bank snooping, abolishing juries, suing governments under trade treaties, the drift

A twin terrible moment for civil liberties, sending civil liberties voices' alarm setting sky high. The present move to massively reduce use of juries in Englandandwales, and now passed the present Britishwide introduction of snooping powers over welfare recipients' bank accounts. Both these at once. Both need the COURT CHANGE used by all parties resisting them.

On juries, this is both to cite the court change against the change happening, and if it still happens, to use the court change in actual cases. In Scotland, where the extent of right to juries is weaker, still 2 recent attempts to partly abolish them were successfully stopped, including by lawyers' opposition. The SNP government tried to suspend juries entirely at Covid's outset. Then straight after a jury defeated its attempt to frame Alex Salmond, it stood on a policy to abolish juries in sex cases where even the present English proposal keeps them, and where even without doing that, the Supreme Court case recently proved Scottish law to have practised unjustly in the witch-hunting of men.

So the political elite, including from the left, has been dangerously after juries for a long time already. All organisations who stand for civil liberties, who voice any resistance to this change, are evidenced only to mean what they say if they acknowledge the court change, cite it against the juryless process's demerits, and are not ignoring it. The court change is a serendipitous resource in this which they can't afford to leave aside.

The move against juries is part of shift from proper democracy to business controlled government, corporatism. A Guardian item on which by George Monbiot, Dec 1, has been welcomed by Helena Norberg-Hodge of the Local Futures mailing list. To which today she wrote in response, it -

《 details the ISDS clauses, written into free trade treaties, which give foreign corporations – and only foreign corporations – the right to sue governments, sometimes for many times their annual GDP. This is what I mean when I say, as I did in a recent video currently doing the rounds on social media, that this is a completely illegal global system.

Trade treaties have been the dark secret of the global economy for decades. Both the Left and Right have been handing over their wealth and power to global monopolies, making a complete mockery of democracy and giving rise to Corporate Rule. This lies not only behind the complete failure in the climate arena, but is also a primary reason why more and more people are forced to run faster and faster just to put food on the table and a roof over their head. As a consequence of these increasing pressures on people, we are witnessing a frightening political swing toward fascism.

And the good news is that this is not so much about "good guys" and "bad guys" as it is about blindness. It’s my experience that the majority of our political leaders have not had a clue about this, nor have most social and environmental activists at the grassroots – not even the majority of people inside these giant monopolistic corporations! 》

She asks for circulation of it - 《 That this corporate empire threatens all of us gives us reason to unite like nothing else.

Please help us spread the word. Share Monbiot’s article along with our video, Trade Gone Mad.

Big hugs,
Helena Norberg-Hodge  》

But with the court change too. This campaign too will unaffordably miss a resource if it neglects the court change. George Monbiot has not exposed the court change, and nor have campaigns against corporatism for a generation already. Uniting includes automatically taking up all resources contributed by anyone. It will visibly only be meant if it acknowledges and uses the court change.

#FreeTradeAgreement #freetradetreaties #tradetreaties #CorporateGovernance #CorporateGovernment #corporategov #oligarchpolitics #oligarchy #LocalFutures #helenanorberghodge

Youtube censors Edinburgh tram options !

Under a video by CityMoose channel on the tram expansion, that supports the Roseburn path option, including without local knowledge the total path option at Telford Road, Youtube is utterly banning the following comment. Not even the first sentence on its own, or using 1s and 0s, any comment referring to station siting in any way will not post -

《 You are wrong about Telford Road. Station's site on the path route will be in a park and behind some flats, hence lonely, won't feel safe after dark. I heard that raised in the public drop-in. Its distance from the hospital too, across a housing estate, is not good for infirm or ageing patients who can't walk well. It will be a white elephant.

