Month: February 2020

Saturday 22 February 2020

The SNP and Nicola Sturgeon, Bernie Saunders, US foreign policy

Well, here I am with my musings of the world this week from Mennies, But this week it is somewhat different as it comes from Brussels, where I am spending the weekend, Brussels is a beautiful city a city with, it seems, a chocolate shop on every other corner and a Belgian beer hostelry on the other one.

Back in Dundee it has been another busy week in business, with another step in the progression of a MOT (Ministry of transport) station being completed.

In-between all this, trying to keep up with what is happening in Scotland and indeed the rest of the planet.

Here in Scotland we had one of our representatives at Westminster, and MP for Perth and Kinross, Pete Wishart making a fool of himself again by showing his unionist credentials in one of his blogs, calling England the “parent country of Scotland.”  This in relation to the debate on how we should progress to another referendum on independence, or what it should actually be and that is, an assertation of the will of the people, with a view to progressing to a fully independent country.

At present we are caught up in a massive road block brought about by the leader of the SNP and therefore the de-facto leader of the independence movement ,Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence that the only “legal” rout is to keep on asking Westminster to pass a section 30 derogation of schedule 5 of the Scotland act, thereby enabling a referendum to take place , the outcome of which would be pre-agreed.

This is of course in no way required and the present Westminster government are rubbing their hands with glee at the fact that Nicola Sturgeon and people like Pete Wishart are doing their job for them. It is quite clear in the UN charter of self-determination that all a country, or a people requires to do to gain its independence is simply ascertain that the people wish to be independent and then declare that they are independent. This would be followed by recognition of the fact by other countries and eventually the UN. This was exactly how Kosovo became independent and Britain was one of the first countries to recognize that fact. In this process we do not need foolish people like Pete Wishart and Nicola Sturgeon giving false credibility to the naturally oppressive state of England, A country who have raped and pillaged the resources of half the world during the history of the British Empire.

The trial of Alex Salmond is to begin next Month and I fully suspect that revelations which could be made concerning the involvement in, and closeness of, some of the witnesses to the first minister, could see her departure from the post. I sincerely hope that this will be the case and we can get back on the road to independence.

Only today it was announced that Joanna Cherry will be standing for the seat in Edinburgh that Angus Robertson intends standing  in, This is good news as a precursor to Joanna becoming leader of the party and Angus being consigned once more to the pages of history as he is too close to Nicola and he himself is likely not to come out too well either ,in the Alex Salmond case. By the way, if there are still a few misguided people out there who still think Nicola is going to lead them to a glorious referendum this year as she has promised, or indeed that she ever had a “cleaver plan” in the first place then be prepared for the shock if your life as she will be very lucky to still be in power by the end of March.

So now to Bernie Sanders who had been doing rather well on the primaries and looks good to successfully challenge Daft Donald in the forthcoming presidential election. Now there are several reason why I say this and not least among them is the fact that the Jewish lobby are throwing inordinate amounts of money into a campaign of disinformation against Bernie and guess what? The Russians are coming again, riding to the aid of Bernie, I ask you folks, honestly, just how stupid do you have to be to believe that crap being fed to you daily. Just look at where it is coming from, it is media and news papers with large Jewish controlling interests. The reason being if course is that if Bernie gets elected, he will reign in the mindless support for the worst terrorist state on the planet, Israel, In doing so he will stop the US from being a poodle of Israel and guess what? He will bring your young folk back from stupid wars in the Middle East. Hands up every Mother and Father who would like to see their Sons and Daughters in the armed forces being used to protect US shores instead of “US interests” which is another way of saying Israeli interests in the Middle East. Come on folks, wake up, you are being taken for a bunch of mugs and by the way  you might not have noticed but there is about to be a peace agreement with the Taliban and the only condition is that the Taliban have to cease hostile operations for a week. I will say that again “the Taliban have to Cease hostile operations for a bloody week.” So, in other words you have had your young people dying in Afghanistan for the last 17 years to give Afghanistan a week of peace, wow. Mission accomplished.  

So, sitting in the lounge at Brussels Airport finishing this week’s “The World This week From Mennies” and looking out on a dreich windy day. I am sure the Sun is splitting the pavements in Dundee awaiting my return.

