Wednesday 16 January 2013

JUST HOW LOW CAN THEIR ARGUMENTS GO?

What can you say about the so-called debate that was held in the London parliament yesterday?

It's hard to put it into words.


The unionists relied for their all their arguments on a catalogue of lies and slanders.

This seemed to centre around the notion that the Scottish parliament and the Scottish government was being run by a dictator who brooked no argument. Comments about the dictatorship were made with a straight face by people who surely must remember the Thatcher government, when any kind of thought independent of the "kitchen cabinet" was crushed by the handbag; or the Blair government which made its decisions on his sofa, with Alistair Campbell running things, and paged updates on policy to MPs and ministers alike so that no one ever spoke out of line. Worse still, some of them served in the Brown government, where a remark of disagreement was likely to result in severe injury caused by dodging a flying mobile phone, or a coffee table hurled into the wall. I bet Alistair Darling knows a thing or two about how to dodge unidentified flying objects.

The Scottish government was elected, against all odds, as a majority government in a system which was designed not to elect majority governments. It was thus elected with 45% of the popular vote. Of course it is likely to win the arguments in parliament, just as the Tory/Liberal government in England is likely to win their arguments in the London parliament. It's called having a majority. It is the way that people voted. Democracy, if you will. Live with it, people.

The incredible ignorance displayed by the members of parliament, mostly Labour and mostly from Scotland, was jaw dropping. But one Tory member from Epping Forest appeared to think that Scotland was already an independent country... Eleanor Laing said: Scotland should be, is and always has been an independent country. It is a non-question. There is no point going through the rigmarole of a referendum, spending hundreds of millions of pounds, to ask a meaningless question.” Jaw dropping, no?

The thug Davidson pointed out that the referendum would take place in the year commemorating the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn which he said " is celebrated mainly because Scots slew large numbers of English people". (No mention of the Scots who were slain, I note.)

Well, firstly, you ignorant idiot Davidson, it is not celebrated because of that. Indeed it is rarely, in my experience, celebrated at all. But it might be helpful for a rounded and reasonable debate to remember that Scotland and England were separate countries in 1314, and the English were in our country. A bit like the Argentinians being in the British Falklands: they were the invaders and we sent them packing.

He continued that the referendum would come after a year of celebrating all this slaughter of our neighbours... but there seemed to be no recognition that, although it would not be unusual to celebrate or commemorate the END of a war, the British government has ordered a year of commemoration in 2014, of 100th anniversary of the BEGINNING of a war in which millions lost their lives, Englishmen, Scots, French, Russians, Germans... and on and on and on...

Of course a commemoration in 2018, when the war finished, wouldn't give the Brit Nats any chance to wave their union flags before the referendum.

Wings over Scotland has done an analysis of some of the most outrageous things that people like Sarwar, Davidson, Curren, Darling et al, had to say. Almost every single one a lie or contortion of the truth. I urge you to read it. 

I'm not sure if they realise how insulting all this is to Scots, or how many people they have driven from "no voters" to  "don't know", with their childish, sorry excuses for arguments.

Anas Sarwar said, when he was appointed to head the Labour campaign for unionism, that he wanted to raise the level of debate. 

I can tell him now that not only has he failed. He has failed dismally.

******
Wings over Scotland has a poll on what kind of Scotland we would like to see after the referendum. I had fun filling it in...

30 comments:

  1. tris

    Dont see why the Nats with Alex as the first liar of Scotland should be the only ones to lie at will.


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  2. 45% of the popular vote or is that 25% of the possible vote

    you are right about 1918 100% its just a way to drum up emotional support for the union.
    and counter the few nats and there use of the emotional effect of Bannockburn and freedom.


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  3. And still no argument of why we are better together other than garbage as shown above.

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  4. Niko. But every time Labour accuses the SNP of lying, and report it to the standards authority, they find the SNP not guilty.

    Seriously I can't believe that anyone was looking for a battle of 700 years ago to influence what people think now. That's just junk. Most people under the age of 70 wouldn't have a clue what Bannockburn was unless they lived just up the road from the battle site.

    I accept that the effect of the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup were probably taken into consideration, but no one wants independence on the back of some perceived hatred of the English. It Britain we don't like, not England.

    Davidson is an uncouth thug, and a liar. You can't deny that. Moore is well out of his depth and Fluffy is...well, he's just thick wee Fluffy.

    Anas, the one I had a bit of respect for has also been promoted beyond his efficiency level. Some of the lines he's coming out with are classics.

    Lamont doesn't know whether she is on her arse or her elbow, and Alistair Darling must have been hit by a few too many Nokias, when he dared to point out to Brown that we were in the whatsit.

