This week the panel of Phil Boswell, Eva Comrie, Lloyd Quinan were joined by Denise Sommerville from Ayrshire. They had plenty to discuss as our leaders once again showed us just how incompetent, how stupid and how detached they are from the voting public.
We had several local authority council by-elections this week. The most troubling aspect of these was not that the Unionists won seats it was the lack of engagement from the electorate that is the talking point. One result in particular Glasgow North West had a turnout of 12%!
That 88% of those eligible to exercise their democratic right chose not to should be a wake up call for all our politicos. Sadly, as is the norm the winners of these non contests were preening and prancing and lauding the voice of the people. The losers were commiserating with the losers who they assured us were brilliant candidates and undeserving of loss!
Neither the winners nor the losers managed to find time to bemoan the death of our democracy with such low turnouts. This in the same week where yet another opinion poll shows that the Scottish people favour independence over union! Yet the SNP lost every one of these ballots of the people.
As I am writing this I would hope that John Swinney and his team are sitting in a room finally waking up to the reality that they are on the wrong track and need to change direction and quickly! Regrettably, I know they are not!
We also had the farce of the Herald Political Awards this week. Any awards handed out to “watch my lips Sarwar” proves these are indeed political awards, British Unionist awards.
The same awards announced Lorna Slater the failure serial loser as Green Politician of the Year! It seems cost the Scottish tax payers £200 million because of your incompetence results in a win for the Unionist media.
Kate Forbes was given an award for her services to Business! Well of course, the Unionists want to reward the patsy that greased the path of Freeports. Also this week Kate announced there is indeed a “credible path to Independence.” Great and what is it Kate? Seems it is the same secret plan that Nicola never revealed either!
John Swinney should have received an award as the most incompetent leader ever of the SNP. He appointed Marco Biagi as a Special Adviser Marco who is one of the most divisive figures in the SNP. A serial failure in every task he has ever been set. Scotland where failure is rewarded be it useless councillors that are from a party that removed your granny’s WFA and supports a genocide to MSPs that cost us £200 million in failed schemes. The detached establishment will reward the failures and ignore the people.All to protect the union!
On the week that Vladimir Putin told the west that any NATO long-range missiles into Russia would be viewed as an act of war and would receive appropriate response as dictated to by International law. Swinney decided to go all Brit and give Scotland’s unconditional support to the fascist regime in Kiev and the use of said British missiles.
Maybe John is the only person in Scotland that doesn’t know that the Storm Shadow missiles the British used to attack Russia are made in Beith. Perhaps by some miracle he is unaware that the British nuclear deterrent is housed on the River Clyde at Faslane! He has painted a huge target on Scotland with his stupidity! Way to go John!
On the same day Russia fired the first ever ICBM ever into Dnipro as a warning to NATO that he has weaponry that cannot be intercepted or neutralised! This did not stop Starmer or Swinney behaving like 19th Century British Imperial morons as they both poked the Russian bear!
I have to keep repeating myself to SNP people. You have one job and one job only, getting our nation independence. Your job is not to support British Foreign policy or their broken Parliamentary democracy. Indeed, at every opportunity you should be taking the exact opposite stance!
Meanwhile, the Chiefs of Staff were in a committee at Westminster saying how the British Army of around 75,000 souls was ready to go and face the Russian army of 1.5 million! Their macho Anglo supremacy BS was on show for all to see. It seems that our ruling elite thinks if we do have a nuclear war they will step out of their nuclear bunkers into some sort of Garden of Eden and England will once more rule the world! It is pathetic as it is embarrassing and totally deluded!
What was also telling this week was the silence from both Swinney and Starmer over the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Galant.No rush to find a tv camera and be all macho and tough. They can’t be seen to upset the baby killers of Tel Aviv!
Then our politicians wonder why only 12% of the voters turnout for elections! WTFU people the public are completely disillusioned and disenfranchised. If you want to get back to turnouts like 2014, you need to champion the people’s priorities, not your own!
