At the age of sixteen, I had my Road to Damascus moment on Scottish independence. I decided then that self-determination for my nation of birth was the only correct political decision available. It took Scottish voters, a long time to agree with me. Back then not many shared my viewpoint. Between my friends and family, I was viewed as just being a rebellious teenager and that I would grow out of this insanity. I was the butt of many jokes and took lots of ribbing. Back in the late 1960s nobody truly took the SNP or Scottish independence seriously. The WWII generation were still very much the majority.
Throughout the 1970s I was heavily involved with the party. In 1977 I even stood in the local council elections in Inverclyde. Fortunately, for the party and the good citizens of Port Glasgow, I was beaten into second place by a Liberal. I did though, take great pleasure in pushing an ex-Labour Provost into third place. I was mightily relieved though that I was never elected. The following year I was the election agent for the SNP candidate. We fought a good campaign however it was not to be our year.
The discovery of North Sea Oil changed everything! What also changed around that time was the attitude and behaviours of our opponents, especially in the Labour Movement. From being joke figures not taken very seriously the comrades became quite nasty. They realised that this SNP lot were starting to bite into their vote. The first SNP breakthroughs tended to be in Tory seats and areas. Labour was quite happy with that as it helped increase their majorities in most seats. However, when they began losing voters the panic and venom set in. It continues to this day a quite irrational hatred of all things SNP and Scottish by the die hard Labour folk.
Through the late 1970s and 1980s the SNP moved more to the left. Folk like Alex Salmond, Jim Sillars, Alex Neil, Margo MacDonald saw to that. Our success as Winnie Ewing described it was like the tide coming in and out, after each setback, we recovered and went again, each time we landed a little further up the independence beach.
Back then as now, I just could not understand why others couldn’t see the light. Westminster was never going to prioritise Scotland over England. In England it prioritised SE England over the rest of England. The farther north you go the less interest Westminster has on the people, outcomes or events. The same is true if you go west and south west from the Home Counties. It was so obvious to me I just couldn’t understand why others couldn’t see it.
I started my political journey as a 16-year-old youth. I was in my mid 50s before the rest of Scotland caught up with the few of us in the SNP. I will never forget my joy in May 2007 when the final seat in the Highlands confirmed that Alex Salmond had brought home our first ever Parliamentary victory. Our first ever victory over the British Labour Party and the first SNP Scottish Government. We had more votes, more MSPs than Labour, it was joyous. I was in Byres Road, Glasgow, when the confirmation came through. I went straight into Tennents Bar and sank a fair few pints.
I felt at last exonerated in my years of campaigning for the cause. All the last places, abuse, mocking mattered not a jot in that moment. The SNP had won, Scotland had won, the people had won, at last, we had Scots controlling Scotland for Scotland! The victory was narrow however it was a watershed moment in Scottish politics. The Union has never since that day won a, single election. I knew at that moment there was no going back to unionism. Independence was now when, not if. I must have looked a bit of a nutter standing in that bar as time after time I let out guffaws of joyous laughter. I certainly didn’t have anyone crowding my personal space!
This victory, if anything spurred myself and others to even greater efforts to capitalise on our success. Alex Salmond and the SNP did not let us down as he again made history in 2011 by achieving the one and only ever Holyrood majority recorded. The D’Hondt, AMS voting system introduced by the Brits and was never meant to let majorities happen. (More on that later!) I think it is highly unlikely that will ever happen again. The unique factors in that election will never be repeated.
Immediately after that momentous victory Alex Salmond gave us our first and only ever chance as Scots to determine our own destiny. He gave us the stage, sadly Scotland fluffed its lines, and as they say, the rest is history.
By 2016 and the time of the next Holyrood Election, so much had changed. Alex had gone, replaced by Sturgeon, Labour were no longer competitive in the constituencies. They also had lost 40 MPs at the 2015 UKGE. The three House Jock Parties, each only had a single MP in London. The SNP dominated Scottish politics. I often smiled to myself thinking of the times in the previous century when as SNP activists we had very little support, funds and in lots of elections not enough candidates. Now we had people queuing up to represent the party. Unfortunately, for the cause too many of them were grifters and carpet baggers.
