A particularly mendacious lie by Danny Alexander puts the institutional start-up costs of Scottish Independence at £1.5 billion. That is a cool half billion pounds cheaper than Scotland’s share of the costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, even on the Westminster government’s blatant under-estimate of the war costs.
So Scotland can afford criminal invasions killing hundreds of thousands to ‘bring freedom’, but cannot afford the smaller cost of its own freedom!!!
The £1.5 billion estimate is mendacious in two ways. Firstly, it is a simple recycling of a Canadian lie at the time of the Quebec independence referendum, apportioning with no argument 1% of GDP to startup costs.
Secondly, as nearly all the money will be spent in Scotland it is not a loss at all, but actually an increase to GDP, as any but the most nutty neo-con would be forced to acknowledge. And it would be the precursor of government money spent annually in Scotland rather than England for ever thereafter.
Thankfully Alexander won’t have a job much longer – and if he thinks a penny of Scottish public spending is going in future to support his huge arse and deceitful mouth, he is very wrong.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044j40n
Danny Alexander on at 2hr 6min.
He puts his view a cross in an open an honest way although he focuses on monetary matters like it is paramount. When will people realise that money is just an inconvenience!
Mary.
It certainly seems a strange one to outsource child protection services when you would consider community based local services to be superior.
What concerns me is the closing of sure start centres which are a great benefit for new parents.
Apparently the right wing parties accounted for a truly majestic 1,5% of turnout in the Ukraine Presidential election.
It is strange that the self-appointed “anti-fascists” on this blog remain so silent in the face of this good news.
Moreover, this significant bit of news seems to have passed by entirely unnoticed by the normally oh so-vigilant Marys, Gosses, Peaceakers and assorted other loudmouths.
Whence this sudden blindness? Could it be that they are secretly disappointed?
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La vita è bella, life is good!
Not a bad post on the Hitchens blog about Ukraine: “Ukraine – A Warning to the Furious”.
You can see why so many people in power don’t like him.
Mary
“‘On a point of information, Mary, is that one of the privately-run prisons you’ve complained about in the past, or is it a state-run prison?’
Has the poster @ 6.49pm not heard of Google?
I notice no concern expressed for those in need of psychiatric care. Some will be past members of HM Forces.”
_____________________
Google? What’s that?
Since it was you who chose to comment about HMP High Down, I obviously thought that you would know whether it was a state-run or private prison. Why did you choose not to tell your readers, Mary?
Re your comment about concern, I didn’t note much concern in your original comment either. In fact, I got the distinct impression that you don’t give a flying fuck about mentally-ill people except as a further handy little stick with which to beat the govt. Your hypocrisy stinks to high heaven!
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PS – are you a comfortably-off member of the middle class, espousing Tony Crosland/Tony Benn type socialism?
Get my name right, Habby. Peacemaker is a highly worthy concept but in the context of false-flags here, there, and everywhere it seems somewhat remote at the moment. I am a Peacewisher of the John Lennon “Imagine” variety. I hope some day you’ll join us…
“Thankfully the good guy won”
Eh!
This scumbag?
“He has never been an entrepreneur or start a business of his own. The story is invented. He made a head start thanks to the criminal connections of his father sentenced for large-scale theft in 1986. Having served the sentence, Poroshenko Sr. launched his own business making his son involved in the activities.
The business was dirty, it all started with the plundering of state property by armed gangs. The Poroshenko family had plans to expand the activities beyond Ukraine. Tatyana Mikoyan, a well-known Kiev-based lawyer, remembers what the family did in Transnistria,
«It was horrible back in the 1990s: illegal arms, prostitutes, drugs – all bringing profits to father and son».”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/money-laundering-who-is-ukraines-president-petro-poroshenko/5384213
No surprise to see you cheering on the thieving oligarch murdering ordinary people, all for an extra bit of turf to plunder.
Amazing the way people like you are so keen to support this murdering thug and condemn the much milder response of the previous president, who was happy to engage in talks.
You are a truly disgusting creature.
But then you have to be to cheer on what your Israeli mates get up to on a daily basis.
At least you’re consistently on the side of evil.
H/T to Dreoilin for this pertinent news.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/head-of-the-imf-christine-lagarde-in-court-charged-with-embezzlement-and-fraud-8628670.html
A bit of connectivity and context here; http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/27/imf-chief-lagarde-bankers-ethics-risks
“Peacemaker’ was St Ronaldus’ paean to Orwell. He changed the public perception of the MX system for his re-booting of the arms race using the vaunted ‘doublespeak’ of our Leaders.
Don’t be too hard on Habby, Herbie. He’s only repeating what we can all read in our highly impartial news media.
Yes, Ben. Another example was the “Peacemaker” missile, which Tracy Chapman so effectively exposed.
Correction; “PeaceKEEPER”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper
I remember him trotting out Posterboard with pictures (like Bibi’s ‘bomb’ lol) showing smaller but more advanced solid-fuel US rocketry and comparing the ancient behemoths of hydrogen, to illustrate how we needed to catch up with the Soviets.
Herbie
Gosh, you DO sound miffed that the good guy won, fairly and squarely!
But hey, that’s democracy for you – you have to learn to roll with the punches sometimes, Herbie!
PS – love your eulogy for the previous Prezzie.
Whoops! Yes, sorry Ben.
“Why are the missiles called Peacekeepeers when they’re trained to kill…”
I wonder will Geithner or whatever goon has replaced him at Treasury be calling for her to resign immediately, as he did with DSK.
Don’t think so.
Another hypocrite, proving ever more demonstrably the whole thing was a fit up.
