A Scottish political disgrace

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Angry Weegie

After a thoroughly nasty set of campaigns from her opponents, the recall petition for Margaret Ferrier has succeeded, with the two major parties in Scotland (with loads of help from the media) managing to persuade just over 14% of the electorate to sign. Commons rules meant Margaret was not permitted to put her case before the recall was officially announced, but by that time Labour had already been campaigning for about 2 months. Margaret immediately leaves the Commons and will likely be succeeded in a by-election sometime later this year by a numpty from the Labour party, whose only contribution to the Rutherglen and Hamilton constituency will be his smirking appearance at the post-election photoshoot. You can be sure that he was only picked (over 4 real local candidates) because he agreed to do what he was told by his London bosses.

The recall petition was ‘cleverly’ arranged to conclude while Parliament was on holiday, so maximising the disruption as the by-election can’t be arranged until the Commons returns in September. It means that Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be without representation for some months, so constituents, please make sure you have no problems needing support from your MP until after the by-election and even then, hope that the MP has a team who have some clue and can be bothered to make the effort, though, as we’re talking Labour, that’s far from guaranteed.

Certainly, Labour’s contribution to the campaign was a series of leaflets more notable for their lies and smears than for their policy content. For one example, see here.

At least, you can understand what drove Labour to create the opportunity, first by voting in the Commons committee to make sure that a 30 day suspension was agreed, triggering the recall petition and then conducting this nasty campaign, disguising their party self-interest in a cloak of public concern. They desperately wanted this by-election success to demonstrate that Labour are back to being a political force to be reckoned with in Scotland, even though victory, if it happens, is likely to be more to do with the expected disintegration of the SNP vote rather than any increase in Labour support.

But what’s in it for the SNP? When Nicola Sturgeon prompted this witch hunt against arguably the most hard working SNP MP, but one whose support for independence was at odds with the leadership of the current party, the SNP were riding high in the polls, with the worst of the Hate Crimes Bill, the GRRB, DRS, the offshore wind auction and the rest still to come. Could she have anticipated the backlash and the impact on SNP support or, as many have said, could she have planned it?

But now, with SNP support heading for the toilet, Sturgeon’s replacement decided to continue the persecution of Margaret Ferrier, thus really annoying the large number of constituents who previously supported the SNP, but who had no desire to get rid of Margaret. Of course, they had no voice in the recall, but will certainly make their voice heard in the by-election.

Let’s not forget that the SSP, the Scottish Socialist Party, another supposedly independence supporting party, were also campaigning for the recall, even though they had virtually nothing to gain from a by-election. Perhaps they thought they were on safe ground with no actual independence party standing to point out that the SSP, like the SNP and the Greens, are another party who seem only committed to independence when it suits them.

So we are where we are. If Margaret chooses not to stand again, the constituency will lose a hard-working MP with a proud record of backing local issues and local people. Even worse, her replacement will be either be the Labour candidate who lies about being local (unless you think Partick is part of Rutherglen) or the SNP one, said to be the laziest councillor in South Lanarkshire. Some choice!

So the good people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West have a choice to make. We don’t yet know all who’ll be standing, but the two candidates who have so far been put forward by Labour and SNP are certainly not ones I would vote for (and I have a vote).

One last general point. Are the recall rules fit for purpose? Is the tiny 10% of the constituency electorate (OK 14% in this case) really sufficient to end the career of an MP, especially when the combined might of parties attracting virtually 100% of the voting public are campaigning for the recall? Is it fair that those who oppose the recall get no voice? Is it fair that parties supporting the recall get to campaign for weeks before the recall petition is officially launched, when the MP is prohibited by Commons rules from putting her case during that time? Is it fair that parties can spend up to £10,000 each and make use of party members time, limited only by the number of members in each party, when the MP is effectively on their own? I realise you can’t expect fairness from Westminster, but surely this is just too one-sided.

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SALVO
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Sweet music from the Plastic Humza Band?

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Angry Weegie

The Scottish Government are deeply frustrated. They’re deeply frustrated by the UK government’s failure to allow them to implement laws passed by a majority of MSPs. They’re also deeply frustrated by the Scottish public’s inability to see the multi-cultural and anti-discriminatory benefits of women with willies and the health benefits of walking miles to the nearest recycling point with your load of glass bottle returns.

So, what do a bunch of immature government ministers do when they’re deeply frustrated? Well, of course, they lash out.

However, they can’t lash out at Westminster. They’ve tried that before, but unfortunately (for them), Westminster has a bigger lash available so it did them no good. They will always end up on the losing side.

So, the Scottish Government have decided to punish the public because the public find it much more difficult to fight back. They can show the public who’s boss without too much danger to their egos.

As they haven’t yet been allowed to re-introduce the death penalty for misgendering their ultra-sensitive, wee wokey friends, their latest Green-inspired wheeze is to give Local Authorities the power to introduce financial and potentially criminal penalties for misgendering recyclable rubbish. If you look at a piece of plastic packaging and your eyes tell you this is recyclable waste, but someone from the council has a different view, you might be fined up to about £60 for putting it into your recycling bin. Do it a second time and you may be referred to the police for possible criminal prosecution.

Now, I hear you say, surely there’s nothing wrong with asking householders to be careful filling their recycling bins, with a wee incentive if necessary.

But wait, aren’t there snags?

A lot of plastic packaging isn’t marked as recyclable or not, so you’re left to guess whether you can put it in your recycling bin. You may opt for the safe choice and consign it to landfill, defeating the whole purpose of recycling. Or you may think it fits the local authority criteria for recycling and take the risk that it’s OK. A risk that might cost you £60.

