It is hard to envisage politics without lying, nowadays. A world where politicians are honest about facts, actions and motives appears an impossible aspiration. In general, the electorate seem now to accept this lying as priced in. I don’t think that anybody now doubts that Boris Johnson shagging Jennifer Arcuri led him to send public money and access her way, but the English electorate in particular show no sign of caring enough to alter a voting intention. Mind-boggling sums on Covid-related contracts for mates, or the entire crooked premiss of the Greensill public finance scam, appear similarly to have no effect.
The BBC care so little they did not report Ms Arcuri’s confession at all, save for Ian Hislop referencing on Have I Got News For You that the BBC did not report it. But only on the extended, late night edit of that programme, that nobody watches.
It is not generally sensible to try to analyse the Loyalists of Northern Ireland using criteria that refer to the use of logic, rational thought or any empirical knowledge established since the eighteenth century. But the riots in Belfast reflect, at least in part, that it is still possible that some people get upset if lied to.
Boris Johnson could have stated “To have no hard border with the Republic of Ireland is paramount. Therefore Brexit will necessitate the imposition of certain border checks of a technical nature which will be necessary at the Irish Sea. These cover veterinary and phyto-sanitary declarations and that sort of guff. They are a nuisance but not serious, and in no way reduce our commitment to the Union. They will be more than compensated for by new transport infrastructure, political initiatives and Treasury grants to Northern Ireland”. That would at least have had the benefit of being, mostly, honest. We will never know if it would have caused a violent reaction from unionists. (The question of who attended which funeral may be a trigger event, but is not a cause).
But Johnson did not do this. Instead he simply lied. He lied to the loyalists of Northern Ireland saying that there would be no border checks at the Irish Sea, when plainly there would be. He lied to the European Union by trying not to implement the Protocol he had signed. He lied to the United States that the Good Friday Agreement was not impacted.
It is difficult for me to inhabit the mindset of a Northern Ireland loyalist; but if you are one, your allegiance to the British state is the most important factor in your life, besides immediate family considerations, and sometimes before them. To discover therefore that the British state which you worship has sold you out and told you a load of lies, must be disorienting. Particularly when you find that the truth is that the British government is much more worried about Northern Ireland’s links to Ireland than to the rest of the UK, and pretty relaxed about setting a path that is obviously – to everyone except, till now, you – leading to Irish reunification.
It must all be very horrible for loyalists who are abandoned by the state to which they wish to cling, and must feel their peculiar culture slowly dying. Hence the riots, which will make no difference.
Iain Macwhirter extrapolates from this situation to the English/Scottish border post-Independence. He is keen to point out that if Scotland is within the EU single market and England outside, there will have to be those non-tariff border restrictions and thus some border infrastructure and checks. That is undoubtedly true, but I am not quite sure why he thinks that is so terrifying. The loyalists in Belfast are not rioting because there is a practical shortage of quinoa and they are starving; they are rioting because of purely political dissociation.
Scotland will certainly need checks on the border with England; these will not be, as Macwhirter tries to make out, just “EU protectionism”, but are needed, to protect us against import from England of chlorine-washed chicken, genetically modified tomatoes, unsafe children’s toys, and whatever other delights the Tories promised bonfire of EU regulation will visit upon us.
Border controls are good.
I am normally a genuine fan of Macwhirter, but he makes the curious mistake of suggesting that Scotland after Independence would be in the same position as Northern Ireland now is, in relation to the UK and EU. Whereas of course Scotland would be in the same position that the Republic of Ireland now is, assuming it joined the EU or at least EFTA and the EEA. And there are no riots in Dublin. In fact, Brexit has brought to Ireland the advantage of more direct links to Europe bypassing England altogether, which have burgeoned at spectacular speed.
Precisely as Ireland has done, similar ferry routes for Scotland will massively mitigate any problems caused by what will be – and I happily shout it out – a very real border with England. What is alarming is that it is well within the powers of Holyrood to start work already on the necessary port infrastructure, but no planning on transport integration for Independent Scotland appears to be happening at all.
I have felt for fifty years that the A1 – incredibly still not even dual carriageway for much of its progress north of Newcastle – is the perfect symbol of lack of genuine enthusiasm for the union in the British body politic: as well we have the fact that no government has ever seriously considered a genuine high speed railway running from Inverness and Aberdeen to London, and onward through the Channel Tunnel. The UK now has less high speed rail than a substantial number of third world countries. The timidity of HS2, which may make it before I die to its ultimate goal of Leeds – just a quarter of the way north from London in the UK – shows that the union really does not deserve to survive.
