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.

fax democracy

This is really good:www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/22/scotland-vote-no-fax-democracy-alex-salmond-independence-westminster Norway is a "fax democracy" because it has to keep sending faxes to the EU asking to have the say it does not formally have because it is not as an EU member. Thus we would be in the same position under indy, in relation to all the aspects of the union Salmond wants to keep. We would be a fax democracy, a state opted out of any leverage towards the things we would ask other countries for.

Like the now exploded assumption that rUK would keep investing in renewable energy here to buy from us, just to make the nats' sums add up - the European Court of Justice has made a ruling that there is no such obligation between EU states and rUK would have no duty to invest in Scottish renewable energy. As Brian Wilson explains here in the ScotsmanSkittles of assertion falling down": "As I have repeatedly pointed out, it is completely irrational to assume that the UK Continuing would subsidise expensive Scottish renewables if we were a separate state, leaving Scottish consumers alone to pick up a tab which is currently spread across the whole UK."

It is in this nat culture of mirage, reckless claim, shouting down opponents, and as JK Rowling said, calling all contrary arguments scaremongering without actually answering their content, that the nats have not put right their citizenship policy either. They won't budge, they are sticking to their line of betraying the diaspora, even our closest next of kin diaspora, by making inheritance of citizenship from parents refusable and discretionary for the state to allow. A new clearances that would scar our history - by our own nationalists!!.

So it looks inescapable and now beyond any serious chance of changing, that the moral right has turned out to be with No. I started this blog without any such conclusion drawn in advance. During the period in 2012-3 when they were talking a lot of open borders rhetoric and before they had issued any policies, I was cautiously sympathetic towards Yes. That rhetoric was smoke and mirrors they have not honoured it, they have gone totally the other way. Their concept of "civic nationalism" has turned out to be a cover for an anti-outsider form of xenophobia even against our own close diaspora, a tribal cult-like intolerance, No supporters intimidated from putting up posters, and an unscrutinised emotionalised faith that every dreamy claim the Yes side makes must be right and all contrary information is scaremonering. A totally dismal picture. As these articles show, they have blown it big time.

All who care about their own and their friends' families, for all with a social conscience against hateful xenophobia, vote No.

nationalists continuing the Clearances

NATIONALISTS CONTINUING THE CLEARANCES !! Yes, you read that right.

Before campaign details and policy crystallised, the Yes position offered great possibilities of helping the diaspora and producing a more liberal regime over citizenship than the British one. That is all utterly extinguished now. In the time since the White Paper came out, the Yes campaign has turned very ugly and sinister. It seems to be pandering to the racist vote now popular in all British politics, and to an anti-outsider racist strand in the SNP's support. It is betraying and backstabbing the Scottish diaspora, in ways that actually form a continuance of the clearances, dividing families and taking Scots' country away from them.

Have already mentioned here how the latest circulated Yes paper described the terms of automatic Scottish citizenship as not including the children of exile, the Scots born in what we now call "rUK" (rest of Britain) if they can't move home before indy day to qualify for citizenship by the absurd arbitrariness of living here on that one day. Already mentioned that neither they nor any of the Yes supporting parties have answered enquiries about it, about interpretation of the provision for "may register for citizenship."

Now something has happened that clinches a turn to a sinister appeal to outsider hate on the Yes side. An SNP MP has actually denied that the folks at stake in this issue are Scottish. It was in this Sunday Post story yesterday.

ON WHAT ENTIRE BASIS, SQUARED WITH THIS, ARE THE SNP PLANNING TO HOLD A HOMECOMING FESTIVAL ????? This Angus Macneil, MP for the Outer Hebrides, may be remembered in history as the exploder of every decent opportunity this referendum could ever have been and its association instead with dividing families, with hate between siblings, with dividing Scot against Scot, with tearing a whole section of the nation out of it, absolutely the stuff of the clearances and racial persecution.

In the Yes campaign's absurd party of wishful thinking, saying just choose not to believe anything that gets in our way, they are all wrong and bluffing, just believe whatever Salmond wants to be true, they might answer this point by claiming that the pledge for the common travel area and an open English border means that foul play upon the Scottish diaspora does not matter. this is of course convenient wishful thinking and wrong. The EU common travel area might cease to include either country, either one, we know there are uncertain futures around that attaching to voting either way. rUK might put a closed border on, it has said so, it owes nothing to make Salmond's inconsistent promise, to belong to the British common travel area yet have an independent border policy, work. So exclusion from citizenship can translate into exclusion from living here.

So until he and the Yes campaign pledge automatic right citizenship for the children of exile without our new state having any power even in theory to say no to any of them as citizens, and they have been totally reluctant to do that as yet, many many Scottish families with cross border links now know that the practical and moral position has been totally swung to voting No. Done actually by nationalists' own attitudes to thwe world community of Scots.

What a way to run a railroad to London

Oh no they don't mean anything they say, they mean what I want them to say. Whatever I want it to be that they said, of course really they said it, just TRUUUST me and take it from me, you don't need to actually listen to their words saying the opposite.