Voting for a broken, unresponsive, not to mention genocide-compliant system of governance, is akin to voting for the dead. We should be “voting” with our feet, on the street!
Public information on the Storm Shadow missile facility in Beith is freely available here:
“Beith Munitions Depot”
https://secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/BeithMunitionsDepot
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Munitions handled at Beith include the ALARM (air launched anti-radiation missile), Tomahawk, Storm Shadow, and Brimstone missiles, and the Spearfish torpedo. ”
with a clear aerial photograph here:
https://www.navylookout.com/arming-the-fleet-the-network-that-supplies-munitions-to-the-royal-navy/
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DM Beith is an inland munitions depot about 20 miles south west of Glasgow. It was established during World War II and is sprawling site covering 1,000 acres with 21 miles of internal roads, and almost seven miles of perimeter fence. Employing more than 200 staff, the depot’s storage capacity is some 18,000 cubic metres. Its main focus is on the supply of complex weapons for all three services. Beith does not just undertake RSMI of complex weapons but is sub-contracted by BAE Systems and MBDA for assembly and manufacture work on torpedoes and missiles.”
(DM) : Defence Munitions
(RSMI) : Receive, Store, Maintain and Issue
Eva, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel which is not a signatory, and Gaza is not a state, so its jurisdiction over what is happening there is also open to question. Furthermore, Israel is a democratic state so that any misdeeds by its citizens should be tried in Israel. That is the norm, and we know that individual soldiers, accused of war crimes, are being tried there. If Scottish judges were to try Netanyahu, even supposing he would ever choose to come here, we would not be doing so as a signatory state, but as a satellite nation of the UK, which is the signatory state, because we are not independent. It is right that we should have compassion for the Gazans and try to help them as much as we can, but it is not in our gift to create a state for them. God help us, we cannot do that even for ourselves.
I would like to see the evidence, in detail, laid out for the arrest warrants. I would also like to see the Israeli embassies all over the world, invite journalists, politicians and members of the public to witness the Hamas footage of 7 October. The families will not allow widespread showing on the internet, and that is understandable, given their grief and given their religious burial etiquette and fear for the remaining hostages, but people, certainly in the West, need to see that footage to understand why the conflict was undertaken in the first place. Not to condone what is being done in Gaza and Lebanon, but to understand why the Israelis mobilized in the first place and to start asking: would we have done anything differently had our citizens been slaughtered like that? The Americans chased down and killed Bin Laden for less – the numbers per capita of the population being far more in Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the PLO, etc, are ISIS by any other name.
The vast majority of Muslims are moderate and are as disgusted as we are by what is happening now, and by 7 October. It is naive and disingenuous to suggest that all the Western targets of Islamist extremism would be spared if only we left the Middle East to itself, and, rather, the death toll there would expand exponentially as Sunni and Shia fell on one another, as they have done, consistently, in the past.
As a female person, I know, because I have made it my business to find out, that no Muslim nation affords autonomy to its female population, and we have only to look at the Taliban, another off-shoot of ISIS, to understand what could happen so easily. Why no international arrest warrants for the oppressors of women and girls who are being left to die in childbirth because female doctors are banned and they cannot be treated by male doctors, sold off to older men at tender ages, their immature bodies ravaged, killed in domestic violence? This is not whataboutery, but genuine puzzlement at the perceived difference. It’s okay to kill women and girls in those circumstances but not in Gaza, in a war zone? To me, they are one and the same. Women and children were quite deliberately used as a human shield in Gaza. Women and girls are used as the proverbial punchbag in Afghanistan and other Muslim states.
The West is not lily-white, and we all know that, but the systems we have in the West must be preferable to those in Muslim states; if not, why are so many so desperate to get here and why are so few desperate to go there. In the end, if Netanyahu or Galant is arrested by a Western state, it might make us feel less guilty about what is happening, but it will not shield us from what is to come.
