I emigrated to Catalonia in December 2015. I moved there for personal and health reasons. The Iberian climate is better for my condition than damp cold Caledonia. As it was part of the EU at that time there was no need for me to be too concerned about anything. There was no hint of the stupidity that the English voters would foist upon us all in June 2016.
Like everyone else, including Prime Minister Cameron I believed the Remain vote would carry the day. How wrong we were all to be proven? I knew moving here that I would after eight years lose my right to vote in UK General elections. I immediately lost my right to vote in Local and Scottish General elections. I accepted all that because I was a European citizen!
On the run up to the disaster of June 2016 I had several conversations with fellow independinistas back home. People who I had campaigned with over decades for Scottish independence. Several of them informed me that even although they supported remaining they would be voting to leave. Their reasoning was that they believed a vote to leave would ensure Scottish independence! Lots of us believed that too. Sadly another instance of our Scottish governing party missing an empty goal! The lack of strategic thinking and courage are the missing links in our struggle!
We all know what actually happened, however, to this day I still cannot believe how stupid and idiotic the English voters were to prove in that Brexit referendum. Now as the reality sets in the majority of people in England realise they made a fatal mistake.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/
Hindsight as they say is an exact science. Looking back, we can see that the corrupt right-wing owned media played a crucial part in corrupting the English voters. They rolled out the racist rhetoric to great effect. The Leave campaign and sympathetic right wing papers perpetrated the lie that Turkey was imminently about to join the EU. The implication was also fed to the English public that this would mean hordes of Turkish non-white Muslims would descend upon the UK in huge numbers and that the UK would be helpless against this mass migration. It played to the lowest common denominator in England, their inherent racism and superiority complex.
Did the unfounded claim that Turkey was about to join the EU swing the Brexit referendum?
The corrupt British media has learnt over the years just how to play the unsuspecting British public. Media is the greatest gift to autocratic governments. If you control the message, you control the people. This is exactly why Westminster retained broadcasting and media when devolution was set up.
We have been brought up with one of the biggest lies of all time in that British media and broadcasting is the finest in the world. There remains this belief that the BBC is the most honest, most revered broadcaster in the world. A complete and utter falsehood of course! The same form of manipulation and dishonesty is used against ‘foreign media’ the implication there being, well they are not English and you just cannot trust Johnny Foreigner, they eat horse meat and snails after all!
We have seen in the tragic Ukrainian conflict this disgraceful dishonesty on display. You are to believe everything the western media and broadcasters tells you, 95% of which is untrue. You are also encouraged to disbelieve 100% any media outlet or independent journalist that tells you anything different than the western corporate sources!
The western elite and WEF went a step further. These so-called bastions and protectors of democracy and free speech blocked outlets that dared to try and proffer a different line from the western lies and exaggerations. From economics to war, to healthcare, anything the elite can make massive amounts of money on, they control the flow of information to you.
Independent journalists that report both sides of the conflict in Ukraine have seen their assets back in their homelands being seized by their governments. They are acting as they would have you believe these bad governments in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran act. Such is their determination to stop you hearing or reading what those countries and media say they have pushed the propaganda and lies to new highs.
In the western ‘democracies’ nowadays it is like going into court where they only allow prosecution witnesses and testimony. No defence witness are to be allowed to take the stand. If that doesn’t make you suspicious of what the media tell you daily, it should. It is exactly how that very same media reported the Alex Salmond trial!
From Independence to Brexit to Ukraine and all stops in between our media are complicit in lying to you! Their lying though is not the biggest crime. Omission is the biggest disservice meted out to the unsuspecting public.
It has always been there but nowhere more so than in 2014, 2016 and post Brexit of course, the Ukrainian, Palestinian, Yemeni or Syrian conflicts. All of these events directly affect the wealth and ability of the 1% to steal from the public purse. They of course, can all afford nuclear fallout shelters, can you?
Scotland is England’s cash cow those of us that do not rely on the BBC, ITV or the corrupt MSM have long known that Scotland subsidises England, not the other way around! Those of us that sought to educate ourselves from other sources knew that the lies about immigration and payments to the EU from the UK were unfounded scaremongering, nothing else. The corrupt media knew that too, they just chose not to tell you the truth. The few Press Barons, all living offshore chose to lie to you for their own personal gain. The so-called 4th Estate journalists went along with the lies!