All local authorities in Scotland have their own rules about what they’ll accept and that probably won’t cover every type of packaging marked as recyclable. Even when you’ve learned them, the local authority’s rules are unlikely to cover every possible type of packaging, meaning you will have to contact them to get a definitive ruling or face another £60 mistake.

How will the local authority know you were responsible for putting the packaging in the bin? As bins are generally put outside at night and are not locked, the opportunity is there for neighbours or others to put their overflow in your bin. Will the presence of the packaging in your bin be sufficient to levy a fine? Will you be required to prove the identity of the real culprit to escape punishment?

How will the local authority know what’s in the bin? You can’t expect the refuse collectors to check every bin for incorrect content. It’s impracticable, it would take far too long. Another method would be to have a group of bin inspectors who would tour round the area making random inspections of bins, though even that would be difficult if they were expected to view everything in the bin. Of course, the cost of the inspectors would have to be paid for by finding enough people to fine.

These are real problems making it more difficult for householders to stick to the rules and avoid costly mistakes. These are real problems that really need to be addressed before implementation, but which almost certainly won’t be because it isn’t in the government’s and local authority’s financial interests to make the scheme easy to use. The Scottish Government are searching for a win to make up for recent setbacks, but you have to wonder if, like so many of their recent initiatives, this has all the hallmarks of policy announced without considering all the possible complications. Or is it just another policy to be announced but quietly dropped in a year or so, having done its job of creating a virtuous headline.

It’s a conundrum

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Angry Weegie

This is a post looking for answers, because I’m confused. Being confused is pretty much my normal state, or, at least, has been my normal state ever since 2015.

In this case, my present confusion centres on the currently expressed SNP strategy for what they would do in Westminster after the next UK election in the event of a hung parliament. Would they offer support to one of the two major parties to take them over the line and, if so, what would their terms be?

This has been the subject of much comment from senior SNP politicians in the last few weeks even though we’re at least 12 months, maybe even 18 months, away from the election. It must be said that speculating on their strategy (if that isn’t too strong a word in relation to today’s SNP) is a common ploy by SNP politicians in the run up to a UK election, giving themselves some sort of justification for being there at all and giving Scottish voters a reason to keep supporting them.

Now the terms for doing a deal in Westminster is normally along the lines of “you give us a Section 30 and we’ll go along with whatever rubbish legislation you want to bring forward”, knowing, of course, that the legislation wouldn’t apply to Scotland in the event of independence. This also means they can talk about independence without actually committing themselves to doing anything, a bit of a win-win situation for today’s SNP.

Of course, there are snags to the SNP’s plan. The major parties would first try to do a deal with the LibDems and history shows the LibDems would jump at the deal to regain some relevance. So if the LibDems had enough MPs, any deal with the SNP would be dead in the water. Bye, bye, section 30.

However, the SNP have also placed constraints on doing a deal. Yousaf has ruled out the Tories:

Humza Yousaf rules out IndyRef deal with the Tories

Humza Yousaf has insisted that not even the promise of a second independence referendum would persuade him to do a deal to keep the Tories in power at Westminster.
(Sunday Times)

It seems independence is less important than virtue signalling that the Tories are beyond the pale.

Even though the Labour Party have repeatedly ruled out any association with the SNP, Yousaf and other senior SNP figures have laid out their ‘terms’ for doing a deal with Labour to put Keir Starmer into number 10. There have been some differences of opinion as to what these terms might be. Yousaf says an agreement on a section 30 would be required, while Stephen Flynn (SNP’s Westminster leader) reckons they would be looking for increased devolution powers.

Stephen Flynn has hinted the SNP would consider rolling back on demanding a second independence referendum in exchange for supporting a Labour government, as he said his party would want more powers to back Sir Keir Starmer’s party.

In a subtle softening of the stance set out by other key SNP figures, Mr Flynn called for “meat on the bones” of devolution as he suggested support for Labour in the wake of the next general election may not be wholly contingent on being granted a section 30 order for indyref2.
(Scotsman)

So, are SNP the party of independence or are they the party of devolution?

If we assume that, as party leader, Yousaf would have the final say (big assumption?), and the SNP demand a section 30 as the price for supporting Labour, given that support for the Tories is off the table, the only circumstances in which this would arise is that Labour are in a minority if the SNP abstain in a vote of no confidence, but have a majority with SNP support.

Now here comes the question. If Labour are in a minority without SNP support, where is the advantage to Labour to agreeing a section 30 with the SNP, given that, following a successful referendum, the SNP would withdraw from Westminster, leaving Labour in a minority again, subject to the risk of losing a vote of no confidence. Why would Labour, fearing the loss of a vote of no confidence, agree to a strategy which leaves them open to the loss of a vote of no confidence.

The only two answers I can come up with are:

No they wouldn’t, Keir Starmer isn’t that stupid (surely not).
Yes they would, but only in bad faith, coming up with all sorts of excuses that now is not the time.

On one hand, there’s no advantage to Labour to say yes, so they’ll say no. On the other, there’s no advantage to the SNP for Labour to say yes, because they certainly won’t mean it. So if the SNP are really a party desperate for independence, what’s the point of this Section 30 ploy?

Come on guys, come up with the (obvious) answers that I’ve missed.

(PS. Thanks to Wings for some of the links above)

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.

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.

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.

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Angry Weegie

Supporting Scotland's rightful place in the world

Tag: Humza Yousaf