For the 45th consecutive time I have been invited, organised and then blocked at the last moment from a mainstream media appearance.
On Sunday I received this email from Channel 4:
Channel 4 have cleared their schedule for a live, hour long prime-time programme on Scottish Independence at 10pm on Wednesday 17th September in Edinburgh. I was wondering whether this is something you would consider being involved in?
With just hours to go before Scotland votes, the fate of the whole United Kingdom hangs in the balance. Jon Snow is hosting the debate live from Edinburgh, and will be joined by major politicians, voters, campaigners and well known faces from all across the United Kingdom to thrash it out one last time before the polls open.
We will have a panel of guests, and a front row of experts who will all join the discussion and we would love if he would consider coming along.
Do give me a call if you need more information or have any questions, we’d love to have you on the show if possible
On Monday I phoned them and agreed the details and they told me where to go. This afternoon they cancelled me because “the panel was full”. It was not full when they invited me or agreed everything.
Regular readers will know this happens again, and again, and again. I am invited to a programme, then shortly before the appearance am cancelled because some blocking mechanism steps in. The determination of the establishment to keep dangerous dissent off the airwaves is still implacable – even in Edinburgh tonight. By Friday they will look pretty forlorn.
.
Jeez. The powers can’t allow you on tv. It’s bad and bad enough for them that you tell the truth here, or in halls up and down Scotland. God forbid if people ever heard what a bunch of liars and cheats Westminster/Whitehall is on live television.
Must be last minute checks by people at the top, or objections from politicians who are terrified you are going to embarrass them by letting out one of their parties’ or personal misdemeanors.
RoS:
I’ve nothing against passion, but it is misplaced here. You are being sold a pup.
Secession isn’t revolution, it’s just a reshuffle of the capitalist pack. Disillusion will follow. Scotland and England will both turn to the right. A ‘Yes’ victory would be a disaster for all of us.
Vote ‘No’.
Habbabkuk wrote (a couple of threads back) :
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With likewise respect – robbing a nation of its sovereignty, and making it a colony of your own, is not an act of democracy. Even if you eventually (and grudgingly) grant its citizens the right to contribute to a decision on which Establishment figure gets to rule over them.
It is hard to feel much satisfaction that we might call ourselves a democracy – a parliamentary democracy – when the choices on offer are all centrally controlled (right down to each constituency’s candidates). When the general wishes of the populace are routinely ignored, and most particularly when the population is terribly badly informed – or rather, misinformed – to the point that most make no contribution to election decisions at all.
It would be more accurate to regard ourselves as being managed – not represented – by the paid employees of the largest corporations and financial interests, who are also beholden to their transatlantic masters (who are themselves wedded to a pay-to-play form of “democracy” to an even greater degree).
Colonists are usually allowed to go their own way once an empire has had its day, and is done with ridiculing and making servants of its citizens, while stealing their resources. Surely even you recognise the reasons a nation might tire of this, and want independence.
RoS:
I’ve nothing against passion, but it is misplaced here. You are being sold a pup.
Secession isn’t revolution, it’s just a reshuffle of the capitalist pack. Disillusion will follow. Scotland and England will both turn to the right. A ‘Yes’ victory would be a disaster for all of us.
Vote ‘No’.
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Jesus if everybody had your outlook on life we’d all be on Prozac, independence will remove one layer of useless government Westminster,no one said Scotland will be a utopia with a yes vote, but its a step in the right direction.
A YES vote isn’t the end, its the beginning,the beginning of, well, lets wait and see shall we, but it must be better than what we have now.
Alex Salmond live in Perth, delivering his final speech, the hall is jam packed, hope not fear will prevail.
RoS.
How quaintly naive of you. If secession presented a threat to the ruling classes, do you really think they’d offer it to you?
Divided we fall.
Vote ‘No’.
I mentioned this totalitarian phenomenon last week Craig
http://rt.com/op-edge/187340-bbc-911-money-tv/
Has happened to me before on the Today programme but not scores of times.
If I were a producer or researcher doing my job I would be inviting you, as an authoritative commentator on. Not the clown Russell Brand…
How quaintly naive of you. If secession presented a threat to the ruling classes, do you really think they’d offer it to you?
Divided we fall.
Vote ‘No’.
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Oh it does, and we will, Cameron will be regretting signing the Edinburgh agreement but if he didn’t we’d have pushed independence through by now “The Ruling Classes” maybe you haven’t noticed the Empires dead, and tomorrow evening it will be buried.
Quaint, naive, well, you can stop a man, but you can’t stop an idea,and that idea’s time has come.
