Saturday 26 November 2022
The Laird Report Episode 21 UK Supreme Court vetos Nicola Sturgeon advisory Referendum
The UK Supreme Court vetos advisory referendum on Scottish Independence, the case was a loser but Sturgeon still carried on. Nicola Sturgeon is buying time for her escape as First Minister, and while no job offers come in from big organisations to make her a global player she is trapped. Her update tactic of 2024 as a defacto referendum is a con trick on independence voters, this is the same trick used before at every election. Is Sturgeon trying to create 'the troubles of Northern Ireland in Scotland'? Is Scotland heading towards civil war and chaos? What action will the UK Government take if civil war breaks out in Scotland with a hostile administraion in Edinburgh?
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Operation Branchform, SNP staff, present and former to be re-interviewed by Police Scotland investigating SNP Party finances, this development in the slow moving case is said to be directed by the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, is this another false dawn for action, or is the storm about to erupt?
When former Nicola Sturgeon was cornered like a rat by the Holyrood press pack, you could see in her demeanor that she extremely uncomfortab...
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On the 31 st July 2023, I did a blog post called ‘political death looms in Rutherglen’, my contention was that the by-election on paper see... -
On the 11 th of June, SNP MSP Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed by police; she was in fact arrested, not interviewed as a witness but arreste...
Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Westminster Expenses Scandal which brought the SNP to power - I read a few days ago that Mhairi Black submitted expenses clains for approximately £250,000 last year. Blackford and O'Hara are top claimants too. So, my guess is the SNP movement is dead, or is dying anyway. No-one believes in it any longer and the White Papers that were published in recent months were gash. My mother is fanatical about the SNP, but it's all this blood and soil stuff that no-one with any sense cares about. Apart from her, I don't know another single SNP voter. So, I hope that she goes ahead with her de-facto referendum because a great number of people who are ordinarily SNP voters will switch because they are really not separatists. Husband and wife teams are always a feckin disaster.
That music was terrible. It was hardly Johnny Cash at San Quintin, was it. If that bunch showed up at San Quintin, God knows what would happen.
ReplyDeleteThere was no doubt in anyone's mind that Nicoliar would lose the case. The truth is, it was all brought about because Nicoliar could get a few days' worth of propaganda. She knew she would lose, but she carried on and spent a fortune on lawyers. Right now in Scotland, there must be over 1000 abused survivors who are unable to find a lawyer prepared to take the institutions that abused them to court. There is a law in Scotland that says that if the abusers are dead, the survivor has no case. As a result, it is almost impossible to find a lawyer on legal aid in Scotland who is willing to fight the institutions. Why then is Nicoliar allowed to spend money hiring expensive lawyers on a frivolous case with zero hope of winning? Is there one law for them and another for us? The SNP or Nicoliar herself should be forced to pay all the expenses of the lawyers they employed. How much money was expended on expensive lawyers, and for what?
ReplyDeleteFree legal aid in Scotland survived Thatcher but was abolished by Sturgeon. It used to cost a few million a year which is nothing. As you correctly say, that money is now used to fund Sturgeon's own personal vainglorious legal adventures and, as George correctly says, why we in Scotland continue to tolerate this....God knows the answer to that question.
ReplyDeleteGraham Simpson is the Tory who spoke-up about the Ferguson ferries fiasco. He sounded great at the time, with bags of energy and confidence and, whoever he is, he knows what he is talking about. But, my guess is that a good number of Tories would support you, a small number of Labour and a small number of Lib Dems. If you write a letter that all of you are happy with and then send it out signed by the constituent of the MSP's that you select, and you should go perhaps for a number of cross-party MSP's all at once, then that might get the game started for you.
ReplyDeleteThe letter shouldn't show any frustration because that won't help you; so, keep it as business like as possible and about 2-pages long. That's my suggestion. Personally speaking, I would rather jump off a bridge than trust or even speak to a lawyer. Best of luck with this and I personally hope that you all do well.
