Saturday, 30 July 2022
The Laird Report Episode 18 Alex Salmond attends Glasgow Soup Kitchen while SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon stays away, Sturgeon yet again shows her utter contempt for the poorest and most vulnerble in Scotland
Former First Minister Alex Salmond attends Glasgow Soup Kitchen while current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon refuses to attend, Salmond lives 186.1 miles away, Nicola Sturgeon lives 11.1 miles in the East End of Glasgow. She is too busy to spend 35 minutes out of 168 hrs in a week, to see how the poor and vulnerable cope during cost of living crisis. Under SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, poor people have to eat their soup kitchen hot meal in the street or carry it home, by then, it's cold. No SNP MPs MSPs or Cllrs attend the soup kitchen, week in, week out. Four groups control the SNP, lgbt, Muslim, Sein Fein lite and the rich, the group exercising the main control of the party is lgbt, the malign influence.
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Alex Salmond and the SNP are a waste of time and space, particularly when you take into account that we have had devolution for 23 years and a nationalist administration since 2007. After all this time, why does Scotland still have such deplorable statistics? According to official statistics, we have the highest rate of suicide and drug-related deaths, the biggest jail population per 100,000 population, and the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteAre our politicians not embarrassed? I don't believe they are. Do they care? I don't believe they do. But I'm embarrassed. I'm now so embarrassed that I can no longer be proud to be Scottish. With these numbers, one may assume that our country has been conquered by a foreign country and that the Scots have been subjected to great oppression. With the SNP involved, it's much more disgusting.
Fascinating and another great effort.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you a funny thing about the SNP and that bent wee Glasgow lawyer you had a run-in with in your youth. He was bent in the traditional sense in that he was chronically dishonest - a liar.
Anyway, when the SNP came to power we used to have free legal aid so that everyone, theoretically anyway, had access to law. Free legal aid in Scotland had survived for decades and had survived Thatcher but Sturgeon cancelled it. It was one of the first things she did 6 or 7 years ago. It used to cost a few million a year which is nothing but she cancelled it along with hospital beds for drug addicts and all the rest of it..
Then she created the 'Scottish Legal Complaints Commission' which is the gateway which complainants have to go through before they can go to the Law Society of Scotland. Needless to say they don't allow anything to go before the Law Society of Scotland.
The bent wee Glasgow lawyer you had a run-in with in your youth works for the private law firm that recommended these changes. Hence, his law firm, which is the most bent law firm in the English speaking world, has never had a complaint raised against them. Not one. Everyone knows they are crap but the Scottish Government pay them 10's of millions a year. Poor folk don't get free legal aid any more, but bent lawyers get free tax-payers money.
The result? the Scottish legal profession which has been respected for hundreds of years is now delinquent. Made delinquent by Nicola Sturgeon and a bent wee Glasgow lawyer. You would hardly believe it possible, would you.
Anyway, it's good to know she is passing her CV around. It's too late though and Scotland will never recover from this.
The older men used to tell me that the SNP were tartan Tories when I was younger, and I still remember that. Even Thatcher was better than them, I don't know what this shower is but Scotland is suffering.
ReplyDeleteNationalist movements by enlarge tend to eat themselves from within. The gene-pool gets polluted and degraded and before long the IQ of your typical MP/MSP is nowhere near good enough, They do not have the attention span to keep the dream alive. A good example is Belfast's Europa Hotel (I don't know what it's called now) but it was a new building back in the 70's. It was clad in 'curtain walling' which is glass top to bottom. The IRA detonated a car bomb outside and smashed every piece of glass. It was rebuilt and within a fortnight the same thing happened again. The British Government paid for the next rebuild, but it was never blown-up again and now the IRA are gone. It will be the same soon with the SNP. They are so crap they cannot survive much longer as a governing party. No-one wants to be in Nicola's gang any longer.
ReplyDeleteIf Sturgeon fecks off to Brussels soon then I hope she takes Swinney with her because he is a feckin idiot of the highest order.
ReplyDeleteI understand that Swinney has just asked Nadim Zahawi for an extra 3.5Billion because we have run-out of cash. This was always going to happen and these soup kitchen queues are only going to get longer.
ReplyDeleteAye, he's spent all the spare money educating the children of millionaires for free.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of educating the children of millionaires for free, controversy regarding that has been bubbling away for years and is back in the spotlight again. It sounds like a good initiative but all it does is, as you correctly say, educate the sons and daughters of wealthy folk for free and that diminishes the number of places available for Scots kids. Medicine and engineering are now full of foreigners. When asked to defend this, no-one from the SNP was available. Neither Sturgeon or her vapid education minister Somerville would talk. Salmond said something like if you messed with free university education you would pay a heavy price come election time....but I'm not so sure about that. It's like all of these SNP initiatives; once they are proven to be wrong, to make everything worse, you would think that they would go into reverse gear but they don't. They just keep on straight ahead.
ReplyDeleteI think Sturgeon knows full well the game is up. Even SNP supporters are wanting rid of her now.
As far as a job in Europe is concerned, that used to require the approval of the PM. If the new PM is to be Liz Truss then Sturgeon can forget all about a recommendation from her.
There are one hundred long-Covid clinics in England and not one in Scotland. Wee Patrick Harvie still gets picked-up from the house each morning in a Ministerial car. It's become something of an embarrassment to all right thinking Scots, hasn't it. Time to send-in the auditors.
ReplyDeleteThe SNP still have a strangle-hold on BBC Scotland for some reason. Otherwise, there is a growing disrespect for the SNP all over Scotland and the rest of the UK. They have wrecked the public finances in Scotland with their something for nothing philosophy and they are leaving Westminster to sort it out. The press reflect the public mood and that is changing quite quickly. I can see the Labour Party recovering a lot of their lost ground in Scotland. The SNP are just about finished. The net is closing.
ReplyDeleteLiz Truss called Sturgeon an "attention seeker" yesterday. Immediately, the dark sinister wing of the SNP represented as ever by John Swinney and the LGBTQ wing represented by Kevin Stewart and Patrick Harvie took to the TV studios and Twitter and all the rest of it to denounce it as "deeply troubling" and "disrespectful". Did Sturgeon not call all of the Tory candidates "hypocrites" a few days ago? I'm sure she did, you know. Anyway, it sounds as though Sturgeon and her indyref 2 are about to be put back in their box.
ReplyDeleteWhat with all of these giant profits the energy companies are announcing, was there not supposed to be a not for profit energy company set-up by the SNP? What happened to that? Too complex?
ReplyDeleteThat policy must be in the same cupboard as the replacing council tax policy that never came to fruition. Sturgeon is full of it.
ReplyDeleteLooking at John Swinney the other day on TV, he looks as if he's ready to give-up. He seems to have aged many years since the last Holyrood election. His full-time job nowadays is keeping the SNP house of cards standing and that has become increasingly impossible. I personally hope that he goes soon as I cannot stand the sight or sound of him. How he has managed to last 20-odd years at Holyrood is astonishing. All he is is a liar and bull-shitter.
ReplyDeleteThis is a small point but it tells you a lot: I notice that Liz Truss wears the same clothes over and over again. She no doubt washes and irons them, but she uses them again. Nicola Sturgeon, on the other hand, doesn't do that does she. It's new gear all the time. You're talking about soup kitchens, but she is very far away from the mentality of the soup kitchen for me. As far away from the mentality of the soup kitchen as anyone in the entire UK if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteYou may remember Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. They couldn't care less about the poor either. Ferdinand was a failed lawyer who used to be paid by the state in gold-bullion. Imelda had a huge collection of expensive clothes and shoes. Familiar so far?
ReplyDeleteScotland didn't used to have a drug problem; a specific one which was worse than other countries because we inherited a reasonably good treatment programme prior to Holyrood. Holyrood just dismantled it so that it no longer exists. The Philippines never had a drug treatment programme in the first place. Drugs took root in the country away back in the 70's and today it is one of the few countries in the world with a worse problem in Scotland. Once you let it get as bad as it is today, it is nearly impossible to improve it much.
If Scotland wants to end up like the Philippines, just continue with Sturgeon and Swinney....or Sturgeon and Murrell. Both equally as bad as each other. Liz Truss is fairly terrible too I must admit, but correction time is coming for Scotland and it is better to take the medicine now.
Like you, I expect Sturgeon to make a quick exit soon. There's too much shit and too many dead bodies hidden all over the place. She cannot keep it hidden for much longer. Swinney will go too and thank God for that.
Liz Truss is fairly terrible too?? (You were doing well then had to through that into the mix) A lot of us are prepared to give her a chance. No one is as wicked as Sturgeon.
DeleteSeveral Billion in extra Covid money was sent up the road by the UK Government to Holyrood. This several Billion wasn't spent on Covid, many Billions were but this cash should have been and wasn't. No-one knows what it was spent on. They keep asking at Holyrood and no-one responds. Audit Scotland keep asking too. No wonder the SNP hate Audit Scotland. Maybe we're all being taken for mugs here? Here we are vexing about soup kitchens which cost thousands to run while we are being fleeced (allegedly) for Billions?
ReplyDeleteIt looks as though the tide is turning in the Ukrainian war and Russia is now responding to Ukrainian attacks instead of the other way around. A staggering amount of US weapons has been shipped into that country. I don't know how they are managing to do that. It looks good in a way, but a cessation looks a very distant prospect from where we are now. The east of the country was the industrial heartland of Ukraine and that has sadly been flattened.
ReplyDeleteAlex Salmond probably did more for the SNP than any man/woman in their history. The High Court show-trail on trumped-up charges and events of the subsequent Fabiani Inquiry have convinced many in Scotland that the present SNP leadership (all of the) should go. As well as her gaff in the East-End, I believe Sturgeon has another in Highland Perthshire and another in Portugal. No need for soup kitchens.
ReplyDeleteElsewhere in the world Donald Trump is under investigation by the FBI and Boris Johnson by the Partygate Committee, headed-up by Harriet Harman. Already, it looks like both will be goners soon. Folk that are giving evidence at the Partygate Inquiry for example are being quoted in the Press saying that Boris lied. Nothing as straightforward as that goes on in Scotland, which is as bent as a ten-bob note. Comparatively, in world standards, we are bent.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say "as bent as a nine-bob note. Second thing: I believe that Linda Fabiani and Maureen Watt are in charge of the FBI investigation into Trump.