“Why are the missiles called Peacekeepers when they’re trained to kill…”
It’s all a question of perverted perspective.
Some people think only of what is done to them, never what they do to others.
They’re called psychopaths, and they’re currently running the western world.
Peacemaker; Here’s the reference Reagan was using. http://guns.wikia.com/wiki/Colt_Peacemaker
Being an actor in Hollywood made him an expert on the Old West as we romantically recall.
Eastwood’s Unforgiven took the shine off that mythology.
Whoops!! Sorry about that Peacewisher. 🙂
Now the Poles are sending in Death Squads and chemical weapons, having trained their fascist friends in their use, to kill even more civilians.
“By order of the Kiev directorate of the SBU, the fighters, the cargo and the containers of poison were not inspected and left the airport in cars with tinted windows. The cargo was accompanied by CIA agent Richard Michael. Aboard the plane were also fighters from the Right Sector and the Polish private military company ASBS (Analizy Systemowe Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz) Othago, created several years ago by Poland’s current Minister of the Interior, B. Sienkiewicz.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/polish-death-squads-fighting-in-ukraine-cia-covert-operation/5384210
I know a great deal about psychiatric illness as it happens. Does caring for a mother with dementia over several years qualify? Or having helped friends recover from breakdowns and being a volunteer for a local charity that helps carers, some of whom are at their wit’s end. My late husband was a Samaritan too bless his soul.
You really have no place here as you appear to be heartless.
‘All men are brothers’. Have you heard of that saying?
Kempe, correct over UN. Ukraine has apparently supplied UN helicopters in peacekeeping missions to Congo and elsewhere.
“Commit no crime, stay out of prison!”
What a load of tosh!
Your Yankee friends let Herman Wallace out to die of cancer after 42 years in solitary confinement having not committed a crime. They still have Shaker Aamer in Guantanamo. Aamer’s friend, also a former detainee at Guantanamo, Moazzam Begg, has been in police custody since February. Having been subjected to it himself he was investigating the torture about which the British Secret Services don’t want you to know.
No wonder nobody takes you seriously when you come out with such Yerunda!
Yeroonda might be better, or ерунда!
The gangsters-in-charge are meeting in Denmark tomorrow. Bilderberg time again.
Mandelslime, Gideon and Balls Up are going.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/is-it-the-bilderberg-conference–or-conspiracy-9449477.html
@Herbie: These Poles should know better. They were massacred by the Banderites in the 1940s, when the latter had teamed up with Hitler. Now they are working with them?! What was that about “strange bedfellows” in some Shakespeare play?
Mary
“I know a great deal about psychiatric illness as it happens. Does caring for a mother with dementia over several years qualify? Or having helped friends recover from breakdowns and being a volunteer for a local charity that helps carers, some of whom are at their wit’s end. My late husband was a Samaritan too bless his soul.”
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So what?
Your comment at 16h19 was not about mental illnesses in general but was specifically about mental illness among prisoners, with particular reference to HMP High Down. You used that to get in another kick at the govt.
You should be ashamed about that – and you should be even more ashamed to retell personal stories here in an effort to create a diversion from my question to you, which was : is HMP High Down a state or a privately-run prison?
Why on earth are you so upset at that question?
Could it be that you normally wax indignant at how privately-run prisons are run and that you are now embarrassed to have to admit that state-run prisons aren’t that wonderful either??
Mary, it hardly seems a year since I was down at Watford on last year’s Bilderberg fringe protest. The weather was gorgeous. The speakers and entertainers were good too. one of the items on the Bilderberger agenda was “The Challenge of Africa” but as far as I could see there was nobody from Africa invited. These people are a lot more dangerous than Paul Flynn thinks they are.
Herbie
“Now the Poles are sending in Death Squads and chemical weapons,…”
________________________
What do you mean by “the Poles”, Herbie?
Your comment appears to attempt to give the impression that it’s the Polish govt that is “sending in Death Squads”.
I note however that your cut and paste refers to a “Polish private military company ASBS (Analizy Systemowe Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz)”.
Are you trying to mislead, Herbie, or are you just confused?
BTW, I note that the origin of your cut and paste is the Californian “Global Research” outfit, which we’ve come across before now on this blog. Ni one should place too much confidence on what they write. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, they are nutters in the Dr Paul Craig Roberts class.
Mr Goss
“These people {ie, the Bilderbergers} are a lot more dangerous than Paul Flynn thinks they are.”
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Right on, John.
And 9/11 was a vast conspiracy, as was the assassination of JFK, and everything is really run by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers.
Grow up, for Heaven’s sake.
Peacewisher
“What was that about “strange bedfellows” in some Shakespeare play?”
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Don’t get over-excited, P. Just focus on the efforts of the legitimate armed forces of the legitimate govt of Ukraine, acting on the orders of the democratically elected President of the country, in their mission to rid the country of fascist thugs and bullyboys seeking to to create a Mafia-ministate in the east of the country under the risible guise of “separatism” and “federalism”.
And H as regards the imprisonment of Moazzam Begg I shall be saying a few words from the floor tomorrow night about this wrongful removal of freedom (29th May) in Birmingham, 7.30 p.m. Rooms 3 – 4 Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham B1 1BB. Left Unity Launch Meeting. We’ll be bringing socialism back to the masses. I’ll be there. What about you?
“And 9/11 was a vast conspiracy, as was the assassination of JFK, and everything is really run by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers.”
By George, he’s got it! By George he’s got it! Now once again, where was the vast conspiracy?
The twin towers. The twin towers.
Where again?
The twin towers. The twin towers.
(Singing) The way they fell it could not be a plane.
The rain in Spain says mainly on the plain.
🙂