You can review Graham Simpson's performance at Holyrood for yourself. I saw it some time ago and I cannot remember where, but he humiliated John Swinney with regard to the Ferguson's ferries. He's not the only good MSP though and I think that many of them are just comfortable doing nothing or very little. But, you have an objective here which will get at least some of them moving and I am pretty confident of that. They know that they are there to work for Scots and that there is a general feeling amongst the public that they are not doing that and so my suggestion to you is to give them this and we can all see what they are made of. I don't know what constituency Graham Simpson represents but if you are lucky enough to have one of your colleagues living there, then he would be my first port of call along with, as I say, another few others from Labour and the LibDems. It was one of the most comprehensive put-downs of John Swinney I can ever remember seeing. John Swinney as usual just passed everything off to his compliant civil-servants. With your story though, he cannot do that and I would expect it to generate a negative public reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe Westminster Expenses Scandal involved folk buying two televisions, two i-pads, expensive furniture, bogus taxi receipts and all the rest of it. Hundreds of thousands of pounds no doubt and I seem to remember a few of them went to jail for it, but in the scale of things, it was nothing really. Take a look at the Michelle Mone story if you want to know how far corruption has moved-on since then. £65m I believe, scammed from the UK tax-payer and paid to her and her kids while she was on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Private Eye are all over the story but it will be interesting to find-out how much enthusiasm that is investigated with and by whom. There was a time when that sort of stuff would never have gone-on in the UK, but these last 10-years or so we are becoming very, very corruptible aren't we. I used to stay in Newton Mearns by the way and I used to see Michelle Mone up at the shops there. Greed has swallowed her up, sadly.
ReplyDeleteForget about abused survivors getting help. I don't think the Scottish parliament, the media or the legal community give abuse survivors much thought.
ReplyDeleteThey would much prefer to offer us assisted suicide than any real monetary compensation. It's as if they have a covert eugenics scheme.
The way they are treating the old survivors is so absurd it's hard to believe. They are offering us a miserable £10.000 with a promise of more that will never come. There is no support group, such as an abused survivors group, fighting these animals. Only Incas are mentioned, and even then it is only as a name, as they are doing nothing and have since come to be seen as a part of the system.
I was reading WoS there. Good to have him back. He was making the same point you are making. All of this: 'independent small country in Europe', isn't going to happen. I wonder how long it is going to take the average voter in Scotland to work that one out?
ReplyDeleteYou need to present your case better. Select a strategy, get all the help you can and don't rant at people because it turns them right off.
ReplyDeleteI was reading there than 2million Scots voted to save the Union in 2014. Only around 1.3million Scots ever vote SNP. So, there really is no mandate, is there.
ReplyDeleteIt does look to me though that the Labour Party have an unassailable lead of something like 24 points over the Tories and so it is almost inevitable that they will form the next Westminster Government. In my opinion, the Tories have become corrupt and should be swept aside now until they sort-out their MP's and Lords and Baronesses who have been on the take. So, although I don't think they are fully ready and charismatic enough in the way that Blair was, I do think that they offer the best for the vast majority of the population just now. The truth of the matter is though that life in the UK, post the banking crash, has become tiresome and dull and there is no money for anything - power stations, hospitals, railways. That Fred Goodwin bastard should be in jail just now for what he did.
ReplyDeleteI remember Ian Blackford as a vicious wee guy who bullied Charles Kennedy and humiliated him. Many people of my age can remember that. It will be fascinating to see who takes his place. The stand-out candidate is Joanna Cherry and I seem to remember she stood before and was narrowly beaten by Blackford. In the days ahead when a clear head is needed, the last thing the SNP need or want is another vapid bullshitter. Stephen Flynn was I believe Maureen Watt's secretary (remember her from the Fabiani Inquiry). I saw him on Question Time a few months ago alongside Jordan Peterson and the comparison was akin to comparing honey with birds' shite. However, I may be wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt looks as though Flynn will be unopposed and will be the new leader of the SNP at Westminster. I think that the SNP group there really lack direction in that everyone knows that all the decisions in Scotland are made at Holyrood for good or for bad. So, what do they actually do? They don't contribute anything beyond calling for independence all of the time and everyone at Westminster is tired of hearing that. I don't know much about Flynn at-all but all I would say is that it is incredibly difficult to be effective at Westminster. Only the old dogs who have been there for decades really do well there and even Kier Starmer struggles and he is a great communicator. I somehow expect Flynn to be tripped-up early-on and suffer a humiliating existence at Westminster from there. Sometimes it is best to adopt the Murdo Fraser approach to life and that is to get-on with it at a relatively low rank. Don't stick your head above the parapet so to speak.