So, to all my friends the World over I wish you a great (remainder of the) weekend. Take care all, be productive, be fair to others and gentle with animals. Life is too short for anything else. Slainte  

Sat 15 February 2020

Russia, SNP, Trump and the UN

Well here we are again at the end if a busy week, I missed my view on the World from Mennies last week because of pressure, business wise, as we are in the process of setting up a new workshop facility within recently acquired buildings adjacent to our existing workshop and depot. Big project for us, and it will give us one of the largest and most diverse vehicle workshop and repair operations in Dundee, it will include at least one possibly two MOT test bays allowing testing up to the largest vehicle possible under MOT regulations.

So, to what is happening around the planet over the last couple of weeks and let’s start with Russia, Now you will probably have noticed that there has been a lot of talk about Scottish independence of late and this had been brought about by various announcements and promises by the leadership of the SNP. Now let me be clear, I have absolutely no confidence in the present leadership of the SNP doing anything remotely like advancing towards independence ( as they have promised) this year and will instead ,once again use independence to get them a comfortable majority at the Scottish parliamentary elections next year.
Ok, so what has this to do with Russia? you will be saying. Well I will tell you. Now although the SNP ( the party of independence) are doing absolutely nothing , by way of preparation for and other referendum ( or other means of ascertaining the will of the people) the British establishment certainly are doing something about any threat to the removal of the goose who has been laying the golden egg for the last 313 years. In fact, ever since the last referendum in 2014 they have never stopped trying to influence the people of Scotland against any thoughts of removing ourselves from the United Kingdom.
There is various way in which they do this and one if them is to try to negate the value of our assets and in particular our reserves of oil. You will notice that recently there have been various interviews from so called experts in the oil industry giving views on the sustainability of our oil reserves and therefore the potential value to an independent Scotland of a product that is in declining usage. These reports are mainly put out by the UK state propaganda broadcaster, the BBC.
So where does Russia come into this? Well Russia together with its oil related companies are about to embark on the largest oil related operation the World has ever known and are to develop large oil reserves on the wide-stretched tundra lands of northern Ural and export it through a projected seaport in the Taymyr Peninsula.

The project costing in the region of $155 billion will include 15 new towns, airports, sea ports and in the region of 100K jobs,
Now if anyone ( even the BBC) expects Russia to put that amount of investment into a product that will loose its value in the foreseeable future then they seriously need professional help.
Scotland’s oil will continue to be a huge factor in the economy of an independent Scotland for many years into the future no matter how many (Sir) Ian Woods’ the BBC drag into their studios to try to tell you any different.

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So now to the SNP, who at one time were called the party of independence. That was of course until Nicola Sturgeon took over, and now are called the party of the Grand old Due of York as she has marched her troops up to the top of the hill and down again so many times that that it is not funny anymore.
Well a couple of weeks ago she did just that, for the umpteenth time.
Before the recent UK General Election she made great play with regard to a referendum being held this year, She even went to the lengths of arranging a rally in George square Glasgow to fire up the faithful into believing that there would be a referendum this year, The fact that she actually appeared at an independence related  rally in the first place was remarkable as it was the first one she had appeared at in the five years that she has been leader of the so called party of independence, Choosing instead to appear at rallies of her chosen sexual affinities held by the gay community and of course Brexit rallies on her crusade to save the UK union.

