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.

Rockall imperialism

No momentum or much news is happening now, indywise. It's all flagging. The Herald was right to report, to the Believe in Scotland site's rage, that Yes's recent day of action was a flop, as 1000 of them taking part from 120 local groups is less than 10 in each place. Huddled groups chatting to the folks already well disposed towards them.

Meanwhile the polls are comfortably unionist again. The nat poll surge in the earlier Covid period, when the blame for wobbles around shutdowns and reopenings hit the British govt first, is long over. It already was before the election, as Scottish govt showed it had no cleverer ways to cope and was drawn to follow mostly the same as what British did, with mostly the same swings in and out of shutdowns caused by the same forces.

The National is full of pieces fighting within the Yes movement, over its loss of all momentum feeling and its split on gradualism. The writers and their fragmented grassroots know the picture is desultory.

So to show keeping up effort with their arguments, this Believe in Scotland, the latest brand name for their side, has flyered homes. 2 flyers arrived at my home today, on pensions and on a set of economic stats about us.

Those included: "32% of the UK's landmass and 62% of the offshore maritime area", illustrated by a map. 62% ? That we have the actual majority of maritime area ? What ?

The map has, sticking out of our coastal waters, a long horn of supposed maritime area protruding out to the northwest, just into the open sea. What justifies that ? What is supposed to make it our maritime area ? Simply ROCKALL ! Ain't that ridiculous ? A little rock you can't even land on gives us a great sticky-out extra maritime area to tip the stat, to let us claim the biggest ? A misleading creative stat that is just a ptake, and a nat piece of map-grabbing imperialism: innit !

Herald wiping comments and manipulating debate ?

On the following page on Frank Skinner, www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/comedian-fears-england-may-go-right-wing-if-scots-vote-yes.24817570, in the Disqus comments section is the Herald showing a manipulation of heard debate to favour Yes? It has excluded the following 2 posts from being posted:

• In answer to a racist called Alex who wrote "You are not in your country, unless you were born there":
  
  The school bully prejudice of claiming that birthplace dictates country divides siblings and has been visibly wrong ever since the ancient Jews' exile in Babylon. Tony Blair is English and was born in Scotland. Eamonn da Valera was born in America. The Silent Twins, Barbadian, were born in Yemen simply because their family was in the RAF there, left it at age 7 months and had no further connection with it in their lives. Among Scots, Alexander McCall Smith was born in Matabeleland, Fitzroy Maclean in Egypt, Edinburgh council leader Andrew Burns in Germany, Eric Liddell in China. Lesley Riddoch, Alec Home, the Queen Mother, and former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Wigley were born in England, while famously Norwegian author Roald Dahl was born in Wales.
• In answer to "Simon Harries, Cambridge" post beginning "I was born in Africa":
  
  "Simon - Yes has ratted on a former SNP pledge of automatic citizenship for everyone born in Scotland and is confining that to inherited British citizenship, in that negative way it is not defining citizenship by birthplace. But in another negative way it is. Scots who were born outside Scotland to emigrant parents, mostly in rUK, and can't arrange to be resident here on indy day, they won't budge on making their citizenship only discretionary and refusable. A humanitarian betrayal which will divide families, against ECHR article 8, preventing them coming together to support each other against poverty or in time of medical need, and means the Scottish nation rejecting and excluding a large part of itself.
  
  "Civic nationalism" has turned out to mean a selfish anti-outsider racism of only caring about the population who chance arbitrarily to already live here, thus totally hostile to moving around and orientated to making it harder. I got that from 3 sources at Yes events.
  
  Pat Kane told me he would be first to speak up and say "this is wrong" against any further openness to the diaspora. Jim Sillars, considered a leading nat speaker who is doing many meetings for them, answering my question on dividing families said he wants our exile-born children subjected to the same filtering for skills as migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all, and openly told an audience "We must not be afraid of this". Those of the exile-born who have suffered from bad education systems or corrupt abuses like Savile, and that is their reason for not having high value skills, will be further punished and rejected by their country for being abuse victims. A stallholder for Radical Indy, told about this, defended it and called it good socialism to treat all outsiders from everywhere the same and racist to give preference to "someone who happens to be descended..." and he never answered on the practical impact of dividing families, dodged it several times by just repeating the racist jibe "how far back do you go?"
  