ReplyDeleteNo one speaks of Liz Truss now, but Irving Welsh (who I think lives in the US now) says of the UK that it has become an artificial construct of a country which exists only to maintain and protect an elite few. When you hear of people eating pet-food nowadays in order to keep going, it is difficult to argue with that. We are still capable of great achievements like the Covid vaccine and all the rest of it, but the country is nevertheless is being submerged in self-interest.
ReplyDeleteI see that Alison Thewliss is putting herself forward as leader of the SNP at Westminster. A committed Nationalist who wears the colour yellow all the time. She's the Sturgeon loyalist alternative to Flynn and so there will be a contest after all. Those who believe that they are subservient to Holyrood against those who think they are different and there to represent the broader interest of Scotland's place in the UK and what we give against what we get back. This contest will determine whether those at Holyrood have been hollowed-out or if they have any back-bone left. I have younger members of the family though who attend primary school and they are surrounded by SNP dogma from the earliest age and they never see anything else as they grow-up. That said, their vote share continues at a low level and is even dropping slightly. I really don't have a clue what is going to happen next but in the Labour Party there is some hope. It's far from perfect, but against the alternatives, which are truly dire, I think people are going to vote for it.
ReplyDeleteI read there that Michelle Mone has just taken leave of absence from the House of Lords. I do not expect for a moment that anyone will miss her. I am watching this case with great interest. When £65m kickbacks are given to House of Lords members, paid for by the tax-payer, we all should be very, very angry about that. It is only an allegation of course, but it is taking a long time to go away.
ReplyDeleteI think Baroness Mone is being hounded by SNP backing journalists. My understanding is that she followed the protocols in place at the time which are open to us all. We anti-nationalists should be careful of the nationalusts' divide and rule tactics and not fall for them by falling into the old Lab V Lib V Con mentality of yesteryear.
ReplyDeleteMany UK companies who produce PPE and have done so for years couldn't even get on the lists at the time. Angela Rayner said that on Question Time. This investigation is being led by Private Eye who have been on her case for months now. Hardly an SNP supporting magazine, is it?
ReplyDeleteThe protocol didn't include provision of a kickback and that is what all the controversy is about.
Kickbacks occur of course all over the world and in Africa, for example, someone may be given a new Toyota Land Cruiser or something like that, but when it is £65m, then maybe that should result in jail time.
I remember Jonathan Aitken was given a few years in jail for lying in court. This may be seen as more serious than that. However, she has taken time-off to clear her name and so we may all be mistaken here.
Just as well for Private Eye though, because no-one else was going to do the investigative work they have done.
George - I haven't been keeping in touch via your other website as the situation is nearly at an end now and at this stage you are best to keep quiet.
ReplyDeleteMy next door neighbour is an old military man. He was telling me earlier that an old colleague of his works at the House of Lords now. There are 800No members. Many just show-up for 20-minutes, have a cup of tea, and go back home. Whatever happens between now and then it looks like it will be a comfortable Labour victory at the next General Election and there is some prospect of the House of Lords being slimmed-down dramatically. In the US, the Upper House there has only something like 100No members and so something has to give.
ReplyDeleteI was reading a short time ago that 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine and possibly the same number of Ukrainians. Countless homes destroyed, industrial areas razed to the ground, bridges, roads, railways, power networks and all for what benefit to anyone? It must be the most pointless of all wars. I remember hoping that Putin was dangerously mad or ill and that he would be replaced soon. It doesn't look like it and it's an end-game scenario now where no-one will back-down, or give an inch. Boris Johnson has left it all behind and made himself a million pounds out of speaking engagements in the past 3-months.
ReplyDeleteIs the Glasgow Soup Kitchen still working in the open-air - under the railway bridge in Argyll Street? I seem to remember assurances were given back in April that this would be managed in some way to provide sheltered, heated accommodation for the winter and it's now mid-December.
