It saddened me to read the very long trail of condemnation of a piece in the Times regarding Nicola Sturgeon’s response to the election of Donald Trump as the president of the USA in Wings Over Scotland
Now let me be plain that most of the comments regarding the hypocrisy of the paper involved and the hypocrisy of both the opposition in Holyrood and indeed the British government are in the main well deserved. However the one thing missing from all this vehement condemnation (and I admit I haven’t read all of it) is actual comment on the substance of the piece, which was critical on the advisability of a head of state making the comments that Nicola made.
Now let me be very clear that at no time during the American election process did I support Donald Trump and anyone who had read my blogs on the subject will have seen that and I in fact said much the same as Nicola did. (and probably a lot more)The difference is off course, that I am a private individual and Nicola is the elected leader of the Scottish people.
I have a great many American friends including some who are very close to the American political scene and indeed many who are republicans. I have had many debates with them regarding the suitability of Donald Trump as a candidate to the most powerful position on the planet. I predicted that if Trump became the candidate he would be humiliated and the republican movement would be virtually destroyed as a consequence.
Well I was wrong, I was 100% wrong and I have admitted it to the people I debated this with.
So what, you may ask does all of this have to do with Nicola Sturgeon? Well I will tell you, and it is very simple I am a nobody as far as politics go and she is the leader of the Scottish people and as such she has to look to the future when she speaks. Now her first mistake was in her endorsement of Hillary Clinton a few days before the election .In effect she made that unwise endorsement on behalf of the Scottish people. Well I for one was absolutely terrified of the prospect of Clinton ending up in the Whitehouse as there is nothing surer that before long we would have been dragged even further into the US/Israeli morass that is the Middle East and more than likely to war with Russia.
OK apart from that, Nicola backed a looser and instead of showing some diplomatic probity, she acted like a petulant child at first minister’s questions. This is not what I expect from a leader of Scotland.
Politics and diplomacy should go hand in hand and one of the tenets of good diplomacy I would suggest is that although it is sometimes right for a politician to speak well, there are times when a silence says even more.
Trump, to all intents and propose is an unknown entity. Yes he has made some awful comments regarding race and gender but he is a new kid on the block. How many presidents have there been who did not make these terrible statements before they were elected, but then went on to drag us into horrible wars , killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and many thousands of our young soldiers.
How many young men have you known who have been wild in their youth but changed when they had a family?
Well this guy has just been given one hell of a family, so give him the benefit of the doubt. There is absolutely nothing we can do anyway.
Bob Costello 
Don’t worry about it, but please, no blog wars, there’s been too many of them already. It’s very healthy for the YES movement to represent different views, and in fact totally neccessary to get the support above the 50%, but perhaps the waiting around is getting to people. For some reason we’re all supposed to think like clones, clones, clones. NIL CARBORUNDUM! Don’t let the …. grind you down.
Meanwhile one thing I’ve been doing is getting some information together about the EU and its construction, please feel free to use it. It has official links to check.
yesindyref2.wordpress.com
Hi ,Thank you for your comment . Yes as you say it seems a long and winding road to independence. I am of the opinion that it has been unnecessarily long and winding. I keep going on about the need to address the issues we lost the last referendum on, but the SNP seem to be oblivious to the need to address them but keep on saying that we need to wait until we get to this magical 60% before a referendum is triggered. Well although I do not necessarily see that this is impossible by natural selection ( so to speak) I would rather we shortcut this by simply addressing the issues I mention above, because evolution takes a long time.
The other problem we have now of course and I feel you possibly feel the same is convincing yes voters of the benefits of the EU and again the SNP have done nothing in this regard either. By the way I cannot see the attachment you mention regarding the structure of the EU , as you say it would be very helpful
Yes, there are YES voters who don’t like the EU, and EU voters who don’t like YES so that’s a major battleground, and the more EU knowledge, the better. I forgot the http stuff at the front:
https://yesindyref2.wordpress.com/
This is fantastic , this is what we have been needing , I have been saying since the EU referendum that we need to do two things . We need to address the issues we lost the Independence referendum on and we need to convince the EU sceptics in Scotland that the EU is in fact a democratic institution.
This is exactly what we need and this should be put in to flyer and poster form or at least the artwork for it should be available for grass roots groups to take up and get on to the streets .
Is there any plans to do a similar thing in connection with Pensions and the monetary situation in an independent Scotland .
I together with another member of Business For Scotland have been trying to get a sensible breakdown on the GERS figures as it would appear that the SNP in effect accept them as proving we would have a deficit in an independent Scotland. We have a lunch in Dundee on the 25th November at which Dr Craig Dalzeil of common weal and Gordon McIntire Kemp will be speaking on the subject of the GERS figures and I am hoping to get from that some sort of literature that we can get out on the streets. You would be welcome to come to that Lunch.