    Ever wonder why he waited till he was in his Hebridean home (2nd home number 3 , I think) when he made the statement that this was the worst crisis since 1929...? he couldn't stand any more assaults on his person by the mad prime minister...

    As for people who don't vote, we must assume that they have no opinion if they are too lazy to drag their backsides down to the polling station, or get a postal vote. That's fair enough, but only Labour ever insists that we take the whole of the population into account in these matters, and clearly only when they didn't win.

    Remember Blair only got 35% of the popular vote, not 35% or the electorate.

    LOL...

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  5. No CH. No argument except the made up ones... like Moore's blunder on how much worse off we'd be (but he hadn't added up the figures right and it turned out we would be much better off....)

    Apart from "errors", there are only lies.

    One day there will be a good reason.... maybe

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  6. I think we should be told if AD uses mascara on those eyebrows as all his other arguments are fiction.

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  7. Nah CH. I'm all for openness, but there are something I really don't want to know... and that's one of them.

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  8. Ian Davidson point is that its meaningless to celebrate Bannockburn in our modern, progressive times. We don't need to celebrate Scotto-English hatreds, wars and battles anymore.

    Can't we focus on the positives and not the negatives?

    Like working together to form the welfare state? Like the BBC? Like MOD jobs across Scotland? Like a democracy which is multicultural and forward looking in so many respects; like a minimum wage to be proud about having established.

    Ian is right, the SNP need to stop this pathetic navel gazing into the darker chapters in our less enlightened history in these British isles. We're working together rather than fighting today. Maybe the SNP could just once, just once mind - concede that working with rather than against England is a better system?

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  9. "Standards authority????" You mean that there's a body that rules on whether politicians tell the truth or not? Seriously, that's amazing.

    No such thing in the US of course where First Amendment free speech (in a political context where slander or libel is not an issue) protects lying speech just as much as truthful speech; and lying about your opponents is just another useful political tactic. (And probably the one most used.)

    Bannockburn is mentioned by a narrator at the end of "Braveheart." And that's seriously being discussed in terms of the referendum campaign? That's crazy enough to be an American political tactic. Surely you must respond with rhetoric about Longshanks....or maybe even about the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. ;)

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  10. I only managed a few minutes of the "debate" as that Effing Tory from Epping was on. Apparently most of the 6 hours was as bad. I don't have a problem with people who want to vote no. That's their democratic right. I do mind when their "argument" consists of a pile of steaming excrement based of remarks such as dictatorships, Braveheart being the only reason we want independence (give me strength) and the rest.
    Many have asked for the positive case for the union, we are still waiting.

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  11. Dean: We don't celebrate Bannockburn. That is to say, I've never yet heard of anyone celebrating Bannockburn.

    If you can find me anyone anywhere from the SNP or any of the other parties in Scotland that want independence stating any wish to celebrate the slaughter of Englishmen, then I'll be pleased to print the reference and apologise to Davidson.

    As I said in my post, however, it is as well to put Bannockburn in it's place in history. Just as, say, it is with Dresden, or Coventry, in the context of the fact that Germany is now a close ally and partner in the EU. Or perhaps Waterloo, given that France and the UK now have a pact to share nuclear secrets and aircraft carriers.

    You will find, time and time, if you bother to read anything Alex Salmond, or any of the other politicians, or indeed the YES campaign say, that we look to co-operate in every way with England. Time and time again the situation has been compared to Scandinavia where the countries are separate, but have open borders, and co-operate over many multi-national matters.

    Only from the warped and frightening mind of people like "doing" Davidson, the man who seems to control his committee by threatening female members who disagree with him and are his intellectual superiors, with a bit of violence, with sexual overtones, do we get these repulsive statements.

    That is politics at its most filthy and guttural. It reminds me of the Glasgow councillor who threatened a Labour member that if she didn't vote his way he would ensure that her disabled son lost his apprenticeship with the council.

    I don't know who chaired that debate as speaker, but I suspect that he or she was a unionist.

    If an SNP or green politician had made a claim of that kind of preposterousness, they would have been told to withdraw.

    His suggestion that people in this country celebrate the deaths of anyone, is a slur on every single Scot.

    Davidson is an abhorrent thug. Even thinking about what he said makes me want to vomit.

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  12. Panda... That woman was some nut job, wasn't she?

    I have no problem with people from England making a contribution to the debate on Scotland's future.

    It is fair enough that they should have a say on the transfer of power from their government to ours, but at least she should have read up on Scotland first.