ReplyDeleteStill there, and still no help from Nicola Sturgeon
DeleteGender recognition clinics in Scotland exists but some say they are not very good. Soup kitchens exist in Scotland and they are not very good either. Gender recognition clinics get all the attention at Holyrood and Soup Kitchens get none and that is symptomatic of how far Holyrood has drifted away from priorities of the general public. Shona Robison was questioned at Holyrood on Soup Kitchens the other week and it was obvious that she couldn't care less.
DeleteIt's an organization called the Good Law Project that are investigating the PPE scam. The same people were paid to procure PPE and, when it was found to be faulty, to store it and then incinerate it.
ReplyDeleteThe GRC debate at Holyrood fascinates me. I am not anti-LGBT at-all and live and let live is the way I work. Allowing convicted criminals to apply for GRC is worrying though. Jamie Greene is one guy who has always sounded sensible to me but his idea is that they shouldn't apply (I really don't know why he thinks that way) but if they do apply and get charged with a sexual offence, let the Courts sort it out. What if the Courts can't sort it out? What if the Courts can't sort it out? What if the Courts decide that the GRC was not fraudulently obtained and so no crime has been committed. A sexual crime has been needlessly committed and many will blame the GRC for that. As I say, I have no axe to grind and ordinarily I reckon that Jamie Greene is one of the better MSP's but he ought to ask lawyers first before going ahead and assuming that they will sort everything out later. Personally, I reckon this will be a real mess.
ReplyDeleteThey say that MSP's have spent 10-hours per day for the past two days debating this in Holyrood. This sounds like some of the baggage that came along with Green Party support for the SNP. It is only the Green Party that are fully in tune with this GRC stuff, isn't it. Do they spend 10-hours per year debating Education for example, or Health, or anything else? It one of things like Brexit that will make no major difference to most of us but I reckon the overall effect will be negative. It's been tried elsewhere, in Canada for example, and there have been problems and many of the problems have been pointed-out over the past weeks, but nobody's listening.
ReplyDeleteIt can take a month to get a doctor's appointment, and three to six months for a NHS dental appointment. There are virtually no legal aid lawyers prepared to take on any cases. Yet our little parliament spends time debating and passing crazy laws that allow any man to self-identify as a woman. It shows you where the SNP's priorities are. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Alister Jack is about to throw this load of GRC shite out. About feckin time. He could have done that months ago. Not fit for purpose this lot at Holyrood. Sitting on their arses, passing legislation like this. Wee Patrick Harvie will be really, really angry.
ReplyDeleteThe Conservative Party's number-one aging Bond-girl is Michelle Mone and there is no doubt about that. Number-two is Esther McVey and I just heard that she is implicated in the great-big PPE rip-off as well. My guess is she has chiselled herself a fat wedge. Maybe not tens of millions, but just millions - although several millions. That's my guess. She denies all allegations of course. So, when the glamorous grannies of the Conservative Party put on a show, they can get away with almost anything.
ReplyDeleteIt is shameful to pass such a law at a time when thousands of people lack the means to cook or even heat their houses.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of nation has Scotland developed into?
I agree, for what it's worth, that it is shameful. I get the feeling though that no-one at Holyrood is proud of what they have achieved. This is not equal-sex marriage or anything like that. The absolute silence from Holyrood (even the Twitter accounts appeared to be silent) and the fact that it was rushed through just prior to Christmas tells me that they all know that the public reaction to it is entirely negative. If it doesn't have public support then all at Holyrood are on thin ice. I remember the public reaction to same sex-marriage and it wasn't negative at all. In fact, I was personally quite positive about it, but not this time. It should never have been a party-political matter of course, much more a matter of personal conscience. I notice Kate Forbes didn't vote. She could have, but chose not to. A committed Christian who was afraid of the political consequences to her of voting the wrong way and so she chose not to vote. Very sad when that happens. All the noises from Westminster indicate that a challenge will be mounted and that CRG will never reach the statute book. And so, as you say, a monumental waste of everyone's time.
ReplyDeleteA chap used to write in about the abuse that went on at Thomas Guthrie's School in Edinburgh. That abuse happened because the regulations were too lax and 'bad actors' took full advantage of it. Are we now going back to that? Do Jackie Baillie and Alec Cole-Hamilton really know what a 'dynamic risk assessment' is and do they expect a young girl on the minimum wage at the reception desk of a sports centre to be able to do one quickly on a 6' male protesting that he is actually a female? If they are not absolutely sure, should they have voted to allow this scenario to take place, because it will take place undoubtedly.