Contrary to Macwhirter, I expect that Independence will in the event radically improve Scotland’s connectivity not just to the EU, but also to England. Even though we will have a border to keep out the dodgy stuff, and a good thing too.
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Is lying “priced into politics” or just “priced into Brexit”? It was Brexit that opened the floodgates to a tsunami of untruths – and, when polled, Brexit-voters cared little about any chaos left in their wake, considering it “a price worth paying”; so surely that includes any barefaced porkies that might help them win? And given that people identify more strongly now as Leavers or Remainers than as aligned to any particular party, I would suggest that lying is priced into Brexit. Johnson is the Brexit PM – he was sacked twice for lying before he became PM, he and Gove lied consistently during the referendum campaign (remember “No one is suggesting we leave the Single Market”?), and Johnson has lied consistently since he became PM as he endeavours to “Get Brexit Done” and meet all the contradictory promises he made to different interested parties. Yes, mendacity has always been slightly priced into politics, but lying moved front and centre during the referendum campaign and the subsequent government. Of course it helps to have a press which acts as your propaganda department rather than making any sincere effort to hold power to account. Imagine if a Labour PM behaved like Johnson – it wouldn’t be off the front pages until s/he had been bullied into resignation.
What about Blair and co. vis a vis the “war on terror” and Iraq?
Yes, it’s lying of course – but to me that was nothing like the relentless tsunami of falsehoods unleashed by Brexit and a Brexit government whose first instinct is to lie and then tell a bigger lie. With Iraq, there was never a sense that half the nation believed and was totally committed to completely fabricated “alternative facts”. And also let’s not forget the press exposed Blair and Campbell’s lies – whereas now the vast majority of the press is actively colluding in the Johnson government’s lies.
– or maybe it’s the Johnson government colluding in Murdoch and Rothermere’s lies; it’s hard to tell anymore… Either way, there’s almost no scrutiny, no oversight, no meaningful way in which power is held to account.
“– but to me that was nothing like the relentless tsunami of falsehoods unleashed by Brexit and a Brexit government whose first instinct is to lie and then tell a bigger lie. “
Brexit indeed was a tsunami of lies, from both sides, remember, so the net result was that people just became sceptical and didn’t believe what anyone said. We didn’t leave the EU because politicians lied. No-one expects politicians to tell the truth.
Amy said:
“Yes, it’s lying of course – but to me that was nothing like the relentless tsunami of falsehoods unleashed by Brexit”
Reports suggest that a million people died in Iraq because of the Labour regime’s bogus “Saddam has WMD’s and can hit us in 45 minutes” war dossier (not forgetting the torture and destruction of infrastructure, jobs and lives).
I am unaware of anyone dying because of brexit.
A Tory government would have joined the Iraq invasion even more enthusiastically.
Yes. Blair, Starmer and co. are just Tories in reality.
Or maybe BoJo, Cameron and Gove are really just Labour MPs?
When it’s clear that both sides will tell any lie they think they can get away with, it’s ludicrous to ascibe dishonesty to being a characteristic of one side alone.
It works both ways.
Polly – Here –
Professor Jeffrey Sachs: “The US always attacks other countries. It holds itself sacrosanct.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FMSrI3_QU4
No, No, No, Brexit may have highlighted the lying but it’s been ongoing for decades. Think of all the lies that Cameron, May and BoJo told before Brexit – the NHS, Syria, Expenses, Bankers, Immigration, Housing, Grenfell, Heathrow expansion, HS2, Assange, etc. etc.
Politicians, and the Tories in particular, are compulsive liars. Fact.
What is it that they say? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander? Yeah, that sounds very fair and most reasonable. What say y’all here?
amanfromMars 1 Wed 14 Apr 16:45 [2104141645/52] …… just saying out loud on https://forums.theregister.com/forum/1/2021/04/14/fbi_exchange_server_malware_deletion/
Re: Out with the old, in with the new
As in most countries, the biggest Criminals are the Government & their friends. ….. Anonymous Coward
Now that is an observation and accusation that the present Boris Johnson fronted Tory Party gang/cabal/government are most anxious to not be discovered and exposed by a quasi-independent Westminster Parliamentary inquiry before a cast of their peers, in a copy-cat mirror of the recent, excellently transparent and wonderfully well live-televised/broadbandcast Scottish Parliament Holyrood Inquiry investigating the shenanigans surrounding Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond.