Today in post Brexit UK the truth is also being kept from you. Brexit has to be the biggest self-harming exercise by any government, in any continent, in any age! Yet the media since that fateful day in June 2016 have done nothing but lie to you by omission. Everything and everyone have been blamed for the UK’s woes, except the real culprits!
We always had control of our borders. It was just that successive UK Governments would not make the investment required to secure our borders. They have always been understaffed, but there is no profit to be made for the spivs in recruiting public service workers! Let’s be clear even the spivs know that completely privatising the border guards would be a step too far even for the Little Englanders!
We have massive shortages of staff in the NHS and agricultural sectors. Never will you hear government ministers or the corrupt media tell you the truth, the madness of Brexit is the real cause of those shortages.
The cost of living and especially energy was rising rapidly long before the war in Ukraine although nowadays the media and politicians tend to blame Vladimir Putin for all the ills of the self-inflicted troubles in the West. 40 years of neoliberalism, Brexit, right-wing mantra must never even be hinted at as a possibility of why your standard of living slips while the wealth of the elite rises like never before.
Meantime, we have more billionaires created since Brexit than ever before. At the same time the levels of poverty and the poverty gap have grown to an all time high. It doesn’t take much to join the dots and arrive at the reality. GREED is the problem we face, nothing else. Back to omission, this truth will never be told you by the mainstream media and politicos. Only bloggers like myself will tell you because we are not part of the clique. That is why like foreign TV channels if they could, we bloggers would be silenced too.
It’s why they vilify us daily.It is why they do not want you getting alternative facts and most of all they do not want you getting the truth. Scottish Independence, Brexit, Ukraine, Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Syria, energy pricing, fair pay, fair voting, democracy, free press are all about a very few people making disgusting amounts of profit! Democracy in the UK is an illusion. It does not exist! A free press in the UK does not exist! Truth and reality do not exist in the UK. You are living in a real version of The Truman Show! From your morning newscast till your bedtime, everything is a distortion of the truth and reality!
Johnny Foreigner is not your enemy. The enemy is your own government and your own media. They have gone to extreme lengths to ensure you never hear the truth only their sanitised version of reality.
On Thursday when Jeremy Hunt makes his Financial Statement be assured of this, he will lie to you! He will not say Brexit has caused staff shortages and our rising living costs.He will not say the US enforced sanctions on Russia are anything to do with the economic disaster we are facing. He will name other unrelated factors as the cause, Covid, Putin, Jeremy Corbyn, Scottish Separatists, Johnny Foreigner. Not the truth, the need to keep making the elite richer at your expense is the motivation, nothing else! The media who report on what he says also know he will be lying. They will not however tell you that. They are in on the gig, they need to keep omitting facts and lying to you. Their huge salaries and lifestyles depend on them being malleable and dishonest.
I too, of course, could be lying to you so my advice is simple. Do your own research on EVERYTHING! Seek out alternative sources for your information. You will never find the truth from your TV, Radio or newspaper. They are the experts at deception and omission. Truth is the biggest fear of our ruling elite. Governments should always fear their people.The people should never fear their government. Knowledge is power. That is why they do not want you to attain knowledge! My suggestion is to arm yourself with knowledge!
Great post Roddy – agree entirely with you on the MSM. Rather than existing to call out government and all its branches, they are completely complicit in the cosy establishment deceit.
All info above = reasons why I don’t have television and don’t buy newspapers. I get my information from blogs such as yours. Thank you Roddy.
” Democracy in the UK is an illusion. ”
Well said Roddy.
As you imply, the situation is arguably worse for ‘a people’ lacking democracy AND ALSO subject to colonial procedures and oppression. As Albert Memmi put it:
“What is fascism, if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few? The entire administration and political machinery of a colony has no other goal. The human relationships have arisen from the severest exploitation, founded on inequality and contempt……”
https://wp.towson.edu/iajournal/the-socio-political-determinants-of-scottish-independence/
So clear, so true. Great post as ever. One also has to ask why the media in Scotland continue to refuse to mention the Alba Party?
