the jury is in

The SNP govt wanted, during the present state of emergency, to abolish juries. No attempt to do that has happened in Englandandwales, where jury trials are simply postponed for the duration. Mercifully, within a day they were stopped by all the Unionist parties: and okay, as the Unionists are not in a majority, also by the opposition of law professionals from their own ranks.

Human rights here have just passed through a breathtaking moment of emergency, and who from? From the reputed progressives who have told us for years they want to give us a nice more progressive state of our own, and campaigned against Brexit's likely rollback of ECHR-associated human rights safeguards. The independence movement's entire claim that Scottish governments and state would be innately more progressive and fairer, now stands smashed by this. This will always be there as a fact of history in the debate.

Notice it follows within days the MeToo extreme feminists' oopenly disliking that a woman-majority jury found Alex Salmond innocent. This has rightly split the nats into a bad fight on Facebook and in the National, where both the loyalists who saw politicality in the whole trial, and the scrupulous over the vital human right to presumption of innocence, have seen through the evil raving believe-what-we-want injustice of the radical feminists and their witch-hunt of men.

The Crossgate Centre on Mar 24 displayed on Facebook a reply to that character of radical feminists, that they well deserved, and deserve everyone to contemplate:

《 This tweet from Rhiannon Spear, the SNP National Women's Convener, in response to the Alex Salmond verdict yesterday is absolutely appalling, and has drawn a well-deserved backlash from SNP members and the wider Yes movement on Twitter. Her contempt for the principle of presumption of innocence, juducial due process, and not least the jury, 9 of whom, the majority, were women - makes her unfit for office.

Never mind respecting entitlement to presumption of innocence, clowns like you can't even respect a verdict from a female-majority jury if it goes in the accused's favour. You epitomise the entryism piggy-backing on & destroying an SNP where it is because of indy supporters. The tweet itself, Mar 23, and its reactions, are here.

a dangerous passport trap, they must not be over 9 1/2 years old even if over 6 months left

TRAP ! KEEP NOTE OF THIS. #globalapartheid #passport6months

From a story in the Independent titled "BRITISH TRAVELLERS FACE BEING TURNED AWAY AT AIRPORTS OVER NEW PASSPORT EXPIRY RULES AFTER BREXIT." A funny title when we are after Brexit now, as if they have not yet got used to that. Or is it intentional to jolt Brexiters with a reminder that we are not yet into full Brexit conditions until they hit at the transition period's expiry, next new year?

It's important and devastatingly unjust what they are reporting. You can get caught out + pigheadedly oppressively denied travel, with all the serious lost money that means!! as well as humiliation, if you use a British passport that you think is okay because over 6 months left, but that is over 9 1/2 years old. Until 2018 Britain used to give back paid-for time on passports and issue them for longer periods than the exact 10 years. But in conflict with that well-intentioned move, arbitrarily oppressively + pointlessly, many countries don't recognise validity beyond 10 years + their 6 month rule cut you off at 9 1/2 years no matter the actual expiry date.

From next new year, our transition period's expiry, this will include the EU. The EU is wrong to choose to have these rules, even if most of the world has. Passports are unjustly losable documents anyway. There is fault on both sides in this, + honestly admitting so makes a more rational case to Brexiters than a line of always placing all the fault on Britain's side. It is wrong when Rejoiners are unwilling to say that, + want to place all the fault only on Britain's side in every story like this. Honesty with the balance of fault is needed in any hoping to shift attitudes when Brexit's impractical results hit.

to revoke article 50 is the least gamble

British govt is at crisis point of having its hands tied by parliament against the exact thing it most wants to do. But will there turn out to be any point to it? For yet another EU extension is refusable, a danger that the Benn law does not deal with, + France's President Macron is already talking of refusing it. It was he who made the present extension shorter than the rest of the EU intended to make it. IT WOULD BE LESS OF A GAMBLE TO REVOKE ARTICLE 50, AND WE HAVE REACHED A POINT WHERE IT WOULD BE PERFECTLY DEMOCRATIC TOO.

We have never yet had a 3-way referendum, + our first will inevitably be beset by claims not to understand the process, encouraged by those who don't think it will go their way. It would have to be by the AV system itself defeated in a now-forgotten ref in 2011, the Tories won't agree to that, or else it could fail to produce a majority, fatal if its purpose is to resolve a deadlock !

To have a 2-way ref, you need to have a Leave option to offer in it, that the Leavers agree represents them, is not a robbery of their true position, + is fit for them to enact if it wins. There is none !