For any thinking that better lessons and unpleasant hidden truths can be learned with a trialing and trailing of anything else lesser, they would be very much mistaken, and have one thinking that they would have much to hide from general knowledge and mass public view should they choose to reject and oppose it …… and that would make them somewhat complicit in and possibly probable accessories to any and all facts that would subsequently be teased to the surface of the swamp.
What a stinking mess they have made for themselves.
One does have to wonder at what the police and the military and the intelligence services are going to do about, or whether they are to be recognised as a toothless paper tiger doing nothing at all honourable?
“Come out, damned spot! Out, I command you!” 🙂
As I went to bed last night , thinking about the latest ‘developments’, I had a strong sense of what must have happened at the end of the Roman Empire-a feeling that this ‘country’ was imploding somehow, and that there is no way back to the halcyon days-was it 1910 or thereabouts? I am -to a certain extent lucky in that I am Welsh , and that I no longer have to pretend a fake allegiance to the ‘British Monarchy ‘et al. I do feel sorry for the ‘loyalists ‘ in Northern Ireland, though. If they knew the contempt with which the English regard them they would not want to join them. Where can they go?
To Ann Owen
I’m British, a londoner to be precise, and I owe no allegiance to the monarchy either. It’s not illegal to be in favour of a republic, nor to say so. Let’s not exaggerate please.
As far as I can make out, on balance things started getting worse year by year instead of better in the early 1980s.
Yes, the evil Neo-Con trick was really and truly underway globally by then.
Of course, in the 1970’s, the murdering of elected President Allende and thousands of Chilean citizens by US backed Pinochet – a good friend of Thatcher – was when it really started big time.
Craig showing distinct signs of having been here: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/publications/resist-reform-or-re-run-short-and-long-term-reflections-scotland-and – this is a video of a talk by Prof Ciaran Martin on his paper on the options for the British State to deal with Scotland with contributions by Tom Devine – plus the paper itself – all released yesterday.
Particularly noted the point made that the Indy side must be honest about what Indy means.
People would be more freaked out by the truth than the lies now,that’s how entrenched the culture of lies has become.
Very sad.
You forgot the biggest and most pernicious of them all: the false narrative of a Labour antisemitism ‘crisis’ … a narrative so dishonest and brittle that nobody in British public life can be permitted to state the facts lest the whole structure of politics and media collapse.
Thanks, Anthony (17.58) for this reminder. Liar-in-chief is of course ‘Keeves’ Starmer. He and his pathetic gang of nonentities don’t seem to realize that they are trivializing the Nazi Holocaust by faking a non-existent outbreak of anti-semitism. Shame on them.
Yes, even a few years ago you could not have made it up. An unbreakable consensus that the most anti-racist British politician of the past four decades is in fact the new Hitler. The chief prosecutors? Some of the most racist politicians and media outlets in Britain and beyond. How can anybody of good conscience go back to supporting institutions like the Labour party, the BBC, Guardian, etc, after witnessing this. Only by wilfully wiping the memory clean.
I agree totally and worst of all was the BBC who did an absolute hatchet job on JC. But Labour Friends of Israel were well pleased. The end result which they all wanted to achieve is that no criticism of Israel can be or is tolerated.
Re:
“….Macwhirter……makes the curious mistake of suggesting that Scotland after Independence would be in the same position as Northern Ireland “
Could it be that the very real internal schisms in Scottish society could erupt to make it essentially ungovernable? All that hate must find a political outlet ….
And why should Scotland be different from any other country?. Independence would give us the chance to work out these differences – cf W&E Germany, Czech(o)Slovakia, etc ad nauseam.
It baffles me that people who can see that Scotland’s democracy is being limited by being part of the UK wish to be part of the EU, an institution that is even less democratic… and quite possibly even more corrupt and corporatist.
The “west” is in decline, politically, culturally and socially. The centre of geopolitical gravity is moving east and south and the US-allied bloc of nations is unable to deal with this hard fact sensibly.
The only thing the west knows how to do is belligerently berate other nations and force them to accept a toxic combination of capitalism and liberalism. Countries that refuse and wish to remain independent are threatened with deadly violence and crippling sanctions.
Meanwhile in the western “homelands” governments are doubling down on neoliberalism, becoming more authoritarian by the day and using “woke” ideology to gaslight and manipulate the populace.