ReplyDeleteThe FM attended the Edinburgh International Book Festival last night as a guest of Iain Dale. She was telling him that she had been in Vogue magazine twice and Liz Truss hadn't been in Vogue even once. Liz Truss wanted to know more....how did you manage that, Nicola. Nicola wouldn't tell her. "Thet ask for me by name" is all that she would say.
ReplyDeleteThere you have it then, George. The thought patterns of our FM explained in front of the world. She doesn't give two hoots for the Glasgow Soup Kitchen. It all about Vogue. It's Vogue of bust for Sturgeon.
The Scottish Govs not for profit energy company "has been delayed due to the pandemic". It reminds me you know of Alex Samond's not for profit construction companies who were going to build all of our new hospitals and schools. That turned into a mighty foul-up, didn't it.
ReplyDeletehttps://uk.yahoo.com/news/quebec-teach-us-scotland-future-100000973.html
ReplyDeleteLiz Truss was asked last night about Nicola Sturgeon's assertion that all she was interested in was how to get into Vogue magazine. Truss said: "It was Nicola Sturgeon that asked me how to get into Vogue magazine". I don't have any time for either Truss or Sturgeon, but I have less difficulty in believing Truss and that shouldn't be the case.
Just read, they are bringing out "warm banks".
ReplyDeleteI expect that Sturgeon and people like her will be discussing the best strategies to halt climate change while curled up in front of their log fireplaces this winter. It's astonishing what's occurring.
She's told the Independent that the "world is her oyster". Food banks in Argyll Street are very, very far from her thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHave a look at your other web-site, George. We are at the end of this Scottish Government and Scottish legal profession incestuous affair at last. This country appears to be totally corrupt to me and I'm wanting out. A one-way ticket to somewhere in Africa would be fine.
ReplyDeleteThe Sturgeon Interview with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Literary Event was about two-thirds empty. No-one wants to listen to her now. I remember the days when she used to pack them in at the SECC like Bruce Springsteen or Johnny Cash. Not any more. Her decline, and the SNP's decline, has set-in like rigor-mortis in a dead cat.
ReplyDeleteBoth Truss and Sunak are promising a spotlight is shone on the incompetence and corruption going-on at Holyrood. There's obviously pressure in political circles to get it cleaned-up. I would start with the Lord Advocate. Remember the last spoof that sat in that chair....James Wolffe? "Those MSP's thinking of identifying the alphabet women even in a roundabout, jigsaw fashion, will be prosecuted". God help us.
ReplyDeleteIn Scotland, some individuals or organisations seem to be exempt from all inquiries and legal actions.
ReplyDeleteThey blocked access to my yahoo mail this morning and that worked for about 20-minutes. I've worked in KSA and Libya and things like that didn't happen there. However, when pressure builds, things do start to move - even in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteMy next door neighbour was in the military for years and served in Northern Ireland and all the rest of it. He worked alongside Mike Jackson, if you remember him, he was a craggy guy with a deep voice. He always had the look of a trained killer to me. Anyway, he reckons a few folk at Holyrood have a legal force-field protecting them from harm. I think we all know that and can recall seeing it happen. Anyway, not many of us have the luxury of a legal force-field paid for by the tax-payer. If you recall what Holyrood was set-up to do for all Scots, providing free legal force-fields for senior MSP's was not included in the specification, was it. I reckon it's a check-up from the neck-up these folk need before they do any real damage. I think that's coming, you know.
ReplyDeleteWhat we are seeing now is a couple of Unions on strike and a few more talking about it. This is mid-August, in mid-November the situation will be different and there is a real prospect of unrest. People will be at home, in debt and afraid to put their heating on or lights or television on because it will increase that debt. Much of this is down to the war in Ukraine and I see that the UN Secretary General, Pres of Turkey and Pres of Ukraine are due to meet today or tomorrow to try and bring it to an end. The war is going nowhere and achieving nothing and looks set to spread misery all over Europe.
ReplyDeleteYour old colleague in blogging Stuart Campbell is making something of a come-back. I've got to admire that guy's fearlessness. He's naming the SNP trans-activists one after the other. The SNP trans-activists, and there are a number of them both at home and at Westminster, are hardly the type that would come round and pan your windows in mind-you. However, good luck to him. He's doing a great job as he always does. Everything researched; he makes a statement and then goes-on to prove it. He's been a marked man for years, under constant attack, but he just cannot stop.
ReplyDeleteYou're better off with the Labour Party, George. They're OK when they get going. The SNP are crooks and the Tories will do nothing for anyone.
ReplyDeletevery true... The SNP are crooks, and the Tories will do nothing for anyone. You forgot to mention Lie@bour in power. In my memory, they crucified the poorest, introduced Atos, benefit sanctions and workfare, and introduced food banks. introduced a minimum wage of £3.28 when the lowest wage was around £5.50ph. People who lost their jobs later found new employment at a minimum wage or sanctioned benefits. They even forced dishwashers to get qualified and certified. It flooded the country with 4 million immigrants. 50% of our pubs closed. The list goes on, but at least we know the Tories will do nothing and the SNP are crooks, but Labour has been the most anti-working-class party in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteExactly! Well said.
DeleteThe article is about the Glasgow Soup Kitchen. Now, the Tories don't care about it and neither does the SNP. I don't know to be honest what the Labour Party do in support of Soup Kitchens, but my guess is they are more supportive than anyone else is.
DeleteTories will do nothing for anyone.....remember the name Dido Harding? She was a tiny wee woman, a well connected Tory but no-one ever knew what she did. She was always on the public payroll in some shape or form and was given the Covid 'test and trace' to develop and to manage in the early days of Covid. She would appear at Matt Hancock's press briefings from time to time to tall us that the UK's system would be 'world-beating' and all the rest of it.
ReplyDeleteIt was supposed to warn you via smart phone if someone who had teated positive for CV had been within 50 of you or 10m, for a specific minimum period of time sufficient for you to catch CV.
It was beset by a host of problems, I remember the biggest problem was that it didn't work on i-phones (and that's a fairly big problem). So, it never really worked.
Nevertheless, the cost was £3B, which is £3,000million.
Prior to test and trace, the biggest waste of money in UK during peace-time was Holyrood at £300m. This was 10x that cost for absolutely nothing. £3B would help-out the whole UK with their energy costs this winter.
I think Councils are best led by Tories but when that bunch get into high office the allure of living off the fat of the land alongside their golf-club pals is too much for them to handle. You're best with Labour and Tories in opposition.
If Nicola Sturgeon is casting around for another job in Europe somewhere than that tells you all you need to know about what she sees coming down the track towards her. Swinney will be hiding under a desk: "It wisnae me, honest.....I know nothing".
Are we going to get finished this week, George? What do you think? I don't know....one chap expires and another chap steps right into his shoes. I'll tell you one thing - if any of your family want to study law, don't allow them to go to Glasgow University. It might be improving nowadays, I don't know, but God almighty it's been in a mess.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a medic friend, first a student, then back as a staffer, he hated the law crowd with a passion, it took a wee nudge for him to get venting and calling them all bastards.
DeleteWe've got a coal fire and a woodburning stove. Thank fuck for that. These gas prices are extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteWhat I was watching on Channel 4 news about energy price rises was alarming and there will be many more waiting in line for grub at foodbanks if we don't do something soon. All this talk about tax cuts is disgraceful under these circumstances. Government borrowing is used to even-out shocks. This is all a result of Putin's war and the public should not be suffering and worrying needlessly. on top of the pandemic borrowing it will be a hell of a lot, but necessary all the same. I cannot see any other way and endless tariff rises have to be stopped now.
ReplyDeleteSturgeon could have set-up a not for profit energy company 5-years ago but decided it was too complex and didn't do it. She has no input in the current crisis at-all. It is not devolved and if it was devolved it would be an even bigger mess with even less hope of salvation from it. She's just using it to cause resentment, that's all. If she is going to exit for a job in Europe, now would be a good time for all of us. It would be a very good time for her as well.
ReplyDeleteDiscounting Covid funds (several Billion of which appear to have simply vanished in Scotland) the Scottish Government has had a 7.7% increase in funds over last year. The country should therefore have plenty of cash.
ReplyDeleteThe Alba Party have had two elections now and have failed both times to make any kind of impression. So, I think we can all forget about them. That leaves the SNP as the only show in town as far as independence goes. Joanna Cherry's suggestion that it has been a long time since the SNP has had a leadership election will have gone-down like a lead balloon in the party, with Swinney, Blackford, Wishart and all the rest of them. But, how has it been received by the rank and file membership? I suspect many of them would agree to a leadership election ASAP. That's the thing with people like Cherry. They are thinkers and they know the value of patience and so she has said that for a reason.
ReplyDeleteBoris Johnson's statement that we should all accept higher energy bills in the UK because Ukrainians were paying in blood just shows what an embarrassment he has become.
ReplyDeleteToo many vested interests within the Tory party to sort-out these energy price cap rises. We need a Labour gov. Sadly, I see no alternative to that.
ReplyDeleteThe not for profit energy company would have given the SNP tremendous leverage just now. That, and the sky-high price of North Sea oil and gas, would have made energy a backbone of any independence argument.
ReplyDeleteRemember that bent wee lawyer that set you up all these years ago? Well, they're still at it. All those he taught at University and all those he trained at work. Bent as a nine-bob note. Every feckin one of them. He's gone, but the legacy of bent Glasgow lawyers is here for good by the sound of things.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering why the price of electricity was continuing to rise. I thought that it should be getting cheaper, but I learned that it is pegged to the price of gas so that when gas prices rise, electricity prices rise in step. This would seem an easy thing to reverse but with so many vested interests in the Tory Party, nothing is easy. Nevertheless, I find Liz Truss's insistence on tax-cuts rather than helping the millions heading for fuel poverty this winter to be deplorable. There is all the potential there to make the Tories unelectable once again.
ReplyDeleteShe's in Copenhagen this week. Fuck knows why. I think everyone's too frightened of Sturgeon and her Mob that they don't tend to ask these questions any more. So, no sign of her visiting or having any interest in the Argyll Street food-bank. When do you think we can get rid of Sturgeon. It's about time for her to go I think.
ReplyDeleteI was watching the news last night and in France the energy cost increase for businesses has been capped at 4%. In the UK it is set to rise by between 300% and 400%. I don't know what the situation is for domestic customers but when customers lose their electricity supply then kettles, microwave ovens and all the rest of it are lost too. I really think we are heading for a disaster this winter.
