandemic, Scottish election, self-id and Hate Crimes, it just wasn’t the right time to progress independence, or even talk about it.

2022 saw a new independence delaying strategy. As the effects of the pandemic faded, meaning it couldn’t be used again, Sturgeon instead referred the concept of an independence referendum to Westminster’s Supreme Court, knowing that a negative response would provide another reason for delay. The Supreme Court obliged by ruling that an independence referendum was outwith the Scottish Parliament’s competence, allowing the promised 2023 referendum to be ditched, without even a real whimper of objection from the Scottish Government.

So much was going to be done in 2022, a new referendum bill, an updated independence prospectus and agreement on the referendum question. What was done was no new bill, three papers on life after independence (widely mocked as useless) and the floated possibility of a three question referendum, including enhanced devolution, which received such overwhelming derision that it hasn’t been mentioned since, though, I suspect, it’s not forgotten.

I suggested that the biggest blockage on the road to independence was Nicola Sturgeon and her leaving would be a big boost for the independence campaign. Given that she didn’t leave and the independence campaign continued to flounder, does that mean I was right? Maybe.

I also suggested that a way to ‘encourage’ the SNP to move on independence was to vote for Alba, ISP or other independence supporting parties instead of the SNP in the local elections. Instead, the SNP got an increased share of the vote and, as a result, took that as confirmation that no movement on independence was necessary. So they did nothing.

So what are my non-predictions for 2023? I still think that Sturgeon’s departure is essential for there to be any movement on independence. Will she go this year? With all her objectives achieved, Hate Crimes, Self-Id GRR and longest serving FM, what’s left to do? I guess only her fear that her work might be undone if she left would keep her in post. Depends how much faith she has in her possible replacements. Given she knows how much she had conned Alex Salmond by 2014 into believing she was the perfect replacement, she could be worried that her potential replacements are similarly conning her.

Without Sturgeon’s departure, it’s hard to see any progress being made. Even with her departure, if she’s replaced by one of the SNP Looney Bunch, most likely Robertson or Smith, then there’s little chance of anything happening. There are no elections planned for 2023 (at the moment) and the chances of the SNP Government resigning to force an election are remote. In fact, more non-existent than remote.

So it’s looking as if 2023 is going to be a pretty fallow year. Unless someone from Salvo or Liberation knows different.

Despite all the depression I’ve tried to spread, I hope you and yours have a happy New Year, and may all your non-political wishes come true. Political wishes? – we can always hope.

Slainte Mhath. Saor Alba.

Gender Reform – An MSP’s view (continued)

Posted on December 30, 2022December 30, 2022 by Angry Weegie

Or how to dress up misogyny as a ‘good thing’

As promised, here’s the update. There was no reply to my second email, even after the vote, so I send a third email commenting specifically on the vote to allow sex offenders to obtain a GRC. I’ve added a copy of email 3 at the end.

As most of you will be aware, I am not a fan of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRR) currently making its extremely swift progress through the Scottish Parliament and likely to become law by the end of this week.

I wrote to my MSP expressing my views and, surprisingly, got a brief reply.

I thought it might be interesting to see the correspondence. This was my initial email …

Click on the images to make them a bit bigger.

And this was the reply.

As you can see, the response fails to address most of the points I raised, contenting herself with gender reform being in the manifesto (self-id wasn’t), that I wrongly described her as a medical professional (I didn’t) and saying practically all the correspondence she’s received has been supportive (must all have been from SNP members). However, she does say she will vote for the bill to support “one of the most marginalised and discriminated against communities in our society”.

With that in mind, I replied …

I await a further response. However, as it’s likely that, if I get a response, it will come after the vote, I thought it might be worthwhile getting it out before the vote. If I get a response, I’ll update the post.

Here’s email 3. Maybe it will be graced with a response.

The unwanted Christmas present?

Posted on December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Angry Weegie

Tuesday 20th December, 2022 will be known as the day of the shameful sixty four. The day when that number of our MSPs thought it was a good idea to remove the distinction between male rapists and women. This was the Scottish Parliament’s Christmas present to Scottish women and girls.

This was the day when male rapists were allowed to put on a dress, call themselves women and be allowed access to all women only places and facilities.

The day when male rapists were given permission to access to rape crisis centres, not because they’ve been raped, but because they are, or would like to be, rapists.

The day when male rapists were given permission to enter women’s refuges so they can continue to abuse women sheltering there hoping to recover from abuse.

The day when male rapists were given permission to enter women’s toilets, so they can wave their willies at teenage girls, or, if they’re lucky and there’s no one else about, they may be able to force girls into sexual acts.

The day when male rapists were allowed to enter women’s changing rooms in sports and retail facilities, so they can parade their ‘women’s cocks’ in front of real women and girls, probably with a hard on brought on by the excitement at what they are doing. They may even be able to take photos of themselves (ooh, look at me) or even photograph women changing, so they can post the pictures on social media to show how clever they are.

Of course, when the law is passed, it will be the day when men are allowed to enter women’s sports and win everything because they are bigger and stronger than the women they’re competing against and if it’s a contact sport and women get seriously hurt, then that’s just acceptable collateral damage, Acceptable to the Scottish Government anyway.

This is all taking place in the name of trans rights, but those I’m talking about are not trans. They are perverts, rapists and paedophiles who are taking advantage of a law which has been drafted to allow all this.

The excuse the sponsors of the bill used to allow all this was that it would breach the human rights of perverts, rapists and paedophiles to prevent them from gaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. The sponsors say they have taken legal advice about this, but, of course, they are refusing to release the advice they have been given. I wonder if they asked for legal advice about whether giving perverts, rapists and paedophiles a free pass into women’s facilities would breach the human rights of the women and girls. I don’t suppose they did. If they did, they ignored it.

All of these things will soon be law and the perverts, rapists and paedophiles will soon have the law on their side. Women who complain will be breaking the law and could be arrested and charged with a hate crime because they don’t want to share their private spaces with perverts, rapists and paedophiles. Insanity or what? Because it’s the law doesn’t mean it’s right.

However, this weekend and next, I think everyone needs to forget what’s happened over the last few days and try to enjoy whatever Christmas and New Year celebrations you have planned. Don’t let the shameless sixty four spoil your plans.

Remember, you can always return unwanted Christmas presents and after New Year, we can all work hard to remove this shameful law from our statute books.

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Angry Weegie

Supporting Scotland's rightful place in the world

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