Why the SNP are not a nationalist Party

The title of the SNP is 'The Scottish National Party'

If it were the 'Scottish Nationalist Party' it would be a very different beast.

It is up to us, the people who live here, to decide this very important issue.

I do not get  the concept that there is a case to be put to anyone living here that they would be better off staying with Westminster.

It is a bit, divide and conquer, to my mind. If you live here and care a little bit about here as opposed to there, well............

I am aware that there are people who would self identify as Pakistani, English, Italian, or heaven forefend Polish who will vote for independence.

 To those people, I raise my hat. They are not affeared of independence, they see it as a freedom from this sort of Britishness:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-23897533

or

 http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/08/15/holocaust-denier-david-irving-to-tour-the-uk/

Which is a tad ironic?

You have rejected the 'ist' bit. It is, perhaps, more than important that the rest of us embrace you. For we want to be an inclusive, rather that enclusive politic. I find the history of our nation fascinating, but counter-productive.

For instance, Polish plasterers are a good thing

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There are comparatively small stickers in windows in Pollockshields with 'Yes' on them. I would like to know where I can get one.

With 'friends' like Kate Higgins. who needs enemies?

It is always odd when people adopt the language of the opposition. This:

http://news.stv.tv/politics/237029-has-the-newspaper-column-row-damaged-yes-scotlands-credibility/

listen, if you must, at around the 6m 30sec mark to a complete sell out of an easily defensible position. There is literally no difference between Kate Higgins and the Unionists.

This woman is indeed a self identifying quisling and I claim my £100.

What is interesting about this media

A long long time ago I posted on a site called 'Pickled Politics'. And I ended up liking, or indeed, loving, an awful lot of folk that I would like to see come here to an independent Scotland.

Your mileage may vary, but these are people that would add significantly to who we currently are.

Almost all of them are Asians by ancestry, though almost all of them have a British Passport.

What, you might ask, dear reader, if I have one reader, is what are you saying?

I am arguing for openess in a post 'Yes' situation. I am arguing that we should not adopt a 'Daily Mail' attitude to 'foreigners', that we should have open borders to anyone that wants to come here.

I spent a lot of my youth wandering around the Highlands looking, inter alia, at demolished crofts, knocked down villages and other piles of stones.

We, ladies and gentlemen, are an empty land. We ought to welcome anyone that want's to fill it again.

Oh!

To get back to the point, none of our media would say anything like that for fear of nurse, or David Cameron or worse. Nigel Farage being a hero of the anti-revolution.

We, you and I dear reader, should be encouraging re-population of ruins. If you head out of Milngavie on the road to Strathblane it is astonishing to see a croft sized house falling to bits. It is to your left, just after the resevoir.

Why is that? Who is stopping it being retrieved?

It cannot be unrecoverable, and it is within an easy commute of Glasgow City Centre.

What is going on there?

Someone is either holding out for too high a price or there are, as usual, ridiculous legal reasons.

If it is the former, then hell mend them, if it is the latter, then let's have it addressed directly in the Scottish Parliament. There is no excuse for ruins.

What we ought to do Better in an Independent Scotland - Number Two

I have scratched my very small brain and I cannot get my head around the idea that we should celebrate the start of a War.

It seems obscene that the Cenotaph will be covered in, what, memorials to the dead?

Perhaps not. This seems like an obscenity to me.

In a new mode that  suggests that WW1 was a glorious endevour rather that what it really was, slaughter of us at the behest of Royalty across Europe. As a sort of sparring game between cousins. Deaths to be totted up for a laugh and a joke. The War itself was an obscenity, a last hurrah! for royalty.

 But what is planned, is not around the Cenotaph where one might imagine a complete generation of idiotic rulers committing seppuku, but our betters don't do that, do they?

Oh! No!

Glasgow, is to lead this merry dance of celebration of the Start of a World War.

I know why they are asking us to host this.  Did you ask for it? No, neither did I.

Anyway

Here is what a soldier had to say about it:

Aftermath

Siegfried Sassoon (1919)

Have you forgotten yet?... For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just the same-and War’s a bloody game... Have you forgotten yet?... Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz– The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’ Do you remember that hour of din before the attack– And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay? Have you forgotten yet?... Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget. It isn't really worth celebrating the start of that, is it? The end of it, perhaps, but the consequences of it, do we lie about that too?

What we ought to do better in an Independent Scotland - Number One.

Patrick Mercer has apparently resigned the Tory whip, see here:

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/05/31/is-this-what-forced-tory-mp-patrick-mercer-to-resign/

It is not clear yet whether he just loved Fiji, don't we all, or whether he was paid to ask these questions. The fact he resigned is a tad indicative that it wasn't just about love.

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If we are to learn anything from this, it should be that no MSP should be allowed to take a brass farthing without being thrown out of the Parliament. There should be no quarter given, no matter the goodness of the cause.

A transfer of money from any advocate should mean that the MSP is barred sine die, to use a good old football expression.

It is up to us to make this future land a place where the brown paper envelopes are a thing of the past.

I would hope that the mere threat of being chucked out of civic society would be enough to stop this sort of thing. If not, we should criminalise them. Because the idea that they serve us is more important that the idea that they are above our contempt. It is our contempt that they seem free to disregard when the political classes come to town. We need them accountable to us, and not vice versa.

We need a written constitution almost as much as we need our freedom.

A Problem with the ego of successful blog authors. The little guy does upskirt!