I have been unable to access your site for for some now, Roddy, and I assumed you had blocked me, but I hope you will give room for the other side of the debate, or it cannot be called a debate; rather, an echo chamber. It is not actually a different side, because I, too, feel the greatest compassion for the Palestinian innocents, but this conflict will not be ended by any kind of compassion; rather, by hard-nosed political reality. If Israel falls, so does the West.
I never blocked you Lorna it would never cross my mind.
I have no idea why you were unable to access the site.
I view you as one of my best commentators
Thanks, Roddy. I have cut back on commenting, anyway, as I find it so depressing these days, but I always follow you, whether I can gain access or not – if not here, then on YouTube. Yours is one of, if not the, best discussion shows.
Hi Lorna, I fundamentally disagree with the US vetoing of yet another UN cease-fire proposal in Gaza, only this week. White Christian Ukraine, is another matter, though; primarily because US big-business interests have agricultural, rare-earth and other investments to be protected there, which they’ll fight to the last Ukrainian to protect. The near powerless ICC has, at least, made a symbolic point, one which Israel is unlikely to recover from until that countries people decide on their settled position in North Africa and how it intends to divest itself of its vicious racism towards its neighbours. Finally, are not Arabs also entitled to protect themselves against foreign oppression, exploitation and worse? It would appear not.
Carmen, with all due respect, could I encourage you to listen to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an exiled Palestinian? His voice is one that we should all listen to, but I suppose he will be accused of being an American mouthpiece. He demolishes so much of the stuff that is believed in the West about the Palestinians, about the Muslims, about the Israelis, about Gaza and about the West Bank.
His take on extremists in both Gaza and Israel is measured and, to my mind, true, although, having studied Netanyahu, I do not get the impression that he is a real right-wing Zionist, but, rather, a politician who has been pushed to the extremes by others on whom he lies for support. Not making excuses for him, just that he has always stated his opposition to the push for unlimited settlement expansion by Israelis, and I think what has been taken to be a deliberate hands-off before 7 October, to allow Hamas to grow and administer the Gaza Strip, was more of a desire to see if the Palestinians would get their act together, not a prelude to war.
Alkhatib states quite clearly that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has already recognized Israel, if not openly. This needs to happen in Gaza, too, clearly stated, and the Israelis will have to negotiate. The dream of a two-state solution is now further away than it ever was, and the Israelis will be a hard act with whom to negotiate, but they are not going to forget 7 October. The bright? young things who march and shout and call for the river to the sea without an ounce of understanding need to listen to this man, too. He calls them morons, as he does the academics who encourage them.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143
And meanwhile two million people have signed a petition in less than four days calling for another election due to the new Labour government repudiating its pre election commitments.
Said to be the fastest ever petition it in truth matters not a jot. Starmer has already stated that unless 17.8 million people sign it the petition is inconsequential, and so it is. The dear old English have just woken up to the fact that democracy does not work, is a charade. Scotland of course has known that for a long time but I really wonder if the majority truly care.
Poverty, of mind, of possessions, of societal care and compassion is utterly lacking. Like donkeys we allow our government to put people in extremis whilst there are resources aplenty that could provide for them. Cutting the heating allowance to old people on pensions, oft with ill health, is but one example.
And now the march to war. The UK has had, not that we were told boots on the ground fighting Russia. And now we openly prepare, target and launch long range missiles into Russia. So let us make no mistake we are at war. And of course with ever more sophisticated technology the art of war through that technology becomes ever more deadly. Russia has shown that in the use of its most recent display of a hypersonic missile that cannot be shot down.
And so, gas pipelines cut, international sea communication cables cut, it doesn’t take much savvy to realise how bits of dear old Blighty could resemble bomb ravaged Beirut, or Gaza or many of the totalled towns in Ukraine.
And what do we Scots do with our nuclear submarine base, nuclear warhead stores, military airbases and if I may add, key infrastructure resources like gas, oil, and electrical wind and hydro power sources that supply England.
i think we know the answer to that. We either switch off completely, or focus on gender, or for a few, a very few stand up and say they want to kill bad Russians. Ah well, the big stick might be coming their way – as the wise buy shares in a well known paper tissue excellent for wiping away the tears.