Those who push back against the lies, corruption and staggering hypocrisy are smeared and vilified and accused of being ‘Russian agents’. The few brave journalists remaining are forced to the margins or, if they sufficiently embarrass the establishment, are tortured and thrown into prison and left there to rot.
On the part of the powers-that-be there is no self-reflection, admitting to mistakes or forging a new path that aligns with local and global realities.
An inflexible system that is unaware of its own shortcomings, or in the case of BoJo and his ilk simply doesn’t care, can’t not become more authoritarian as the rotten edifice begins to crumble under its internal contradictions.
Even more dangerous is the USA with its Nazi-like belief in its own infallibility and divine right to force its will onto the rest of the world. That way lies war and apocalyptic destruction.
Bernays’ succinct ascertion in Propaganda that the people needed directing in their views is as relevant now as 100 years ago. However, it is the modern naivete to class oppression that allows the bread and circuses to continue to work so well. Right wing issues of border control appear high on the agenda of left wing parties like SNP, yet not when it come to EU borders. Left wing issues like equality have been diluted by the easy splitting of class into race and gender.
When everything is topsy turvy, like the West singing about Rules based order while breaking all International Laws it is unsurprising that few can see what is up. The real danger is the confusion between patriotism and nationalism. And where our patriotism is not republicanism, but monarchic, the class divide will always perpetuate.
In what sense is the SNP ‘left wing’?
Perhaps, like Labour, they were, once. Now they are Tartan Tories.
The irony is that nationalism – the principle raison d’etre of the SNP (putatively) – is one of the few differentiators between fascism and socialism.
Just as I was thinking it was safe to go back into the MacWhirter too.
The unionists in the north of Ireland have known for over thirty years that they are a disposable commodity for the British state. Telling them that is far short of something they don’t already know Mr. Murray.
The population also know that politicians lie, so, again, try and tell them something they don’t know Mr. Murray.
And once again, just accept that Brexit is a reality and that no amount of ad hominems thrown at us deplorables will change that.
It is one of those historical changes that nobody will be referring to, let alone objecting to, in the decades to come.
Amen to that…_
Digger,
Yes brexshit is the runaway train wreck that it was going to be since that June morning when it was set on that course.
Due to covid it has gone into a slow motion disaster scene – hence we aren’t yet seeing its ultimate wreckage, on everyone whether they really bought into the idea or not.
I don’t know how regularly you travelled to Europe in recent decades, but many of the people who are used to jumping on a easyjet to the sun/party/skiing spots or travel on ferries with pets and families and happily cross European borders; taking whatever food and stuff or BRINGING it back without limits – they are going to be a LOT surprised!
Now that will be schadenfreud – will they take it up with Fartage? Bozo? ResseMogg? Talk radio? LauraK? You?
More likely they will get even more entrenched in their certitude as you are already – ‘whats’ done’s done, no use crying over spilt milk, suck it up, you were asking for it, the furrigners taking our jobs and women, etc etc.
Anything except understand that their dumbing Downtoning over decades reinforcing the belief in the integrity of the posh boys and ‘not my place’ they are the ones who we love and trust bollocks and vomit – is how the propaganda in the whole msm has softened the minds of all. Including Harry Potter to never ending super hero exceptionalism.
The only solution is for people to switch it all off for a few months and go cold turkey for them to see again with clear eyes.
Thank you, Dungroanin, for pairing a classic bit of Brexshit with a classic piece of Remoaning. Almost worth printing out and framing.
You are welcome B, I accepted the referendum result quite quickly. I thought a sensible deal would follow with fewer of the rights we enjoyed. That was before I calculated the major postal vote fraud that was undertaken to deliver that result; as it was in Indyref; as it was initially trialled in the NE under …Cummings.
You didn’t comment on the cultural dumbing down and exceptionalism so I assume you don’t dispute that.
No, indeed I don’t, however, I’d dispute the postal vote fraud. What got us out of the EU was the mistake by Cameron in aligning the (Tory) government with Remain, and Project Fear promising pain for the middle classes if we voted to leave, thus ensuring that everyone who hated the Tories or the middle classes voted to leave, even though they didn’t give a stuff about the EU. There are a lot of people in this country who hate the Tories, certainly way more than the small number it took to tip the vote from “Remain” to “Leave”.
I do believe the Corporation of the City of London, a State within a State wanted Brexit, for unrestricted banking powers. I sat on the fence and didn’t vote for the Corpoartation of the City of London, nor the unelected monsters in the EU.