ReplyDeleteThe UK govs Covid Inquiry is going to include Scotland and Wales too. They must have taken a look at our Fabiani Inquiry and decided our gov and lawyers were too bent and incestuous to do it themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe UK is the most affected country in Europe by high energy costs and there is something wrong there when we have been producing oil and gas for decades and we have some of the most advanced renewable electricity sources in the world. On the face of it, it's the cost of privatising the sector during the Thatcher years but, whatever it is, it's a real mess. Europe is far ahead in terms of planning, sourcing oil and gas and storage. I'm beginning to think we would have been better dropping anchor in Europe and ditching Boris instead. I'm sure there will be plenty thinking the same way soon.
ReplyDeleteLiz Truss will mean certain defeat for the Tories at the next GE. That's a nap.
ReplyDeleteRe Truss, she will either fly or fail, I dount that she will go the route of an early GE
ReplyDeleteShe's frozen energy prices and that's a good start. Anything less than that would have meant deaths this winter. I'm all for giving her a chance. There's another way of looking at it of course and that's the Russian way. According to them she should be at home in the kitchen and the global machinations of world politics are too much for her. We'll soon know who's right there.
ReplyDelete"As Keir Starmer pointed out, the Treasury estimates energy producers stand to make £170 billion extra profits over the next two years. “These vast profits are not the reward for careful planning,” said Starmer. “They are the unexpected windfall from Putin’s barbarity in Ukraine”. Correct.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, a moral as well as fiscal issue arises. There is a direct correlation between the “Ukraine dividend” reaped by energy companies, for doing nothing they wouldn’t be doing anyway, and the crippling bills people are asked to pay.
How can this “cash machine”, as BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, so helpfully put it, be defended by any Prime Minister?" My guess is it can’t.
It looks very much as if the war in Ukraine is turning against Russia. Events are moving very quickly, but it does seem that the pendulum has finally swung.
ReplyDeleteRussia is committed to winning, I think a bit of land taken here and there is strategically meaningless.
DeleteThe past couple of days has proven to me anyway that there is more that unites the countries of the UK than divides us. I don't think that I have anything like the same outlook on life as Boris Johnson does, but he said the same on a number of occasions.
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me as though Ukraine has adopted NATO weapons and battlefield strategies against a much bigger and, on the face of it, better equipped army and at last is coming-out on top. I understand that Macron is being asked to broker some kind of peace talks and Zelensky reckons the next 3-months will be crucial. It just goes to show that you can never predict the outcome of a war and I don't think anyone would have predicted this outcome. When the war started, Putin was telling the world that his arms were more advanced than anyone's. I'll bet he wishes he had kept that to himself now.
ReplyDeleteI recall your troubles at the hands of Glasgow University and one of their Professors of Law. I've had a run-in with the same wee chap. He died a few years ago and so his colleagues took up the challenge of defending his honour. It's almost at an end now. I think I have won, but you never know with that dishonest bunch. It got me wondering though. I had always expected the legal profession to be essentially full of honest folk with the odd crook here and there. If my experience is anything to go by then that is not the case and the crooks in fact represent the clear majority of lawyers in Scotland. I reckon that this has been a rapid decline, occurring over just the past 10-years. It's happened so quickly that many don't realize that it's happened at-all. It's a really depressing place for a once great profession to find itself in because once they go bad, almost everything else goes bad with it. There are a few honest lawyers around but they must look around themselves and wonder what has happened. How has it been allowed to get this bad. Personally, I reckon it's all down to money and personal greed. There's no cash in defending the public any longer, so why do it?
ReplyDeleteIt turned-out to be a great day for Scotland. Respectful crowds a fabulous historical location and a great display of tradition by the military. Patrick Harvie let us down with his speech including trans rights. Who cares about trans rights on a day like today?
ReplyDeletePatrick Harvie let us down, he does that every time without fail.
DeleteThe look on Charles and Camilla's face said it all. After a gruelling day, having to listen to the self-interested ramblings of Patrick Harvie. God help us all if this is modern Scotland.
ReplyDeleteI know Harvie, he knows me, he knows that I think very little of him as an MSP and a man.
Delete
ReplyDeleteAccording to reports, Boris Johnson was the Queen's least favourite PM, followed by Tony Blair and his 'Peoples' Princess' guff. Johnson would do nothing for anyone - even the Queen. A delinquent parliamentarian we are all best rid of.
I thought Anas Sarwar made a great speech yesterday. He doesn't have a great delivery yet, Jackie Baillie's a bit better at that, but the content was good and was well measured for the occasion.
ReplyDeleteJackie makes a better leader, her time will come after London Labour realises that Anas isn't a leader, outwith Glasgow and part of the central belt he has no appeal.
DeleteWe are inching towards a conclusion George. I have been saying that for two years, but that's how long it takes in this country of ours. You have a share in the outcome of course and good luck to you.
ReplyDeleteThe outlook for gas prices is that they may fall by 50% by early next year. It gives us a winter of extreme hardship ahead, but still a better outcome than many had feared. The Germans have built four or five giant floating gas storage facilities already and are filling them up. Ironically, there is no shortage of gas in the world, we have all just gotten used to Russian gas. Russian has been pumping far less gas to the west in recent months, only around 25% of the expected amount, and it this that has caused all the problems. In future, they will probably have to look east for markets for their gas. The west will still take it, but it will be price capped.
ReplyDeleteI was reading there that the HIMARS rockets that are doing so much damage to the Russian war effort are guided by satellite to within 2m of their target. They have a fabulous reliability and almost never fail. This has made all the difference. I know nothing about the military and none of my family have been in the military, since WW2 anyway, but I find the subject fascinating. I have no doubt that the brutality of actual warfare would shock any one of us, but invaders have to be defeated and that's all that interests me. How it is actually done and in this case it is conventional weapons of the Russian Army versus satellite guided rockets supplied by the Americans. I think that it is now inevitable that the Ukrainians will start targeting Russian bases inside Crimea and at that point the Russian war effort may start to crumble.
ReplyDeleteYou may remember the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war. It was a complex inquiry involving Blair and Bush and the military on both sides of the Atlantic. It cost £12m and took 8-years to complete.
ReplyDeleteI was reading there that our Edinburgh Trams Inquiry, which has already taken almost 6-years, has cost in excess of £12m already. Obviously those at Holyrood don't want to publish it and so they just carry-on paying lawyers to do fuck-all.
It's a sad reflection on the both Holyrood and the legal profession in Scotland. Where else in the world do you think this would happen? This on the back of the Rangers FC scandal which looks set to cost us in excess of £60m, again for fuck-all, you begin to get the picture?
Corruption.....is there any other word for it?
The Indian PM (I cannot remember the chap's name) told Putin before the war in Ukraine started that: "This is not the era for war".
ReplyDeleteCorruption... Is there any other word for it?
ReplyDeleteIn Scotland, we have an ongoing child abuse inquiry on April 1st and, no joke, it's cost £57,921,999 so far. Most abused survivors over 50 will not receive any justice in court because the legal profession claims that the abusers are all dead or disappeared. All of their abuse offences are now void under Scots law. The abused are being forced to seek redress and are not being allowed justice.
To put it simply, if you're Scottish, they can kidnap you from your mother at age eleven and accuse you of crimes you didn't commit. They can lock you in a cupboard and give you a razor blade, pour insecticide down your throat, sexually abuse you and break your bones, torture you and fail to give you any education. Then they can ignore you all your adult life. All of this is perfectly legal under Scots law.
https://www.change.org/p/remove-the-thomas-guthrie-statue?fbclid=IwAR2HHfFr0AkbXSL2MhTuJNIW5AsIYwCrawSl6T3zKcuC1JgReFMXTvJ6XTw
ReplyDeletePlease support the petition by signing it.
The statue offers the public a very erroneous idea of Dr. Guthrie’s schools.
As a former pupil, I have firsthand knowledge of what it was like to attend a Dr, Guthrie’ school.
I see the statue every time I go to Edinburgh, and it bothers me greatly.
Whoever you are - I for one agree with you entirely. One of the Churches is involved and it is impossible to criticize them in Scotland without being accused of being a bigot. That cost is staggering. It was never ever going to produce results for the victims and that was never its intended purpose. The legal profession in Scotland is akin to the Mob sadly. Vested interests abound and they are answerable only to John Swinney. There's your answer.
ReplyDeleteThe Child Abuse Inquiry: Lady Smith has been coining it in since August 2016. £500/hour is my guess. The victims are few and far between now. All are a good age and all they are wanting is an apology and to receive compensation so that they can live-out the rest of their lives in relative comfort and security. All this Inquiry has done is provide cash for a few favourite lawyers. A typically despicable act then from a pretty despicable bunch.
ReplyDeleteThe institutions that abused children may be sued in court, Scotland declared to the entire world. However, under Scots law, the crimes committed by abusers are void if they are deceased or have vanished. Because they have no case, the majority of abuse victims abused before the mid 1980s are unable to sue. Private schools, rather than children's homes, orphanages, or any other sort of care facility, will be the setting for the majority of abused people who report the abuse and go to court. Remember that before 1985, virtually all large children's homes, orphanages, and approved schools shut down. The schools like Loretto , Gordonstoun, and Fettes remain open and have had complaints to the child abuse inquiry from the late 80s, 90s, and up to 2014. The only abused children in our child abuse inquiry able to sue in court will be mostly ex-private school pupils and not children in care. The children abused in care are being forced to apply for redress and might get £10,000 each. Not one lawyer is prepared to fight the system and all appear to agree with the judgement made "if the abusers are dead, there is no case"
ReplyDeleteIt's a total shame.
"Not one lawyer is prepared to fight the system" - I remember when the case first started and lawyers were appointed to fight for the victims. John Swinney and Angela Constance found that they intended to go after one of the Scottish Churches. John Swinney sacked the entire legal team and so the Judge resigned too. The excuse Swinney gave at the time was that he was doing it "to save the public purse". There were complaints from Scottish lawyers, but nothing too serious. I remember that they found it difficult to find a replacement Judge. Lady Smith stepped into the role, presumably because £500/hour for the rest of your working life is not a bad gig really.
ReplyDeleteWhen this started, my opinion was that several hundred thousand should have been awarded to each victim by the Government straight away. The case then goes ahead to apportion liabilities and recover as much money as they can from the Institutions that allowed this to happen.