  That the Yes we are faced with is as nasty as this is a humanitarian emergency in our history. But it's by enquiring and digging and going to meetings that I have discovered it, not by passive listening to the campaign. In the British-wide racist mood I can't make the media or No campaign focus on it, so have had to make personal efforts with a "no to a new clearances" campaign in the Borders, and a Euro petition against accepting a new state as fairly mandated if voters were unaware of this horror."

A Facebook link showing horrible cybernats giving a birthplace racist reaction to Rod Stewart, in their usual emotional haste forgetting that their position would apply against their own Lesley Riddoch too.

frank

Comedian Frank Skinner, in advance of coming up to the festival, has given a muddled view of the ref. Desperate nats could take it as a celeb endorsement of voting Yes, because he has said that from a selfish point of view he would vote Yes if he lived here. He happens to be factually wrong in that, he has listened to all the unevidenced propaganda that life under indy would not be, as it would, just as neocon as British life. But the muddle is, from the point of view of living in England he has also endorsed us to vote No, saying that would be better for them, that seriously telling argument of the fear of rUK being left more right wing by our departure.

A reply to him, as posted under the Herald article:

Mr Skinner esquire, You might not vote Yes if you lived here and had done some digging for yourself into Yes's plans in an are the campaign has not focussed on: citizenship. Being conceived in Scotland would not be enough for your son to get their favour. They intend to make it refusable by the state, not an innate right, for the Scots who were born in the rest of Britain and can't be resident here on indy day to inherit citizenship from their parent. I have often found decent but overfaithful Yes voters shocked to hear of this, and generated a few extra enquiries by it, but always with the same answer. With government, Yes campaigns national and local, including Helensburgh who checked it with a lawyer, and all the yes supporting parties, they won't budge - they won't make this class of citizenship unrefusable. This is a basic assault on family life, against ECHR article 8, and a new clearances, an intention to reject Scots from their country. If the British or European shared travel areas break down, citizenship will affect who can live here - and only last week, totally slipping the mask, we heard Sturgeon's seriously unpleasant threat to throw out all the EU citizens here if we hit any problem with rejoining the EU. The so-called "civic nationalism" they have claimed is wonderfully progressive and non-racist turns out to be so deeply racist and anti-outsider that it even kicks away Scots' extended families - for what it means is only caring about the population who chance to already live here. Even when emigration features in Yes arguments!

Dividing families is a very practical matter preventing them caring for each other or supporting each other against poverty and welfare troubles. Yet a stallholder for Radical Indy kept dodging answering this with the diversion "How far back would you go?" and called it good socialism to subject the exile-born children of our emigrants to the same filtering for skills as Yes proposes for migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all. To reject our children taking no account of life misfortunes, education systems working badly, abuses hushed up by punishment as was revealed in Savile, as causes of not having high value skills.

I have petitioned the EU not to accept the ref process as legitimate or a new state as mandated if the mass of voters were unaware of these sick plans. Now the Yes campaign especially its meetings consists of an ever more raving Project Fear threatening all sorts of lurid right wing prospects if we vote No, without any disproof that they would happen the same under indy too as our major parties are just as neocon inclined as the British ones. Everything they threaten is actually a reason to vote No, in order not to betray branches of our families who have already suffered life misfortunes to also suffer rejection by their country and being abandoned to suffer all the threatened things living in the rest of Britain, cut off also from the help of their families here unless they emigrate too, and shorn of our leftward impact on British elections. While in the union we can vote against right wing horrors instead of having them thrust on us by a big powerful neighbour with no say in it, let's take your endorsement of voting No for that reason.

Great, but great-great?

The referendum's most morally important issue has at last surfaced in the news, here in the Herald yesterday www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/salmond-snp-favours-irish-style-citizenship-after-independence.1358446515 and it has an inconspicuous short item on an inside page of today's Times. It has never been top of the Scottish media's agenda are spinning totally the wrong agenda and can be supposed not to care a fig about the majority of all Scots in the world the diaspora.

Salmond has told a TV channel in New Zealand, at last, it has taken long enough, that our new state would have an increased openness to citizenship entitlement for the diaspora, than is the case now in the union. That they would copy a model used already by the Irish Republic, extending to great-grandchildren. Even the Herald article has a racist slip-up in its wording on this, it refers to great-grandparents who were Irish. Yet the measure's obvious point is that all the descendants are Irish too. To word it such as suggests the 2 diasporas are not actually Irish or Scottish is of course to oppress them.

Great-grandparents is still far from enough generations to embrace all the descendants of the clearances. Do we want a referendum where both sides' position is genocidal? That would make its result's international validity questionable, and it is what will happen if neither side gives citizenship to all the diaspora who identify as Scottish unto perpetual generations, specially including all the descendants of the clearances.

