Rebecca McQuillan, regular cosy-upper with Gordon Brewer, tries to fool readers into reading on after that apparently friendly headline.
Hah! Quick as you like, she inserts this:
I’d suggest that she gives us some evidence of that but then we’d have to read it. I feel sure she’d find endless articles where Carlaw, Fraser, Davidson, Bowie, Murray and, of course, the PM, are outraged or insulted or both.
She must have seen Johnson, Bowie and Rees-Mogg affecting outrage at the FM’s response to Prof Sridhar yesterday. I feel sure everyone can see who was doing the inflating.
I can’t be bothered doing it, but I feel sure we can find examples, over years and years, of Tory indignation at Scots having the nerve to actually use devolved powers.
And that last sentence? I find it really really hard, impossible, to imagine that those self-centred, dishonest, Eton schoolboys, with degrees in Classics and advertising, could ever have made a better job of managing the coronavirus response, than the two comprehensively educated, working-class women doing the job here.
Hm, so they would have us all reinfected from an open border, just because they are playing politics – when our lives are at risk I really take a dim view of of this submissive colonial style politics.
Craig Dalzell of the common green has posted an article giving a run-down of the main options of the ways to gain independence – I think it’s good to see the list all in one place, though I argue with a couple of details he puts in: which I think actually comes down to ‘stop worrying about a might-be future’ especially when he says himself that none of the plans are mutually exclusive. Anyway, some folk here might be interested in reading it if they haven’t already:
https://thecommongreen.scot/2020/06/20/the-road-to-independence-part-one-a-democratic-event/
I still disagree that having list-only pro-independence parties is in any way ‘gaming’ the system. Stuff and nonsense.
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Westminster has the power to stop elections to devolved parliaments plus referendums.
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Not quite, Clydebuilt, not legally anyway. The Scottish Parliament has the power to hold referendums without Westminster consent. The problem is when it is a constitutional thing – those are mostly reserved – but the question is not resolved, not legally anyway. Hopefully we will get an answer soon from the judicial review – if you don’t ask, you don’t get!
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Contrary
Coronavirus enabled Johnson and Cummings to grab the powers they hoped Brexit would have gifted them.
In Politics .co.uk Ian Dunt writes:
“Other powers enable the home secretary to request that port and airport operators temporarily close, to cancel elections and “restrict or prohibit events and gatherings”.
https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2020/03/18/coronavirus-bill-the-biggest-expansion-in-executive-power-we
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Clydebuilt – I see what you mean now. In theory those emergency powers run out and things revert, but there do seem to be plans afoot for a ‘new’ devolution settlement, so it is quite possible we have lost any chance of having an independence referendum ever again.
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Contrary
I response to your words of Never Again
Respectfully i must correct you
It us we the Citizens of Scotland that are the sole arbitrators of when and how we have OUR 2nd referendrum
It is our Nation,lands, seas,resources and peoples
And we alone shall decide the future of such
We are the Sovereign Power
That is a universal truth that NONE can deny
And truth is the only possible thing that can exist
Why because that is Reality
Anything else is a temporary state of affairs faslely created by the dellusional
In the vain hope that what they endeavour upon is to establish a false Reality
They are paper tigers and have everything to lose
Whilst we only have the chains that bind us to lose
But everything to gain
We Shall be a Nation again
And that is as sure as the Sun shall set tonight and rise come the morn
Lift your gaze from the wet dreich pavement upon which you stare
And lift your gaze to the horizon and realise what awaits
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😊
The Tories have a sizeable majority at Westminster now . . . . They are capable of holding on to these draconian powers under another guise, if they choose.
Blair’s adviser, Jonathan Powell, was on Newsnight last week , he said if there isn’t a change of tack that the UK will be like Hungary or Poland in a few years.
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Doubtless,the same sort of people would have been accusing the Americans of having a culture of grievance when they decided to part company with Westminster.
People have “grievances” for good reasons.
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More opportunity for incompetence coming our way from a cretin, or three, too near. it was in the Times originally, I think, but behind a paywall.
“British ministers are considering revolutionising Whitehall’s approach to devolution by creating new UK-wide economic and security bodies as part of an effort to strengthen the Union.