You can't go through life communicating like that. It's unconvincing and silly. it's wishful thinking. I don't like what someone said so really they meant the opposite, really they meant what I wanted them to say - consider how that works out - no more toys means more toys, no consent to sex means consent to sex, we voted Yes but it means No. IT DOESN'T WORK. Would you buy a used car on that basis?

The referendum has become a shambles and tragedy. Alex Salmond, who called it, has determined on the following tragicomic place in history. He will go right up to poll asking you to vote for a statement of faith that his silly unionist idea that contradicts independence, currency union with the country you are leaving, you can ignore the No clearly given to by the entire political class of Britain and believe what the cheery salesman wants them to say. He's not going to railroad them.

This is the Yes campaign that is so caring about our ordinary lives it has not answered about the issue in the last post, the citizenship of Scottish exiles who can't return before indy day. On the Facebook Yes pages you can read yeards and yards of emotionalism about a great natiomnal moment to seize.

To continue the Clearances' logic by the moral obscenity of taking automatic citizenship away from some Scots, to make indy a way of shutting our door in some of our own people's faces, to want to tie us to the austerity programme through servitude to the Bank of England without a say over it, to call for an extra year of Tory government instead of the next British election on time during the indy process, to shut his eyes and make this ridiculous spivvy assertion that we can take his word that 3 parties don't really mean they won't do what he wants, and what he wants is unionist anyway.... WHAT WAY IS THIS TO RUN A YES CAMPAIGN?? A unionist, implausible, ludicrous, people betraying, spivvy way. AAAAAAAAAAH. If there was any national opportunity moment it's this SNP leadership who threw it away.

The sensible non-SNP wings of the Yes campaign who never wanted a currency union now need to split with Salmond and his train crash of nonsense.

Brand new idea: to do without the union ;)

If the UK is not going to enter a currency union at the demand of and convenience of a country seceding from it, and for purposes of controlling that country's budgetary policy more closely than before it seceded and with less accountability -

[1]Who is surprised? The same folks as as are not making constructive wise decisions to pay folks their benefits are hardly going to make a constructive wise decision take on currency support for a foreign country.

[2] Now, reasonably, we can have a nice enlightened pro-immigration policy free from the constraints of being in a travel area union with the UK either. So Scottish National Party will you now give your nation's diaspora that? You have made a moral campaign argument out of our needs differing with the UK's ugly right wing agenda towards its borders and barriers. Do you want history to remember you keeping them up against our own diaspora of our history of an ethnic injustice of their clearances and dispersal?

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.

the nat clearances?

The long term Nat maverick Jim Sillars who finds the SNP totalitarian, and their former leader Anti-Gay Gordon, now want us to leave the EU. In the wake of Salmond's mess up of the Scottish EU membership issue and doubt, they have jumped on the same Euro-angry bandwagon as the British right wing and tabloids.

This when the sudden mushrooming to seriousness of a chance of Britain leaving the EU had become the strongest looking reason for voting for independence. Instead the contagion has spread to both sides. That is bandwagons among the political class for you.

How do they expect our European friends and guests, living here and playing a welcome and often major role in many of our lives, to feel safe? Anti-EU voices on both sides need to be challenged to clarify what they intend for the future of EU citizens living here. The obvious fear is of a new clearance, a mass expulsion from the country of people who are friends or workers with real lives intertwined with ours. Thanks to Sillars and Wilson the question now exists against both sides. Before, it was a question for the No side. Salmond too, who you have noticed never clashes with the tabloid racist vote, should have made clear that our friends can stay here if our EU membership is interrupted. Pandering to the British tabloid consensus against Schengen in a way that is absurd for a movement to separate from the country where that nasty consensus is strongly rooted, neither has he ever touched the option of joining Schengen even from outside the EU, like Norway and Iceland and Switzerland. That would secure our friends here. Would Spain veto that too? Even if it would, it is right to propose the option and put Spain under an isolated pressure on the issue.

Both sides, tell us our friends are safe. Otherwise, the referendum will be like poker! We are not informed enough on both futures if we don't know what the EU membership outcome will be with either of them. That is why we fairly need any voting on the EU to be done before on independence. But it won't be, neither side is offering to do it that way round. What a spiral. Sillars and Gordon have said vote on the EU after a win for independence. No, we need to already know what our own decision is on whether we would be in the EU before we can vote for our own state in the first place.

Alex goes south

The Olympic Games are a conceptual absurdity. Their modern revival was supposed to be a promoter of peace, and that is what the symbol with the interlocking rings is supposed to show. Yet nothing is less peaceful to raw hurting human egos, than competition, victory, defeat. That is what competitive games do to people, and they showcase nations' posturing pride which goes back to possessive or territorial animals' aggressive displays to each other.

We hear Alex Salmond was there. Why the hell? It was a feast of unionist propaganda, Britain telling its self-promotional story. Like, look how wonderful we are for creating the NHS, to make the outside world find it harder to believe we are destroying it. No Highland Clearances in there.

