Month: November 2019

Last Thursday I managed to get into a meeting in the Queens Hotel in Dundee, held to give Jeremy Corbyn an election opportunity to support the Labour candidate for Dundee West, Jim Malone and of course lay out his intentions for a Labour government. Although the meeting was to go out as a public meeting , it was anything but that, as the room was about half filled with party activists specially invited. Although most of the seats were filled it was obvious that the seating area had been reduced to try to show a well attended meeting.

I sat down beside a lady and had a blether to her, she told me that although she had been a Labour member most of her life she was really swithering as to whether to vote for them this time as she fully supported independence, the lady was English and had lived in Scotland for some time and loved the country.

I fully believe that had I been noticed I would not have been allowed in to the meting and as I went down the stairs I hesitated just enough as the guy at the door went into the hall with a poster , he went one way and I went the other way around the back of the room and into an empty seat of which there were quite a few.

My reasons for being there were to try to get Corbyn to explain why , if he truly believed in democracy he was, ( according to recent pronouncements) prepared to thwart the will of the Scottish people by refusing to entertain a section 30 derogation of schedule 5 of the 1998 Scotland act, more commonly referred to as the devolution act. This was what was put in place during the run up to the 2014 independence referendum, it made the referendum decision agreed by both sides so no legal challenges could be made to the result.

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8IGYy5vNJ7Y%26fbclid%3DIwAR25S7nGAyMt6itwFodjde-P7WKiZSlQSeFG7mqVgj_1VmcRmV6LWUp-_rI&h=AT1bjrOWB56EGlWKv6XdwTMXBScU4Djo0UmCF-eT51Jd5QoZyCIOQ_IhKJ5Q3mSNR4m4f8Nb19rUpanIG50sGQZ3f-ofc869iX5Jruh_Hffhku-k6mpyV2GBevlUv0U6LX1HRblzAvZpFFBBlksbX7cU0Hn9

Now , I have nothing personally against Jeremy Corbin, in fact I like him and compared to that child idiot Johnson he would make a much better Prim Minister. (to be better than Johnston however does not mean one would necessarily be a good Prim Minister) However he vacillates like no other politician I have ever known and he is a fence sitter. This was obvious in his approach to Brexit and more to the point as far as I was concerned in his attitude to Scotland.

Now Scotland have a pro independence majority in the Scottish parliament and also a majority of Scottish MP’s in Westminster. They were all voted in on the basis that there would be another referendum on independence, The only problem is that the SNP also have a leader who vacillates and has taken us no nearer to being prepared for a referendum in 5 years, but that is another issue and I have blogged on that bone of contention many times.

So in the absence of any initiative by the SNP ( party of independence) I decided to take matters a bit further so I went to the meeting and when Jeremy was well into his speech ( most of which I agreed with by the way) I stood up and interrupted , Jeremy kept on speaking and as he had a mike I had to raise my voice to be heard . There followed quite an exchange where I repeatedly asked why he thought it was within his remit to thwart the expressed will of the Scottish people. There was also an altercation with several of the party members including the last Labour MP for Dundee West. I had to warn the three members involved that they were assaulting me and to remove their hands from my person. The rest of the audience started behaving like a baying mob and I pointed out this to Jeremy and asked of this was his idea of democracy. So after a pretty intense exchange, some grappling and pushing and only once I had said my piece, I left. Mission accomplished .

That should have been the end of it but the rest of the day was taken up by calls from the press including papers like the Daily Mail who had by this time trolled my blog site to try to find anything they possibly could to discredit me with the intention of trying to get the main outlets like the BBC and Skye to take down the footage which by this time was going viral. Because of this invasion of my personal space I had to take down my Twitter account , Facebook account and my blog site. So for the past few days I have been silenced, This is what happens when you try to force the Labour party to act in a democratic manner , So beware.

Yes Jeremy Corbin comes over as a easy going affable guy ( and I honestly believe he is) but behind him is the dark arts of a dark heart of old Labour. I have had a better few days than the last few have been, but it will no doubt settle down and the sooner it does will have a bearing on whether I bring charges for assault or not. An assault that a prospective prim Minister presided over and made no attempt to stop. The Queens hotel is a licensed premises and as such is subject to the Licensing act Scotland in which makes it clear that only the proprietor or their employees can ask someone one to leave the premises. If that person refuses and only then, can the “staff” use reasonable force to remove that person. Anything other than that is a bar room brawl and that therefore is what the Labour party indulged in in order to silence a reasonable request for clarification on a very important issue to the Scottish people

There is a lot about Scotland that Jeremy does not understand , the law is perhaps one of these things, and the other is that the people of Scotland will not stand idly by and allow an undemocratic master to rule over them. Before you come back to Scotland Jeremy do some homework and do please reign in your dogs of war as they do you no credit.