When the results of 2016 were finalised the SNP although victorious had lost their Holyrood majority The SNP vote was up in both the Constituency as well as on the List. However unlike 2011 we had lost List MSPs and the majority. 953,000 SNP List Votes netted just four MSPs, three of them in Tory stronghold, South Scotland. A dear friend of mine in Barrhead, JD, who absolutely loves crunching numbers quickly came up with a solution to the SNP/Independence dichotomy. Having run the numbers JD concluded that the only solution to this, would be a separate List only Independence Party. To be factual, JD mentioned a West of Scotland Independence Party. It never of course got off the ground however it continued as a talking point for us in our endless conversations about promoting the cause of independence.
As JD and I had never got beyond the principle, it was with great glee we heard about ISP. Here was an Independence party that could address the anomalies of the Holyrood voting system. Just as with the SNP in the late 1960s I found myself in a very small minority of people who could see the sense in this party. It was fully in favour of Independence, just like the SNP. Indeed, the founders of the party were ex-SNP. It was only going to stand on the List and therefore presented no danger to the SNP hegemony in the constituencies. It was the perfect and at that time the only sensible vehicle to advance the independence cause.
Just like the 1960s/1970s though the ISP experiment met with furious and vicious opposition. This time the pushback and nastiness did not come from the English based British Political Parties, it came from within the SNP ranks. When I say the SNP, I should clarify, a small vociferous single issue division of the SNP. This grouping had at its head as a patron the Party Leader. I was, shocked at the bile and hatred poured on to myself and anyone else that tried to advance the ISP. This indicated to me for the first time that independence was no longer the main priority of the SNP. The reason for all this hatred against ISP was not that we posed a threat to the union. It was because the ISP in the minds of this cabal in the SNP posed a threat to their Queer Theory politics. ISP had to be crushed in the same way as any woman that speaks up to defend the rights of women is being attacked today.
I once again could not understand why Scots that purported to want Independence above all other issues couldn’t see the validity of an ISP on the List Vote. I was sure though when Alex Salmond and Alba Party arrived that body of voters, would see sense. Sadly, as we know that did not happen. Despite this blog and many other pro independence outlets explaining, imploring giving detailed analysis it was all to no avail. The leader of the SNP and her senior MSPs, MPs and advisors aided and abetted by the corrupt British Media destroyed Scotland’s chances of a super independence Holyrood Parliament. Sturgeon was more intent on a Queer Theory majority and to hell with independence.
I had to wait almost 40 years, for Scotland to catch up with my politics and to see the first ever SNP Scottish Government. I don’t have 40 more years to wait for Scottish voters to catch up again. My clock and Scotland’s clock are ticking. The Tories are poised to let loose their Internal Market Bill. This will result in Holyrood being reduced to nothing more than a glorified Greater England County Council. The few powers that London Tories leave in the hands of the SNP won’t interfere with London direct rule. Sturgeon will be left with the ones that she obsesses over and the ones, she destroyed the SNP and Yes Movement over. History will note that the Leader of the Independence movement at the critical time chose Gender Politics over Scottish Independence.
The Tories will allow those policies to roll out and damage Scottish society. How they must be laughing, they couldn’t destroy the Independence movement no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much money, time and effort they expended they couldn’t destroy the cause. Now though, Sturgeon and her Gender Political nutters have destroyed it for the Brits, Nobody else, Sturgeon & Co have done it all by themselves! Three Huzzahs for Sturgeon and Queer Theory!!! They might even put up a plaque for her at Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral for the woman that saved the English Empire!
*Image by Sands of Time Photograph by Colin and Linda McKie
I puzzled over why English papers and English news channels were not highlighting the SNP’s sudden shift into ‘trans rights’ zealotry, until I remembered Napoleon’s words, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when your enemy is making a mistake.’
Yes, Bibbit, I have no doubts at all that they would use it against us, but, at the same time, we should remember that they are fighting tooth and nail against this stuff. It is no coincidence that it has been rolled out with such aggression in Scotland and Wales. If they fall, the march into England (huge numbers to be gulled and undermined) will be the next step. I believe it is separate from Westminster’s and the British State’s attempts to derail independence, but, without doubt, it would be handy. On the other hand, they might have to count the cost south of the border, so I’m not sure that it originated with the security services. It is, after all, an activist group that is wedded to derailing civil society as we know it by turning everything on its head, so just as much a threat to England as it is to us.