The Leavers were robbed by their own side, the ambiguity it pulled to hold itself together. For some Leavers only leaving with a deal was acceptable and they promised so in their campaign. For others only leaving with no deal was acceptable, now the Brexit Party's position: they avoided that in the campaign but have taken the Leave win as grounds to change the goalposts to that harder position. Both those camps within the Brexit movement hoped + gambled that winning a vote just for the principle called Leave should then let their camp prevail as the true form of Leave supported by reason.

That has not happened, the 2 camps are strong enough on their view of true Leave to fight each other + show that there is are actually majority feelings, national and parliamentary, against each camp. The majority consists of: the other Leave camp's purists + the Remainers. No dtheorists + debaters of referendums ever guessed such a Gordian knot. That a ref would be won for the principle of a step, offered in a papered-over alliance of 2 versions mutually unacceptable to enough of each other's supporters to make majorities against enacting either of them !

Hence it is perfectly democratic to revoke A50 until the Leavers sort that out or holdability of a 3-way ref gets sorted out. It's also less of a gamble to do this than go for either a ref or an extension request which Macron is already talking of refusing. Remainers, handed the chance of a legitimate default victory by the Leavers' divided positions, could still blow it + lose by similar division on the rightness + electoral daringness of revoking A50.

at crisis point how are they so unable to stop blowing it?

Worried by the outcome of Corbyn's meeting with all the opposition leaders.

Putting off a vote of confidence increases daily the odds of finding Johnson able to time an election for after Brexit is done. Legislating for yet another humiliating request for an extension! another! risks fed-up EU not agreeing to it. They are sounding lacking of plan of what another extension would be for.

If the Corbynites won't back a majority supported leader for a new govt for fear of it finishing Corbyn's leadership, and the Lib Dems would rather risk letting No-Deal happen than back Corbyn, and this even scuppers the much-expected move for a vote of confidence: then the opposition is divided and ruled and No-Deal happens.

The independence parties can sit in the middle of the row, outside the blame for it, and happy to see it keep the Union precarious. Corbyn + Swinson + their followers muat know that, + ths whole public know they must know that !

search yourself Lesley Riddoch

Riddoch has written a National column seizing on the opinion poll of Brexit-raving Tory menbers, that found a majority polling as preferring to lose Scotland than drop Brexit. Symptomatic of what Brexit has done to the Tories, and some commenters have suggested it comes from the weight of Brexiters who have joined the Tories to influence the leadership election. But the nats are all falling over it with glee.

They and Riddoch are making a logical fallacy typical of them, in declaring this the end of unionism. They are assuming that all u ionists are Tories. A piece of mud they would sneakily love to stick, and which makes no sense alongside what they often say on low Tory support here. i.e. the majority of Unionists are not Tories, and their Unionism is completely logically unaffected by the Tories' collective crack-up.

Here are Riddoch's words asked back to her. As I asked them back to her in a National site comment.

SHE WROTE

>
• As Stuart Campbell [Wings over Bath] pointed out: “Tories in Scotland and Northern Ireland are clinging to a nation from which their own Conservative colleagues would drop them like a ticking time-bomb ... at the first inconvenience.”
• Who knows if that revelation prompted any heart-searching amongst Union-supporting Scots ? ... So the question is worth asking again.
• Knowing that “fellow” arch Unionists would throw you and your nation to the wolves rather than miss the chance to trash their own economy by cutting ties with the European Union – how do you feel about the Union now? Indeed, how do you rate the thought processes of your erstwhile colleagues?
• What on earth are we waiting for? Even Scotland’s No voters must be asking themselves the very same question.

ASKED BACK TO HER

Lesley: you are a diaspora-born Scot who belongs to your nation by family. The White Paper does not give, and ever since it SNP and Yes have refused to give, unrefusable citizenship by the family connection route, parental descent. For 6 years you have faced the question, and you evaded it when asked by me at a meeting you did in Edinburgh Friends' Meeting House during the indyref:

• Why are you an eager leading voice of a movement that is racist against yourself ?
• Yessers who either are, or care about family/friends who are, parental descent Scots, are clinging to a nation from which their own Yes colleagues would drop them like a ticking time-bomb, by dogma without even waiting for an inconvenience.
• Who knows if that revelation prompted any heart-searching amongst indy-supporting Scots? So the question is worth asking again.
• Knowing that "fellow" arch Nats would throw you and your subset of your nation to the wolves rather than miss the chance to trash their own economy by cruelly dividing families in breach of ECHR article 8 - how do you feel about indy now? Indeed, how do you rate the thought processes of your erstwhile colleagues?
• As of Perth's recent hustings, Green leader Maggie Chapman has come round on parental descent citizenship. What are you waiting for? Even Scotland's SNP voters must be asking themselves the very same question.