Well here we are on the cusp of a General Election which will take place on the 12 December. An election that on the 24th October Ian Blackford ( the leader of the SNP in Westminster ) described as “holding an election in December, as ” sheer madness.” However, by Saturday 26 October, two days later, Nicola Sturgeon ( leader of the SNP) together with Joe Swinson ( leader of the Libdems) had clubbed together to put forward an intention to place a bill before Parliament to have a general election on the 9 th December.

Incredibly , Boris Johnson had opened the door to both parties to form a deal to allow the December 12 date to proceed. Now just three weeks before this debacle I had suggested that the SNP do a deal with Johnston to allow his negotiated settlement on the EU withdrawal bill or a December General Election to proceed on the basis that he would agree to a section 30 as long as it could be put into law immediately.

I had quite a reaction to this on both Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter response was hugely positive. The Facebook response , although in the main positive by the amount of people for and against, was met with the usual mind numbingly stupid reactions from a group of well versed Nicola personality cult, abusers, in a stream of invective and outpouring of expletives , common among the less able to think , who incredibly still think Nicola has a clever plan. A plan I remind you changed from ” General election in December sheer madness” on Thursday ,to “General election in December without a deal to gain a section 30, a great idea” within two days.

because Nicola Sturgeon and Jo Swinson had conspired to allow a December election, this bounced Jeremy Corbyn into also agreeing to a December election. Now let me be plain, and let no one be under any misapprehension. Nicola Sturgeon facilitated an election at which according to all polling will allow the most right wing government in British history into office and she did this WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO GET A DEAL ON A SECTION 30 ORDER, (in fact the leader of this party has twice stated very clearly in parliament that there will be no agreement on a section 30) an act of either deliberate obfuscation as regards an independence referendum or blatant stupidity and believe it or not there are still people who think she has a clever plan.

I do not think I have ever saw such a debacle as I witnessed in the House of Commons as a result of the change of minds of the SNP, Lib-dems and Labour, all vying for their own place in history mixed in with self interest, in particular the SNP, where snouts in troughs replaced the main propose of their existence which is supposed to be delivering independence to Scotland.

So then we had the unedifying spectacle of the hastily arranged rally in George Square Glasgow , An event deliberately designed to divert attention from the fiasco in parliament and make people believe that it was all part of the clever plan of a referendum sometime in 2020 .

Nicola sturgeon gave a rousing speech which was immediately pounced upon as a speech announcing the next independence referendum., Only problem was it did no such thing, and Nicola as usual was very careful with her play on words. Nowhere in her speech did she confirm that there WILL be a referendum in 2020 . The only utterance that came anywhere near that was that she said “I look forward to leading you in PREPERATION for a referendum next year”, something she should have been doing during the last five years. During the speech she made at the party conference a few Weeks ago she again was very careful in her play on words when she was confident that there SHOULD be a referendum in 2020, not WILL be, you will notice. There is absolutely no justification for believing that either speech was not yet another occasion where she has marched the faithful up to the top of the hill and down again as she has so many times in the past.

The fact is, that she has one opportunity left to redeem herself and that is in the formation of the party manifesto for this election. She must make it plain that this election is to ascertain the will of the people as to the strength of opinion on whether the majority of the people of Scotland wish to be independent as required in the UN charter of self determination, just like the 66 countries who have gained their independence from the British Empire since 1945. It should be noted that not a single one of these countries had even heard of the section 30 derogation that Nicola sturgeon erroneously calls ” the Gold standard”

She wont do it, of that I am sure, and then she will be guilty of squandering the most opportune set of circumstances ever likely to present themselves in the history of politics, and let me make another prediction. There will not be an independence referendum before the Scottish elections in 2021 as long as Nicola sturgeon and Peter Murrel ( her husband) are at the top of the SNP.

I have been disillusioned and extremely disappointed at the way the independence cause has been handled by the Sturgeon, Murrel pair since shortly after Nicola was made leader and I do not think it is any coincidence that shortly after she took over, Alex Salmond was sidelined and then basically put out of the game by allegations brought about by a change in the procedure for making complaints brought about by Nicola Sturgeon. I have put my thoughts on this down in previous blogs and I am convinced that the most recent reticence in progressing a referendum campaign has a very close connection to this and believe that revelations which will surely surface during Salmond’s trial might at long last explain this illogical restraint. It is surely no coincidence that Salmond is probably the only SNP politician capable of taking the independence fight forward and he has been muted.

On another matter, because of my frustrations surrounding the constant delays and willful obstructions to the cause of independence I had decided to stand against the incumbent member of Parliament for Dundee West. On a simple manifesto of “independence now”. I had prepared a campaign and had a first class and willing team together and I was indeed looking forward to the fight. Unfortunately because of close family and personal matters I have decided not to stand, I firmly believe that a new party or at the very least a new leadership of the SNP are now required to take the fight forward. I am totally sickened by their insipid performance to date and as this General Election campaign will have, in effect nothing to do with independence ( as witnessed by the candidates literature to date which omits any mention of a referendum) I will not be campaigning, however when eventually we do get into an independence contest I can assure you that the Yes bus will be back on the streets of Dundee and in our city Square.