This blog is a response to the SNP not making public all of the submissions it received to its (FIRST! in 2010) consultation on an independence referendum. The second earliest post here is a submission Salmond dug in not to make public. Why? Hiding which of its contents? Is it because they want to run away from acknowledging the court change? Is it because they want to avoid taking account of the issue of return of the diaspora and how some returners to Scotland have been treated by the state?
In seeking to post this around facebook, it was astonishing to discover the Scottish Lib Dems now have no public page, and the UK ones still after a day had no mention of Jim Wallace's passing. even as a former Deputy PM, in the first Scottish government, he shared in an ordinary grassroots experience of street campaigning in the Brexit ref 10 years ago.
His passing removes a witness to how ordinary Remain campaigners got messed around by our own side in the Brexit ref. In the polling day flyering at Edinburgh Haymarket station. I was in it, we were completely left to do it when we were in numbers, in the morning peak. Then, when numbers reduced and a couple of us stuck at it after our colleagues had finished, we got targetted by the station manager then the police, who claimed completely different activity boundaries than our own organisers had told us.
After which our organisers when told about it would not challenge the police's action, and nor would the Lib Dem from their nearby office who was flyering beside me and who favoured respectability even when pushed around instead of arguing jurisdictions to defend the election activity info our organisers had brought us there by telling us. Then Jim Wallace was there in the evening peak and was allowed unbothered to do it in a place where the morning police had not allowed us to do it.
Our (ex)organisers never answered any communication from me ever again after our polling day activity was over, and despite all the controversy around whether the ref was held fairly, I could never get anyone to take up + make use of this story about Jim Wallace.
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.
Although Cameron's EU deal brings in some inevitable nasty Tory economic barriers, which a future Labour led government can easily enough drop, yet there is also a surprising strand of good in Cameron's deal.
He has drawn some red lines that protect member countries' democratic sovereignty and stop the growth of centralised commission power to tell them to do things. This has actually made the EU more democratic in a way that folks have been saying ever since the 80s is needed. It has shown that members can reform the institution in more democratic ways and put their foot down to halt undemocratic drifts. It's a milestone of democratisation in the EU's development.
Time to vote In, or Stay, or Remain, on Jun 23, whatever they will call it. They will have to avoid calling it Yes when there are still stubborn blue Yes window posters around referring to leaving another union.
AND MEANWHILE?OH MY GUUÀAAAAARDD !!!
George Galloway!!! He was a massive asset for the indy No campaign. He was the most prominent name among radical leaders to support the British union, he showed decisively to many that you could be unionist and left wing. So, now, WHY THE HELL ISN'T HE UNIONIST FOR THIS UNION TOO? He is anti-EU and has already been photoed alongside Farage !!! campaigning for out !!! After in the indyref he wouldn't be seen alongside the Tories.
How totally Gordon Bennett is that? What a jerk particularly because leaving the EU keeps the British union unstable and there is continuing argument for independence on that trigger. Present polls don't make the nat leaders keen to call a second indyref, but the constitutional argument and threat of it is always there, an EU Out vote could still help to lead to it eventually.
How will Galloway then argue against it, when at the Out rally which the Daily Telegraph site showed a clip of, he calls lifetime important "the demand that Britain shall be an independent sovereign and democratic country", exactly the pointless nationalist sentiment he condemned for Scotland saying that creating national barriers is bad! Work Galloway out !!! eh? What he said is nonsense because Britain is already perpetually sovereign, Cameron's deal has clearly established that, with the EU treaties now formally exempting us from the aim of "ever closer union."
Time to expose a most startling piece of censoring from a different source. Unlock Democracy!
It calls itself "The UK's leading campaign for democracy, rights and freedoms". Successor organisation to Charter 88.
It has just circulated to its subscribers papers for an internal election for its council.
" No candidate may pro-actively campaign for election online, or allow anyone else to campaign on their behalf." - What the hell is wrong with campaigning online? No explanation given.
Candidates may inform their existing friends and social contacts that they are standing and may answer direct questions about their candidacy, if asked. This rule applies to the informal use of social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). However, there is inevitably a thin line between informing and campaigning via social media and there are circumstances in which a candidate may not be able to control how their communications on social media are subsequently relayed by others.
For these reasons, the Returning Office advises candidates to take great care in communicating via social media their decision to stand. The Returning Officer may disqualify any candidate who they deem to have made a public statement to promote their candidacy".
WHAT THE HELL REASON OR PURPOSE IS THERE, IN OUR "LEADING CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY" PUTTING UNDEMOCRATIC GAGS ON ITS OWN PROCESS? Would you trust any public election that gave one official the personal discretionary power to "deem" anything factual whose effect is throwing candidates out of elections? That is the same as It is a power of bias over the whole election, to control and select who can stand in it. The same trick as often practised by dodgy unfree states when they put on a controlled show of elections, that we know not to recognise as fair as a result.
Here that person will be a judge of folks' performance at an impossible task of walking on eggshells, at a requirment to get right something so excruciatingly narrowly defined that even in writing the instructions they admit it will be very easy to get wrong, yet still impose the rule and on pain of exclusion from the election. This is totally not reasonable at all. A process with impossible to avoid pitfalls is not a fair or open process at all.
Time to lose trust in Unlock Democracy. What is being protected by an election that no participant can be sure of getting right? and WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNING? WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?