We are only a month from the election , and already we can see that it’s over with the SNP.
They have completely ditched independence, and Nicola is squeezing every last drop out of the Covid mini lockdowns. She has nothing else to offer. No vision for Scotland’s future, even within the confines of devolution. The SNP are a completely empty party , they are a ship drifting along with a captain without a chart.
At some point there has to be a Fletcher Christian to come forward and take back the ship.
Well said, but what we don’t know yet to what extent the British state has been involved in the subversion of the SNP.
I think we will discover, H, as Gerry Adams and Martin MacGuinness did eventually in the case of Sinn Fein/Provos. IRA, that the organization is riddled with agents. It will take about 30 years to learn just who. There have always been rumours that the SNP had been infiltrated, from the early days, long before it became the success at the polls it has. I think it has to be a foregone conclusion that the British State has infiltrated the SNP. It would be very remiss of it if it hadn’t.
The SNP are a Social Democratic Party and describe themselves as such. About half the electorate are not social democrats and will not ever vote SNP. ALBA are social democrats and will never seriously grow the pro independence vote, though they can game the system. What was needed was a liberal/progressive party to serve that portion of the electorate who need to be shown how independence also serves their needs. I do not see any party to fill that void. Unfortunately all the bloggers, except Stu Campbell, are social democrats.
And the majority of ourcommenters and readers are social Democrats sadly a few unionist fannies appear from time to time thinking they are so much smarter than everyone else. Deluded fools!
Well, Willie, either we will emerge with independence or utterly defeated and sinking into a period of real mental ill-health for the majority of the population, or the tension will snap any political consensus, tenuous as it is within our society, and armed struggle will follow. Who wants that? Trans activism and queer theory are about to take centre stage, and they have societal upheaval built in – and they will be resisted, if only by women. It is not a question of whether social democracy can persuade – here we go again, talking about persuading the unpersuadable – but whether self-preservation kicks in, in time, because, politically, socially and economically, it is going to get a lot worse very soon. We are almost at that turning point that Ireland reached just before 1916. As for Alba, I think you are wrong: it will grow the vote because it will offer what the SNP cannot and will not.
I’m a blogger.
But I am not a social democrat.
Excellent article. However I think there is a wee bit more to this than choosing “Gender Politics over Scottish Independence”.
Postcolonial theory (Fanon et al) tells us much that we need to know about what is happening today in Scotland, viz:
– a colonial people remains in large part an underdeveloped people and nation;
– in a colony, a dominant national party is invariably ‘a gang feathering their nests’;
– a dominant national party ‘helps the government hold the people down’;
– a dominant national party ‘becomes more and more clearly anti-democratic, an implement of coercion’;
– independence is intentionally delayed and replaced by a plethora of ‘mystification’s’ (and diversions) of various sorts (e.g. gender ‘stuff’, ‘hate’ crime, Section 30) – these are also tools of coercion used to hold down the people and to contain the more ‘radical’ elements of the independence movement;
– however, the dominant national party begins to disintegrate and soon ‘nothing is left but the shell of a party, the name, the emblem and the motto’;
– the dominant national party ‘has been transformed into a trade union of individual interests;
– ‘the party’s mission is to deliver to the people the instructions which issue from the summit’;
– ‘There is no longer any party life, for the branches which were set up during the colonial period are today completely demobilized’;
– ‘the local party leaders are given administrative posts, the party becomes an administration’;
– ‘after leading the bourgeoisie to power, they (i.e. the activists) are firmly invited to retire so that the bourgeoisie may carry out its mission in peace and quiet’;
– ‘After a few years, the break-up of the party becomes obvious, and any observer, even the most superficial, can notice that the party, today the skeleton of its former self, only serves to immobilize the people’;
– ‘The party, which during the battle had drawn to itself the whole nation, is falling to pieces’;
– ‘The party is becoming a means of private advancement’;
– among the party elite ‘some have a double source of income and demonstrate that they are specialized in opportunism’;
– ‘Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs, while morality declines’;
– ‘The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the (colonial) machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilized’;
– ‘the party…chooses a dictatorship of the national-socialist type’;
– ‘We know today that this fascism….is the dialectic result of states which were semi-colonial’;
– ‘the army and police force constitute the pillars of the regime’;
– ‘the strength of the police force…..are proportionate to the stagnation in which the rest of the nation is sunk’;
– ‘scandals are numerous, ministers grow rich, their wives doll themselves up, the members of parliament feather their nests and there is not a soul down to the simple policeman or the customs officer who does not join in the great procession of corruption’.