This is a great book … published in 1946 it explains the Empire of the City and the Zionist Rothchilds influence on the United Kingdom.
Empire of the City …………
https://archive.org/details/TheEmpireOftheCity
Apologies. The link I gave above doesn’t give you the transcript of the book. This one does.
It’s so well worth reading Craig Murray and everyone.
https://www.1215.org/lawnotes/misc/the-empire-of-the-city.pdf
Looks interesting Mockingbird.
Of course it’s regarded as awfully clever these days to disdain conspiracy theories, I love them!
Even if eventually they’re all proved wrong (not likely), I’ve been superbly entertained over the years.
If the humanist, evolutionist Richard Dawkins fans are correct and we come from nothing and go to nothing then what does it matter what the hell you believe!
The ONLY reason for the hard BrexShittery was to free the City from the ever increasing levelling of the playing fields the EU is inevitably doing regardless of any number of vetoes and banker plants in the European body politik.
Sunak’s budget delivered the legal framework via the cover of Freepor’s. Ask why the rich South East needs one? When it claims to be for regeneration of parts of the country that have been depressed since Thatcher?
Ask also why it includes ‘banking’?
Finally ask why the range can be extended to 25 miles or 40km?
Clue:
A straight line from London Gateway to the City of London is exactly how far?
After what the EU did to the PIIGS – saddle them with preposterous amounts of debt to bail out the Commission’s banker chums – you can suggest with a straight face that they are somehow less in Big Finance’s thrall?
You can make a case for Remain on a number of grounds, but freedom from the malign influence of Bankers is not one of them.
It must be a great shame to you that the world doesn’t listen to or bow to your oh so superior knowledge.
Dear All,
Lest you didn’t know – even over here in the Caribbean there was a contest for the best liars in all the world.
You may doubt what I have just said – so – just listen to what Lord Nelson has to say on the subject:-
Lord Nelson – King Liar (calypso song) – YouTube (4m 58s)
Believe me now?
The question of who attended which funeral may be a trigger event, but is not a cause………… is a remark made by someone who has zero understanding of the actualitie, as is the canard of “chlorine washed chicken”…. I expected better of you, Mr Murray
I am a great fan of Craig generally, but it’s clear he’s never found the time to crack open an economics text book.
No, we don’t need border controls to keep us safe from chlorinated chicken.
Craig, Lying and the SNP. They spin us a tale about independence but haven’t done even a modicum towards getting Scotland ready to be a sovereign country. Just received a flyer by my SNP constituency MSP (Fiona Hyslop). It’s a four sided A4 document and not once is the word “independence” mentioned. So the SNP are still lying. Much as I want Scotland to be an independent country, I cannot in good faith knowingly be openly hoodwinked and still vote for them.
very informative and illuminating post craig… thank you!
An important point at the end, independence will improve relations with England. I felt this was very true of devolution as we had, seemingly, more power as a nation.
Agreed about Iain McWhirter. However he’s starting to show where his beliefs are (if they weren’t already apparent) with regard to Scottish independence. After the Fabiani inquiry he claimed that Nicola Sturgeon would still face a reckoning. Today’s front page clickbait in the Herald mirrors a piece by Ruth Davidson on the Unherd website. They’re both trying to rubbish Salmond (and Galloway) as irrelevant and out date.
I think there are those in power who feel they can act with impunity now, both in Westminster and Holyrood
“We will have a border to keep out the dodgy stuff.”
I’m sure I’ve already heard it somewhere. Any hints?
Craig says: “It is not generally sensible to try to analyse the Loyalists of Northern Ireland using criteria that refer to the use of logic, rational thought or any empirical knowledge established since the eighteenth century.”
Nearly every month in life, Craig posts his sectarian anti-protestant hate. If his hate was aimed at blacks, minorities, asians, or the gay community, he would be cancelled, de-platformed, and most likely up on charges.
It’s amusing, hearing his bigotry, while he claims to be tolerant and liberal. Like most fake liberals, he tolerates people that share his views of the world and despises those who do not.
I am protestant, from Ireland, and never wanted Ireland divided in the first place. To unite Ireland, there has to be tolerance and reaching out, from both sides….to sell the idea of a shared future, on a shared island. There are lots of great people here, catholic and protestant. Indeed, the vast majority are good people, just trying to make a living.
Ireland has to be a country for everyone. Those who continually fan the flames of historic bigotry, and divide us, do absolutely nothing positive for our future.