We have a political judiciary in Scotland and it has been that way for the past 10-years. Law is run by John Swinney and that's his job.
"It's a total shame" - the shame is that Scottish law no longer works for or represents the public. A centuries old institution that has succumbed to devolution. The budget is swallowed up by these farcical Inquiries which achieve nothing.
ReplyDeleteI think someone mentioned some churches being protected. The place where I was ill treated was actually a Free Church of Scotland institution. In 1970, I remember the free church sign in the driveway as you entered via the front gate. The free church sign is light blue, while the Church of Scotland sign is dark blue. Dr. Thomas Guthrie was a founding member of the Free Church. They liked to call it the "wee Kirk". Now I never hear anything negative about his institution. The only church ever to be exposed in Scotland is the Catholic church. The Catholic Church has been totally demonised by the media, but for some strange reason. Protestant church institutions appear to be totally immune to media exposure. Apparently, in Scotland, protestant institutions never abused any children.
ReplyDeleteI think they're all immune. The Church I was referring to was the Catholic Church as they have Parliamentarians on their side. Incidentally, I have a neighbour who was badly injured in an accident. He was a member of the Free Church and they never came near him and it was the Catholic Church that gave him £100 and some clothes to get him started again. I am not bigoted in the slightest. All I am saying is that your experiences in Childrens' Homes of the 60's and 70's is well known about. We don't need it recorded in Court just as we don't need th details of the Haulocaust recorded in Court. Apologise, make amends and the Court should then look at which party is liable. That's the way it should work surely and it would cost very little but it would put the Churches at risk. What we are seeing now is a cabaret act and a very expensive and damaging one at that. This is not the way other countries deal with law you know. Sometimes I think we are all far too deferential to lawyers and parliamentarians as if they know best. Remember John Swinney said that he was trying to save the public purse....do you believe him?
ReplyDeleteI'm not a bigot either. I remember my mum getting money from a priest to pay her rent. My family are all protestants. As you say, the holocaust did happen, and thousands of children were abused in Scottish care settings. I believe Scotland has taken too long to hold an inquiry and that most of the abusers from the 50s to the 80s are now dead. Survivors are not getting the justice they deserve. Institutions responsible for horrible child abuse are not being exposed. It didn't take 52 years to investigate the holocaust. If we did, nobody would be surprised if most of the Nazis involved were dead. As I said, it's all a sham.
ReplyDeleteThe Lady Smith Inquiry has been going-on for 6-years and there is no end in sight. It has been a waste of time and money and it has made the situation worse. I remember a story in Scotland on Sunday in the summer of 2016 where a woman victim told her story and it was very similar to yours. No-one doubts that she and you are telling the truth. What you are looking for is 'closure' which is a modern word; easily dismissed but I know what it means. We used to have a legal profession in Scotland that were tuned-in to the public and what was right for the public. That no longer exists. What I am saying is that wealthy lawyers are lining their pockets while you wait. That don't care when it ends, as long as they are still getting paid. There used to be separation between lawyers and politicians, in fact it is more or less essential isn't it; that no longer exists in Scotland sadly. You call it a sham and I agree with you. That's all it is.
ReplyDeleteLet me make one last point here - in the USA they have a slightly different legal system. In a case like this one, no-one is asked at Court proceedings to re-live horrific experiences which they have lived through. If it is accepted knowledge that these things happened then they accept that they happened and the purpose of Court proceedings is to rectify the wrong. 9/11 was like that and the recent Miami building collapse was like that too. What Swinney and Lady Smith are doing is medieval in comparison with just about any other democracy worldwide and the situation whereby Lady Smith invoices us for more in a week than you will probably get in total at the end of this, is appalling. The law in Scotland exists to protect the wealthy and make them richer.
ReplyDeleteWe had a really wonderful, enjoyable talk. I'll add one more thing. Scotland in the year 2022, and waiting three weeks to see a doctor. Dentists are no longer accessible through the NHS. Additionally, I've been waiting for a hip replacement for three years. If I can't even get a basic operation or see a dentist. Who am I expecting to receive free legal services?
ReplyDeleteFree legal services were abolished about 6-years ago in Scotland. They survived Margaret Thatcher but couldn't survive Devolution. What does that tell you? The money saved in abolishing free legal aid (and it was only a few million) has been swallowed up ten times over by these Inquiries into Edinburgh Trams, Care Home Abuse and so on. I think that your case exemplifies above all else the failure of Devolution. I remember when it was presented as a means of solving Scottish problems in Scotland - remember that? You've got to wonder what type of opposition we have at Holyrood when folk like you are left on your own to fight this case single-handedly? I remember the woman who was featured in Scotland on Sunday back in 2016; she was on Reporting Scotland at around the same time and that's when your Inquiry was just being set-up. She was obviously genuine and was just looking for an outcome, or 'closure' as I say and in most countries in the world that would have happened within 12-months. Sadly, it is corruption and there is no other word for it. The law in Scotland is not there to protect you.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting fed up with constantly repeating what happened to me. First in 1988, then 2014, then the abuse inquiry in 2015, then the police in 2019, then a lawyer in 2019, now tomorrow I'm phoning a different lawyer to plead with her to fight against the institutions that abused me. That's four different lawyers in the last two weeks. I'm also phoning an Edinburgh newspaper, and on Thursday I'm being interviewed by the police. I'm 64 and I want closure. I feel like I'm peeing in the wind and basically getting nowhere.
ReplyDeleteIt was explained to me a few months ago that there is a legal force field at work in Scotland protecting Sturgeon and Swinney.
ReplyDeleteThat explains everything, doesn't it.
Your experience of abuse won't be that different to anyone else's that attended these institutions. Whether it be sexual abuse or physical abuse, everyone accepts that it happened.
This Inquiry is being carried-out in secret almost and so no-one knows when the outcome is going to be. That is no use.
What the public expect to see is the full effort of the legal profession directed towards identifying who the victims are and getting them settled, whether that means financial settlement or apology, as quickly as possible.
This is not complex and it is the way it would be approached elsewhere.
Trust me, and George Laird has experience of this too, the legal profession in Scotland is virtually dead. It used to be the case that the majority were good and a few were bad but I'm afraid the opposite is the case nowadays.
I cannot remember anything about the woman who went to the Press in 2016. She would be in her mid-sixties too. She presented an unarguable case which Lady Smith and John Swinney have just ignored.
So, you are up against the well-fed force field of John Swinney and Lady Smith.
This is the way it works elsewhere: The Champlain Towers apartment building that collapsed a year ago in Florida is being investigated by Federal Agency NIST. Why did the collapse occur? That investigation may take 2 or 3 years, no more.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, people have to live and so a judge has ruled on the most probable cause of collapse so that insurance money can be released. In this case that amounts to a $Billion.
That's the way public interest law should work. We are far from that in Scotland and since Devolution we are farther away than ever before. It is virtually a private legal profession accessible by only a few.
One possible way for the Press to look at this is why we in Scotland are spending these amounts of money of Inquiries which never report and never conclude with an outcome? There are victims of the Edinburgh Trams and you are one of the victims of institutional abuse in child care homes but what is anyone doing for you while this is going-on.
I seem to remember John Swinney paid you all a few thousand pounds a year or two ago. Set against the extraordinary cost of the Inquiry so far, this seems insulting to me. God knows what it feels like to you.
"I seem to remember John Swinney paid you all a few thousand pounds a year or two ago. Set against the extraordinary cost of the Inquiry so far, this seems insulting to me. God knows what it feels like to you"
ReplyDeleteI haven't received one penny and I have not received any apology.
The Scottish law that declares abusers' crimes to be void after they pass away also means abused survivors don't have a case in court. If they waited 50 years and treated the Holocaust survivors the same way they are treating Scottish abused survivors, All the concentration camp guards who worked in the camps and killed, tortured, and raped the inmates would be absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing.
The institutions that harmed us and the perpetrators themselves are protected by Scottish law, and we are all aware of this. Our legal establishment has shown survivors of abuse nothing but contempt. Our legal elite could not be more disrespectful to abuse survivors, even if they tried.
The Government are in charge of the country, not the lawyers. The victims need to live and it's the Government's job to make payment and make an apology to them. I think that you are better with the Press, but it has to be a front page story. The cost of this Inquiry so far has been staggering. The public accept that abuse has taken place and I'm sure that they would rather the victims be paid and apologies issued than this Smith Inquiry (or whatever it is called) is allowed to continue swallowing up money and working in near total secrecy. Scotland is a legal backwater in comparison with other countries and I quite agree with you on that. They scratch the Government's back and the Government scratch their back. It's an incredibly sad situation.
ReplyDeleteIf a number of you, say 3 or 4, went to a Sunday paper and presented a case saying: 'We're sick and tired of this Smith Inquiry. It has been running for more than 6-years now and is proving nothing. We want Government to scrap the Smith Inquiry, they know who the victims are and so engage with us directly and make amends'. It would put you at odds with Lady Smith of course, but my impression is that her Inquiry on a bullshit scale of 1 to 10 is a 10. The Edinburgh Trams Inquiry is exactly the same. Tens of millions of pounds for nothing. If you combine it with the Rangers fiasco, that is 3 cases, which could costs us more than £100m.
ReplyDeleteThe Smith inquiry is nothing more than a total con. Since my initial communication with them about seven years ago I have made no progress. None. I regret getting in touch with the abuse investigation in the first place. It's a complete and utter whitewash. The places I complained about in December 2015 haven't even been investigated. Honestly, it's all a whitewash and the system is rotten to the bone.
ReplyDeleteIf it's cost £60m and there is no outcome for victims and it is full of lawyers placed there by the Scottish Government, then I would take that to the Press.
ReplyDeleteThe last time I saw in the Press was in 2016 and the Inquiry was just getting started. There were misgivings even then that lawyers were being sacked and replaced and so on. I don't know who the woman was who presented on behalf of the victims, but you may know who she is yourself.
You will need to demonstrate what has moved-on since 2016. A huge cost has been incurred and that's for sure, but have the lawyers done anything for you?
John Swinney said that he was replacing the lawyers to save the public purse - he hasn't done that has he. He also said that he was making a payment to the survivors. He hasn't done that either.
Scottish lawyers are getting paid and you are not. That sounds like a public interest story to me.
Try not to get too frustrated. Just write it down dispassionately. Try linking it to the Edinburgh Trams and Rangers fiasco.