The road is wide, has a hospital gate straight onto it, has not got homes straight onto it. North side of the road, in Drylaw park's corner, there is a strip of ground behind a substation, gentle gradient, where you can bring the line up from path to road, so no need to build an intrusive ramp. 》

What world geopolitics or radicalism is there in words about a bloody tram line ? Made this point in favour of the Telford Road option in my trams consultation submission. Also

• instead of writing about cross-city services from Balgreen, could reopen as tram the old Corstorphine rail branch, there have often been views on local social media for that, folks who remember it say it has always been slower getting into town by bus without it. Most of the branch route still exists as a park path. Last 1/3 mile does not, so it would take an on-road bit to reach Corstorphine village. That is short enough, and not in town, that it would not slow up the buses like they are saying the Orchard Brae route will do.
• Cockburn Association, that cares about old buildings, has blogged warning of structural doubts in building the southward line over South Bridge. Modern big train-weight trams will stress the structure far more than the bus-sized ones in the historic tram era, and is a load the bridge was not built for. Same concern as for Dean Bridge, but while the Orchard Brae route is one of 3 options, South Bridge is a less known issue because the south line's route straight down the A7 is just getting taken for granted. Clearly there is a responsibility not to take it so.

If the line was diverted down Holyrood Road and near parliament, it would be a bit longer and have more corners, but it offsetting so, it would have an off-road section and avoid trying implausibly to run through the overcrowdedness of South Bridge and Nicolson St. Street widths would allow it to turn from North Bridge eastward into High St, with the northbound track off-road there to avoid the notorious tailbacks into that crossroads. Blackfriars St, Cowgate, Holyrood Road, then it could go off-road on the waste ground that is Holyrood Park's edge behind Dumbiedykes, and rise from the ground at gentle gradient by a ramp to beat the sharp rise in ground level it will eventually meet. Though the same rise prevents the line going up Pleasance because of steep gradient, that is on-road surrounded by streets with no space to beat it by a ramp, while in Holyrood there is that space. The least bumpy course over that hill, just behind the end of Dumbiedykes Road, already has an old wall along it, that obviously was easiest to build there, so the line would go through that, use its ramp to take the hill at gentler gradient than steep Braidwood Gate path up to behind Crags sport centre, Bowmont Place where it will not affect home entrances, St Leonard's St, then for local opinion to choose which street to cross back onto Clerk St via.

public be moved to keep bureaucracy off the graves you care for

change.org/p/oppose-removal-of-grave-ironworks #westlothiancouncil #disgustingbureaucrats #bureaucrats #oppression

This type of arrogance where it hurts can move the public to react against bureaucrats as they need to.

A 16 year old boy dead from some road accident, which itself is evil enough and attests the world to be so, his family set up on his grave some honouring structures that are made of iron. 26 years later, out of the blue, arbitrarily without consultation, West Lothian council arbitrarily declares new rules to ban and remove them.

learned of from Nextdoor, 17 Jul 2025

SNP’s Trident policy plays into Putin’s hands

A Herald article Jun 25,by Neil Mackay: SNP’s Trident policy plays into Putin’s hands

It complements my post here on 23 Jan 2022: Remember it was Ukraine who gave up the Bomb. This is a politics writer who has been trendily CND ever since the Cold War 80s days when it was so hegemonically the left fashion around its period in control of Labour. So when the Soviet Union existed, he was CND in face of it. But no more on face of Putin now after Ukraine.

A conversion like Einstein's in 1934. Saying that Putin's Russia now poses the same choices.

As left wing Unionists pointed out during the ref, indy won't remove the Bomb from Britain. It would just move it, and it would still have the whole island's safety as its meaning and red line, because letting an invader take Scotland just opens the door to England too. But instead, in a British election, as is on now, the concern is against the SNP exercising leverage upon British nuclear choices.

ex-PM and his party using the court change

A few days late with this, as I have had to carefully nudge my signs back in to Google, which it kept blocking on a main browser until updated, and even then, it had to be in a mobile site setting not desktop, and in a new window not retaining any code memories of the blocked sign-ins. Too much naff we get from Google's security. Hence, why had I ever signed out? knowing it has inconvenient results. Because, I had to reset all my identity indicators to do a survey from new again, that was programmed to pick up where you had got to and not allow you to start it from new again in the same browser! but one of the survey's option choices had been unclear and only after choosing, turned out to be a wrongly limiting choice, so that I needed to start it from new again.