That last comment was utter misplaced cynicism but the message is clear. We too could be the next Gaza.
Proud Scots indeed!
If you were talking about my comment, no, I was not saying that we would be the next Gaza. Quite the opposite.
Dinna fash yersel Lorna, If I wanted to pick up on any of your comments I would.
My point was rather simple. Democracy does not work. It is a sham, a charade, and we know that only too well. Resources rich our peasants are poor. A few glass beads for some Scots and they are anybody’s. Or is it lumpen indifference for may.
You raise the point about the possible suggestion that we could be the next Gaza. By we presume you mean Scots. But in what context. Apartheid colonisation by the big neighbour next door. Exploitation of Scotland’s resources, rich in energy, has a populace that is energy poor. Economic retardation is another context that could be a contrast between Israel and Palestine.
But it is in the potential comparison between Gaza’s destruction and Scotland that you thought I was alluding to. That is an interesting comparison. Gaza has been ruthlessly flattened necessary you will realize to neutralise and enemy. That’s what you do. Women, children who gives a jot. Not the Israeli’s or their Western backers.
But now we have a different scenario. The Russian Federation is not a helpless Palestine. Unlike Palestine the Russian Federation has huge military resources. And it seems that they are winning, despite all of the western input. But now that it seems that Ukraine, the hapless proxy for Western expansionism, is losing, the US and the UK step up and now overtly engage in warfare against Russia. Storm Shadow missiles supplied, launched and targeted by the UK, and of course the US are now being fired deep into Russia.
And Russia’s response has been to show it’s teeth with a hypersonic missile. So what happens next. Will Sir Keir Starmer sanction more British boots on the ground, more Storm Shadow missile launches. And what will be the response to that.
And it is in that, that one can think of Scotland maybe looking like Gaza. Everyone knows, or I think they know that Scotland has the Clyde Submarine base at Faslane, has the nuclear warhead store nearby at Coulport, has another munitions store built into the hill side at Glen Douglas which together could be targets if the thing goes war goes nuclear.
But before that, what about crippling the infrastructure that facilitates weapon manufacture. And to be right in vogue, what about the much vaunted Storm Shadow missiles. No doubt assembled form parts manufactured in factories all over, one has to ask where that assembly may be – and in that regard Scotland once again, in the place of Beith in Ayrshire hoves into the horizon.
RNAD Beith as I remember was a torpedo assembly and arming facility. All very important stuff for your nations defence. But now it seems it processes Storm Shadow assembly. Now, if this is so, and the UK’s big show is to launch Storm Shadows deep into Russia could brave Beith be on the target list – even if its just to show a small example.
Or what of taking out some of the energy generation or distribution capacity. Nord Stream a year or so back, a couple of main fibre link sub sea cable the other day, or maybe a nice hydro scheme in the Scottish Highlands. Its a possibility before the big one and of course where would that leave Scotland, a bit raggedy like Gaza.
But no, too war we go. Britain is on the world stage again. The US’s lap dog, the US’s proxy. And would the UK or should I say Scotland take a bullet for God and country. I do believe they would.
Is that what you thought I was alluding to Lorna or were you saying that we would be the exact opposite. Not sure if we would, but hey, British Bull Dog spirit, tenacity, on the beaches, we know the line.
And Gaza, and its hapless population, they are just hapless collateral damage. Hamas through their murderous actions gave the excuse and the Israeli’s have used that excuse remorselessly in a brutal show of genocidal power.
More Storm Shadow missiles Vicar?
Sorry, Willie, but you did quote a part of my comment. I have said and say again, no I do not think we are anything like Gaza. Compare the two histories and you will understand why that is a nonsense.