Is it not about time for Episode 19, George? You're keeping us all waiting here.
ReplyDeleteI am tending to think now that Liz Truss's Premiership might go on to be one of the shortest in UK history - I certainly hope it is.
ReplyDeleteSky-high fuel prices have been accepted because they are the price the whole world is paying for the war in Ukraine. People by enlarge look at it and say "whatever this is costing me, it is costing the people in Ukraine much more".
Truss's present policies though, which no-one voted for remember, will push interest rates and inflation up and probably up by a large amount.
It strikes me that this is the very last thing our government should be doing just now. This is being done in the dogmatic belief that it will somehow boost growth and the benefits will trickle down to all. It's all been tried before of course, it didn't work then and it probably won't work this time either.
What it will undoubtedly do though is alienate many millions of voters of the working and middle classes who will desert the Tories at the next election and may never vote for them again.
That, together with the Truss versus Starmer decision which we will all have to make, makes me believe that she will be dumped by her party soon enough.
It doesn't take long for interest rates to rise and for inflation to rise. Once the public see that happening and Truss will be blamed for it, I think they may move to replace her straight away.
The last time the pound was this low against the dollar was around 1985. We all know the de-industrialisation that followed before and after 1985. There are virtually no people in jobs today who are getting government subsidies and remaining in jobs. Only the public sector is there to be cut to the bone. I see massive job cuts in the public sector. Not bin men or road sweepers or nurses, but office workers.
ReplyDeleteYou cut taxes for the rich because you can afford to do it, you do not borrow money to do it. You're kidding yourself if you do that, but that's what's happening just now. I doubt if she'll last much beyond Christmas. The pound is dropping because we are borrowing money to subsidize fuel bills when energy companies should be doing that and we are borrowing money to fund needless tax cuts. No doubt the markets can see how this is going to end. She thinks she's Thatcher Mark 2. Sadly, many think she is fundamentally stupid.
ReplyDeleteWhat effect will the sanctions on Russia be having on the lives of ordinary Russians? I remember when I worked in Libya about 10 years ago just after they were emerging from 20-years of Sanctions. I worked in a town called Sabratha, about 40 miles from Tripoli. The town had one sewage treatment plant for the whole town. Sewage used to be transported by road tanker and just dumped into the tanks and the plant would treat the sewage as virtually clean water with some sewage sludge which was cleaned-out and dumped in the desert every week or so. The plant was built and maintained by the Italians but when sanctions were imposed they stopped maintaining the plant. It broke down of course, but the tankers kept dumping sewage there. Soon, it overwhelmed the place and there was a lake of sewage there the size of Hoganfield Loch. You could see families of rats swimming around on the surface. Funnily enough, the smell when you were up close wasn't that bad, but the smell 2 or 3 miles away could be overpowering. The point I am making is that Africans will put-up with that, but Russians won't and these type of things will be happening in Russia right now and will only go-on and get much worse. How long before ordinary Russians are on the streets complaining about it? Who knows, but it could happen there.
ReplyDeleteI can't recall a time when a government lowered taxes by £50 billion and then had to take on debt to cover the cost. Even if he was giving tax cuts to the poor, it would be fiscally insane, but giving the £50 billion to the rich and borrowing the money to do so is immoral. I really fail to understand what is happening. Are the Tories now screwing the country for one last sting? Everything looks very odd to me.
ReplyDeleteThe tragic story of the new school that's sinking into the mud is almost at an end. It should be finished on Friday and so I'll let you know about that. Both yourself and Stuart Campbell helped enormously. It was in the Press twice but somehow the Press doesn't seem to make the point clearly enough. The bloggers on the other hand are seen I think as being more authentic. It seems the polar opposite of what should happen but when you read something in one of these blogs you assume it is correct, whereas if you read it in the Press it's never seen as that authentic somehow. Anyway, it's taken 8-years which is a humiliation for all at Holyrood and the Scottish legal profession. Jackie Baillie did a good job and it makes me think what the outcome would have been had I had a less effective MSP. Come to think of it, they're all less effective than Jackie Baillie.
ReplyDeleteKen Clarke was on Radio 4 this morning saying that lowering taxes by borrowing money at sky high interest rates is what they usually do in Bolivia and Venezuela. I saw Kwasi Kwarteng on the news earlier and I really think he has been spooked by the public response. I do hope they get rid of both of them. They are smiling cretins. Ruining everything for just about everyone. The next GE will be a stampeded away from Tory to Labour.
ReplyDeleteFinally, what would you give for the return of Theresa May and Philip Hammond rather than these two vapid spoofs? It's a runaway feckin train, that's what it is.
ReplyDeleteAfter Sergei Lavrov met Liz Truss he said that she should be back home in the kitchen washing her husband's socks, not getting herself involved in world politics. He was right, wasn't he. She will be the worst PM of all time - comfortably worse than Boris was.
ReplyDeleteI was never a great fan of Rishi Sunak, but what is unfolding now is exactly the scenario he described during the selection campaign. I remember it well and he lost his temper withj her over it. The Tories have selected the worst of all of the possible candidates and this will condemn them to lose the next two or three GE's.
ReplyDeleteIt's all smoke and mirrors with this lot in government, but would lie@bour be any better? I'm still a socialist, and I prefer inept Tories to Sir Coverup any time. At least we are aware of what the Tories often do, which is to protect the wealthiest. With lie@bour, it's a guess. Last time they won power, they were more right-wing and anti-worker than the Tories.
ReplyDeleteLie@bour will lose the next election, I'll wager money on it. Before they are ever elected again, they will require at least one generation of people to pass away who remember them in power. And let's not forget about Scotland, where there is almost no prospect of labour ever sending 40 seats to Westminster. I mentioned it back in 2010. Not until 2028, at the earliest, will Lie@bour be back in power. I still state that.
ReplyDeleteWhat perhaps goes unnoticed from the above opinion poll, given the present Truss/Kwarteng omnishambles is that the popularity of the SNP has dropped by 20% - even more than the drop suffered by the Tories.
ReplyDeleteIt goes back to the story here: Sturgeon not visiting the Glasgow Food Bank. Sturgeon does nothing which is any good to anyone and sooner or later people start to notice that. The drop from here for both the Tories and the SNP could be precipitous. Neither have a bloody clue what they are doing.
Part of the reason the markets reacted so badly is because they view this as a delinquent action of an out of control government. So, anything could happen next. As we have seen, it is very, very easy to dig yourself into a hole like this, much more difficult to climb back out again. They may have viewed Truss and Kwarteng as lightweights who are not supported by any of the big thinkers and experienced guys at Westminster and they just waited for them to put a foot wrong. They didn't have long to wait, did they. What a disaster and like all of the best disasters over the ages, there was no need for it at-all.
ReplyDelete“Given elevated inflation pressures in many countries, including the UK, we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy,” an IMF spokesperson said.
ReplyDelete....and the rest of the UK said...."what a feckin embarrassment".
Isn't it strange the way the world turns, George. I remember you had a disagreement with a Professor of Law. People of our generation in Scotland were always brought up to respect Professors of Law but I remember reading your complaint and thinking that something wasn't right and that this guy sounded as though he was working only for the privileged few. Anyway, that particular Professor of Law is dead now and I have had an almost identical experience with the man who stepped into his shoes. His doppelganger if you like. Just like your Professor of Law, my Professor of Law is as bent as a nine-bob note. However, we're nearly finished and I'll let you know how I get-on.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about a law professor, but a recent ruling by a Scottish judge stated that "if the abuser is dead, their offences are void." Maybe this law only applies to people abused in childhood, because imagine if you were in a hospital and another patient decided to attack you. He then killed himself by cutting his throat. Is his crime committed against you void if he's dead and you are not allowed to sue the NHS, or does this law just apply to those who have been subjected to abuse while in care?
ReplyDelete"A recent ruling by a Scottish judge" - that says it all. We're complaining about Law Professors and you are complaining about a Judge. It's become a delinquent profession in the past 10-years, beholden to those with cash and/or authority.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the only way to prove them wrong is you have a great deal of money yourself. The Rangers administrators Directors had that and they proved them wrong. You and I cannot.
But, if there's a legal Inquiry going on and it's costing £60m and it's not doing anything and you are unhappy with it, then there's a good chance that everyone else will be unhappy with it as well. But, it needs to be explained. The public would rather you were all identified and a cash payment made to you along with an apology and that would be it - end of story.
Investigative journalism is dying-out in Scotland and so you need to piece a story together yourself and hand it to the press. You have a good story and so I would give it a try and see what happens.
I don't know how many victims of child care homes are still alive. Just say it is 300No. So, the £60m that has already been paid to Lady Smith and her lawyers, if it had been paid to the victims instead, would have given them £200k each and, just as important, it would all have been over 6-years ago. This was all started to 'save the public purse', remember. The remit has been so politically interfered with that it will inevitably go-on for another 4, 5 or 6 years before finally being abandoned when Swinney is long gone.
ReplyDeleteThe collapse in support for the Tories is proving catastrophic, isn't it. MP's are openly saying that they are being taken for lab-rats in Truss and Kwarteng experimental economics.
ReplyDeleteBefore she became PM, I read that a few politicians said she was unstable and slightly dazed. Imagine being PM for one week or so and allowing your chancellor to give tax cuts to the top 5% and borrowing £50 billion and making cuts in the public sector to pay for it. I've just read that the pensioners' guarantee that they get a 2.5% minimum wage increase or inflation increase is to be abandoned, and benefits will not increase by inflation. All this to pay for the £50 billion borrowed to pay for tax cuts for the richest. Is this a joke or is this really happening in Britain in 2022? It's way beyond anything Thatcher or Lie@bour would do. The policy is madness, so much so that the world's bankers look on in awe and can't believe it's happening either.
ReplyDelete"Unstable and slightly dazed" - I hadn't read that. What you explain above will take some time to be fully understood but when that happens their support (which is already at 21%) will collapse into the teens. They could be overtaken by the LibDems. Quite possible.
ReplyDelete"Kwasi Kwarteng defends tax policies as markets reel, saying he had ‘no other choice’" I'm an undoubted simpleton but I find this statement astonishing. From the most senior ranks of UK Government to come out with a statement like this is astounding. I remember Philip Hammond used to balance the UK economy using spreadsheets that were so big they were like rolls of wallpaper. This idiot Kwarteng thinks that you just need to do something - anything and it will be better than doing nothing. No it won't. The old heads at the Conservative Pary: Ken Clarke, David Davis and Charles Walker know the game is now up. It has become so bad that electoral antihalation is now inevitable.