Regardless , what you have here is great , are the SNP on board with this ?
Glad you like it. No to the SNP being on board, it’s a solo effort, I saw the need and went for it. I would try running it through the local branch but there’s little interest in anything apart from leafletting, door-knocking, etc. for elections. I’ve worked a little on doing a summary page that could be used in forums or tweets for specific points, kind of a companion to be able to reference back to the full version. I’ve already used it myself to be able to refute various assertions in such as the Herald. I’m half way through looking at the EU budget, CAP (uplift convergence), and what a resulting nett Scotland contribution might be without the UK rebate. It’ll need a bit more research yet. I only use official sources, though I get information from anywhere to help that search along. Might be ready this weekend there again it might not!
I was working a bit on GERS, got distracted by trying to get a certain forum more welcoming of NOes and undecideds looking for info and answers, less vile cybernat “you’re a troll”. As you saw yourself though, it’s not even welcoming to YES voters with different views, so having used up all my “cred” on the Sturgeon issue and a day or two before that on another issue, I’m giving up there, probably for good – which will give me more time for more useful stuff. There’s a core of half a dozen, which is a shame for the rest but it’s up to them to stand up and be counted for what is mostly a useful resource. Put the head above the parapet.
SNP – don’t know. There’s a lot of us hope they know what they’re doing, and have a plan. There are signs that they do. For GERS, the “£15 billion deficit”, there’s a new EU accounting standard ESA2010 which was due to be implemented by 2014, the UK got a derogation but it’s due 2017 which hopfully will affect the next GERS due out next August. Not sure what’s in it but I think there’s more breakdown of accounts required by the member state and I think that affects its regional accounting. It might clear up a lot of issues, and give an easier starting point to move from GERS to iScotland’s accounting. Currently GERS is done on the ESA 1995 standard.
BfS – yeah, I might be tempted to do something with them. My feeeling is that BfS should stay away from the left policies of the 2014 Referendum, stay away from Trident, but put forward the fiscal potential of iScotland – for business, tourism, the financial sector even, perhaps with some co-operation with the Wealthy Nation Institute, though NOT a joint venture (they’re conservative). Oh yes, meanwhile that deficit – ignoring oil but looking just at onshore deficit including capital investmment. I did a bit for that:
https://yesindyref2.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/onshore-deficit-from-gers/
Hi ( dont now your name) Had a brief look at your GERS stuff and a question. Am I correct in thinking that your ex oil revenue figures are based on the GERS figures as presented and therefore take into account Scotland’s share of revenues and expenditure as it is and not actually what it would be in an independence situation . IE we would not be paying for Westminster House of Lords ,Trident etc ?
Hi Bob,
Yes, the figures are straight from the executive summaries of the current GERS versions. Currently I’ve no intention to do an Indy projection. I’ll probably email you some time, just got a lot on at the moment. Or should do if I didn’t keep distracting myself with Indy!
Have done a little update to the EU page though, small paragraph on the last 3 of 7 EU institutions. Also a dummy section for EU budget, I’m kind of halfway through analysing the UK EU costs and grants, want to split that down to Scotland, work out an Indy projection based on the relative GDP without having the UK rebate, minus the grants and funds applying to Scotland.
And then perhaps with an estimate of the extra funding we’d get through proper allotment of the CAP Pillar 1 and 2 convergence uplifts which were split via Carmichael over the UK rather than all coming to Scotland.
Plus taking into account that the UK was too late for a couple of funding applications (floods one I think), and doesn’t bother applying for funding which smaller states work together to get, a rough guess at how much more funding we could get by being a small state working with the EU, rather than against it.
Then that’ll probably be as far as I’ll go with the EU page. Well, I forgot I need a sentence or two on abstentions to voting, the plenary as well for the Parliament.
https://yesindyref2.wordpress.com/
This is all very good and I will have to take time to take this all in .It must have taken you some considerable time to do all of this. Remember , you are welcome to come to the BFS lunch on the 25th just let me know and I will book you a place.
By the way I agree with your comments regarding the left and this also applied to the SNP after the referendum and it was very obvious in Dundee which manifested itself in various events and rallies which did not come of as expected. This instead of supporting the grass roots groups which were very active and I had personal experience in this.
Thanks for that , you have put a hell of a lot of work in to it and I know what you mean but having to shuffle about your time between projects , I have the same problem. I will have a look at the new stuff, thanks .
Takes a lot, I have to read a lot more, condense and simplify it, and make sure the links have all information presented on the page. But once the basics are there at least it can be added to, as I just did about the euro and convergence criteria over 2 years. And earlier about abstentions and plenary. Just Budget to go now! No rush …