Moon River
Somebody recently said to N_ that adherence to any ideology would distort their view of the world, or some such similar meaning. That is the problem with all the -isms, including Calvinism, Islamism, Capitalism, communism. The appendage of -ism allows the original idea, which was probably a good one, to be loaded with hypocrisy and realpolitic.
For example there is nothing wrong with trade in goods, but there is something disgusting about a nana costing us 13 pence here, while a bottle of local water might cost more than a pound. Capitalism incorporates gross hypocrisy and injustice, including criminal greed of the used car salesman Cameron capitalising unsustainable private enterprise with government cash.
Every ideology does that. The transition from an idea to an ideology is the uploading of illogical crap.
Therefore you misinterpret Craig if you think he is prejudiced against Calvinism. He isn’t. “Logic, rational thought and empirical ideas established since the eighteenth century “are his criteria for analysing any ideology, and yours is one of many that fail his critical analysis.
On the other end of the Richter scale in Islamism, I can be killed for merely pointing out that Modern jihadists are proxies of the western politics. The distortion of Holy Scripture from ‘Don’t spy on people in the privacy of their own homes’ to the Islamist fatwa that anybody criticising them is a spy who should be murdered’ is one example of the power of ideology.
In Thatcherism ideology Mr Cameron was finding an alternative to state funding of private capital. In fact he was doing the opposite, channelling state funds into private hands. That’s what ideology does and is.
Blag. Pure and unadulterated. All ideologies have only one purpose: to distort truth. Which last time I looked was called lying, painful though that might be to all budding ideologists, including maybe myself.
It is obvious he is referring to Loyalist ideology. He is not obliged to mouth respect for it.
Iain
The two words ‘ protest-ant ‘ and ‘ loyal-ist ‘ belong to different periods of history, refer to the same entity, the British Establishment , which was under Roman Catholicism before Henry VIII and against it after him. But we are now several periods of history later, post civil war, post Victorian empire, post war and now post EU.
To define oneself by the ancient meanings of words instead of contemporary history allows 360 degrees of wriggle room as to their meanings. Always handy in politics.
A week is a long time in politics and in some minds at least Scottish Indendence has now evolved to mean Permanent Devolution and woke politics. The comfort of travelling in the English political gravy train , while gazing at an imaginary navel in the clouds, and designing the photo-optics for one’s next brush with the media. Nice work if you can get it, but not quite what Alex Salmond had in mind.
I think that lying by politicians was considered bad up until Bill Clinton perjured himself regarding Monica Lewinsky. Somehow, for the mainstream media and his democrat supporters, his perjury was just fine. That was followed, in England, by the head of BP perjuring himself in a court case regarding his sexual activities. This, for the MSM, was just a pecadillo, too.
Of course, Johnson and Nixon lying about Vietnam, Reagan lying about Iran/Contra, and Blair and Bush and the MSM lying to justify the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq wars was far more destructive in terms of lives lost and nations ruined. But the sheer gall of Clinton, perjuring himself without consequences, served to encourage the others — which led us to Trump, to Biden lying through his teeth during the debate with Sanders (and Sanders unwilling to call him on it), and to the Untruthful One in residence at Number 10.
The English electorate comprises a few hundred people who select candidates for fake general elections. The only time in my adult life that the English electorate was the people registered to vote was in the independence referendum, which you might remember, voted “Outez!” The result was as incendiary as the only democratic vote in the Middle East, which saw the Hamas Party voted in. Examples which those electors north of the border could take note.
Be interesting to hear what the people who actually live along this wonderful new border have to say about it all. If Scotland returns to independance I have a suspicion it will have to be on very much reduced borders and excluding some islands.
And please spare us the chlorinated chicken nonsense.
If Scotand votes for independence then all Scotland will be independent. You can’t pull the old “Ulster” trick again in the 21st century and still be taken seriously as a democracy.
To discover therefore that the British state which you worship has sold you out and told you a load of lies, must be disorienting.
And to realise that they also proactively both collude with and conspire against natives in the proper planning and preparation to prevent piss poor performance in acts of troubling terrorism, is also disconcerting.
Such more than just suggests that no one from any side anywhere has any sort of grand master plan to present and energise in an oasis of ignorant conflict and arrogant chaos sucking on the fumes of a bankrupting indifferent intelligence deficit throughout a politically inept and practically impotent executive and legislative assembly.
And the fact that so many on the street can barely read and/or write and string a few coherent sentences together about anything other than the practically nothing that they don’t really know much about, doesn’t help a great deal either whenever accompanied by no ready cash or blow stash.