I think that, if the Israelis wanted to commit genocide in Gaza, it would have done so long since. It could wipe out the remaining population tomorrow. Did you know about the water and huge camp in Gaza that the Israelis supply? Their engineers brought water, as they did in the Negev desert, which is populated by Israelis. They were torn out by Hamas. I do not support the war there, any more than I support the war in Ukraine. Neither do I support either extreme Islam or extreme Judaism, but I do recognize that the Jews have not bombed us or attacked our children. A cold, hard splash of reality is required before the Israeli-Hamas conflict can be ended. To blame the West for all ills is as stupid as blaming it for nothing.
The problem is that, when you start a war, you have to win or, essentially you lose. The Gazans have lost. Perhaps this next generation will free itself of the hatred of Israel, recognize Israel, live in peace with Israel and get on with building a new Gaza for the Palestinians. That has been made much more difficult because of 7 October, from the Israeli side, and because of the death toll, from the Palestinian side. Ukraine is different. Russia is winning there, whatever the propaganda tells us, and the propaganda is just as bad as in Gaza. In order to settle, the Ukrainians will lose territory in the Russian-speaking East, or we will be facing a Third World War. That is the choice.
Scotland will never stand up to England-as-the-UK, but it can make England-as-the-UK want desperately to let us go, and that can be achieved by a mix of operations: the political; the constitutional; and the propagandist. Goebbels was a horrible wee man, and his regime was a horrible regime, but he knew the power of propaganda. Hamas and extreme Islam knows it, and it has worked on the guilt of the West to undermine its sense of itself; and the sheer Bonhoeffer stupidity of many of our young on the left/woke axis leaves us vulnerable. Manchester and Southport should have woken us up, but they haven’t. I have said it before and will say it again: regardless of finer feelings, if Israel falls, so does the West.
Israel needs to fail to save the world from destruction. Most of the Israelis are European or US citizens and they need either brought to heel or removed from office. Israel is a Zionist State,not a Jewish state.it is an Apartheid state not a multicultural state. It is a fascist state not a democracy.
I think, as in Iran, as in Russia, we need to keep out of this except to ensure that the Gazans are supplied with food, water and medical aid, until Hamas is uprooted. I can’t agree that Israel is a fascist state.
The people of Iran, Russia and Gaza have to overthrow their own regimes if that is what they want and need, and establish democracies – but only if that is what they want and need. If we interfere again in the Middle East, we could be looking at more strikes against us here. Iraq is majority Shia, as is Iran but the Shia are a minority in the Middle East as a whole. We are now seeing the fruits of our toppling of Saddam, who could have been shunted aside by his own people without Western interference, as the Iranians have moved in to fill the gap. Gaddafi, the same. Everything has consequences and most of these are unforeseen and rarely good. Isis was created and cannot be uncreated, even though it appears to have been defeated. The Taliban is an off-shoot of the confederation that is ISIS. All we did was strengthen them and ensure an even tighter grip by them on the Afghan population, or, at least, half of it.
If Netanyahu is to be removed, let his own people do it; he has strong opposition in Israel, but I cannot see anyone else doing anything differently. The conflict could end tomorrow, as it has in Lebanon, if the hostages are handed over to their relatives and the Gazans repudiate Hamas. Will they, though? Israeli sensibilities have hardened again in the wake of the international arrest warrants and I cannot see them allowing Netanyahu to be toppled – yet, anyway – although he will have to go in the longer term, and I have no doubt he knows that himself. Whatever they say about him, he has been a constraining force on the worst of the extreme Zionists.
If Israel falls, the West is wide open to extreme Islam, and a new Palestinian state will align itself with Saudi, another Sunni state, or, perhaps Egypt. At the moment, Iran is funding both Sunni and Shia. With Israel out of the way, the Sunnis and Shias would fall on each other for domination of the Middle East, as the various Arab states picked a side, and greater bloodletting would ensue. Syria and Libya and Jordan are predominantly Sunni, as is Egypt. Many of them call us the little satan and America the big satan, perhaps with some justification. Does anyone seriously believe they would leave us alone once they have settled their own differences?