Now the SNP have been in power in Scotland for some considerable time and like all political parties they become jaded and corrupted by the power they hold. Now once upon a time it was the policy of the SNP to disband on achieving their primary goal but this is now not the case and my concern is that they will fall apart at the seams before they have achieved their primary roll and that is, facilitating a road to independence.
This process of falling apart , to my mind has already been put into operation. We now have a faction withing the SNP who are causing mayhem among the membership and the general independence supporting community, they are the WOKE brigade of gender neutralization. They are supported by the leadership of the SNP. Believe it or not they are pushing for a system of self ID which means that a physical male can have access to women’s private places by simply saying he feels like a woman, There are quite possibly very genuine people who struggle with their gender identity and should have provision made for them, but it is not in women’s toilets and shower rooms where women and children can be vulnerable and at risk from weirdos and sexual deviants. This gender recognition policy as laid out by the SNP leadership will cause huge losses in voting intentions and a subsequent loss to the independence movement. It must be stopped in its tracks.
Just over a week ago the finance minister of the Scottish Government, Dereck Mackay was discovered to have been texting messages to a 16 years old youth and is now under police investigation for grooming. Now anyone who conducts himself in this manner (and assuming he was indeed grooming) is disgusting. However, there is another aspect of this that is deeply worrying and that is his downright naivety and stupidity. This was a government minister openly texting without any thought as to where these texts were going, He would have been as well copying in GCHQ to the texts as every single one of them will have been sifted through their intelligence gathering software, stored safely away awaiting a prime opportunity for this to be used, Coincidently this came out days before he was to be laying out the budget for the Scottish government and more importantly he was to be producing an alternative version of the GERS figures, something the Scottish government should have been doing years ago as these flawed figures are used every year to falsely show Scotland in deficit.
So a couple of weeks in which the SNP Scottish government are starting to unravel at the seams and only a few weeks to the Alex Salmond trial in which I expect Nicola Sturgeon to come out in a very negative light. We badly need a new leadership in the SNP to carry forward the independence cause.

So to the middle east and Trump’s instructions from the Israeli government to produce a peace plan that will virtually destroy Palestine, Well understandably this has not gone down well at all in the world with many nations voicing their severe reservations Probably the only country where it did go down well was the country that it no doubt, was drafted in and that is Israel before being handed to Trump with instructions to sign it and get it out there.
United Nations, this week produced a list of companies in Israel who trade on land stolen from Palestinian people. The purpose being to put pressure in Israel to uphold the something like, 64 UN resolutions passed against them in relation to their treatment of the Palestinian people. Will it do much good? Probably not, as the tentacles of the Israeli government creep far and wide.

   Human Rights Watch said the list “should put all companies on notice: to do business with illegal settlements is to aid in the commission of war crimes.”

Hopefully the World will now sit up and see what is being done to a people in the Middle East, but I am not holding my breath waiting.

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And so to the main event tonight and that is a couple of pints in Mennies and no doubt some lively conversation.

So to all my friends the World over I wish you a good and peaceful weekend and remember :-  
When in Dispute with someone, and before passing judgment, you should first, walk a mile in their shoes
Then if you still do not agree, you are at least a mile away from them
And you have their shoes

Slainte    

Saturday 1 February 2020.

Nicola Sturgeon’s speech of surrender. Trump’s awful peace settlement proposals. Leaving the EU.

Well, another week in and a busy one at that and time for a pint in my favorite hostelry, but first a wee look at the week past, and indeed let me start with a subject very dear to my heart and that is the state of the independence movement in Scotland today.

Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon made her much awaited statement on what she intends doing with regards to advancing our march towards independence. To cut a long story short the answer is nothing ,except for the usual marching of the troops up to the top of the hill and down again. There was absolutely nothing in her speech which differed from her approach till now, and that is absolutely nothing, except “wait a little longer” That is what she has been saying for the last 5 years.
Five years ago she said that the people of Scotland would tell her when they wanted another referendum, So they did. They marched in their tens of thousands, they engaged with no voters on social media they did everything they possibly could without an official campaign. They, the people, told her that they were ready.

What did she do? Nothing, except change the peramiters. The “people will let me know when they are ready” slogan was dropped as the people marched. Marches that she was never on, She did however march at the front of her chosen sexual preference groups in Gay rallies and also in anti Brexit rallies. In the elections in 2015, 2016 and 2017 she swept the cause of independence under the carpet, supposedly to set about governing Scotland well, in order to convince Scottish voters, that because it could be proven that Scotland could be governed well under the union it would be able to govern itself well without the Union. I ask you this, if a person voted no because they though that the country would be better off under the union ,then why on earth would they change their mind if it could be proven that the country could actually be governed better under the union.

No, just nonsense, and meanwhile whilst she was trying to convince no voters that they could actually be governed better under the union she was doing nothing to actually convince them that they could be governed better as an independent country. Yes believe it or not, in the 5 years since the last referendum the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon have not even tried to address the issues we lost that last referendum on quite possibly with the exception of the Growth Commission report that the SNP commissioned, which actually made the situation worse by suggesting that we do one of the very things we lost the last referendum on and that was a form of monetary union and worse still that we could be tied to England financially, for up to 10 years. Absolutely crazy.