Well said. The dire results of British nationalist xenophobia and propaganda espoused by the britnat media is not new of course and neither is the gullibility of the public, especially in England but also in Scotland, although I continue to hope more and more folks in Scotland are ignoring britnat newspapers in favour of websites like this one. The television, especially the BBC, remains the main danger to Scotland’s political enlightenment. Sadly the SNP leadership continues to treat the BBC as the epitome of perfection even as the BBC spews out its own brand of anti-Scottish propaganda.
A bit of a mid-reading/ misunderstanding of the facts there, Roddy.
Brexit was an immediate response to the practical implications of EU enlargement to the east- is a million Poles swamping much of England in a wave of migration unprecedented in English history. These (legal) migrants didn’t come to Scotland on anywhere like the same scale (Scotland is far less welcoming than England and the economic opportunities are far less). Had Scotland experienced the same wave we’d have been just as enthusiastic for Brexit as the English.
And, sadly, Scotland is no one’s cash cow. We couldn’t even find our current levels of public spending without that annual fiscal transfer/ subsidy from the rUK.
Until the Indy movement abandons the idiocy of socialism an independent Scotland will never happen. We can’t afford Socialism I’m afraid!
Racists are not welcome here Chris. Indeed racists like yourself should not be welcome in any decent society. Sadly, in the British Union racism, religious and political intolerance run through the DNA of those that support British Nationalism a blood and soil vile form of supremacy. Incidentally it was as well in 1940 those Poles were swarming through Britain they did win the Battle of Britain and took Monte Casino for you blood and soil Brits! Your racism is only matched by your ignorance of actual history. Incidentally my wife is Polish. If you ever attempt to bring your British racism here again you will be blocked. You disgust me!
“Until the Indy movement abandons the idiocy of socialism an independent Scotland will never happen. We can’t afford Socialism I’m afraid!” You’re confusing me now, corp’: I always thought you National Socialists were o.k. with socialism?
Away and bile yer hied, I see no concern for Scotland or it’s folk in your branch office mentality.Shame on you.
Yes, lots of brace Poles in WW2. Rather irrelevant to the fact that services and communities felt swamped in England which was what led to the ‘leave’ vote, short sighted though it was.
Thankfully the EU market is largely irrelevant to the Scottish economy so far less of an impact here than in England.
Anyway, a ‘yes’ vote in 2014 would have seen us out of the EU even more quickly!
The swamping of services in England was not because of immigration it was because successive neoliberal Governments at Westminster have not invested in our public services instead they have moved the money of the nation to enrich themselves. To hide that theft they played the hard of thinking,the gullible ignorant racists like you to blame immigrants and hide their theft you stupid, stupid bigot!
If ever we are forced into armed rebellion here in Scotland Roddy, every media outlet, and the traitors who work for them should become priority targets. Their lies and propaganda needs silenced for scotlands and liberty’s sake.
And, in the interests of spreading knowledge:-
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/11/06/as-cop-27-opens/
and
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/06/06/stands-scotland-where-it-did/
Are you here to add to the exchanges or promote Iain’s site?😜😜😜
I am here to add to knowledge. My article’s title is self-explanatory (Iain Lawson wrote the headline, I wrote the article). COP 27 ends on the 18th, so I thought you would like to help me spread the word about the implications of climate change. After all, it emphasises the urgent need for Scottish independence.
As someone who joined the SNP in 1987 and who has a very long term commitment to the environment, one of my major frustrations as an activist was the unwillingness to listen to the environmental case for independence. I am convinced that, had this case been given the respect it was due, the urgency of independence would have been recognised much earlier and a strategy employed that would have made our arguments more convincing to the electorate.
Iain gives other writers the opportunity to write about a variety of topics that are related to Scottish independence. All of my articles to date have been well received and you can read them here (most recent first):-
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/11/06/as-cop-27-opens/
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/06/06/stands-scotland-where-it-did/
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/charity-begins-at-home/
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/self-id-causes-problems/
My offer of speaking on your show is still there!
Not very polite Fiona,especially without prior discussion. Good manners cost nothing.
So, which part is not polite? Your article is about the mainstream media withholding information on Scottish politics. It is about their dishonesty, omissions and lies about the case for Scottish independence. My articles give further information about various aspects of such behaviour within the Scottish Establishment. Why would you object to that?
I have to tell you when you have posted almost the entire back catalogue of another blogsite on mine? A quick do you mind would have been appreciated.