The mindset of an ITN reporter. They get worried when they see the cracks occurring in their cosy little world.
ITV political editor Tom Bradby compares reporting Scottish referendum and Northern Ireland
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1410969529.html
I heard today that a friend of mine who is temporarily living and working in Cornwall didn’t apply for his postal vote in time so he’s going to drive home to the Highlands to vote YES. It’s a 1400 mile round trip.
Can you imagine such enthusiasm and commitment from a NO voter?
http://www.newsthing.co.uk/independent-scotland-could-not-keep-boolean-algebra-warns-darling/
You’d think the man from room 101 was still embedded with major media outlets no, Craig? Big angel on top of the christmas tree.
The ‘haves’ have it. We live in a feudal state, not a democracy. This is 2014 not 1904.
A snip for £11m.
Prime Minister’s old Etonian chum who runs the Camerons’ favourite music festival set to buy up entire coastal village in Devon
Nicholas Johnston fought off rival National Trust bid for the Bantham Estate
His family already own the Great Tew Estate in Oxfordshire
Each year he and his wife host the Cornbury Music Festival at Great Tew
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2733044/Prime-Minister-s-old-Etonian-chum-runs-Camerons-favourite-music-festival-set-buy-entire-coastal-village-Devon.html
This item of ‘news’ chimes nicely with the return of a new series of Downton Abbey at the weekend.
George Monbiot gives the definitive encapsulation, for me, of what tomorrow is all about. The United Kingdom is cracking open, and the cracks, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, are how the light gets in. Apologies if already posted.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/16/media-shafted-people-scotland-journalists
I heard today that a friend of mine who is temporarily living and working in Cornwall didn’t apply for his postal vote in time so he’s going to drive home to the Highlands to vote YES.
Once the international border is established, immigration may require that your friend remain in the Highlands, or in Scotland, anyway, which will have the desirable consequence of creating one more job for an English citizen.
But when everyone’s chanting “Yes we can” and telling Unionists to “fuck off” minor technical matters such as this will naturally be overlooked for now, to be regretted later.
Node:
I wish I had a vote. I’d travel twice that far to vote ‘No’. But I’d use public transport.
RoS:
I’m sure your hope and optimism and the hope and optimism of those huge, dizzy, chanting crowds of ‘Yes’ voters is quite genuine. That is what really worries me.
When your progressive, humanist ambitions are stymied by the financiers, the EU, NATO and most particularly the TTIP, and an ‘independent’ Scotland fails dismally to live up to all that hope and expectation, how will you all react?
Deep disappointment will turn to a bitter cynicism about the possibility of ever achieving progressive political change. A dark right-wing cloud will hang over us for generations.
Yes we can, but this isn’t the way.
Vote ‘No’.
After independence, the old line parties in England will be thoroughly discredited , which is one thing for the English to thank the Scots for.
In place of Cameroon, Clogg et al. we’ll likely see some kind of English Nationalist government that will withdraw from the EU.
Then who will be independent? Scotland, an insignificant satrapy of the EU and a NATO tributary, or England?
CanSpeccy 17 Sep, 2014 – 10:14 pm
“Once the international border is established, immigration may require that your friend remain in the Highlands, or in Scotland, anyway ….”
“Once,” not “if”!! Thanks for the vote of confidence.
As regards the border, I don’t believe that you believe that that will happen. I do believe it won’t.
Sounds to me like you are banned Craig.
Gutter 17 Sep, 2014 – 10:15 pm
“When your progressive, humanist ambitions are stymied by the financiers, the EU, NATO and most particularly the TTIP …..”
…. as they already are under Westminster.
On another thread, you agreed with me that the banks have been controlling the UK government for a couple of centuries. How much longer do you reckon Scotland should wait before giving up on Westminster and trying to sort it out for ourselves?
Researchers, and sub editors can run around and make decisions, then there are the editors who can veto, and flush away the set plans.
Already, there has been the snide remarks; “they were made aware of”, along with; “no there is no conspiracy”, plain fact is it is not once or twice but forty five times, this is another facet of zersetzung clearly designed to frustrate and demoralise.
That is why Scottish need to be independent, and start the process of wresting the management of their own affairs in the way of self determination, and shaping their own destiny.
Utter tripe forwarded by the “no” camp in this thread is pitiful and only proves their tenuous grip on realities.
The panel: Vivienne Westwood (dressmaker or something like that), Brian Cox (actor), Pat Kane (musician), Elaine C (Rab C. Nesbitts woman) and Lesley Riddoch (Journo).
Comment?
