John McNally 114


John McNally has been selected by the membership to fight Falkirk for the SNP. I was able to congratulate him yesterday and offer any assistance I can give in the campaign. I spent a total of ten hours locked in various small rooms with John as we waited to take our turn at each of the four hustings meetings in the constituency, and he is a genuinely decent man who will make an excellent MP. He was not just courteous, but markedly kind and helpful to me as a newcomer to the constituency. It was evident he was not only a Councillor, but a man deeply rooted in his community. There was nobody we met during the process of whom John could not tell me not just who they were, but about their family for several generations.

I will not pretend that I am not still stunned by the strength of hostility of the SNP highheidyins towards me, and my removal from the ballot. But to put that in context, here is the email I sent to the leader of the SNP group on Falkirk Council on 12 November:

Dear Cecil,

[Name deleted] …gave me your email address. I believe she mentioned to you that I am looking to stand as an SNP candidate at the forthcoming Westminster election, and very interested indeed in the prospect of campaigning in Falkirk, which I strongly believe we can win.

But I would like to make absolutely clear that if there is a hardworking and qualified local person who wishes to be the candidate and who would have a good chance to win, I would not want to come in from outside and spoil somebody else’s hopes. Does that make sense?

As you may know, I am a former British Ambassador and former Rector of the University of Dundee, and campaigned very hard during the referendum campaign both speaking at meetings and online. I have been an SNP member since 2011. Before that I was a Lib Dem but resigned in disgust! My application to be approved as a candidate is lodged with SNP HQ. I realise they are swamped at the moment and hope we will be able to find a way to get that dealt with in good time. I contacted [name deleted – a MSP] who suggested that if I could get definite interest from a constituency, that may help prioritise processing the application. That seems a bit chicken and egg as to which comes first (not a Jim Murphy reference)

Craig

The reply of the same date was:

Dear Craig,

Thanks for your e mail, it is good to know that there is interest in Falkirk, as it will in deed be a key seat.

We are in a very different position this time round for the Westminster Elections, and would not discourage giving members a choice of potential candidates

Cecil

I therefore went forward despite my strong reservation, on the express understanding that the members wanted to have a wide choice. But from the first time I met John McNally, I was having qualms of conscience about standing against someone who is the kind of local citizen, not a career politician, who ought to be an MP. That is why I can say, that irrespective of my continuing concerns about the values of some of the central SNP establishment, the local outcome is the right one for the people of Falkirk. I shall certainly be back there occasionally to campaign for John McNally.

PS By coincidence today is the anniversary of the victory of the great Lord George Murray against the Hanoverians in the Battle of Falkirk, 1746. I don’t think the family had been back since, until this campaign. 🙂 There is an old stained glass window installed in the shopping mall in the centre of Falkirk, one level down. It includes a large portrait of George Murray. The interesting thing is that this portrait, from the 1830’s – which is a fantastic piece of glasswork – shows in great detail his kilt, which is identical in absolutely every respect to the Murray of Atholl tartan in my own kilt. One of the anti-national myths perpetuated in Scotland is that kilts are a recent romantic invention. They are not, they date back at least seven hundred years and the modern “small kilt” at least 240 years. Part of the myth is that the clan tartans were invented by weaving mills in the 1890’s. This window is incontrovertible proof that is not true either.


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114 thoughts on “John McNally

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  • Ba'al Zevul

    Oh, and sign this, please”

    So the new found scottish democracy is already reduced to petitioning leadership online.

    It seems a pretty good way of making issues unignorable to me, whatever the state of Scottish democracy. Pity the UK’s political system makes this sort of thing necessary, and even greater pity Scotland does not have any effective influence over UK foreign policy, but you know why that is, and that is apparently perfectly ok with you.

    So we’ll be remaining the backup base for US ambitions fin Europe for a while, then. Your reasons for supporting TTIP would be more relevant than the usual reflex bitching. If you’ve got a clue what it is.

  • Robert Crawford

    Craig.

    I have just bought your book, Murder in Samarkand. It is bringing back bad personal memories.
    Those in Power cannot be critised without a consequence, a bad consequence for the person that critices. Having said that I would and continue to criticise as and when I think it is needed.

    The bit I don’t get is, so many people say they agree with you and me, to a lesser extent yet they themselves lack the courage to speak out.
    Probably like the NO voters,feart they lose their jobs/money.

    So all I can say to them is,” line up all cash cows and be prepared to be milked because that is how you are being treated”.

    Oh, when is the worm going to turn?.

