Alibi

Sure, we all want to be ruled by a cabal of pink or blue fascist crooks in London, rather than by Scots. People need to look at the reason why this budget is happening. There is a concerted attempt to impoverish Scotland and its population,to portray it as an economic basket case, while at the same time they are putting in place the infrastructure to steal our resources and ship them south, and to make it as difficult as possible for Scotland to flourish. TV & radio pumping out endless stories to demoralise Scots or try to instill a sense of Britishness. All the while, the SNP leadership have become supine, scared to make a fuss, bowing and scraping to the fucking monarchy and to the British establishment. I'm certain there has been infiltration and/or some people being compromised. Maybe the Salmond case will flush out some of the political corruption. I notice UKaye this morning was in full "SNP bad" mode, with her first caller being a Labour apparatchik with a prepared attack of unverified shite. We are at war, a war of independence, and so many people don't even realise what is going on. I have no idea where we go from here. We need to find leaders who will actually lead, not the bland anodyne nonentities we have at the moment. The UK political parties and their leaders have no compunction in accepting genocide in Gaza; let's not pretend they would exhibit higher moral standards when it comes to Scotland. they will fight dirty; in fact they are right now.

That new song by Cher is pretty good. Not quite Maria Scary good but catchy.

Just say you'd forgotten to buy something so went back later in the day to get it.

I'm sure an SNP spokesperson (pronouns he/she/it) will be along soon to rubbish that view and stress that they have full confidence in the UK "supreme court".

That was the thing that struck me right away. However bear in mind that lots of other companies or individuals also supplied unusable PPE - going down that route might spread the contagion to other folk who are hoping to walk away with their loot without any concern about their crimes being exposed to the wider public. Mone seems to have links to Michael Gove - both nominally Scottish, so "no great mischief if they fall" as the saying goes. I think Kuensberg knows exactly which questions not to ask. Remember Medpro are already being sued by the UK government, but why are the many others who supplied defective PPE not also being sued? There's a bigger story here...

There was a lot of comment in 2014 along the lines of "We must offer to take on our share of the national debt even though legally we don't have to". Why? We weren't responsible for running up the massive debt. We've had so many of our resources stolen from us, getting rid of the debt is the least we deserve.

Can't argue with the optics of that. However an indy Scotland would, if done properly, raise taxes from exploitation of our resources rather than all monies heading south. Things that need to be done at the moment are due to being in the union. If they would only explain that in simple terms, people might be more accepting and also might see the need for indy, but they won't do it because they're too fucking thick or don't actually want indy - you decide. Any tax rises need to be accompanied by a statement along the lines of "We are having to do this because currently our finances are controlled by another country. Indy would mean we could avoid these extra taxes as Scotland freed would be a wealthier country." or words to that effect. Not holding my breath.

I find it hard to believe that support for Labour in Scotland is showing a resurgence. Apart from all the stuff listed up the page a short distance, Labour are now strongly Brexity, and very anti-indy - Lisa Nandy wants indy supporters beaten up by the polis, or so she says. Labour would never countenance Scotland having the same arrangement as NI because we don't really do bombing stuff. Starmer is strongly pro-Israel and is happy with Gaza being obliterated with tens of thousands killed. His policies are pretty much Tory with a few minor cosmetic changes - Labour is the Morris to the Tories' Wolseley for anyone who remembers 60s badge engineering. Labour will not be good for Scotland. What a pity we no longer have an actual Scottish party that will stand up for Scotland in a meaningful way, but all we get are daft policies and woke wankers putting their pronouns in their signatures, things that drive away support.

Yes, but Salmond didn't raise this case - which apparently has today been decided. The SG lost and have to comply with whatever they were asked to comply with. See Wings for a brief resumé.

There is a severe shortage of tinned anchovies. Due to El Nino affecting the shoals off Peru apparently.

Don't think this latest case is driven by Salmond. Not directly anyway.

My membership expired recently and I haven't renewed so far. IMHO no government should be attempting to do this. It's on a par with the lying alphabet women (I assume they are women but hard to be sure given the secrecy) being given lifetime anonymity. My thoughts are "what are they trying to hide?". I very much hope they don't manage to prevent the release of the information, although no doubt someone higher up the UK establishment food chain will decide.

Agreed about the need for policy changes, but the SNP need to start campaigning now. Labour are there for the taking with their policies. No matter how Sarwar tries to differentiate "Scottish" Labour, in a UK general election he can't be allowed to get away with that. He is by definition pro-brexit, anti Scottish democracy whether he wants to be or not cos that's what London Labour dictates. Any half decent SNP leader would be ramming that home daily, but Yousaf seems more interested in making ultimately pointless gestures about Middle East politics - virtue signalling like his old boss. Trouble is he's not really a leader.

Yes, the timing is clearly to avoid the case going beyond the time limit. May well get settled out of court anyway although how embarrassing would that be for Sturgeon? I can see why Salmond is not willing to let it go.

Agreed. They are toxic, and they are harmful to the SNP's electoral prospects. And hardly anyone voted for them - they only have list seats, and they only have those because they claimed to want independence. How many would have voted for them if they hadn't said they wanted independence?

I'm sure it didn't all happen by accident. i'm inclined to think there are folk within the SNP deliberately harming the party, whether by bringing forwards daft legislation that the public hate or by other even more devious means. maybe some stuff will come to light via the Salmond case.