And can you imagine what the recent monumental lockdown and teaching establishment closures have done to any attempts at remedying that endemic systemic problem?
It’s a crying shame, the names of the games they play virtually for real over there.
If the truth were to be told, a fundamental revolutionary evolutionary change be desperately needed there ……. to shine a light on what can now be easily remotely done making much greater use of all the many active new tools at our disposal, and in so doing show all others in similarly distressed positions what needs to be done, and how it is done, or, whenever such intimate practical information is reasonably adjudged too sensitive and disruptive and dangerous for general knowledge and circulation, where to go to to get it done.
Anything at all like just more of same old political posturing and nonsense is only going to deliver more Troubles. It aint rocket science, is it, …. pure common sense?
But it is probably very true to say that the biggest liar of them all is BJ. After all he has been sacked twice for lying. And now this viral video exposes more of his public lies. But where is Starmer?
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/boris-johnson-lies-viral-video-b1830732.html
SA
Starmer recognises the appropriateness of the idea that when vast amounts of money have flowed into the pockets of the people, even faster amounts must necessarily flow to venture capitalists. The only thing not allowed under the social contract is for money to flow from govt. Directly to industry. That would break the holy cow of non- profitability, which is why Greensill Capital had been able to afford to finance the steel plants in the first place.
Big Society nurses don’t need pay rises. They do it for free. But Big Society financiers that look after ailing industries don’t see why HMG can’t pay out for non-profitable industries now that we have left the EU.
After all, our deal with the EU not to do that, can be broken just like the Northern Ireland part of the deal. Some Tory MPs want to ” break everything quickly “.
Johnson has the right posh English drawl to brazen it through.
All true. I know this article is about Scottish independence but as a Brit, the thing that concerns me personally is the lying, corruption and graft, and the high Tory poll ratings (from which I gather the SNP is not immune). I see the country slipping into banana republic status and I don’t know what to do about it.
Correction: ‘Banana kingdom status’.
“…slipping further into…” Steve Bell pointed out in the 80s that we were the only banana republic that imported its bananas.
There are a couple of options on the NI border that aren’t mentioned;
1) have the same customs regulations as the Good Friday Agreement requires everywhere in the UK,
2) have the GFA required rules in NI only but don’t collect any money as goods cross the Irish Sea, money saved by re-routing throgh the republic would mostly be cancelled out by extra logistics costs, so its liveable with.
3) same as 2) but don’t have a specific location to collect the money, its just some money owed in taxes.
The state of the A1 has been going on for years, it like the gov. wants to build roads anywhere except where the locals want one. I notice roads in Scotland have improved since devolution.
The two HS rail lines aren’t connected to each other so if you want to travel by HS rail to the continent you will have to get off at Euston, drag your luggage to St. Pancras and get on another train. Its like they can’t imagine that anyone would just want to go through London to get to somewhere else.
It’s only a mile or so from HS2 to HS1 in London, connection is not impossible.
That’s a long way to walk carrying luggage.
Which section of the Good Friday Agreement refers to customs, let alone the requirement to have the same ‘everywhere in the UK?’
“Its like they can’t imagine that anyone would just want to go through London to get to somewhere else.”
Well, since the main reason for building HS2 was to bring more places within commuting distance of London, they didn’t have to.
Democracy has always tended to degenerate into mobocracy, accompanied by corruption and exploited by populists.
But the process can perhaps be restrained by blogs like this. So nice going!
HS1/2/3/4/5/6 to get faster from Banana airport Heathrow to Banana Edinburgh 20 minutes faster… or keeping 100 plus ancient forrests and natural habitats for whatever offspring one has managed to bring to life?
Slow down boar, the race to the bottom does not have to be fast.
Should BJ and his cohorts in this environmental destruction tantrum be hanged from the rafters? when he’s so popular for killing so many, the Bullington way?
All that say yes raise your hands slowly, because slow is the future, fast has got us nowhere.
“because slow is the future, fast has got us nowhere.” Ah yes, back to carts drawn by oxen.
Actually the most positive aspect on this front I came across recently was Macron’s announcement this week that domestic flights in France are gong to be banned where there is a train that takes less than four hours (there are some variants to the idea under discussion, so I can’t give the precise detail. Three hours would have been a better figure). Great idea. One that is very positive for high-speed trains, which don’t belch out CO2, and don’t take up much land. Though Tory landowners and and their acolytes are against it, of course – that is why there’s so much reactionary opposition on this blog.
take your blinkers down, Laguerre. HS trains use electricity derived from gas power stations, which ideally should come from alternatives.