ReplyDeleteI've been a conservative voter since 2010, even though I still believe in socialism. I suppose I'll hold my nose this time and support Lie@bour at the next election.
ReplyDeleteI heard earlier that Kwasi Kwarteng was top boy at Eton and his specialist subject was Greek and Latin poetry. Boris was there doing much the same thing 10 or 15 years earlier. If everybody in world economics is disagreeing with them, they think that they are right and the experts from world economics are wrong. That's the problem. It's too late to do anything about it now and it's all about saving face. Soon, nobody will buy it and I reckon there's a good chance both will be gone (Truss and Kwarteng) by Spring next year. Hopefully, a hell of a lot sooner.
ReplyDeleteHe is a former Eton boy who is an expert in Greek.
ReplyDeleteOh, okay.
"Former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke told The Independent that Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng need to “learn important lessons quickly” after a “politically inept” mini-Budget including £45bn of unfunded tax cuts, which sent the markets into freefall and Labour surging to leads of as much as 33 points in the polls.
ReplyDeleteAnother veteran of Sir John Major’s Treasury team, Phillip Oppenheim, said Ms Truss was “quite possibly the last ever Tory prime minister”.
“Nothing in last week’s mini-Budget indicates that our new leaders have the slightest grasp of our long-term structural problems or the solutions, beyond a half-digested, two-dimensional version of Thatcherism,” said Mr Oppenheim."
Truss's depth of support in the Tory Party appears puddle-deep. I remember when Boris Johnson was in trouble near the end of his tenure, the likes of Nadine Dories, Michael Fabricant and occasionally Jacob Reese Mogg would defend him. Hardly a credible bunch then. This time though, with Truss, I'm not aware of anyone and, for that reason, I reckon they'll cut her loose as soon as they possibly can. She's drowning and she cannot be saved.
ReplyDeleteLord Frost completely agrees with her. I am at a loss for anyone else. It appears that she and Quasi the 1st published a book that advocates abolishing all benefits, including the NHS and the state pension. I have not read it yet. Perhaps one of the readers of this blog has.
ReplyDeleteThere is already a public petition for a GE. It's only been running for days and already has 400,000 signatures. It could easily reach several millions and I imagine it will break all records for such a petition. Just think though, a few years ago everyone was vexing that Corbyn and O'Donnell were extremists. As far as book writing with Kwasi is concerned, she'll be watching "Strictly - the Results" tonight. That's about the limit of her critical thinking. I personally think the Tories will move against her very quickly. Sunak and Tugenhadt were OK - far preferable to any of the others.
ReplyDeleteGeorge - The contents of your other longstanding blog are proving a great success. Captain Hugh has spoken. I don't know what he has said but it sounds as though it is a turbocharged version of what I have been telling them for years. That's what he is like. So, the legal force-field which has been in place in Scotland for 8-years thanks to your favourite law firm has been broken down in a few days thanks to a blogger. That's astonishing isn't it. So, it looks as though I have been right all along. In some countries, you know, in fact in most countries, they would round-up and jail every one of them for that. They would get 6-years in the local jail. They would take their I-phones off them and give them a rolled-up prayer mat. That would be their only worldly possession until they were released in 2018.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with a party that changes direction from day to day is the 'optics' as they say are terrible. It just looks like vapid incompetence. Is Truss really the best they've got? The calls for a General Election are just going to get louder and more difficult to ignore.
ReplyDeleteMichael Gove usually comes out on the winning side and he's not for you, you are pretty much a goner. He doesn't seem to be for Truss/Kwarteng. Also, one of the journalists, I can't remember which one, said - comparing Truss to Thatcher is like comparing Johnson to Churchill. That's about the size of it for me and for many others it seems.
ReplyDeleteI believe any government that gives tax cuts only to have to borrow the money and then subsequently have to make public sector cuts to pay for it is incompetent.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's all extremely immoral given that the tax cuts are for the wealthy at a time when people are having trouble making ends meet.
She's a lightweight; she's been PM for 4-weeks and for most of that time the HoC has been in recess and already she is as unpopular as Boris was just prior to him being ousted. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time and that's her problem. The main problem of course is she doesn't know what she's doing. Never promote incompetent people to positions of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteSince 1982, when you think about it, in the last 40 years, the British have been hammered one way or another. First we get de-industrialisation with millions on the dole, then a slight recovery. Then a recession in 1990, then a slight recovery . Then comes new Lie@bour with a minimum wage of only £3.28 an hour, benefit sanctions, workfare, Atos, and foodbanks. Five million immigrants believed the minimum wage was good. Then, since 2010, austerity, then Brixit, then COVID. Now we are back to austerity.
ReplyDeleteHere in Scotland, after 15 years of an SNP government, we have the lowest life expectancy, highest drug deaths, highest suicide rate, and highest prison population in Europe. Our NHS is collapsing and people are no longer able to access NHS dentists. Is it really worthwhile to vote when everyone in power appears to be the same?
Labour aren't perfect but I can remember Jack McConnell in the early days of Holyrood and there was a decent amount of honesty about that guy, for me anyway. Sam Galbraith was still around and the Health Ministers and Education Ministers were intelligent hard workers. What we have now is the Mafia and every senior civil servant and lawyer in the country near enough is bent. We need to stop voting for them - there's no other way.
ReplyDeleteThe latest opinion poll that I read puts the Labour Party on 50%, Tories on 25% but, SNP down from 5% to 3%. In terms of percentage falls in support, it is the worst performing party just now.
ReplyDeleteI remember some time ago, Angela Constance said that Scotland had smashed the glass ceiling by allowing many women into top civil service jobs. I'm a democrat and if a woman is good enough then I have no problems at all with them taking top jobs. However, in my experience, they are seldom good enough. In fact, they are very often crap and they are very often liars, which makes it all the worse.
ReplyDeleteI am just emerging from a bruising experience with these women in top civil-service jobs and let me say it has been an eye-opener. I have no doubt that in most jurisdictions in the world they would be jailed for their behaviour, but in Scotland Nicola says that "we are lucky to have them". We are not lucky to have them. We should sack the majority of them and replace them with folk who know what they are doing.
I am not exaggerating when I say this, but I have not met one woman in the Scottish civil-service who is any good. Doubtless in the lower levels of the civil-service they are fine, but in the higher levels where you have to know what you are doing and work fast, they are crap. All of them are crap.
Some Tory MPs insist that benefits increase in line with inflation and are opposed to any benefit reductions. It appears that most Tory seats have 5% more benefit beneficiaries on average than Labour seats, and they do not want to enrage their constituents. If this is true, then more poorer folk voted Tory than voted for lie@bour in the last election. What would make the poorest people in the UK vote Tory? The voters must remember when Labour was in power. I wonder if it's things like Atos, benefit sanctions, workfare, food banks and an extremely low minimum wage that made them vote Tory!
ReplyDeleteAnother way of looking at Liz Truss is that she is an 'extermination event' and her arrival marks the beginning of the extinction of a political party.
ReplyDeleteThe English Covid Inquiry is now underway. A Judge has been appointed and it's all televised. UK Inquiries are reputed to be the among best in the world. Here, in Scotland, the Judge has just resigned before our Covid Inquiry even got started. A few others from within her legal team have gone too I understand. As per usual, citing Swinney as their reason for leaving. In a way, it is good news as it shows we still have some decent honourable lawyers left. Look out for this Inquiry taking years, costing tens of millions and proving that Jeane Freeman was 'not proven' of any crime whatsoever. What a mess Scotland is now in. 10-years of managed decline.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Lady Smith could take-over. She could preside over the Child Abuse Inquiry and the Covid Inquiry at the same time. She would make double the cash and the Inquiry would never get finished. It would a win-win for John Swinney. I'm only guessing, but I would reckon that Lady Smith is one of the wealthiest folk in Scotland just now. Devolution isn't half working for her.
ReplyDeletehttps://uk.yahoo.com/news/anger-over-backlog-scottish-government-135506339.html
ReplyDeleteMr Swinney and Lady Smith again. After 6-years they have suddenly become aware that the victims want justice. Priceless.
The main reason why so many are applying for redress is that the survivors of abuse are not allowed to take the institutions that abused them to court. In Scotland, if the abuser is dead, the crimes committed against the survivors are now void. This new law's "loophole" apparently includes the institutions too. So forget the nonsense that survivors are allowed to sue in court. It's blatant lying and government propaganda. The child abuse inquiry is also going so slowly, especially considering the average life expectancy for people who spend time in care is only 63. Most people abused from the 1930s-to the mid 1970s are already dead. How very convenient. If the abuse inquiry plays its cards right and is still inquiring into abuse in five years, most abused survivors will be dead or gone. They can then write a completely fake report. "In Scotland, children didn't get abused."
ReplyDeleteI speak as a member of the public without any knowledge of this case. As I said before, I read about it in the Press in 2016 and I was shocked by it. You are getting the story in the Press again though? I say that because I read it in The Herald yesterday. The way I look at it is the Scottish Government are ultimately responsible for everything that happens in Scotland and that includes this abuse. Of course they weren't around when it was taking place, but they are still responsible for achieving redress for all of you. There is a difference between the way the Scottish Government and Scottish lawyers see this and the way the public see it. The public will want to see you all paid and I don't think there is any doubt about that. It might help is 2 or 3 of you approached the Press and complained that £60m has just been wasted on a useless Inquiry which everyone knows is going nowhere and has been designed never to go anywhere. Even Lady Smith knows that. The same thing is happening with the Covid Inquiry. Swinney again - sadly the man is a liar and should be removed from Scottish public life. The way lawyers work in Scotland nowadays is the way Tom Hagan worked in The Godfather. He was the lawyer and it was his job to protect The Godfather at whatever cost. We don't have the Godfather but we do have Swinney and we do have bent lawyers. I think the public will be with you near enough 100% and so it is a case of articulating your case to the Press. Swinney at the moment is very weak and so now is the time.
ReplyDeleteI remember when Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Tories. They knew within weeks that he would never in a million years win a GE and so the replaced him with Michael Howard. He didn't win either, but he was an improvement on IDS. It might be possible that the same thing is about to happen with Liz Truss....being replaced by Michael Gove with Rishi Sunak back at number 11. Stranger things have happened.