EU mucked up

Nobody needs telling that Salmond has not had a happy day in the newspapers. Or in his party. Blink and savour having a majority government while it lasts, it may be over any minute.

Just when the SNP's years of tabloid law and order nastiness towards the young seemed to be starting to thaw, as he pledged a bill to make the voting age 16 properly. How will all that young bashing, the tightening up on pubs and their under-18 licensing, look in hindsight if the same party that did it makes some breathtakingly ironically British history by turning out to drive votes at 16 into place across all Britain's elections? After the half generation of nasty reluctance and faffing there has been by the British major parties, continuing not to do it, all through the new era of reform opportunities since Thatcherism ended in 1997?

Just when Salmond seemed to start turning a bit nicer to the young again, now that he needs their votes, he had to go and spoil his whole enterprise by the sneakiness over our continued EU membership, where the SNP has now been tripped up. To try to be popular he persisted in saying he would go along with the existing British system's narky old racist line of not joining Schengen. If we had to rejoin the EU as a new member we might have to join Schengen: GOOD - I want to join Schengen. So does any rational and humane person who fears the losability of travel documents and finds covering the world in apartheid passport barriers an obstacle to common sense life. Though Schengen only exists because the EU does, you can even belong to Schengen without belonging to the EU, like Norway, which is worth knowing if our membership gets interrupted.

It was not worth telling fibs and blowing trust for the whole Yes campaign when it was falling behind in support already, to get out of joining Schengen and pander to Tory passport racism. That will be a mortifying mortal failing for the Yes campaign to be remembered with in history.

OCT 26: Newsnet Scotland here has posted a story that was in the Herald, of the European Commission Vice-President saying EU citizenship once given can't be taken away. Yes supporters on Facebook can criticise the BBC for not majoring on this story, but they are seizing on it too eagerly, it does not establish Scotland would be in the EU, only that we would not lose our citizenship for travelling to the EU.

leave to appeal

Yesterday's Herald headline on raising the age of buying alcohol, is all I need to feel the most immense moral relief that I did not vote SNP. How many youth votes did its emotional landslide sweep up?

Older voters too already have grave cause for uneasiness, from the present row about the Supreme Court. The SNP blatantly does not want folks to have access to a means some have already used, to establish breaches of human rights. It wants to suppress access to something that even covers the safety of convictions. This is supposed to whip up national pride and a feeling of insult at British interference in us. This exactly parallels how many dictatorships in Asia and Africa used to call the outside world's human rights concerns interference and associate it with colonialism. Robert Mugabe and Lee Kwan Yew still do that.

They want you to have to go to the European Court of Human Rights instead, knowing that will take longer, so if your case is about being in jail it will mean you stay in jail for longer, and if it is civil law and you need a lawyer to do it there will be more chance that you can't afford it. On Radio Scotland last night the SNP speaker could not answer these objections from Labour and kept changing the subject when asked about them.

Noticeably exactly since the SNP has been in government it has grown a monstrous morally authoritarian streak. It does not bode well for handing them increases of power. This is quite as big a letdown for folks who used to support the SNP as a banner for democratic reform, in its underdog days, as Clegg tying the Lib Dems to stick for another 4 years to a deal to attack vulnerable groups and their safety nets. These are not happy days at all for the reformist parties as were.

On this court issue too, the SNP is ignoring the "court change", the abolition of final decisions, which the whole political elite have kept hushed up ever since 1999 and which I described in my feeback on the referendum bill, last year, which they refused to issue publicly. The cause of this blog's existence.

A massive benefit done by the court change, is that it abolishes the horrible concept of "leave to appeal." That blatantly absurd corrupt mediaeval device, where the same court as makes a wilfully dodgy or corrupt decision also chooses whether to allow you to pursue any objection to it. The court change establishes a perpetual right of faulty finding, by any party, against every legal decision ever. That is what democracy needs. It extinguishes the nonsense of anyone ever needing leave to appeal. In the Supreme Court row, The SNP's minister of justice, Kenny Macaskill, is focussing his argument on leave to appeal. He wants folks to be required to get it before they can bring cases. Openly publicly he wants he wants a device applied at the discretion of the same courts as would be challenged, which is blatantly an unjust corrupt trick, to serve as a barrier to doing anything about safety of convictions.

The court change would protect your liberties from that trick and from an agenda as sinister towards your safety as Macaskill's. The SNP kept the court change out of the public record.