High speed in a vaccum would be able to do the trip to Edinburgh in half an hour, but hey, lets rip up everything in a straight line for a conventional faster rail service. I don’t care about Tories but ecological diversity, there comes a point in time were our minimalising efforts through maximising destruction becomes a self-inflicted addiction to travel here there and everywhere.
If modern communication is not enough to cut out business travel and more of the CO2-reducing pandemic endeavours of those frequent fliers, why not use electric airships with a minimised clientle of about 80? technology is here, why is it just used for heavy lifting?
All those who fly should inform companies that are pampered to the ninth with subsidised kerosene and scrapped VAT, that they are not immune from the law when we get infected onboard their airless planes. Big pharma might have indemnity from being sued, but those who spread this menace should not get away with it ad nauseum.
The amount of advertisement to take holidays must cost millions they got from the taxpayer who bailed these serial infectors out.
How come they can build ever more efficient jet engines, but can’t find a solution to provide fresh air in an airoplane?
Did you know that Barclays shelled out 180 billion last year to aid fossil fuel extraction? They need more punishment than their windows broken, ideally a fossil fuel extraction fine for every barrel of oil they are feeding into this lazy arse economy.
You’re obviously unaware, after all this time, how electricity is generated. Believe it or not, though it may surprise you greatly, electricity is generated from a variety of sources, with an increasing proportion of sustainable. So an electric train is necessarily better than a jet burning kerosene. I thought that was self-evident in my comment, and did not need to be spelled out letter by letter.
Your interchangeable use of the terms loyalist and unionist demonstrate that you are not as well versed on Northern Irish politics and society as you may think.
This is further evidenced by the statement ‘the mindset of a Northern Ireland loyalist;… your allegiance to the British state is the most important factor in your life’ – loyalists are not loyal to the the British state but rather the Crown which is a fundamental difference in the context of Irish and Northern Irish history.
A difference unlikely to greatly alter his perspective I suspect.
I have no doubt you are correct but when he is pontificating about a situation he knows little about in an effort to make a point about Scottish independence, he needs corrected.
Just two cheeks of the same arse !
An erudite and powerful contribution, many thanks.
The old: “how do you tell when a politician is lying …his lips are moving” except when he is saying you need to lock down and other such recent measures, then almost everyone thinks he is as honest as the day is long all of a sudden?!
@Uzmark – Agreed – most of what passed for cynicism towards politicians in Britain proved to have little or no real content to it, and to have been essentially a safety valve, like watching satire. One has to ask how far the next stage of the repression may go. There has been very little resistance. The rulers aren’t looking back at the first 13 months of fascism and thinking “On the whole, there was too much resistance for our liking”. They will be rubbing their hands, thinking “Our level of success surprised even us”, and looking forward to the next big shock they will impose. For a while now the “socioeconomically disadvantaged” and “concentrated ethnic minorities in inner cities” – or whatever the current parlance is – have been billed as vaccine-refusing potential lergy spreaders who ought to be “enhance contact-traced”.
Meanwhile the “left” seems most interested in pretending that men who think they’re women have the right to demand that the rest of us should imagine they really are women.
Respect is due for acknowledging that an independent Scotland inside the EU customs union and a rump Britain outside it would necessarily mean border checks, as a matter of simple logic. This is the first time I have ever heard a supporter of Scottish independence acknowledge that fact. Usually they scream “That’s just Project Fear”, in the fashion of a Trump maniac screaming “That’s just fake news” when they hear something they don’t want to.
Whatever next? 🙂 Perhaps some kind of vision of what kind of relationship with rump Britain would be desirable? I’ve never heard a supporter of Scottish independence deal with that issue either, except to shout that “Don’t worry – we’ll manage” and “Denmark manages to be independent”, etc.
The difference between republicans and those who like their pillarboxes to say “QE” rather than “QE II” should be clear.
In other news perhaps relevant to what may be the attitude of the Scottish authorities when a known critical blogger returns to Scottish soil from foreign parts…Alison Chabloz, who has attended meetings addressed by Piers Corbyn, and who like Corbyn has been persecuted by British authorities helping out Zionists, has been JAILED. Steve Silverman, “Director of Investigations” for the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” gave evidence against her in court.
Following the 1953 coronation the new EIIR pillarboxes were blown up in Scotland, which was as far as terrorism ever got.