A new cabinet group has been set up to promote Boris Johnson’s agenda and devise policies that will enhance the UK government’s standing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Crucial to this will be establishing UK-wide frameworks and making clear what responsibilities are reserved to Westminster. It is understood that Tory ministers are preparing to be more “robust” with their SNP counterparts in taking responsibility for macroeconomic and security issues.
Ideas will be brought forward by the Union Policy Implementation committee, which will be chaired by Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and includes Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, in its membership.
The group, which also includes the secretaries of state for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, has held its first informal meeting. Its mission is defined as being “to support the delivery of the government’s priorities in relation to the Union of the United Kingdom”.
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Yup. This’ll work.
We have an early example with the “quarantine exemptions”, where London has tried to bounce the devolved administrations into following their lead by lying, misinformation, omissions and fake timetables.
Although the media have tried to prop up Westminster’s stupid story, it has unravelled and only makes them look like the clowns they are.
Imagine slithery Gove and languid “Hi” Jack parading round Scotland (to Goves Peterburgh and Fraserhead, perhaps?) pretending to be Lady Bountiful. Who could believe them?
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And now for something completely different and we interrupt this topic
To bring you breaking news
No.10.Boris at the behest of Jacob Rees
& D.Cummins has enacted emergency legislation with regards the wearing of face masks in Scotland which soon will be mandatory
So here is a brief synopsis
1.All masks MUST be in the form of The Union Jack (apparently they were shocked to the core at the image of Nicola wearing a tartan one)
2.Those failing to comply will be taken to a internment camp in Leicester and remain there if they manage to survive
Until Scotland is completely re branded
3. Nicola Sturgeon has agreed to accept
But with one ammendment which has been incorporated into the legislation
4.Ammendment The face masks MUST
Be worn UPSIDE DOWN
Their is great puzzlement within No.10
As to this strange request .None the less they agreed on the grounds that such would be viewed by Johnny Foreigner from afar as the true state and condition of the United Kingdom
This bulletin was brought to you by The Monty Python news desk
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I wear my ears upside down. is that OK?
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Re.your ears being upside down you demonstrate quite remarkably that indeed that the Evolutionarily process in certain aspects that is important is fast
And usually done to adapt and survive as
A species
In this case the species concerned is
Homo Scotia
But this adaptation appears to be only possible in a genetics sub group
Homo Scotia ” Indy”
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“C4 News FactCheck
@FactCheck
· 18h
Boris Johnson said the government sent four new mobile testing units to Leicester ‘shortly’ after 8 June.
@FactCheck understands that it was ten days after that date before the first new centre was opened – and 21 days before four had been added.
https://channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-johnson-not-telling-the-whole-story-on-leicester-testing“
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When Boris makes a statement, it can no longer be defined as lying, as it is his normal mode of communicating.
Assume nothing he says is true.
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More lockdowns on the way in England. More lies about it to follow.
http://www.duncanrobertson.com/2020/07/03/detailed-analysis-of-coronavirus-cases-in-england-new-data-released-by-public-health-england/
Dr Duncan Robertson
Strategy. Analytics. Combining Strategic Management and Management Science.
“I have analyzed these data, available here: coronavirus.data.gov.uk and placed a threshold on the number of cases where the ‘specimen date’ is within the last week.
I have set this threshold at 50 cases per 100,000 population as this is the rate that the German Government uses to place an ’emergency brake’ and where it will reimpose some form of lockdown. These regions are marked red on the map.
I have also used a lower threshold of 40 cases per 100,000 population as a warning theshold, and these are marked amber on the map.
The number of cases per week calculated from the data is likely to be conservative. This is due to the records only being of ‘specimen date’. This is likely to be an underestimate the most recent cases as these are not yet included in the data, as they have not been processed (they may for instance be home tests that are in the postal system).”
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Devi Sridhar has a twitter thread up that explores some of the dire scientific decisions of the SAGE group. She also remarks of the weakness of UK government policy in continuing with the scientists whose advice now is seen as completely wrong in some areas .
Some of the poor advice has already appeared here , so I’m including here just the first bit of Prof Sridhar’s thread with the link.
“I’m reading through the released SAGE minutes from Feb/March & oh wow- some of the conclusions they reached were way off. 8th SAGE meeting: ‘When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.'”
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