(Source: Frantz Fanon, 1967, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, Penguin)
That is why, Alf, we need Alba to grow and deliver independence soon – before we descend into fascism. We are on the brink. As I said to Willie, we are at a crossroads, and a decision will require to be made by the people: 1) accept independence as the sole solution to our dilemma; 2) withdraw into a form of widespread social mental ill-health that is prevalent in populations that are not in control of their own destiny, but are, essentially, colonized and open to fascistic elements of persuasion; or, 3) we descend into conflict to save ourselves from an intransigent power intent on keeping us demoralized, as in 2).
We are now getting to the crux of the matter, Lorna, which as we agree is colonialism and its resulting oppression which comes in a variety of forms; much as Fanon, himself a specialist psychiatrist in mental disorders due to the effects of colonialism, set out as follows:
“In the period of colonization……, when the sum total of harmful negative stimuli overstep a certain threshold, the defensive attitudes of the natives give way and they then find themselves crowding the mental hospitals. There is thus during this calm period of successful colonization a regular and important mental pathology which is the direct product of oppression.”
The SNP pampered elite don’t even seem remotely conscious of the fact that independence is decolonisation, never mind that independence also involves liberation from a form of domination that has had and continues to have significant negative implications for the mental health of an entire people.
Read every word of your reply and it blew me away. Are you THE Alf Baird, ex prof, or just using that as a nom-de-plume.
No matter, it led me to tae search out “Your” stuff online, and I’ve just bought the kindle version of Doun-Hauden. From first sight it looks fascinating stuff. Cannae wait tae get stuck intae it.
Cheers Andy, and I hope you enjoy the book. I usually suggest readers begin at the Discussion, chapter 12.
We have certainly lost a few big battles over the years, often betrayed by a small number in our own side. But the war is only over if we give up. So we keep fighting until we win, and we will win eventually. How long it takes is how long it takes. Quite a few of us may never see what we are fighting for, but we fight not for ourselves, we fight for future generations, we fight for the Scotland we love. We also fight for our late indy friends, comrades and loved ones, sadly gone, who spent years fighting for the cause. Some of them never experienced half of what we have enjoyed in the past ten years, but they fought on regardless, because they had a dream. I imagine we all knew some of those indy heroes of yesterday. Personally, I find their sacrifice a great source of inspiration to carry on the fight and ensure their hard work was not in vain, whether I enjoy the final outcome of Scottish Independence in my own lifetime or not. The dream shall never die.
In time, when the truth is known and the history books written, Nicola Sturgeon’s name will restore that of Dr Samuel Mudd
At 72 and a life long SNP voter I was once happy in the knowledge that I would see my country independent before my time was up.
Recent events in the SNP have now blown that apart. I will sadly never see an independent Scotland.
Roddy, great piece. We have had a similar journey. I remember when Labour, Tories and Lib Dems used to smile indulgently at us as we scrabbled around with jumble sales and draws to try and raise money for the SNP. I remember how they would report us to the police if we put up posters and communications. It took quite a while for it to sink in that independence was not going to go away, and when that happened, they became nastier. Who’d have thought it would be our own who are nasty now, but, having made a study of a number of independence movements and parties, it really isn’t surprising. It follows a pattern. Alba is a genuine and real threat to the SNP, and they know it.
Either the Scottish people don’t know what is going on, or they do know and are content with it. I can’t believe it is the latter. When will the penny drop? Surely not another 40 years waiting. The corruption has to be exposed to end this farce, which means someone in Holyrood (or Westminster?) being brave enough to make available all the facts which the political elite and the media know but keep from everyone else.
The conspiracy goes beyond a plot to get Alex Salmond .Only when the truth comes out will people know how they have been betrayed.