Ireland saving Britain

If we don't no-deal Brexit this week, Ireland has saved us. This is impressive, Varadkar the Irish PM publicly warning the other countries off vetoing the extension. First time Britain will ever be saved by Ireland - it will change our history relationship! It will be new to gave that relationship with a separated former-UK country within the British Isles. It will be a big psychologival change on both sides, and fir Scittish nats looking at it from the Irush side too. - No longer will it be possible to see Britain as the roughshod oppressor over all that has happened between us,
news.sky.com/story/leo-varadkar-any-country-that-vetoed-brexit-delay-would-not-be-forgiven-11686447

#Saveourinternet

The EU is flawed. All acknowledge that, but for europhile nats surely this story is inconvenient in its timing. EU reforms of copyright systems are behind a threat to video freedom on the web. By making hosts like Youtube liable for copyright from the moment a video is posted, they would force then to block lots of stuff whose making certain of its content's copyright. This will stifle art. This is Youtube's campaign: www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/>www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/">www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/

Meanwhile: deal Brexit, hard Brexit, People's Vote, indyref2, vote of confidence, election - anyone asks me or you what is going to happen, next there is only one honest answer! NO IDEA !

But the polls are hardening against an indyref2, for all the anger and pressures for it that are increasingly coming from the fundamentalist nats in parliament (Patrick Harvie) and in tge comments sections on the National newspaper's site and FB page. There are No leads of 4 to 10 points at present. Not an encouragement to Sturgeon to gamble !

in bed with the Tories !

Since the indyref, nats of all their parties have repeated and repeated unto infinity their wrong accusation that Labour damaged itself by being allied to, or "in bed with", the Tories in the No campaign. Keep repeating something to generate a left wing doctrinal peer pressure to accept and believe it.

Today the now annual demo of Scottish feeling against Brexit was held at Holyrood. The speakers included Joanna Cherry, SNP, Patrick Harvie, Green, and - Struan Stevenson, Tory. The organisers the European Movement in Scotland praised cross party working for the objective of trying somehow to stop Brexit. Cherry thanked Stevenson for his participation and celebrated that she had shared a banner with him in this demo.They celebrated their working together on a single issue.

They were right to do that. But by it, they proved Labour also was right to do it in the No campaign. TO ANYONE WHO HEARD OR RECORDED WHAT THE NATS SAID AT TODAY'S DEMO, THEY HAVE EXPLODED AND FINISHED, UTTERLY REFUTED, THEIR MALICIOUS JIBE ABOUT LABOUR JOINING WITH THE TORIES IN THE INDYREF. THE SAME AS WHAT LABOUR DID, THEY ARE NOW DOING THEMSELVES BY THEIR PUBLIC ADMISSION.

spurious leap

What is this assertion by the National, that the Brexit crisis over the Irish border proves there would be no hard border with a Scottish state?

They never argue out any substance behind this, because they have none. The deduction does not follow. They just want it to stick from getting repeated.

We don't even have the certainty yet of no hard Irish border. DUP stepped in against the apparent deal. We always knew that most sides wanted to avoid an Irish hard border, it was no big news at all that the British govt reached a point favourable to making such a deal. It establishes nothing about Scotland's situation at all. There are (1) no peacekeeping rationale and (2) no economic relations with an EU member neighbour, to drive what would happen to the Scottish border. We are not the same situation as Ireland. It remains as possible as ever it was argued in the indyref, for disagreed policies to cause a hard border.

Not indy but exactly from within the Union! is where we should be able to copy any EU-friendly alignment of regulations that NI opts to have, without a hard border for us if without one for them.

back of the queue ?

Today's news on disastrous long queues at airport borders in Europe, between us and the Schengen area: because in the same miserable world trend as Brexit, oppositely to rationality, Schengen borders have recently been made tighter and even non-Schengen EU cou tries' citizens now have go be checked against a database on terrorism alarms. Scottish Yes always said it would stay with the British Isles Common Travel Area and not Schengen. Does this now undermine its whole case to be the way to keep our familiar comfortable place in the EU at all?