    To say the country was, and always had been, independent was just plain weird.

    I wonder how she would feel if Germans or French had a say in the future of England in the EU.

    The trouble with the positive case for the union is that, for the ordinary man on the street, there isn't one.

    Yes, we won't have nuclear weapons; the American president won't be on the phone to Bute house every month or so, telling us what to do; no, we won't have an embassy in Burkino Fasso, but we will have the use of the services of the French Ambassador, should we ever need him; no, we won't have the forth most expensive military in the world, but then we won't really need one.

    On the other hand, we will have better roads, better schools and better health, as the money that used to be wasted on being a world power will be spent in these areas.

    You only have to look at Norway... If we hadn't had to help run the world THAT is how it could have been here.

    If we went to Norway now and asked random people to name the British prime minister, I dare say that at least half would be able to.

    If we asked here who the prime minister of Norway was, no one would know. Not even one person.

    But have you seen their roads, hospitals, schools, standard of living...?

    Britain is a country that is about the top people. They haven't quite got over the idea that the country belongs to the aristocracy and the rest of us are there to toil for them. In Norway the country belongs to the people.

    Did you hear the Tory MP Chope, who, this morning referred to the catering staff in the London parliament as "servants"? ... Says it all. Is MP short for Muppet!¬

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  13. Sorry to hear that politicians can lie in Britin with impunity as in the USA. It would have been nice to think that Britain had a higher standard in which untruthful political speech could be formally challenged in a way that it can in the area of libel and slander in the private sphere. Actually I thought I remembered a time quite a while back in which a case involving a lie in a political campaign was formally challenged in some way. But maybe not.

    Attributed to Churchill:
    "I want to see less peerage and more disapeerages."

    But unsourced on the internet, so possibly apocryphal.

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  14. The Hadron Collider searched for that elusive particle of 'Better Together' but could only find the Bosun one, maybe Curiosity will have better luck but it is a long shot.

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  15. It's quite possible that something may have been challenged Danny. I can't remember anything off the top of my head, that wasn't the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament challenging the government for telling lies. (All of which have been found unjustified

    It's odd how they seem less inclined to challenge the lies that the Secretary of State tells about how much poorer Scotland would be, by mixing up his figures, particularly when he puts up figures for England and Wales according to 2011 census, and for Scotland using figures from a 2001 census.

    The lies yesterday consisted of talking about the Scottish government, duly elected by the people of Scotland, as a dictatorship.

    Any majority government, of course, has an element of dictatorship in their behaviour. But they neglect to attribute the same appellation to Westminster governments, elected on a less democratic system, by a smaller percentage of the population... Blair, Thatcher, major. Brown... Regrettably, who ever was the speaker for this debate, neglected to notice that.

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  16. CH... It won't because there is nothing to find.

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  17. http://www.ianhamiltonqc.com/blog/?p=525

    Worth a read....

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  18. Lying to snp supporters and their leaders doesnt
    Count as they are beneath contempt and do not
    Rate to be considered as proper normal
    People

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  19. @ Anon

    Thanks for advice the other day, I will give them a go when I am able to do so. However, I don't think the browser is the problem as it only arises within this comment box

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  20. You know how it is Tris they have been scraping the bottom of the barrel since the referendum was announced and we all know that EMPTY BARRELS MAKE THE MOST NOISE,

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  21. I'm going to try changing the comments box, Boorach, if I can find a way of doing so... :) It might take a little time though....

    They are making a lot of noise, it's true, but I've not heard anything that makes any kind of sense yet.

    Why don't they just tell us what is so great about the bloody union (apart from the fact that they get fat cat salaries for doing very little, and the chance of a seat in the house of retired muppets, with a fat pension that no one else could hope to get, plus £300+ a day and all the subsidised food and drink they can get down their greedy fat necks).

    The life of a Scottish MP is a cakes and ale since most of their work was taken away by the MSPs.

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  22. Ah right Niko. I can see your point, not being a proper normal lying bastard like Ian Davidson... for example

    Oh did I say lying bastard? I did, of course, mean to say "person"....well I think that's what I meant.

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  23. Try this layout for size Boorach...

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  24. No different..... don't worry, I'll be a martyr!

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  25. Niko & Dean really are a pair with nothing to say.

    Nothing positive there, just lies

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  26. Ok Boorach. I have another trick up my sleeve...!

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  27. OK... try this....

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  28. Well Anon, they won't answer any of the points we make to them that call for something substantive.

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  29. Incidentally, Dean. What do you think of celebrating the beginning of a war we had with the Germans?

    Will we be glad we won and killed all these foreigners?

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