Excellent piece there, Roddy. All needed to be said. Straight and to the point. I think you’ve been channelling Scott Ritter. 👍🙂
Scotland is the UK’s cash cow you say Roddy.
Well oil and gas certainly fitted that bill. And now with wind that becomes ever more clear when you look at this Crown Estates offshore map of offshore wind schemes under development and scheduled for development over the next ten years.
https://www.crownestatescotland.com/our-projects/scotwind
And this excludes onshore wind, hydro and pumped storage. Indeed, aside of onshore wind there is huge pump storage underway with the current tendering for the Great Glen Coire Glas scheme. At a stroke this will double the entire UK’s pump storage capacity. And there’s more scheduled such as Cruachin 2 et al.
Scotland the pig poor nation that just keeps giving, and giving.
Willie you don’t seem to understand Scotland doesn’t produce electricity its actually electricity companies do that and they already pay Corporation taxes and VAT to the Scot Gov and their employees also pay income taxes to the Scot Gov already too. The Scot Gov’s own published Document on the Scot Gov Website already tells us this.
https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/statistics/2022/08/gers-methodology-2021-22/documents/gers-detailed-revenue-methodology-2021-22/gers-detailed-revenue-methodology-2021-22/govscot%3Adocument/GERS%2B2021-22%2B-%2BDetailed%2BRevenue%2BMethodology.pdf
No VAT or Corporation taxes gets paid to Scotland you imbecile!
Doubling the UK’s pumped storage capacity in pretty meaning less when the amount adds up to a minute fraction of generated electricity anyway , I’m afraid you need to think harder and stop swallowing meaningless invented propaganda from the SNP Gaslighting Party ..Vote Alba https://fullfact.org/economy/snp-sturgeon-blackford-swinney-renewable-energy/
And Brexit a fatal mistake the English made and now recognise they made.
Well here’s another example Roddy and it reinforces the vicious racist stupidity of the English electorate
London is no longer home to Europe’s biggest stock market,. Paris took over the crown on Monday, according to Bloomberg.
French equities now amount to $2.823 trillion, compared to $2.821 trillion listed on the UK exchange, Bloomberg reported, citing their research data. Britain had a $1.5 trillion advantage over France in 2016, when it voted to leave the European Union in the “Brexit” referendum.
It was Brexit rather than the tax policy of the short-lived tenure of PM Liz Truss at 10 Downing Street that is to blame, former Bank of England official Michael Saunders told Bloomberg TV.
“The UK economy as a whole has been permanently damaged by Brexit,” he said. “The need for tax rises and spending cuts wouldn’t be there if Brexit hadn’t reduced the economy’s potential output so much.”
And there we have it a black economic hole due to the 2016 Brexit decision. And moreover the loss of London as Europe’s biggest financial market.
And Sturgeon and her lushes in Westminster helped deliver it. You could not make it up.
Yeah, we need to keep reminding people of this:
https://www.barrheadboy.com/omissions-and-lies/#comment-21833
Democracy in the USA is also an illusion like when ‘Mr Smith Went to Washington’… say, the truth for a change would be nice.
NB update for entertainment purposes only:
https://www.countdown.date/id/15124/scottish-independence-referendum-2023
The truth is of the utmost importance, and should be supported in principle. The fact that it also supports the case for Scotland’s independence is useful, and should be promulgated widely:-
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/11/06/as-cop-27-opens/
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/06/06/stands-scotland-where-it-did/
Honesty is the best policy – and the independence-supporting Scottish media needs to work together.
Without wishing to be pejorative it seems that Fiona likes to hear the sound of her own voice. Self promotion too and a bit rude.
Some people are like that. It doesn’t however make them bad people. Nor does it mean that they have nothing to say.
Clearly I think she’s using Iain’s blog to self promote. If Iain promotes me, gives me a platform, then why can’t you.
She even says that when she asks you to invite her to speak.
In your shoes I’d take her pushy self promotional re-posting of her Your’s For Scotland pieces as a compliment to your site and its readership.
I have no problem with big Iains stuff being on my site. I just dislike rudeness.As my mother taught me, good manners cost nothing.
My manners are excellent. I at least reply to correspondence. Not once in all the years I have posted weblinks of my writing to blogs and websites has anyone told me that I need to ask permission.