  • Johnstone

    Robert
    -Did you have a lot of good teachers who could control the class and educate you well?-

    I’m not sure whether my personal experience is a good barometer here but generally speaking teachers are empathetic and driven by social motives. can that be said of your average entreproder

    How often have you changed your barber?
    I don’t use the barber insraed I go to the hairdressers

    What are soldiers good at? umm logistics for one thing

    I agree with Duncan
    – the economic fallacy of composition that the tories always push. –

    policies of economic growth are in contravention of the second law of thermodynamics but there’s not a businessman on the planet that knows one jot or tittel about physics

  • CanSpeccy

    Real UK (and Scotch) independence would be mean the final abandonment of and good riddance to the British Empire, now incorporated in Washington, DC.

    Within an independent UK, the Scots could be as devolved as the liked.

    My own preference would be for about a dozen provinces for the UK, pretty much on the model of the Canadian Confederation. Then the Scotch could speak their funny dialect as much as they liked (Gaelic being too difficult to master, obviously — and totally useless) to remind themselves of how different and generally superior they are to the English.

    Ultimately, the Irish might accept a standing offer of membership of the Federation of the British Isles, an entirely logical geopolitical unit, comprising a defensible archipelago with a common language and a common Celtic and Christian heritage.

  • Vronsky

    Note: Although accepting nomination in Airdrie, Craig immediately offered to withdraw in favour of the local candidate. Alas, the SNP’s ‘vetting panel’ (sounds sinister now) took matters out of our hands.

    Until the next time, Craig.

  • John Goss

    Craig, ditch them. Lock, stock . . .

    Syriza is going to show the way to oust these ‘dyed in the Tartan’ sheep.

    Left Unity is allied to Syriza and Podemos. The time is coming. The time is now.

    In a few years Syriza has overturned the corrupt system that got Greece into so much debt. It is the same system that sustains other European countries. They will all crumble, as Marx predicted, though he did not account for global war to protect these corrupt governments and corporations, from what I recall.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    “Syriza is going to show the way to oust these ‘dyed in the Tartan’ sheep.”
    __________________

    You still haven’t given us at least an outline of how Syriza is going to show the way (= its programme, in outline). This despite you mentioning it frequently.

    Could this be because on the one hand Syriza remains delightfully vague about certain policies, eg on illegal immigration (this takes the form of dodging questions on this) and on the other keeps shifting its position wrt those policies it has been slightly clearer on?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    “In a few years Syriza has overturned the corrupt system that got Greece into so much debt.”
    _________________

    Surely you meant to say “..will have overturned…” ?

    I will bet you money that it won’t have (if it forms the next govt., that is). If I lose I’ll pay you in rubles (or new Greek drachmas) and if I win you’ll pay me in Swiss francs.

  • Mary

    Oh no! Marr has got Aaronovitch reviewing the Sunday papers. I am sure the subject of those Islamic terrrists will be brought up.

  • bjsalba

    @Ba’al Zevul

    Why is 38 Degrees petitioning The Scottish Government? This is NOT a devolved matter.

    After the Gagging bill went through, many of the original people left the organization left. they now promote member initiated petitions without bothering to vet them. petitioning people who have no power to do anything is a way of diverting the public’s attention from those who do.

    I now regard them as Westminster party stooges. Why are you promoting this silly petition? Are you just ignorant, or are you a party stooge too?

  • Silvio

    I apologize for this off topic post but I think the information it contains is important for our future safety and the preservation of traditional democratic rights and freedoms.

    The Charlie Hebdo shootings, the censored video:

    Eric Blair
    Activist Post

    Much has been made about the lack of blood in the video showing a French policeman allegedly shot in the head at point-blank range with an AK-47 assault rifle during the Charlie Hedbo attack.

    The video continues to be removed and censored on YouTube and other platforms despite the lack of blood. Yet, countless videos of John F Kennedy’s head exploding from a long-distance shot remain on these websites.

    Here is the video in question with some commentary: (embedded video at link)
    http://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/sky-news-reporter-makes-freudian-slip.html

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    MODS

    Should you not be asking “Silvio” to put the above post (on Charlie Hebdo) on the appropriate thread and in the meanwhile mark it as being under moderation?

    After all, that’s what you did to me when I posted a couple of items wrt Charlie Hebdo on the wrong thread.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    Yes, you’re right – I’d forgotten that.

    I wonder if you wouldn’t agree with me that a lot of it (not all, of course) is either populist nonsense (German war debt), simply unrealisable (ending the Church’s tax exemptions) or more of what got Greece onto its financial mess (which was there, albeit concealed, well before the 2008 financial crisis)?

    Anyway, here is a prediction: 90% of what you posted/linked to will not happen if Syriza forms the next govt in Greece.