You’re not asking me, but it looks like a not-very-deep programme with four participants at least media-connected. VW’s been getting a bit of airtime lately, and taken some flak for her support for Yes. For all I know Craig may have been blacklisted for the other 44 occasions, but I think on the sleb scale, he’d be a bit below the panel members listed for this one; Kane would be in the committed activist slot, and presumably fine.
Get a decent agent, Craig. They did.
Hmmm…was it a phonecall…did they identify themselves by name?
I would have just turned up and said you hadn’t received the cancellation notification 😉
Am watching the programme just now….there are a helluva lot of speakers on both sides…so maybe they got a last minute celebrity (like Mariella Frostrop who’s just appeared) and you got shunted off the list. I hope that’s the case.
Either way, we’ll have the last laugh
A positive reading is that there are journalists, and producers, some at senior levels, who think Craig has something interesting to say, and who want him to appear. And they do keep trying, 45 isn’t bad. So this looks like there are internal battles in the media organisations in question, and they are not all journo-drones.
But then it appears that someone steps in. One wonders if it goes as far as the security services, or maybe it’s just some Tory who is Head of News, or whatever they call it these days. It’s all interlinked though ‘innit, so the difference is of mere academic value.
Also, the Guardian just had a weird poll which excluded ‘don’t knows’. 52-48 to the No camp.
With ‘don’t knows’ included, it became 47-43 to the Yes camp. My maths aint great, but that’s very odd poll. And – are don’t knows usually excluded? Psephology isn’t my game – I regard polls as fairly bent in the main – but I can’t recall a poll with ‘don’t knows’ excluded. Polls always have don’t knows. Usually it’s not that many, but could prove statistically significant at the end. Odd.
Dear Murray – when people like would learn the reality that a great majority of Western mainstream media is run by the Zionist mob whose loyalties have always been with a foreign entity, which according to author and human rights activist Janet C. Phelan was created in 1948 to “solve Europe’s Jewish Problem”.
http://rehmat1.com/2014/09/17/israel-was-created-to-solve-europes-jewish-problem/
Node:
I don’t remember agreeing with that proposition. In fact I remember rhapsodising about the achievements of the Atlee government, who set up the NHS and nationalised several important big industries in the interests of the British people and against the interests of the bankers.
You appear to agree with me that financiers, EU, NATO and that charter for privatising everything, the TTIP, will dash the high hopes of those idealistic crowds of ‘yes’ supporters thronging public squares throughout Scotland tonight.
Without the false promise of progressive change, all that is left of your independence campaign is naked nationalism. Which is a diversion and a hindrance to the work we need to do building a movement for real social progress that will free us from those globalised anti-democratic organisations and forces.
Another world is possible. But increased nationalist division can play no part in building it.
Divided we fall.
Vote ‘No’.
And that movement is what? ‘New New’ Labour, or the ‘Fresh’ Tories, the ‘Latent’ Liberals. With each new iteration of these trougher’s fronts, they get incrementally worse. It smells like and looks like same old-same old, exquisitely wrapped, but still a jobby in a box. The movement you pretend you’re looking for, already exists, if you’re genuinely interested it’s called “Yes Scotland”, afterwards “Team Scotland” and it’s understandable if you’ve never heard of them, there are only several million of them, and they’re everywhere, so hardly noticeable at all, by you and by the media you base your opinions on, to which you gladly, as no great loss, surrender your critical faculties, the loss, if any, being imperceptible.
I agree Mary despite an inconvenience the intention Craig projects is way too empowering. too energising and the purest form of non-induced fear-hence the wired insult.
Gutter
“I don’t remember agreeing with that proposition.”
My mistake, sorry. It was Peter45 making the same point as you.
I agree with you that ” financiers, EU, NATO and that charter for privatising everything, the TTIP” are the problem with Westminster, but it’s too deeply entrenched to be rooted out. Westminster is and will remain fucked, sorry.
An independent Scotland, on the other hand, will have a few years of grace before a new Establishment forms – a chance to write our own constitution, a chance to create a type of government which will be better able to resist those forces of corruption – a chance to learn from the mistakes of UK ‘democracy’ and build in safeguards right from the start. I think you underestimate the will for change in Scotland. The referendum process has raised political awareness and involvement. Everyone here has ideas on what our new government should be like, many different ideas, but none of them include ” financiers, EU, NATO and that charter for privatising everything, the TTIP”. We will not sit back and let the usual suspects carve up Scotland, we will demand to be involved.
I am not a wide-eyed idealist. It won’t be easy, it might be impossible, but it is a chance, and if we stay with Westminster we have no chance.