still fighting fantasies

Ordinary nats are still fighting as they were during the ref, to get unverified fantasies taken as fact, and still calling it lies and scares to point out the truth that a fantasy has no basis.

That is still the level where a nat writing in the Metro this week is at. he called it a unionist scare and lie that there would be any border control with rUK, because there isn't any with the Irish Republic. He slags unionist readers and confidently calls all this unionist lying. And exactly the same facts still stand now as stood during the ref, that makes it the nats who are lying about this and unionists are simply citing facts sensibly:

* It is not Scotland's sole say for there not to be border control. Either state on either side of a border has the power to put control on. Relations with Ireland for no constitutional precedent at all.
* Yes there are identity checks in entering and leaving Ireland, and at present regular travellers to the Republic find it sensible to take their passports to avoid difficulties over whether whatever other form of identity they are carrying is accepted. Not only that, because the Republic has at present has a milder line on immigration than Britain has and Britain does not want to impact Irish politics by being too heavy on the border with the north, there are actually immigration checks when you cross from Northern Ireland to the mainland on the Belfast-Cairnryan ferry! I experienced this in April. The ferry tells you to carry identity, for that reason.

We are getting welfare devolved

In Tory conference week, the Scotsman has learned from UK civil service that yes we will get welfare powers devolved. To introduce new measures and to top up UK benefits, including disability.

It's from 2018, so there is the frustration of the foot dragging process of these things coming into effect, waiting through 3 years more of Tory measures (unless their tiny majority government falls before then). But the SNP have been insisting that we were not going to get this. Though such a detail as this was never in the vow, they have been using it to claim the vow is not being delivered. You can see it is being delivered. This is in the spirit of the Smith Commission.

The announcement's timing is to get around any economically diehard Tories wishing to be difficult about it. That shows their leaders wanting to get around them and secure the Union.

James VI 4th longest reign

I voted No and saw nationalist emotion develop into a completely irrational form like a religion, with devotees keen to shout everyone down and win by peer pressure. They did not want to care or lusten to anything that might collide with the dream, not even when racist horrors came out of their side, the genocidal step of betraying our diaspora by not making citizenship by descent unrefusable, against European human rights article 8, the threat to take residence away from EU citizens already here, and the deportations of deemed rUK citizens luridly threatened by Wings Over England in Wee Blue Book p60-61.

So since the ref it has not been a good move for rational Scots to promote anything with national emotion in it. But we all have to agree that the Times has been an utter numpty today. It should be more careful in these turbulent times to avoid giving the emotional nats accidental gifts. It is rationally insulting to print a claimed list of the longevities of "British" monarchs and list only the English ones! Woefully careless and parochial by old habit.

In a proper British list, of both thrones combined, James VI would be in fourth place, for his 58 year Scottish reign, not shown as James I and 22 years.

nat racists drove their own councillor out of their party

A Scotsman story on a councillor in the south who has left the SNP because she is Chinese and has suffered racism in the party for it: www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/chinese-snp-councillor-quits-amid-racism-claims-1-3852813

For "not being Scottish and organising a Scottish event"! Read the story, you will see it's about a bigoted nat culture of being anti-outsider and spitefully keen to call folks not Scottish.

Matching exactly the way I heard Pat Kane spin the meaning of their "Civic Nationalism" idea, and Hebrides MSP Angus Macneil's hate stirring against Scots who had not lived there, which I wrote to the islands' local paper about, during the ref. That they saw the whole Yes project as only for the benefit of the folks already living here, as an insular community looking into itself, and viewing everyone else, including the Scottish diaspora!! with paranoia as outsiders only to be given as much of a place as would serve the emplaced community's self interest.

Once in a generation

Eck: Nah nah nah, it's only once in a generation, guv, innit? That's how historic the decision is, folks. Just once, like. There won't be another.

He no longer has any credence to accuse Britain of breaking the vow, as the nats are wilfully contriving to accuse over hastily when there hasn't yet been time to take extra powers through parliament since the election. Everyone knows, and will know, that he and the SNP have broken their word, clear and stark, and have always planned to.

no caviar thanks to Sturgeon

On Ed Miliband's Facebook page, a nat has written, about this devastating election:

- "You sealed your fate when you joined forces with Cameron and sent an army of MPs up to Scotland to bully,coerce and scare the Scots into voting no in the Indy Ref, that fate was further sealed when you treated the SNP as the enemy in the election. You are an idiot that has let the whole nation down."