  • Mark Golding

    Speaking of freedoms, humans like to tickle pink or ‘turn on’ their partners with perhaps a titillating email or message. Imaginably amorous and steamy private notes are routinely sent to a sweetheart or truelove.

    We may also have business advantages that provides an edge over a competitor that are/should be kept confidential. The ‘old school’ envelope was our guarantee of privacy because it sealed the contents away from inquisitive eyes.

    The modern ‘electronic envelope’ is encryption. Creating a good puzzle to communicate something private to a entity we trust makes it difficult for an intruder or ‘man-in-the-middle’ to interpret and conceivably use the information against us. Encryption is important to safeguard our daily lives.

    It comes as no surprise that GCHQ/NSA/Israel’s Unit 8200/ had broken/exploited a common Internet encryption protocol called SSL or Secure Sockets Layer. Thankfully Ivan Ristić helped us to prevent such attacks and devised a free test of vulnerable servers.

    https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

    Miffed at their exposure thanks in part to Edward J. Snowden, a technically illiterate agent Cameron has decided to eliminate end-to-end data encryption for everybody as a construct of the ‘war on terror’ boosted by recent ‘terrorist’ attacks.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/17/cameron-obama-ban-encryption-improve-cybersecurity

  • MJ

    There’s also a good quality video of the Paris “shooting” here:

    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc6_1420632668

    If you blow up the video and watch the “shooting” sequence frame by frame it becomes clear why there’s no blood and why the person wearing the police uniform does not react to the impact of a close-range shot from an AK47. It’s because he is not hit by a bullet. If there is a bullet it impacts with the pavement a few centimetres from the “policeman’s” nose. Follow the trajectory of the white smoke. Given that there appears to be no damage to the pavement either it is not unreasonable to conclude that no bullet was fired, only a blank to create the bang and the plume of smoke.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Why is 38 Degrees petitioning The Scottish Government? This is NOT a devolved matter.

    After the Gagging bill went through, many of the original people left the organization left. they now promote member initiated petitions without bothering to vet them. petitioning people who have no power to do anything is a way of diverting the public’s attention from those who do.

    I now regard them as Westminster party stooges. Why are you promoting this silly petition? Are you just ignorant, or are you a party stooge too?

    I’m no-one’s stooge. And I don’t regard people expressing their own views as necessarily being stooges. I look for clear confirmation first. For a verdict on our relative ignorance, I will have to rely on the opinion of disinterested observers, as will you.

    With its almost certainly increased representation in Westminster next year, the SNP will in fact be voting on non-devolved issues. Sturgeon is currently the leader of the SNP. There is also the point that the Scottish legal system is entirely different from the English one, and Scots have a right to be consulted about alterations to it made by Westminster.

    I have already written to my (English) MP, and do not expect more than the automatic reply I received. IMO the TTIP issue is such an insidiously nasty piece of legislation, all avenues need to be explored. There are other options on the site should you believe Sturgeon doesn’t need to know how you feel.

    Or are you an establishment stooge? Maybe you think TTIP is a good idea? Feel free to tell us why.

    As regards 38 Degrees, I hold no particular brief for it. It’s an accessible means to an end as far as I am concerned. It lacks discipline, and will probably not succeed as a political movement. Meanwhile, it’s useful.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Ba’al signed, thanks

    Syriza only has a chance of winning elections because Greece has PR for national elections, because Syriza is a coalition of most of the left wing parties plus the greens (there being no such coalition in the UK), and because Greece has suffered a level of austerity that goes well beyond even what the Coalition have done

    Best chance of an equivalent here would if the Greens started doing well – hard if they get minimal media coverage compared to UKIP. Hope they win their court case to be included in the TV debates. Good sign that the Green parties of Scotland, England, Wales and NI now have more members than the Lib Dems or UKIP

  • Tim

    Is SYRIZA the only party of the European LEFT to be calling for tax cuts?

    If you do not like the TTIP negotiation you need to leave the EU – trade negotiation is the sole competence of Mrs Malmström.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Duncan MacFarlane

    You are right about Syriza itself being a coalition of left-wing parties.

    If you’re interested in the forthcoming Greek elections in themselves, here are three comments:

    1/. Are you sure that Greece has PR for national elections? I’m too lazy to look it up at present but I seem to remember that individuals MPs are linked to specific constituencies, ie X is the member for (eg) Larissa, Y is the member for Athens alpha, Z is the member for Thessaloniki vita and so on.

    2/. Under the Greek system the “winning” party – ie, the party that gets the highest percentage of the overall vote (even if it’s only 0,01% more than the next party) gets a extra “bonus” number of MPs. I forget the size of the bonus but this provision exists in order to give the “winning” party a chance of forming a stable govt without being dependent on a number of other ( smaller)parties in a by definition potentially unstable coalition.