The problem is that the SNP went down the virtue signalling route and have just about painted themselves into a corner. They can't plausibly start calling for Grangemouth to stay open as a refinery while at the same time saying we have to stop producing oil. To reverse that position would likely require a new leader who isn't tarred (see what I did there?) with the oil abolitionist brush. My own view is that Scotland stopping oil production would make about no difference to our climate - oil will just be produced by the rest of the oil-producing countries around the world. Also, there are other uses for oil apart from burning it - is the plastics industry to shut up shop? Of course the real reason behind the Grangemouth closure is that it removes Scotland's ability to refine oil products, harming our economy and making us economic prisoners of the rUK. Fuck the union.

Can't disagree with a word of that tbh. Those that facilitated it need to be identified, called out, and exposed for what they are.

I don't think this proposal has happened just because Ratcliffe wants it - it's a nailed on certainty that the UK government is involved, and without a doubt Starmer is in the loop. Remove Scotland's capacity to refine our own oil and you have Scotland by the balls. It said in the papers that the refinery made a loss of £360 million last year, but shuffling money around and a bit of creative accountancy can create a "loss" to order. How does this plant compare with the 5 plants in England and Wales? This is a blatant political act of economic vandalism, aided by Sturgeon's naive and impractical virtue signalling about oil and gas - if the SNP actually had a leader, rather than the ventriloquist's dummy shoehorned into place (andIi use the word dummy deliberately) there would have been an immediate and incandescent response. This is an act of economic war against Scotland almost as much as destroying the plant by bombing, along the lines being threatened by some unionist politicians in 2014. Pipelines and cables being taken ashore south of the border. Destruction of Scotland's industrial capacity. Already they're talking about stealing our water resources as well as our hydrocarbons, our wind and wave energy. what a shame we have such a bunch of useless wankers masquerading as a government in Scotland. My pronouns for the vast majority of them are fuck and off. And if I hear the phrase "just transition" again, I may spontaneously combust. How the fuck did we ever get to this situation?

I don't know if that post was a response to my post immediately preceding it, but I think you're not quite correct. Nobody actually likes having to pay tax, but most people appreciate that it is meant to be for the common good. If everyone paid their due taxes, most people would regard that as fair and equitable. The discord arises when some individuals, and some companies, don't pay taxes that they should be paying, and particularly when individuals use tax havens to avoid paying tax. Of course folk are going to moan about paying taxes, but I hardly think they're going to convert to hardline Toryism - in fact bear in mind that under the current UK government, taxes are as high as they've ever been in my (fairly long) lifetime. Whilst I don't object to paying taxes, and in fact have a policy of paying my income tax as soon as I find out what is due (I'm not in the PAYE system), I do object strongly to some of the things on which my taxes are spent; nuclear weapons, wars, the monarchy, blocking independence, and the vast sums stolen by corruption due to fraudulent PPE contracts and other covid-related scams, but that's a different issue.

I doubt she is bright enough to come up with that one deliberately. However her stance on oil and gas was I think, like many things, more about virtue signalling than anything else. She has almost the SNP into a corner and it is essential that a more pragmatic attitude is adopted pronto. She has removed a source of GDP, reduced our energy security, and put us at the mercy of international markets as far as oil and gas are concerned. Meanwhile the rest of the world will continue to produce fossil fuels and sell them to us.

Completely removing Scotland's ability to refine oil. Ratcliife doing his bit to strip Scotland of the ability to exploit our own resources.

I don't think he objects to anyone actually being here. It's them having a vote in an indyref that is the sticking point. I'm sure you can see the problem if the UK were actively to encourage hundreds of thousands of people from England, all vetted for their unionist beliefs, to move to Scotland. It would be a sort of plantation of Ulster situation. I know that's a huge exaggeration, but don't expect the UK to play fair over indy. We need to overcome the problem by persuading incomers that their life will be better under indy, by pointing out the benefits they already have, and also pointing out that if they are stupid enough to vote for any unionist party (Labour in particular but also the other ones) they will likely end up losing a lot of the benefits we currently enjoy, up to and including the Scottish Parliament. I don't think anyone is suggesting burning people out of their homes or any form of violence - leave that to the yoons of 19th September 2014.

I think that's taking it a bit far. Pointing out that a lot of people move here from England is just stating the facts. Why they would want to come here if they oppose indy is hard to understand. Though quite a few do seem to support indy - the enlightened ones.

The thing about inheritance tax is that it is imposed on people who have wealth up to a certain point, but those who are even richer can avoid it entirely. I think the starting point is £500k at the moment, and that's not actually a lot if you have a house, a car etc. It's a lot if you have nothing, but that's really a different issue and should be addressed by governments setting tax rates that generate sufficient money to ensure everyone has a proper safety net - the idea of a universal basic income seems like a reasonable concept to me. Ask yourself why the monarchy don't pay inheritance tax. Do you think Rishi Sunak will pay it? Alister Jack? Not a chance. They have their wealth stored out of reach of the UK tax system. If we had a proper inheritance tax, wealth would be taxed annually on vast wealth like Sunak's wife, and those folk wouldn't even notice it had gone. Set a wealth threshold of say £10 million and take a progressively tiered chunk of anything above that and it would start a genuine wealth redistribution process. If folk don't like it, they can afford to move elsewhere. Instead, the uK government go after folk who've struggled to buy a house, paid a mortgage etc, and then the UK blows it all on wars. I for one don't mind paying reasonable taxes, but I want to know that everyone else is in the same boat. And once tax has been paid on capital earned, the tax authorities shouldn't be coming back for another huge chunk, especially at relatively low thresholds. The UK is a fucking Ponzi scheme and it's being financed by you and me (but not the obscenely wealthy).