My reply does not come from a voice who was always unionist, it comes from a voice who went into the ref open minded to see which side would be more liberal on keeping Scotland open to its diaspora, and suspected the nats might pander to racist voters by not being generous towards the broader diaspora gut never imagined they would actually taint our history with the fascism of betraying citizenship of their own country for the first generation diaspora. here is what I said on the economic issue, to the Tory near future we have all been slammed with, and remembering that the propsect of "no more Tory gvoernments we didn't vote fro" was the best sounding line in Yes's campaign:

- "The SNP made themselves an enemy and forced Ed's hand to do that, because they bragged so hubristically that they were going to dictate all his govt's actions. It's their fault. They cheated Ed of the win he was heading for, destroyed the govt they wanted to get, took away from us at the brink of reality the most progressive govt since before Thatcher and gave us another 80s-like trauma. They knew they were frightening voters in England and that the Tories were seizing on it.

Sturgeon said they were going to force CND disarmament. Any surprise at an 80s-like result to saying that? They were going to force a highly austere and absurd fiscal independence for Scotland, and force what Labour's economic policy would be - and talking so dictatorially made it credible for the Tories also to stick on them that they would force another referendum. In fact they were on a carried away ego trip, campaign publicity was their only means of leverage on Ed's govt towards even the more meritorious of their ideas - their anti-austerity line which only stood up if they did not get fiscal indy! - the SNP would not have had any means to force Ed's govt to do fiscal indy or CND, for their only threat was to put him out and Tories back in, electorally impossible for them to do hence already pledged not to. But only the minority of voters who take enough serious interest in politics to understand the system's workings realised this. The tragedy of this election is it has been swung on irrational feeling, that could not have happened if more humans were disposed to think.

We would still be worse off if Yes had won the ref, and if this election still had the same outcome in rUK despite no nationalist scare to cause it. As a so-called independent state avoiding the austerity burden of creating currency reserves by instead choosing to keep our spending and economic policy dictated to us by the Bank of England, we would now be under this Tory govt which would have a stable big majority instead of a precariously tiny one. We would have no future prospect either of voting it out or of having a leftward leverage in parlt if they lose their majority mid term. That's the difference if you take Scotland out of the election, last time we made the difference of the Tories not getting a majority, this time we made the difference of keeping it tiny enough to be unstable. "

Sturgeon's campaign hubris blew it

HOW ARE THE NATS NOW GOING TO COPE WITH THE SPECTACLE THAT THEIR OWN ACTIONS EXTINGUISHED THE GOVERNMENT THEY WERE HOPING TO CREATE AND GOT THE TORIES BACK IN?

THE HUBRIS OF BOASTING THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DICTATE TO A LABOUR GOVERNMENT AND FORCE IT TO DO A LIST OF GOODIES? WHEN YOU FORCED THE ISSUE OF THOSE CLAIMS, IN THE CAMPAIGN AND THE DEBATES, YOU FRIGHTENED VOTERS IN ENGLAND AWAY. YOU ENABLED THE TORIES TO SCARE THEM THAT YOU COULD FORCE THE UNION FURTHER APART IF LABOUR GOT IN. THOUGH YOU COULDN'T DO THAT, VOTERS BELIEVED IT AND FELT SAFER BY NOT ALLOWING THERE TO BE A GOVERNMENT INFLUENCED BY YOU AT ALL, AND RAN HOME TO THE TORIES AT THE LIKELY BLOODSTAINED COST WE ALL KNOW.

AFTER THIS DAY OF ELECTORAL SPASM WENT FOR YOU, THIS HISTORY WILL HANG OVER YOU THROUGH THE NEAR FUTURE. YOUR ACTIONS TOOK AWAY THE GOVERNMENT YOU DREAMED OF, FROM ALL OF BRITAIN: TOOK AWAY AT THE BRINK OF HAPPENING THE TANGIBLE CHANCE OF THE MOST EGALITARIAN GOVERNMENT SINCE BEFORE THATCHER, SINCE THE ONE YOU PUT OUT IN 1979, AND SUBSTITUTED THE WORST CASE INSTEAD.