Throughout this time since Nicola took over as leader of the SNP, she has constantly marched her troops up to he top of the hill and down again with a series of promises generally made in the lead up to an election which were then broken shortly after the election, The classic was the lead up to the General Election we just had. A few weeks before the election there was a surge of talk about another referendum from Nicola and a hastily arranged rally in George square where for the first time since she became leader of the SNP Nicola actually appeared and spoke at a rally, making a strong case for another referendum and indicating that there would be one in 2020. However when it actually came to the election campaign there was no sign of any election material campaigning on independence and instead the campaign was conducted on the basis of fighting against Brexit. So another wards she had done it again, she had sidestepped independence in favor of trying ( as she saw it) to save the Union.

Throughout her time in office, all of her actions could be construed as working to maintain the union, and in doing so she lost seats at every election after the 2015 GE landslide which was won on sentiment after the defeat at the 2014 referendum ., The 2015 landslide was won, not because of Nicola Sturgeon, but despite her. In the GE in December the SNP did manage to take back some of the seats lost in 2017 but that was specifically because she had made such a play on the independence case just before the election, although as I have just said the election was not actually fought on independence but on Brexit which was lost anyway.

We are now faced with the most right wing government in the history of the UK, one with a huge majority and there was actualy no need for it. Believe it or not, it was the SNP who actualy facilitated it by, together with the Lib Dems, agreeing to hold the GE in December , this in turn bounced Jeremy Corbyn into also agreeing and we are now faced with the disaster of a Boris Johnston government of fascists. Johnston was in a cage and Nicola let him out. Once again she saved the union.

So since the GE we have had a series of delays in getting the promised referendum under way, to the stage the other day when again Nicola had run out of delaying tactics and had to make a much needed speech to clarify the situation regarding what people saw as the promise to hold a referendum in 2020, Well the speech was a disaster and gave not a bit of clarification as regards another referendum. There was an avalanche of criticism on social media as people finely realized that they had been duped and this again was the march down the hill experienced so many times in the past. This time it must be clear that the Emperor has no clothes, even to the ardent “Nicola has a secret clever plan” acolytes. My advice to them is stop hitting your head off a brick wall, you will feel better for it.

My hope is that Alex Salmond will be cleared of all charges and the people who set him up will find themselves in court. I have a feeling that there are a number of people including Nicola Sturgeon who will be rather uncomfortable in the run up to the Salmond case and I would not be at all surprised if the case was dropped altogether.
We really need Salmond back in charge, that is our only hope for a proper route to independence but whether or not that happens Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, the chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrel have to be replaced.

Ok so briefly , the US has made proposals for a peace plan in Palestine and Israel, and they are a disgrace. They basically entrap even further the Palestinian people . Donald Trump is now no more than a puppet of the Zionist Government of Israel. The plan and the drafting of it are a disgrace and is openly and simply a propaganda tool of the Israeli government for instance the word “violence” is used repeatedly but only in connection with the Palestinians, Absolutely no mention of the awful “violence” meted out to the Palestinian people by the Israeli forces. The document is a disgrace and I suggest you look at Craig Murry’s excellent piece on the report.
Yet again the conflicts in the middle east are leading back to the door of Israel.

Now the EU, and a very sad day it was on Friday as we officialy left the Union after 47 years, This is a disaster for Scotland and indeed the rest of the UK but England voted for it by a small margin and so the rest of us were dragged out against our will.
My hope is, that now there are no membership restraints on the remaining countries they will openly show their support for Scotland becoming a member should we become independent. When I cast my mind back to the independence campaign in 2014 the no side made great play of the fact that only remaining in the UK union would guarantee continuing membership of the EU. Well we can see just how hollow a promise that was now, can we?
To all my friends in the EU I am sorry to leave you, I campaigned to stay, please leave the door ajar and a light on, we will be back I promise you.

So to all my friends the world over I wish you a pleasent weekend and I raise my glass to you
Slainte

Remember :- Every day is a new page in your life story
You have a choice
You can just read it
Or you can write it