ReplyDeleteA report about Dr. Guthries' school will likely be published in an Edinburgh newspaper soon, I think.
ReplyDeleteThe mistreatment of children in private schools like Fettes and Loretto as well as in childrens homes has now been widely publicised.
Wait until you read about the events that took place in Scottish-approved schools. The abuse inquiry and the rest can't cover up everything, and Dr. Guthries is next to be exposed.
Good luck to you with that. The Press will do more for you than Lady Smith. She was content to say nothing and just submit her invoices every month and take the money and it was Press involvement encouraged her to come out in support of the victims. Sadly, the legal profession in Scotland isn't worth a button nowadays. If it's Scotland on Sunday again, they did a great job for you before. You've got to say, they did more for you 6-years ago than Lady Smith has done since then. £60m for plumbs, as they used to say.
ReplyDeleteBrian Cox says that Liz Truss doesn't have a mandate to do what she is doing, no-one likes her and she makes too many mistakes. For a change, I agree with him. I think they will soon be gone in Scotland too and we will get a Secretary of State for Scotland that will actually do something.
ReplyDeleteOne last point on the Child Abuse case: The Press don't need any lessons on how best to frame this however, from your perspective, if there are approximately 1,000 of you left and the average age is over 60 years, then you want a resolution to this case. You want an outcome and to be able to get-on with the rest of your life. We can all read about the detail of the abuse, but you were promised an outcome by Swinney and where is that outcome. Speaking as a member of the public, I was never that interested in the exact nature of the abuse because you could go-on detailing that forever. It would be like cataloguing Auschwitz in a way and it is really pointless. Get it over with, Swinney! The Press need to make that very clear point and for Lady Smith the days of submitting invoices for 10's of thousands of pounds for nothing should be coming to an end.
ReplyDeleteIt turns out that an accountant and three wee middle-aged women at the council know more about engineering than forty of the world's best engineers. Would you believe that? No, neither would I. Would anyone believe it? Another house of cards balls-up by Mr Swinney.
ReplyDelete"I stood-up to Vlademir Putin.....I want to work with Nicola Sturgeon to turbocharge Scotland's economy". According to The Guardian, there are moves to replace this idiot at Downing Street with Rishi Sunak. A sort of bloodless coup. She is persuaded to go in the National interest and he takes her place. They still expect to lose the next GE, but they are just now facing annihilation - especially in places like Scotland. I remember when Donald Trump took over in the US i thought that something like this was bound to happen there, but it didn't. So, it might happen and it might not but somehow I have a feeling that it will.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for Truss may be that in Thatcher, the public voted for a change in direction and the majority accepted it. We now have a more central politics in the UK; you can be left of centre or right of centre but not far right or far left and definitely not without an electoral mandate. So, this sudden lurch to the extreme right, without carrying anyone with her, has come unstuck. Westminster returns on Tuesday and there is already disquiet amongst the ranks. Not only red-wall MP's but even London MP's can see that they have 2-years in a great steady job and then in all likelihood it will all be over for good. If she just steadied the ship for the next 2-years and did nothing which was too radical, she would still probably have lost, but not lost by nearly as much. I wouldn't be surprised if the start of the Starmer years is seen as the start of the Blair years, as something that will potentially last for 2 or 3 elections. The guy has his limitations and he is incredibly dull but, at the same time, better than anyone the Tories can put up against him. That's what I reckon anyway.
ReplyDeletelast time lie@bour had power, they treated the poorest like dirt, my generation can never forget.
ReplyDeleteI worked with an old chap 35-years ago who was an original member of the SAS. He told me once that anything made out of reinforced concrete is the most difficult to demolish with explosives. If you hit a bridge or a dam with a huge bomb, it may only cause minimal damage and it may be able to be repaired. So, today's damage to the Kerch Bridge in Crimea was some achievement and it must have taken a huge amount of explosives. It was a truck bomb of some sort detonated to explode right next to a train carrying fuel. Sounds like it came straight out of James Bond. Much better than the high casualty blundering around that the Russians themselves are doing with cruise missiles. That's Russia's number-one ship (the Moskva) and now their number-one bridge. The bridge can be fixed, but when you're losing a war, these things sometimes don't get done, or don't get done quickly enough. Good work by Mr Bond.
ReplyDeleteThe Kerch Bridge shows the Russian psyche and explains why they are such a problem in the world. This is being viewed as a declaration of war by the Ukrainians. Not like the bombing of Ukrainian maternity hospitals, the raping of children and the shooting of old people through the head. These are not acts of war in the minds of Russia, but the bombing of a supply line is a declaration of war. I have a relative who has great world experience and has come across and sized-up most nationalities and cultures and he has always had a special disdain for Russians.
ReplyDeleteThe Russians have never hurt us in any way.
ReplyDeleteThey banded together and routed the Third Reich army of the Hitlers.
It's hard for me to understand why certain people hate Russia.
If you were Ukrainian and not Scottish, you would hate Russia. Worldwide, it's a pretty commonly held opinion nowadays. They also behaved badly during World War 2, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you another example of world-wide bad behaviour - in SaudiArabia, there is a big development going on near the coast; it's called "Neom". The Crown Prince wanted to buy some land off the local tribespeople so that it could become part of his development. 4No tribal leaders refused and so the Crown Prince sentenced them to death. Death is by beheading at a place called "chop-chop square" in central Riyadh. It's a strange story but sadly it is true. All 4 are probably dead already as there is no "death row" over there. No appeals; nothing like that to delay things.
Nationalism all around the world has always thrived upon chaos. If there is no chaos, then Nationalists try to create some. That's why Truss has been such a let-down. She has handed them chaos on a plate. The Nationalists will exaggerate the problem ten-fold because they always look better as an alternative to chaos. The fact is, the SNP are in charge of a devolved administration which is responsible for divvying-up the annual block-grant from Westminster. This year, the annual block-grant is 7% up on last year. Doesn't sound like a major problem to me....does it sound like a major problem to you. Can the SNP not just get-on with divvying-up the cash and providing competent administration? Otherwise, can they not just fuck-off. I. for one, am sick and tired of them now.
ReplyDeleteLooking at today's news I reckon it's time Ukraine polished-off the rest of the Kerch Bridge. Do it tonight. "No more Mr Nice Guy" as we say in the west. Russia doesn't have any missiles left, which are capable of hitting their intended target anyway. So, just let them have it this time. I remember being in a hotel once with Russians. They would fill-up their plates at the buffet, cut it all up and mix it together, and then leave it all. That's the mentality of a Russian.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/edinburgh-survivors-abuse-demand-mocking-25207023?amp%3Bamp= So much for the phoney abuse investigation and providing closure and an apology to the victims.
ReplyDeleteSurvivors in corrupt Scotland are ignored and pressured to start internet petitions in order to be recognised.
It is absolutely vital that any newspaper story makes the correct point very succinctly and I am not convinced that this one does that.
ReplyDeleteGuthrie is long dead and probably all of his staff at the school are dead too. That means that reparation isn't coming from them.
The Scottish Government are responsible for paying reparations to you. They set up the Smith Inquiry and later found out how much that could potentially cost them and so they are marking time doing nothing. It's the same at the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry.
John Swinney achieves great kudos among lawyers when he pays them to do nothing. So, it's a win-win for Swinney.
This is what I reckon a newspaper story should examine for you.
Due to the ongoing ramifications of Kwarteng's mini-budget, I doubt if we will see another Tory Government, certainly in my lifetime. So, when folk voted for Boris Johnson for a change of ideas and a new and modern way of thinking, this is what they have got. The biggest self-made balls-up that anyone can remember.
ReplyDeleteThe Economist: "Liz Truss is already a historical figure. However long she now lasts in office, she is set to be remembered as the prime minister whose grip on power was the shortest in British political history.
ReplyDelete“Ms Truss entered Downing Street on 6 September. She blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on 23 September.
“Take away the 10 days of mourning after the death of the Queen, and she had seven days in control. That is the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
"It is absolutely vital that any newspaper story make the correct point very succinctly, and I am not convinced that this one does that."
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Dr. Guthrie's is that no one is prepared to take any responsibility. I'm unable to sue because the law says they are all dead. OK, they are all now dead. You would expect that if they waited 50 years to investigate, but I can't find a lawyer in Scotland who is prepared to take the institutions to court. Why is that? Why are the lawyers so afraid that not one of them has the bottle to take the institutions that abuse children to court? I first complained to the abuse inquiry in 2015 and have waited almost seven years for the police to interview me. I first complained in 1988. They want me to apply for redress, and I haven't even received an apology. The abuse I have complained about is at the top of the scale, and not one person in authority appears to care. Survivors are being treated like we are third-class citizens.
There is no resolution;we don't get closure, all we get is humiliation, and they basically tell us that our abuse is unimportant.
The Scottish Government are due to pay you reparations. I would forget all about the legal route and about lawyers. That's almost a redundant and collapsed profession in Scotland these days. The Scottish Government forgave all the 18th Century witches and the striking miners recently. They need to do the same with you and your colleagues. It will cost them a lot of money, but the public will support you. I would keep going with the Press and make these points. The public are with you.
ReplyDeleteOne last thing - I seem to remember that Swinney and Constance set this Inquiry up so that the Institutions would not be blamed. They were concerned about the Catholic Church being blamed and not Guthrie's. However, the point is that no Institution will be blamed. It just cannot be done. However, the public want to see the money used wisely to compensate the victims; not to pay lawyers for doing nothing. That's the basic point I have been making. There is not a lawyer in Scotland that will help you, but the Press can. The Scotland on Sunday article was fabulous and they may be able to take it forward for you. It was front page in 2016 and if you can get that again, then you are in business.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good if a newspaper investigated the abuse inquiry and questioned why investigations into abuse of children under care in juvenile detention facilities come last. Why have they left the places where the most heinous abuse was carried out last? Any sane investigation would look into the locations of the worst abuse first, rather than last. Since the investigation began, it has looked into huge orphanages, child immigrants, foster care, and private schools like Fettes and Gordonstoun. Eight years after the investigation started, they might finally get to the child remand homes and approved schools. "Bear in mind 99% of the children in approved schools were there for doggin' school or stealing empty ginger bottles." The Irish enquiry, which came to a conclusion in 2009, indicated that abuse was endemic in all reform schools. Our abuse investigation has chosen to look into the worst places last.