May not get hard

LABOUR HAS CLOSED THE POLL GAP ON THE TORIES BY 10 POINTS IN A WEEK.

So it can win. If it keeps up that rate it will win. Thaf is s very rare rate of election campaign gain. It is standing up to scrutiny that its policies are not hard left, or hard Brexit. But they are hard no to deals with the SNP.

They can be, because SNP can't vote to put a Tory government in, so Labour does not have to make any deals to prevent that. They have to be, because the last election was stolen from Miliband by the SNP making their arrogant mud stick to Labour with English voters. Tragically, had that not happened, neither would Brexit and the whole situation behind this election.

Clearly now, the reality of all the loss of sensible European facilities in a pigheadedly nationalist Tory hard Brexit is daunting voters. Accelerate that process, go Labour.

Democracy required to be one-sided ?

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/180642

- The petition to British govt taking a constitutional position that indyref2 now should not be authorised.

Because it is a high frequency neverendum, indyref1 has still only been over for 2 1/2 years, and had a 3 year lead in! and it is lop-sided, not parity, to gave frequent neverendum on an ussue where only 1 sice can choose to gave it after every loss, and the other side get finished by one loss. That is why Jeremy Corbyn is wrong to think democracy requires accepting it.

It would be different for an issue that both sides might want to revisit regularly, e.g. if a measurable public reaction against Brexit happens as they experience loss of European-linked facilities and open doors. Which, the EU and Spain have quickly retold us, we won't get back by the indy route.

a story of Britnat racism?

WAY-HAY, Jim Sillars has stopped being a Yes!! If the fevered-up indyref2 is tied to backing our continued EU membership and held for the purpose of achieving that, he won't vote for that. He will abstain the news suggests, but it places him choosing the British union he has opposed for 40 years over the EU. The British union where his Brexit sympathies won the vote, unlike in his ain nation. It has taken him until the crunch point of indyref2 fever to express this, we can imagine he put it off for as long as possible.

The unionists jumping to call this a terrible enbarrassment for Sturgeon are quite wrong. It's a great opportunity. An opportunity to how an indy movement cleaned of its past racist wing and making citizenship by parental descent unrefusable, fixed as a constitutional red line of human rights before we vote not after.

Sillars, always a Brexiter, personified the bigoted strand of nationalism that was anti-outsider even to our ain folk's next of kin diaspora, andwanted it to be a project for the resident population. He was the prominent Yes figure whose words were cited in EU petition 1448/2014 to make the Scottish state a pariah racist state if it betrayed patental descent Scots wuthout citizenship of their own country. He was the monster who hatefully told a big Yes audience at Liberton school, Edinburgh, on 7-5-14 "We must not he afraid of this" that he wanted the parental descent diaspora treated the same as migrants with no background here and filtered for desirable skills, and said "We can't have an open door" exactly as Brexiters are now made fun of for. Sillars was the outstanding example of why Sadiq Khan was right, and anyone who was at that Yes meeting and in recent days has angrily denied a nationalism-racism link has been lying. Sillars's line was a humanitarian evil, it would break up families, against European human rights article 8, would stop them living together in the same country to pool their resources and helping each other, economically against Toryudm and in giving medical care.

Yes is far better off without him, yes.

20 20 vision ?

STV's story that Dr Tobias Lock, of Edinburgh University, and Dr Kirsty Hughes, a senior fellow at Friends of Europe in Brussels, have reported that we could be "fast tracked" backmp into EU membership, is a very nat biased story. Their report is a best case ideal scenario of what could happen if everyone had the right goodwill. We already know everyone has not got the right goodwill, and they just ignore that. Same as nats in the 2014 campaign used to, they cherrypick words from Spanish politicians to claim tenuously as refuting that there will be a Spanish veto, when they don't even know what Spanish government there will be at the time of us trying to rejoin the EU.

What is noticeable is that even their scenario sees us being out of the EU for 5 years. Without us being part of the British deal, that would have to mean out of the single market too.

Imagining a Yes vote in 2018 they don't picture immediate statehood but the same year and a half transition as was imagined last time. Yet we leave the EU during that transition, on the March 2019 target for Brexit. Formally applying to rejoin immediately at the moment of indy in 2020, then their 20/20 vision sees the accession process taking until 2024. Even on the fantasy that won't happen, of wholesale goodwill and smoothed way.

Continuous or inherited membership, all the nats' spin has claimed would happen, THIS IS NOT.