There is a real danger that certain people - I am looking at the Rev Stuart Campbell - lies to us. He certainly loves the word "lie"!

Once upon a time, that person would  have accepted all comments, and then he didn't. Then he got as restrictive as fuck. I find that quite aggravating and egotistial. On his part. Changing the rules as popularity increased, who'd have thunk it?

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I could accept that, on the basis that some of the comments against him were truly nasty.

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But mine weren't.

What the Rev Stuart Campbell says he does, has become a lie, he is just as much of a fucked up media tart as the people he criticises.

He suppresses comment as much as the BBC.

Mine, for example.

But, on that basis, beacuase he can, because he controls what is said on his web site,  he is just as fucked up as the press.

He is a  guy is a tad full of himself.

It was something he, himself, rejected.

Censorship.

No more does he see that as an issue, no more does he see that as problem.

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Ego is not a joyous thing to see in a person I used to have a lot of time for.

No more.

An apology is unlikely. For the Reverend Stewart Campbell has made an arse of himself and he is incapable of seeing little old me as being on the same side.

I assume that the Rev Stu Campbell reads the words 'Rev Stu Cambell' 'cause that is the sort of ego we are dealing with.

If you come across this, and I expect you will, pretend that you didn't, you will come across as the humourless person that I expect you are.

The Reverend Stu Campbell - I worry in public.

This is what the hero of the modern revolution had to say: The Revend Stu Campbell, yes that hero

"You are barred, yes.

Wings Over Scotland is not a democracy. It has a very open comments policy compared to anywhere else, but it is not without rules, and the one absolutely cast-iron one is that my word goes - if I explicitly tell you not to do something again and you tell me to fuck off and do it again several times, you're out.

You were warned repeatedly when you were already testing my patience (and had been unambiguously told as much), and you chose to continue acting like an arsehole. As such, you're no longer welcome in the comments section. I hope that's clear and unambiguous."

It is, It is. I said:

"Thanks for clearing that up,

I am disappointed that you would see my comments as worthy of a ban. Still, your web-site, your rules.

Frankly I didn't see the barriers. Call me blind or summat. Quite why you saw it as a challenge to your authorty is a bit beyond me. Not a side of your personality that has been evident to me in the earlier, hundreds of posts that I have made.

And, quite why you support someone that has, AFAIK, never written or commented on your web site before, or apparently since, as though they were your long lost brother, defeats me. It is perfectly possible for people to play identity fraud anywhere. As a victim of that in the past, though not in the current fandangle, I would alert you to the possibility that you are being conned.

I thought, obviously wrongly, that you were up for a bit of banter.

Fold?

Apparently not.

We are on the same side. As a long time follower of your blog I regret this parting of the ways.

Best wishes.

douglas clark."

I worry for the Rev Stewart Campbell's health. I most certainly did not tell him to 'fuck off'. He has taken on a huge burden of expectation. His genuine bravery in not backing down to a misplaced legal threat was and is completely admirable. Contrary to what he might think, I would have helped pay his legal fees over that had it come to it. He probably runs the worlds second most successful Scottish Independence blog. (He could probably argue that Newsnet Scotland is not a blog, and I am not sure I would argue with that, so first.). I know that he was genuinely impressed with the financial support he got. His output is prodigious. But the degree of humourless, or as he has said himself, anti-democratic sentiment, that he has expressed here to me is quite concerning. This is, usually, quite a funny guy.

This is not the first time I have read similar sentiments - not a democracy - from blog authors, though never directed at me before. Quite what is it about success, because they never say that when they have one or two correspondents, that allows them to trivialise the media that they have developed and / or benefitted from? What new found numbers allow them to treat us as a, well number, rather than a person?

A different side of his nature, perhaps. Not to make too big a deal of it, but on their way up blog authors appear quite accomodating to criticism, then they get as sensitive as any main stream media journalist. Who are, despite this, still the worst. In relation to the mainstream it appears to be an ego thing, or a projection of their idea that journalists as the only voices worth listening to. Had they not made the horrendous mistake of having comments the old model could have continued ad infinitum. Else we could have retained the dead tree press and their 'Letters to the Editor' with it's huge delays in actual criticism of whatever was now in a chip wrapper.

But the point about blogs is that they ought to be, with the usual caveats about trolling and lies and the Scotsman and stuff like that, to be a two way process. Which have the all the advantages and disadvantages of speed.  It is that that makes them dynamic, different and useful. It is absolutely great to have a discussion started off by a post of quality, and, usually, the Rev Stu's posts do that.  That, not to put too fine a point upon it, is the difference between the mainstream and new media. Misunderstanding that, is to misunderstand the game you are playing.

When contradiction, in the mildest of ways, becomes a challenge to ones 'authority' what is going on in ones head? Who, exactly decided that blogs were - not a democracy - it certainly wasn't their users. It is obviously a truism, but it is anti-democratic (by definition). Is that how Wings over Scotland wishes to be seen?

Is everyone that comments there to avoid any criticism whatsoever of his ideas or  philosophy or what? Is everything perfect in the best of all possible worlds?

It is the genuinely lazy idea that you cast aside contrary views, just because you can. 

I will have no impact whatsoever in his soaring flight into the stratosphere. I am a tad annoyed however that someone I had serious time for seems to have no idea what this media is about. I am also a bit worried that success will bring about it's own failure. It tends to do that when you don't remember where you came from.

Just saying.

douglas clark

Glasgow

13th May 2013