    3/. There is no comparison between the austerity measures taken in Greece and the so-called austerity measures in Western Europe. For example, in no European country (except possibly to a very small extent in Portugal), have public sector salaries and pensions been cut in nominal terms. BUT – to repeat – the Greeks brought much of this upon themselves with the rot starting in 1981 with the coming into power of the first PASOK govt – a PASOK whose rhetoric and policies at the time, by the way, closely ressembled those advocated by Syriza today (Mr Goss please take note).

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Tim

    On a point of fact: trade negotiations are only the Commission’s sole competence in the sense that the Commission – rather than the 28 Member States collectively – does the actual negotiation. However, it acts – or is supposed to act – on the basis of what are call “negotiating directives” which are given to it by the Council of Ministers. The Commission is required to keep the Council informed on the progress of negotiations and the directives can be revised an adapted in response and in order to given further guidance to the Commission as necessary and appropriate.The final outcome of the negotiations is also, of course, subject to approval by the Council itself.

    This qualifies your statement that “if you do not like the TTIP negotiation you need to leave the EU” in ways which you are intelligent and well-informed enough to understand for yourself.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Greece does have PR for national elections. Most constituencies are multi-member – one has 42 members. Bizarrely 8 “prefectures” only elect one MP (not sure how that works). They do give bonus seats to whichever party has the largest share of the vote (which defeats the purpose of PR a bit). If it wasn’t for the “bonus seats” rule the right would have had only a very slim majority after the last election, if they could have put together a working coalition at all. Syriza came very close to winning.

    I agree that austerity in Greece goes far beyond anything in the UK. I just didn’t want to make the policies that the UK government has brought in sound anything less than extreme – because taking disability or illness benefit away from genuinely disabled or genuinely people (including people who are dying of cancer) is very extreme in my book, as is taking unemployment benefit away from unemployed people on any excuse (e.g sometimes for not attending a Department of Work and Pensions meeting because they’d gone to a job interview)

  • Duncan McFarlane

    The seat ‘bonus’ is 50 to the largest party. Wiki says current version of “reinforced proportionality” (bizarre euphemism for taking PR and making the results not proportional) a party only needs 39% of the vote to get a majority. Nevertheless last election was very close and Syriza is higher in the polls now.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Also i doubt Greece would be in any worse position than the UK or France if it hadn’t been in the Euro. All the countries that have had the biggest problem have been the smaller countries that joined the Euro, meaning they couldn’t devalue their currency, change their interest rates or issue currency themselves.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Duncan MacFarlane

    Thanks for the heads-up on Greek PR. I agree with much of what you say in your several posts. Just to say however that “all the countries that have had the biggest problem have been the smaller countries that joined the Euro” may be correct but should leave anyone concluding that all the smaller countries have had the biggest problems with the Euro.
    Good to dialogue with someone who knows what he’s talking about and can express himself politely.

  • RobG

    @ Duncan McFarlane
    18 Jan, 2015 – 8:03 pm

    As I’m sure you are aware, there are, broadly speaking, three types of debt: government debt, business debt and personal debt. With regard to countries like Greece, the debt is almost entirely on the government (because the government borrowed recklessly on the open markets at huge interest rates). When the pundits say that countries like Greece are ‘bankrupt’ what they mean is that the government is bankrupt. When it comes to business and personal debt, Greece is actually in pretty good shape; much better shape than the UK, where personal debt is through the ceiling.

    Much as I hate the BBC, Peston did a good piece on this a few years back. I don’t have a link to hand at the moment. Maybe someone else can provide it?

    So, when the Daily Rag tells you, in the usual jingoistic way, that countries like Greece are bankrupt, you should perhaps take it with a pinch of salt. Go look-up how much debt the UK owes – government, business and personal – and you might realise which countries are really bankrupt here.

    Beware of newspaper editors bearing gifts…

  • Tony_0pmoc

    I never judged anyone on how they were to me. I judged them on how they were to other people. She kept telling me…then she kept telling me…then she kept telling me…

    So I did. I reckon I have met the nicest, most beautiful girl in the world..

    She’s a Freebird.

    She is My Wife

    They all told me to find her..I was programmed with this…

    “Neil Young – Heart Of Gold (Live at the BBC 1971)”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

    She has not only nursed an ex soldier back to health in our home after the operation..We took him to the hospital..and brought him back..He didn’t have anyone else..She also knows all the Prison Officers too…What a nice thing to do..

    She visited him in jail..

    She is a fkin Star..and Everyone – Loves Her.

    She is My Princess

    I guess I got lucky

    Tony

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