BY BERT BURNETT I am reminded of a project to help one of the country’s most threatened breeding bird species, the curlew, which was awarded more than £156,000 from the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Challenge Fund. This initiative, titled Curlews in Crisis Scotland, aimed to increase breeding areas and reduce predation for Europe’s largest wader and one of its most iconic birds. Scotland is home to … Continue reading Crisis-hit Curlews, Cash & The RSPB
BY HAMISH GOBSON As the power of the nationalist wreckers in Holyrood declines, so the prospects for a comparable programme of socialist wrecking in Westminster rise. Many’s the Todday teacup whose soggy leaves have compared Keir Starmer’s greed with that of the seagulls outside the Snorvaig chip shop. My own fronds have been even more outspoken, giving “gannet” whenever the words Reeves and Rayner are … Continue reading How the SNP Dallied with “Participatory Dictatorship”
BY EFFIE DEANS There is of course nothing offensive in describing Scottish nationalism as a threat to the UK. Indeed, the UK has never come closer to destruction than in September 2014. If Germany had succeeded in invading the UK in 1940 the UK would still most likely have continued to exist just as France did, but if the SNP ever won a vote on … Continue reading The SNP is No Threat to Anyone
BY EFFIE DEANS The greatest fault of British politics since the Second World War is that it manages decline. Apart from a brief decade when Margaret Thatcher changed direction, we merely increase our debts, lower our productivity, and see our living standards become more mediocre. Swinney will manage the decline of the SNP. Swinney is like one of the old Bolsheviks. He was there in … Continue reading No Rival, No Leader
BY HAMISH GOBSON The piece planned for today had to be postponed after I made an extraordinary discovery which all literate people in Scotland (or anywhere else for that matter) ought to be warned about urgently. I bought a book from Amazon which turns out to have been written using “Artificial Intelligence technology”. Here is what happened. For reasons connected with the open racism at the … Continue reading Is Humza Yousaf Spouting Artificial Intelligence?
BY EFFIE DEANS Unless something very odd happens in the next year we will have Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and a Labour Government in 12 months’ time. I’m not remotely on the Left, but nor do I vote tribally. I have voted Labour before. I have voted Liberal Democrat. Everyone should think about how to use their vote to obtain the result they want. … Continue reading 2024: Destroy the SNP
BY HAMISH GOBSON In 1910 the future President of the SNP wrote to a suffragette campaigning for women’s rights—an objective he strongly supported—saying: “Women should not forget that a ‘cause’ is the means whereby a politician is put into the position of being able to plunder the nation.” In 1936, when already President, he told a journalist that “politics is a matter of rich men … Continue reading Yousaf, Jack & Chinese Emperor Gaozong of Qing
BY EFFIE DEANS It’s now around 13 years since we last had a Labour Government. People in their twenties will barely remember it. In Scotland too we have had SNP Government since 2007. The days when Labour and the Lib Dems were in coalition are a distant memory even for those of us who do remember. Change is coming in both the UK and in … Continue reading The SNP Can Now be Decisively Defeated
BY HAMISH GOBSON Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge AFFORDABLE GOVERNMENT will never come to Scotland so long as our leaders are carpet-baggers. While I was out on the rocks this spring quietly cutting fronds for political fortune-telling purposes, the Herald tells me that High-end Humza was gadding off to London for seditious purposes (talking to the EU Ambassador to the UK, for example) at … Continue reading Like Mrs Murrell, High-End Humza Eats the Taxpayer
BY HAMISH GOBSON In Culloden month this year, Mike Nevin published an excellent and informed article analysing Evgeny Prigozhin’s future march on Moscow under the title: “Why the Jacobite Rebellion Failed”. What Mr Nevin seemed to me to be saying by Aesopian analogy was that Humza Yousaf does not have the legs for a march as far as Derby, which Bonnie Prince Charlie reached, much less to … Continue reading The Upkilting of Humza
BY EFFIE DEANS With Labour closing the gap with the SNP to three points there is a real prospect of Scottish nationalism facing a God is dead moment. When Nietzsche wrote about the mortality of God, he was not of course suggesting that God had been alive and had then died. Rather he was saying that God had become a dead issue like believing in … Continue reading Mhairi Black is the Reason the SNP Just Died
BY EFFIE DEANS There were two moments when the SNP might have won independence. Alex Salmond had a chance in 2014 and Nicola Sturgeon had a chance in 2016. On both occasions Scotland might have ended up with a leader who would later be questioned on his or her honesty. The reason that the Scottish Government is minded to remove jury trials from rape cases … Continue reading Scotland’s Near Misses
BY EFFIE DEANS We all must take seriously the warning from Police Scotland not to discuss people who have been arrested. As soon as this happens such persons become unpersons. Their names may not be mentioned like יהוה [YHWH] in the Bible. We mustn’t put in the vowels, so that in time we even forget whether it was Potur Marrol or Pator Merril. Better just … Continue reading S(teal) N(ick) P(inch) Unmentionables
BY PAUL T HORGAN It is usually crass to compare something in modern life to the Nazi Party. And yet its parallels with the SNP are compelling. The SNP, or rather the National Scottishist Damning Anglos Party, has followed the Bohemian Corporal’s playbook ever since it took power in 2007, and certainly since Nicola Sturgeon became Leader. Firstly, the SNP is a blatantly nationalist party, … Continue reading The Rise & Fall of the National Scottishists
BY EFFIE DEANS It has been amusing watching the SNP self-destruct. It isn’t very long ago both under Salmond and Sturgeon that the SNP was like the Corleone family. “Never tell anyone outside the SNP what you’re thinking” said Don Salmond. “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the SNP again. Ever.” Said Donna Sturgeon. SNP MPs and MSPs imitated trained seals at the circus … Continue reading Two Wildcats and a Strong and Steadfast Lion
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP’s latest paper “Renewing Democracy through Independence” attempts to show that there is a democratic deficit that justifies Scotland leaving the UK. The argument goes that Scotland votes differently to the UK as a whole in General Elections or during the Brexit referendum. We get Tories though we voted for the SNP or Labour. We get Leave though we voted for … Continue reading Democratic Deficit in Scotland?
BY EFFIE DEANS I don’t know whether the SNP thinks Scotland is a colony, but certainly many if not most independence supporters think this. They often point to a list of countries that have gained independence from the UK and argue that none of them have ever wanted to go back. Most of these countries used to be part of the British Empire. The implication is that … Continue reading If Scotland is a Colony, Who are the Colonisers?
BY EFFIE DEANS Sturgeon plans to hold an independence referendum next October, but she hasn’t published a bill. Yet somehow this unpublished bill is going to the Supreme Court to determine if it is legal or not. If it is legal, we will have an unofficial non-binding referendum with the same question as in 2014. If it is not legal, she plans to turn the … Continue reading The SNP Cannot Use A General Election To Leave The UK
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP apparently wants “independence in the modern world” as opposed to independence in the ancient world or indeed in the world of the distant future. It wants Scotland to be wealthier, happier and fairer, but these would be changed little by independence. My wealth depends on the job that I do, what I inherit or my luck in winning a lottery. … Continue reading The Burden of Independence
BY EFFIE DEANS It is expected that soon Nicola Sturgeon will announce her latest attempt to have a second independence referendum. Lots will be written about this, but it is not the most important issue facing Scotland. The most important issue is demographics, but almost nothing will be written about that. Alastair Allan SNP MSP for the Western Isles has admitted the importance of demographics. … Continue reading Voting with Our Feet