I find it quite extraordinary that you should expect such deference, when the weblinks posted are just 4 articles written by myself – hardly the entire `back catalogue` of Yours for Scotland.
I am not interested in taking sides in your spat with Iain Lawson. As it happens, I understand and sympathise with both of your positions on Ukraine. I would just like the war to stop. The danger of nuclear conflict has been amply illustrated by the missile accident in Poland.
I made a repeat posting of my initial comment, which was simply because it had not gone up on your blog, and it looked as if it had been lost in the post, so to speak. I apologise for this mistake. I don’t understand why the comments take so long to be moderated, nor why they were posted at all, if your site rules forbid weblinks to other sites.
If you take a look at Alba Ayrshire (run by my husband), you’ll see that this promotes a number of websites and blogs that support independence or issues that Alba has decided to support, such as women’s rights. I asked my husband to include your own blog. What a shame you couldn’t see your way to supporting the issues that I’ve written about.
To paraphrase what you said to me in Stirling, Roddie – I don’t deserve to be treated like this.
No there not Fiona they really are not!
Clearly the concept of someone who is knowledgeable about specific issues and who is making use of whatever means they can to promote these issues is foreign to you. If you had read any of these articles, you would know that, like a growing number of voters, I am pretty cynical about politicians and their hangers-on. The difference between you and me may well be that, whilst you were still praising to the skies the very people you now revile, I had already seen most of them for the careerist charlatans they are. The only `advantage` I had in sussing out these people was that I put in the work to try to persuade them to make life better for everyone in Scotland, particularly the most vulnerable, so I got to see what they are really like. Years ago, I attempted to persuade members of the SNP to stop voting for people purely on the basis of a `reputation`, without any idea of their political beliefs, experience or character. But tribalism rules ….
Just a quick thumbs up for your Twitter post Roddy… I’m not on Twitter myself, but that 45 minute interview with Douglas Macgregor is one of the best I’ve seen since the whole business in Ukraine flared up.
The remarkable thing is that he’s simply speaking up for common sense, and it’s very revealing how far from common sense the Western attitudes have been, which in turn, asks massive questions about who is briefing the Western media and trying so desperately to orchestrate such a dangerous alternative and false narrative.
We really need pressure on the Western governments to embrace peace talks and a cessation of hostilities, because the consequences will be profound and far reaching if we do not.
I have to confess a slight prejudice too, because it’s very rare to feel reassured by hearing an American perspective.
https://twitter.com/Scotpol1314/status/1592921084789403648
On the downside, it is self evident that a Germany dependent on Russian oil and gas is no different from a Brexited England’s dependency on Scotland’s oil and gas. I fear Scottish Independence has a big problem when the UK cannot afford to lose Scotland.
I truly wonder whether it would actually pay Scotland to write a prospectus on England in a post Independence scenario, and present the case that the exploitation of Scotland’s oil can be replaced with a constructive symbiosis. Perhaps Germany’s economy being hostage to Russian gas can focus the minds in Westminster and remind them what they have to lose in an acrimonious divorce with Scotland.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t let Sturgeon’s SNP within a 1000 miles of the negotiations.
Don’t fool yourself that the English voted to leave the EU because of something painted on a bus , or particularly strong feelings of nationalism.
They simply voted to leave because of the unprecedented levels of immigration.
Now if that makes them racists in your book, Roddy, it doesn’t in mine.
I value Scottish culture and it seems to me that mass immigration, can’t help but dilute it.
It is perhaps worth remembering here that back in 2014, most people born and raised in Scotland voted to leave the UK and most that were not, voted to remain.
We want independence because we are a people ,with a culture, different from those that are determined to govern us and we should try to preserve it.
Yeah pretty much I do see you as a racist. Immigration is not tge problem Government larceny transferring our resources abd taxes from poor to rich and not investing in public services. You have your Brexit but the immigrants keep coming. You took back control of your borders from those Johnny Foreigner types and now you are paying the French(Johnny Foreigners)£ 55 million a year to take control of your borders because the Littke Brits cannot do it by themselves! Truly pathetic wastrils. You have swallowed the right-wing neoliberal lie big time. Immigration is the problem not the rich stealing from the public purse! I pity you more than revile you,