ReplyDeleteJust to put this into some context, a risk assessment for a possible minor injury like a burn or an electric shock or a trip would have to be done by a licenced risk professional and it would take him/her about half an hour to an hour to do. A risk assessment for a possible sexual assault would take longer. Do these MSP's actually understand this? I don't think any of them do. They have all been caught-up in the moment. Tht's the only explanation I can find for it.
ReplyDeleteI read there that the economic cost of Brexit to the UK has already exceeded the total cost of contributions to the EU, from the UK, from 1972 to 2020. That was a Professor of International Relations that worked that one out.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, George, and to all the readers and commenters!
ReplyDeleteThank you, bumpy ride just recently down with flu, missed xmas entirely
DeleteI was wondering what a 'bad actor' was in the context of the GRC debate. Everyone's going on about bad actors and I didn't really know what was meant by it. There were two male prisoners in a female only jail. Both made the women uncomfortable by being there but one of them had a permanent erection which was evidenced by the bulge in his trousers. You've got to ask yourself, does this guy want be identify as a woman, or does he just want to be able to molest women? That's the question, isn't it. I am made uncomfortable by the GRC debate and I suspect that our MSP's have been taken for fools. That is why it has all gone quiet.
ReplyDeleteThey say the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe because, under Thatcher, we chose banking over industry. The choice was there at the start of the North Sea oil boom and we chose the wrong option.
ReplyDeleteI was reading about the progressive new right to die law being discussed in our little parliament. Out of curiosity, I looked up Scottish data on life expectancy, live births, and abortions. I came across this. These are figures from 2018. I discovered this.
ReplyDeleteAccording to statistics from 2018, there were 13286 abortions and 12580 live births. I find it surprising that there were more abortions in Scotland in 2018 than live births.
The right to die law is legal in Canada, and I've been reading that it started off with restrictions on who could apply. People with terminal illnesses, etc. Now they are including younger people when they say their life is not worth living. Homeless people, drug addicts, and those who are depressed because they can't find work are a few examples. In Scotland we already have the lowest life expectancy in Europe. The highest drug deaths, suicides, and prison populations. We also have more abortions than live births. The assisted-dying legislation. A law allowing assisted suicide is the absolute last thing we need.
ReplyDeleteThe number of abortions undertaken in 2021 was 13,758, a slight reduction from the 13,896 terminations undertaken in 2020. 47,785 babies were registered in 2021. The abortion figures for 2018 are correct, but I believe I made a mistake with live births. Still, an abortion rate of 29% is very high.
ReplyDeleteIf a right to die was introduced in Scotland they would be queuing around the block to get on the waiting list. One queue for GRC's waiting list and another queue for right to die waiting list. But, we're the best wee country in the world....right?
ReplyDeletelol, it could be called the "right to die bank."
ReplyDeleteextremely progressive
2 things remind me of what a vainglorious shite-house Holyrood has turned into:
ReplyDelete1. The SNP sacked a Minister for disagreeing with GRC, but the Labour Party sacked two front benchers for doing the same thing.
2. The legal inquiry into the Edinburgh Trams, which is headed by Lord Hardie, has already cost more than the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War (can you believe that). Chilcott presented the findings himself and answered questions. Those at Holyrood have decided against that and have hired a team of PR consultants instead. The Chilcott Inquiry ran into thousands of pages of findings of fact and conclusions of law. It will be interesting to see how many pages our Scottish lawyers have produced and why they cannot present it themselves.
I hear there are several million people coming down with Covid every day in China just now. Their Covid vaccine can't have been have been much feckin good, can it? Much of the world has Oxford University to thank for the Covid vaccine. That's the one that works and is affordable. Professor Bell I think the chap's name was.
ReplyDeleteJust read the average house price in Scotland has risen £23000. That's £442 a week. Great news if you own property.
ReplyDeleteIt is fitting that Holyrood ends the year with GRC. Another wasted year of shite that no-one wants. When are we ever going to put an and to this cabaret act of duds.
ReplyDelete