Thus is an era snapshot of the fight to do your own simple things instead of confirm to what arrogant programs want you to do.

Okay. The real post. -

The Alba Party is loudly announcing and publishing an opinion by an international law lawyer, against the British Supreme Court decision that Scotland has no power to hold an independence vote unilaterally. It accuses the court of "significant errors" in the decision.

This is the new party set up in 2021 by former Prime Minister (okay officially they have the silly title "First Minister" to make them sound less like a national govt) Alex Salmond, after his falling out with the older SNP who he used to lead, but which conspired to get him jailed on word alone for accusations under the witch-hunting of men. The luck that an ethically conscientious jury did not go along with that, leads to the Alba Party's existence.

This opinion on the Supreme Court is a faulting of a court decision. Alike whether you agree with its content, or disagree with it and counter-fault it, it is an important democratic move to arrive at inability to accept as final what you perceive you can demontrate error in. Hence, is a use of the COURT CHANGE!

Nobody has ever offered any refutation of the reasons why the court change is real, but its ignorement by all the political elite includes by all the nat parties. There is the irony in now needing and exercising something whose existence they have ignored for a generation.

grave for community councils

Community councils - they are defined by law as to represent communities, yet they consist of self-appointed volunteers. Any time they choose to ignore or not engage with an item that protects some local businesses, they misrepresent the community, and liably harming those local businesses by it. Also breaching their constituted function by it.
Such is now the position in South Queensferry, whose community council is choosing not to record or address, in its picture of the local economy, an ethical protection of local funeral businesses. It has been created by an apology obtained for a very nasty anti-social action towards all bereaved people, in a community event at a venue used for funerals. This passed to a funeral director and further minuted in an affected church's AGM. Hence the community council system is proved deficient towards wellbeing of businesses in communities, and owing to businesses to repair this.
A councillor on the real council wrote "there are council officers within the governance department who are responsible for the oversight of community councils". But that office itself, "Under the Standing Orders, it is up to the Chairperson of the Community Council to determine what additional items of business will be included in the agenda of the Community meeting," one person's fief to do that completely unaccountably yet get taken as speaking for a community. This when "3.7: Community councils should be able to demonstrate how they are fulfilling their responsibilities as representative bodies by provision of an annual report and other forms of engagement such as newsletters, surveys, websites and use of social media."
The bureaucratic inaction line contradicts this, and interorets the Standing Orders such as makes them contradictory. Meanwhile, businesses are left without the benefit community committed upholding of an ethical protection for them.

lying about rape definitively provenly exists

The Eleanor Williams case in Cumbria is the most definitive proof that you or Nicola Sturgeon could ever need, that lying about rape exists. Hence that radical feminist dogma that it does not exist has always been a crime against human rights, conspiring to defeat justice. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/03/eleanor-williams-lied-grooming-gang-guilty-perverting-justice Convicted of the most publicly prominent, and on a group scale, with a made up story about a grooming gang, of serial crimes of false rape accusation, where there were clear alibis and evidences against the accusation.

Whence is Rape Crisis's answer?

Conviction on words against other words, whether it is 1 or even 2 persons' words, is never safe, never objective evidence. To allow it is always a most basic violation of human rights, the oldest human right of all.

Usually Tory blogger Effie Deans, completely right about this, warned on Nov 14 of Sturgeon brewing a plan to abolish juries in rape cases, on grounds that they find innocent at a rate not fitting the witch-hunters' dogma. Including, any thinking observer instantly points out, in Alex Salmond's case, where Sturgeon herself had appeared to anticipate conviction and it was going to suit her in party.

Remember too that Sturgeon was stopped, including by defence lawyers' opposition, from an attempt to suspend jury trials more generally at start of the Covid state of emergency in 2020. 20-20 vision on this will alert to and make the same law objections to every move against juries or for convictability on word, and will ever cite Eleanor Williams's case.