Month: October 2019

I posted on Facebook to the effect that I thought the SNP should make an offer to support the latest Brexit plan in exchange for a clear run at another independence referendum. this was met with the usual hate the Tories and don’t you dare suggest anything different than our glorious leader suggested the other day So instead of answering them individually, I will say this And I will break it down so that the more intellectually challenged among you might be able to absorb it

What I am suggesting is that every country in the UK gets what they want.

England and Wales voted to leave the EU.

Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain

We in Scotland have no business trying to force England and Wales to do something they did not vote for.

If the SNP backed this latest plan and agreed to vote with the Tories, then every country will get what they wanted except Scotland.

However, if the SNP backed this UK government plan but with the proviso that schedule 5 of the Scotland act 1998 and in particular the item relating to section 30 was amended so that the right to hold a referendum ( any referendum at any time) of which the result would be honoured on all sides was made the remit of the Scottish government in perpetuity. Then that would mean that all the countries in the UK union would then get all that they wanted.

Now as the more awake of you will see, that shortcuts exactly what Nicola Sturgeon was kicking into the long grass the other day in her speech. Not only that but it guarantees an affirmative answer ( something that Nicola Sturgeon’s plan absolutely did not) for what otherwise would be a matter for the British government and remember two prime ministers have said at least five times that they will not allow this to happen.,

Now you will have noticed that legislation can be passed in the British Parliament at a days notice, therefore there is absolutely no reason to doubt that this legislation could be in place before a vote on the latest Brexit plan

Now, is there anyone out there who would sacrifice a chance as we have now to have an agreed referendum simply because they do not like the tory party?
This is a credible road map to independence and should be seriously explored .

Trip to the Outer Hebrides October 2018

Bob Costello

8 October 2018 ·

Day 2, trip to the Hebrides.

Pleasant surprise when I woke this morning to see that the wind had dropped, and the rain had stopped. Nice to walk down to the harbour in Portree and watch the Sun trying to break through the low cloud base. Nice walk along the harbor

A nice breakfast and then on the road heading to Uig and hopefully the ferry but ever watchful of the weather front, once more coming in from the Minch with rain blowing through and ever aware of the change in Ferries necessitated by Laura’s abject failure to book the proper ones (she being a woman of course blamed me)

So, with the weather once again changing we stopped at the fairy Glen, beautiful and mysterious place dedicated to the fairies embedded in Scottish folklore. The old Scots word for Fairies (the mysterious people) is the Shee, prominent in many Scottish place names like Glenshee, the glen of the Fairies.

The rain starting to be persistent we explored the glen and climbed to the top of the most prominent feature, Paddy being difficult to keep under control on the precipitous climb and even more difficult decent. On the way down a fairy did indeed appear (see photo below).

I remember, visiting the Fairy Glen with the production crew of the film Brave and it indeed did leave its mark on them. The film was the idea of Brenda Chapmen who directed it together with Mark Andrews and they were both on the trip around Scotland to research the film plot. I had the most wonderful 15 days with that group of extremely talented individuals, together with my good friend Ian Stewart taking them around Scotland and the islands researching the film and assisting them with the history of the period, the culture and the humour of the Scottish people.

Some years later I had the pleasure to be a guest at the premier of the film in Edinburgh and took my daughter Laura, it was something special to actually recognise my humour in the film and extra special to see my name in the credits (all be it at the very end )
A few days after the premier I took Brenda and her daughter Emma, on a trip around Scotland visiting some of the places depicted in the film and we spent a very pleasant few hours on a gloriously sunny day in the Fairy glen. The film was all about the relationship between a Mother and Daughter and I remember Brenda telling me that she had in fact based the story on her own relationship with Emma, so it was indeed a special trip.

I write this on the ferry from Uig to Tarbert on Harris then there is a drive to Leverborgh , hopefully to get another Ferry to Bernery at North Uist, then a drive down North Uist Benbecula and South Uist to Lochboisdale and the hotel for tonight ( hopefully).

Well, here we are at the Lochboisdale Hotel after quite a day traveling and two ferries later, together with a drive in the dark from Bernary to Lochboisdale, quite a day and Paddy is tired, poor wee thing.

So, a few photos of today’s travels, including the fairy, you will notice that she is a very well-endowed fairy and I am not sure, but I have the feeling she was being photographed for some rather adult, publication or film.