ReplyDelete"The Irish enquiry, which came to a conclusion in 2009, indicated that abuse was endemic in all reform schools." If our Inquiry, which has been running for 6-years, has managed to establish anything, it will have established this too?
ReplyDeleteSo, every last detail of abuse in big institutions or smaller institutions just doesn't have to be discussed and catalogued. It's all agreed by everyone and it's over.
ALL that the present impasse is caused by is "who is liable to pay reparations to you." The Scottish Government set the inquiry up and selected the legal team with the proviso that it wouldn't be the institutions themselves, whoever they may be, so, ergo, it is the Scottish Government themselves and that is why no lawyer will help you.
They are prolonging this inquiry because it is cheaper for them to do that than it is for them to pay you, but it is putrid, isn't it.
If there are 1000 of you left and you are all aged over 60 years, then by delaying the Scottish Government are counting on 10% or so of you dying off each year they prolongate delay. As I say, it is putrid, but that is the story for the Press.
I would forget all about removing Guthrie's statue. Abuse became endemic in his school, but he didn't set it up with that purpose in mind. The same with the Catholic Church, the Free Church and all the rest of them. It was s societal problem that probably many were aware of that didn't speak-out at the time and that is why it is for all of us to pay reparations, via the Government.
Society is not the problem and I would guess that most will feel as I do about this. The Scottish Government is run by devious and malevolent people, and Scottish law is increasingly run in the same way, by the same people and for the same purpose. Both cover each other's backs nowadays. Hence, a Sunday paper is best place for this. I personally think that it is a great story and worth a front page. In fact, it is worth a front page and 2 or 3 inside pages. Start with how much the Smith Inquiry has cost already, what is it doing, when will it be finished, when will we get an outcome. How long did the Irish Inquiry take to conclude? Stuff like that. I think you have all waited far too long already.
One final point: Has the Smith Inquiry been a total waste of time and money so far and has the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry been a total waste of time and money so far? Remember, the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry has already cost more than the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war. Frankly, I'm surprised it has not been in the Press already.
ReplyDeleteGEORGE: A gross is a dozen, dozens....144No. I had thought that you were waiting until you had reached a gross of comments before you issued another episode, but we are well beyond that now?
ReplyDeletesorry for the lack of output, my spinal issue has been flaring up, I promise to knock something out in the next couple of days.
DeleteGreat - I had an interesting meeting yesterday. I'll drop a line to you on your other website. I'll do that now.
ReplyDeleteThey say that Liz Truss's approval ratings are now on a par only with Prince Andrew's. When it gets this bad and no-one can be put up for interview with the Press to support you, then it's over. The funny thing is that Liz Truss has been around for years and I can remember when she was first appointed a Minister in Theresa May's time, I thought straight away that she was a spoof. The 'blue-rinse brigade' of Tory members thought that she was fabulous and that is all that mattered in the end. Democratically, it is very shaky ground to be on isn't it. Happily, the new Chancellor has some gravitas and I suspect he is the real PM from now until however long Truss is allowed to hang-on for. Hopefully, that will only be for a few more weeks. Old Ken Clarke with the dog-eared shirts and braces said that decisions in Government need to be taken slowly and everyone needs to be carried along during the process. Only an idiot doesn't know that of course, but it looks as if Truss didn't know it.
ReplyDelete"Conservative former chancellor Lord Hammond said the events of the past weeks had wrecked the party’s reputation for fiscal discipline". Remember him? - Philip Hammond - one of the best Chancellors we ever had in my opinion. It took the new guy, Jeremy Hunt ages before he agreed to take the job. That can sometimes mean that he was looking for cast-iron guarantees that he wouldn't be sacked during any re-shuffle. Anyway, whatever it means or doesn't mean, the chap is sensible and unlikely to do anything daft or to agree to do anything daft.
ReplyDeleteI am not a Tory but I have a subscription for the Daily Telegraph. Sometimes when you are working away from home, you want to read a good newspaper and so that's the reason I have the subscription. I understand that it is very right wing and I am not, but that is not too important for me. Anyway, Jeremy Hunt wrote a short article yesterday explaining why he was rowing back on tax cuts and that more austerity was needed. It was nothing that I wasn't expecting and it was very clearly written and unremarkable. I went-on to take a look at the readers' letters page on the same article and although I only read the first dozen or so responses, they were all absolutely furious telling him to fuck-off and all the rest of it. That's one of the reasons why I will never consider myself a Tory because they are really nothing like the rest of us. There are real Tories, but most are just aspirational Tories that want to be like them and see some merit in trying. It's not for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm most definitely not a Tory but I observe Tories all the time and one guy I quite like is Sir Charles Walker. He was on Sky News earlier and said "We need a uniter at Number 10, not a disrupter. She has to go - either she does it on her own on that choice will be taken away from her."
ReplyDeleteI personally cannot remember anyone as inept as Liz Truss. I don't know about you but for me it has been 'off the scale' arrogance and fundamental stupidity.
Suella Braverman - she's another nutter. We would all be best with a general election now.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if anyone remembers Edwina Currie? She was Health Secretary I seem to remember in John Major's Government. She must be about 80 now. Anyway, she was asked her opinion on Liz Truss and according to Edwina, Truss is: "Charmless, graceless and thick". So, you don't want to mess with these old-Tories. Anyway, it looks a nap that she'll be gone soon. When I say soon, I mean within a few weeks.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite Tory, Sir Charles Walker was on BBC News a bit earlier complaining that he was sick of talentless people who voted Liz Truss into number 10 and who would give anything for a seat at the Cabinet table. What a disgraceful mess they leave behind for the Tory party. It was pretty strong stuff and well deserved, of course. He is leaving Westminster soon and he has had enough. Just as well he is not speaking about the talentless tubes we have around the Cabinet table at Holyrood. Now, they are talentless tubes. The problem is they have been there for 20 years in Swinney's case and they are still spoofing it. It's been the biggest political heist in UK history.
ReplyDeleteThat's fabulous news about Truss. Also being swept out will be fanatics Therese Coffey and Jacob Reese-Mogg. The spreadsheet men will be back in charge of the UK and that's great news. Hunt or Sunak and it doesn't bother me as both are sensible enough. It's been an absolute tragedy hasn't it? Collectively for the reputation of the country and the needless damage that it has done and also individually for many, many people who will have to endure great hardship for a lot longer than should have been necessary. She should never have stood as a candidate. Someone should have told her she didn't have the intellectual horsepower. Other world leaders could see it - why couldn't we?
ReplyDelete"Russia says Liz Truss was a ‘catastrophically illiterate disgrace’ of a PM"
ReplyDeleteI noticed Liz Truss smirking whilst she presented her resignation speech yesterday. That's a very unedifying look for both her personally and for the Tories. Whoever takes over now will have to stabilize the situation and they will have no money to do that with. I notice the red-wall Tories are clinging to the prospect that Boris Johnson will get back in the saddle and rescue them all from electoral doom at the next General Election. I think that some humility is needed just now and Boris Johnson will not deliver that. So, personally speaking, I wouldn't touch Boris Johnson with a barge-pole but we will wait a few days and see what the Tory MP's do.
ReplyDelete"Don't put incompetent people in positions of authority" - It is the phrase of our times just now and this time next week we'll all know if they have arsed it all up again. That would be twice in two-months. Speaking of which, Emma Harper is the list SNP MSP for Southern Scotland and she is undoubtedly as thick as mince. She thinks border check-points with England would be a good idea because it would create jobs for her constituents. What she is still doing in our parliament is anyone's guess because she is vapid, vacant and doesn't have a bloody clue about anything. Anyway, undeterred, she is standing up at Holyrood whenever they all get back from holiday to demand an immediate General Election because these Tories are hopeless. She may be right about the Tories but if we in Scotland are being led by folk like Emma Harper then we are at the end...the terminus...we are finished as a country that anyone without half of their brain missing is going to listen to or be bothered with. It's a country run by arseholes.
ReplyDeleteJust to let everyone know how the Tories are feeling our pain: Boris has had three overseas holidays in the past few months, the last of which was to the Carribean and Sunak pays £150k/annum to heat his private London swimming pool.
ReplyDeleteTheresa May: (I know that folk on these pages hate Theresa May but I always thought that she and Philip Hammond were the best we have had in recent years anyway)
ReplyDelete"Congratulations
@RishiSunak
on becoming Leader of the Conservative Party.
Rishi will provide the calm, competent, pragmatic leadership our country needs at this deeply challenging time. He has my full support."
Good luck to Sunak - I thought that Boriz and Liz were both repulsive but this guy, I'm all for giving him a chance. We would all have been a Hell of a lot better off had he been selected in the first place instead of Liz. She couldn't think on her feet and just got herself into a terrible mess right away.
ReplyDeleteAre you going for two gross of responses, George? That would be 288No. That would be something of a record and you are now more than half-way there.
ReplyDeletesorry mate, I have been unwell with my spinal issue, and the lack of a proper sleep is leaving me feeling a tad shaky. I meant to get something out about a week ago, but I will do a video later today, maybe a general round up so far of a few issues.
DeleteBoris can now fuck-off back to the Carribean with his wife. (Dominic Cummings used to call her Miss Nut-Nut for some reason) It just leaves the problem of Liz Truss - what does one do with her? She's turbocharged the economy all-right. King Charles thought they were both useless and so he has the same powers of perception that the rest of us all have. How did these two ever manage to run the country?
ReplyDeletePleased to see Jacob Reese-Mogg strapped to the ejector seat earlier. History graduate and bull-shitter.
ReplyDeleteOne thing, he always seems well prepared as leader of the house, maybe that reading came in handy.
DeleteI recall all that gnashing of teeth over the proroguing of Parliament and JRM saying that it was all routine and nothing out of the ordinary. It was tested in Court on both sides of the border and found to be unlawful. Hence, he's a spoof and not what the country needs just now.
DeleteSunak did well at PMQ's earlier. Dealt with everything seriously and I get the feeling that hard-workers are in charge at Westminster again. They will study data and take advice. Far less of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Nadine Dorries, Michael Fabricant and that superlative bull-shitter Jacob Rees-Mogg. I'm pretty sure that Labour are favourites for the next GE and that is unlikely to change, but it won't be nearly such a landslide. It makes you wonder why they (the Conservative Party members) picked that idiot Liz Truss in the first place.
ReplyDelete