Scotland is not even competing as an entity, only Britain is.Who has the man who says he wants to vote Britain away gone to its capital, in its greedy third hosting of the Olympics instead of a British bid going to a different city this time, to show his support for?

He went to Wimbledon too. Alex really really luvs going to England.

from Tripping Up Trump: this is the nice SNP for you

Dear Friend,

Many of you will have already heard that despite 86 year old Molly Forbes dropping her legal battle with Trump, judge Lord Kinclaven agreed with Trump's lawyer Roy Martin QC, ruling that Molly is liable to pay Trump's and Aberdeenshire Council's legal expenses, which could be more than £75,000, according to the Scottish Daily Record.

To be clear, an earlier court hearing ruled that Molly was not able to legally challenge Trump's planning applications. This time Molly was in court for a judicial review of the planning permissions granted to Trump by Aberdeenshire Council, including one threatening her own home.

Molly doesn't have the money to challenge billionaire Trump, so applied for legal aid, but was refused by the Scottish Legal Aid Board because they thought other people would be willing to pay for it!

Trump and Aberdeenshire Council are now using fine words to try and cover up the fact they could end up bankrupting Molly, so she could be evicted. Trump is accusing Molly's son Michael Forbes and Tripping Up Trump of putting Molly up to the legal challenge in the first place. Trump has even accused Molly's own lawyers of making 'baseless claims' and that they should pay the expenses for Molly.

Molly sets the record straight - "I decided to take legal action last year to defend my home from Mr Trump's attempts to force me out. It is wrong that I should have to leave my home for a golf course. I understand the Trump Organisation has suggested I was in some way put up to this action. I wish to make it clear that it was my decision alone to proceed with the court action."

The next step is for Molly to challenge her claim for legal aid before the legal case resumes in January in the hope that the expenses bill will will not have to be paid as she will have been granted legal aid by the Scottish Legal Aid Board and/or that Trump and Aberdeenshire Council will drop their claim for expenses.

ACTION - If you would like to send wishes of support to Molly at this incredibly difficult time, you can write to her at: Paradise, Mill of Menie, Balmedie AB23 8YE

Please read this article that clearly shows the collusion between Trump and the Scottish Government. Let's not forget that Trump's original planning application was thrown out by the local authority, but subsequently called-in by Alex Salmond's government. Incidentally, Trump's development is also in Alex Salmond's constituency.

Here's what Trump has to tell about Alex Salmond's government when his original planning application was rejected:

"I give the Scottish Executive a lot of credit. They called me and really wanted me to continue going forward. I said, 'Are you kidding? I just lost. I don't like to lose.' They said, 'No, you'll win.'

How personally involved was the First Minister? "I have a lot of respect for Alex Salmond. He's a strong man who loves Scotland above all else. I know he wanted the project to happen because it was good for Scotland."
Many thanks for all that you do.

More soon.

Tripping Up Trump

SNP's ruling class attitude over Trump shows why they would filter the national conversation

The Scotland On Sunday has exposed that Donald Trump, when he was turned down by Aberdeenshire council and thought he had lost, was told by the SNP government he would still win. Their now obviously biased move to challenge and revers the council's position followed.

To all who care to keep a note of it and remember it until election time, this has exposed that the the first nationalist government is on the side of clearances and evictions. It's a ruling class monstrosity at odds with the most prominent theme of oppression that has run in Scottish history since the union!

This is yet another issue that is affected by covering up the court change. I have been saying here, that the well known folks facing evil deportation from Britain to Africa at knowing risk of their lives are being knowingly and culpably kept in danger by the SNP going along with the British parties in covering up the court change, and neither telling ghem about it nor exposing it publicly. At least the SNP claim to be on those folks' side opposing the deportations, so inviting you to judge them on whether they act that way in practice. Not so with the evictions at Menie. The folks whose homes Trump wants to demolish to assist leisure for the rich, the SNP's first government is openly and blatantly not on their side but happy to be party to perpetrating a modern clearance upon them - and it is wilfully withholding information from them too by not exposing or announcing the court change. Suppressing from the public record my referendum consultation response, that included describing the court change, has had this effect too, we can see that it is another measure whereby the SNP has assisted Trump's clearances by suppressing information.

This may not only be about the court change. My consultation response also described a housing injustice issue that the SNP has wilfully run away from taking any position on for 15 years, but that needs to feature in the referendum if it is to be in any way a fairly informed referendum. This was my story that when I made my zionist return to Scotland from exile, in 1995, and bought a house in a nice leafy section of a half-privatised council estate, on my eighth day both in Scotland and in a newly bought house the police lied to me that it was a rough area.

The lie being proved by police complaint and overturned, the SNP could never have had any legal fear over facts. I explained so in the response. The SNP has never wanted to give an inch to any pressing to take a position on that maltreatment of zionist returners from the Scottish diaspora, by the British state, which if aired properly would inform the country properly on whether it adds to the case for independence.

We can see that by not encouraging awareness or talk about any housing justice issues for the Scottish people at ordinary level, they make it easier for themselves to get away with siding with the world financial elite, like Trump and his customers, against us. Suppressing my consultation response was consistent with this too. Nice folks?