Day two in, and hopefully and more relaxed day tomorrow when we take a ferry from Eriskay to Barra, the jewel in the crown of the Hebrides. So, a couple of pints of Guinness after dinner tonight, looking forward to the trip to Bara tomorrow.

I Have felt I had to do a blog this week but when I thought of it, what could I say that would be new and indeed interesting to the people who read my blogs. My blogs consist of travel, General politics and in the main, issues which relate to a subject very close to my heart and that is the fight for the independence of my country Scotland. I decided to simply copy a link to a blog I did on the 6 June this year , it contains links to earlier blogs and indeed to the problems I and others have had with the SNP in trying to get a road map to independence, which is what I thought the SNP were there for .

Throughout the last 5 years since we lost a referendum on independence I have kept a close watch on how our chances were of another attempt to gain our independence and indeed of the performance of the SNP in relation to this task we had given them in successive elections. I am afraid the conclusion I have come to is that they are not up to the task, If you read through the blog a attach below and indeed the attachments contained within that blog you will see a trail of obstruction and incompetence on the part of the SNP and in particular the SNP in Dundee .

Dundee , you will remember was the Yes City , the City that turned in the highest percentage of votes for Yes in the country. I and others in the yes Bus team played a big part in that result and at the time I began to have my reservations regarding the commitment and abilities of the Dundee SNP politicians in regard to the cause of independence. My reservations are well documented in the blogs I have written since then and in deed in the one I have attached below . But it was the attitude of the local SNP after the referendum that gave me most cause for concern and indeed alarm .

Since Nicola sturgeon was crowned Queen of the SNP things have went from bad to worse. Her stated position was that elections were nothing to do with independence and were everything to do with showing that Scotland could be governed well UNDER THE UNION, yes her theory was that people who voted no could be persuaded to vote yes if it could be shown that they could be governed well UNDER THE BLOODY UNION. An act of the highest level of stupidity. Or was it, could it have been deliberate ?

I am not one for conspiracy theories , in fact I fight against them all the time but this whole situation and the amount of glaring opportunities for going for independence that have been wasted have made me to look for a logical explanation., An explanation of why after 5 years we are in effect no nearer independence than we were in 2014 and the small increase in voting intentions since have been down to the actions of the tory party and absolutely nothing to do with the SNP. Yes they have had 5 years and not a single initiative or act of preperation that could be said to take us any nearer independence.

So let us take a totally hypothetical plot where we have a country which controls a smaller country and that smaller country has vast natural resources, resources that financed the de industrialization and monetarism of the larger country. The smaller country has became fed up with the exploitation of the larger country and is beginning to realize that for many years the larger country has been keeping the smaller country down both by force of arms and a relentless misinformation program of indoctrination that the smaller country is subsidized, and there is a fear in the larger country that there could be a case for independence .

So what does the larger country do ? Well it gets its very able security services to infiltrate the smaller countries political system . Now at this point , if there is anyone out there who thinks this is fantasy then I would ask you to look at what happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria .

So what do you think the larger country would do? They would look for people in the political system and recruit them, especially up and coming stars and they would make them sleepers. If by chance these sleepers attained a position of notoriety they would start to work them behind the scenes to undermine the efforts of the people to go for independence . If by chance there was to be a figure head who would take the fight forward then he would have to be neutered and made ineffective. Leaving the chosen ones to string out the process for as long as possible, possibly to the point where people became disillusioned and fell away from the idea of independence or the rules could be changed to make it very difficult or impossible to actually gain that independence that the people so clearly want.

Now this may seem far fetched but I can assure you this kind of thing is going on in different countries all over the planet. What has happened over the last 5 years makes no sense to me and the situation at the moment where it looks as though Nicola Sturgeon will simply ask the British government once again for a section 30 alteration to schedule 5 of the Scotland act 1998, an action she has already been told in parliament that will be refused again., thereby wasting a god given opportunity to use an almost certain mandate in the forthcoming general election. She has blocked a motion by Angus McNeil to have this debated at the party conference . The party of independence being prevented by the leader of the party of independence from discussing a way forward to independence. This is an incredible situation and must be reversed by the membership.

We are in very troubling times and I for one do not get a good feeling. I attach a blog I wrote in June of this year which contains attachments to previous blogs which formed my thinking to date.

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/bobsblog.scot/3393