My OH is a real news junkie. However, he is not online, being quite technophobic. He considers himself quite well-informed. However, he doesn’t know half of what is going on until I tell him.
Most people rely on the MSM for their news, and they are being sadly let down. I would say that is especially the case in Scotland. I watched BBC Ulster’s coverage of the DUP situation last week, and I was actually quite envious. I just could not imagine such detailed and well-informed discussion of Scottish politics on BBC Scotland.
In my opinion, part of the problem is that even when the SNP were doing well, the BBC went out of its way to paint a pictures of things going badly, so many indy supporters have just stopped listening to criticism of the Scottish Government from the MSM. Part of the problem is that the unionist media have realised that the current SNP leadership have no interest in independence, so they want to keep them in place.
So I don’t think it is fair to blame voters for not knowing what is going on. OTOH, I am happy to blame political activists for lying about #BothVotesSNP, and lying about Alex Salmond last month.
I am sad, depressed, angry, upset, livid, on the point of giving up and yet ready to fight on
What are we saying – that ALBA and Alex are no use either ? That there is no way to bring down Nicola Sturgeon and her band of supplicants ?
Have Doug Chapman and Joanna Cherry given up or are their actions the start of the beginning or the beginning of the end ? Can £600k just disappear before our eyes because the SNP wish it so ?
Like you BB I started in the Independence Movement when I was 16, my family has ridiculed me ever since – am I now to pop round to my parents and tell them they were right ?
To fight on or not to fight on……………right now I just don’t know the answer
May I draw your attention to Matt Qvortrup’s magisterial overview of independence votes across the world.
Key points
Successful Indy votes are typically won by huge majorities
And generally by “new” movements, which haven’t had time to become corrupted and ineffective.
Sein Fein was 13 years old, and contested it’s first General Election in 1918. Won, withdrew from Westminster, took Ireland to independence
The SNP had its chance in 2014.
https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/366
Yes, you would normally expect the vast majority of any native people to value their own independence, their own sovereignty, and their own nationality. However, it is not only the natives who are voting and the determinants of Scottish independence are arguably rather different to Ireland in 1918, and many other cases. May I draw your attention to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcmvyW4gtA4
Alba was probably the wrong name for middle of the road soft No voters and Salmond probably the wrong leader owing to many of the same voters seeing him as damaged goods – it’s the perception not the facts than can matter.
To try and replace the SNP with another party would set us back years. An important GE in 2024 is in view where it perfectly feasible for the SNP to hold the balance of power in Westminster from which much could be extracted. There are two ways which might change the SNP leadership, lack of cash caused by members witholding donations or reducing subs to the minimum required to maintain membership and a physical national conference where tactical and organised voting patterns are followed and demanding clarity on the accounts. If resolutions from branches are hijacked, protest marches outside The Scottish Parliament and elsewhere would create discomfort for the leadership but whatever path is chosen, it requires to be co-ordinated.
We need to keep Sturgeon but ditch her supporting cast includeing the CEO.
Sorry I find that comment complete nonsense. The Party name was not the problem. The collusion between Sturgeon and the British Media was the critical factor. The SNP is riddled with corruption and deviance and Sturgeon sits at the top of both. She needs to be removed from the entire movement. The SNP is beyond saving the cancer of corruption and illegality is embedded too deep.
Simply reporting what a lot of friends and contacts said to me, the vast majority of whom are not political and had no idea of what was going on between the SNP and Alba. I’m afraid I do not see my comment as nonsense at all givem these are comments of people – admittedly not from a huge number of people.
As for me personally, I am all for Alba and know an opportunity has been lost and yes I do enjoy your blog and the SNP needs sorting big time – we are in agreement on that.
There is nothing going on between Alba and SNP it is all going on with SNP going against Alba even after the Election. The SNP is a hollowed out entity now, Sturgeon is an autocrat that promotes Gender issues not independence. The Party now has no democratic structures and is corrupt to its core.
Meant to add that I see Sturgeon as creating the problem but where I live she is regarded very favourably and if she goes a lot of voters will go with her.
Think of all the legal fees they have wasted. Also the couching for the inquiry. It’s hardly people witholding subs!
There are still potential legal fees and compensation coming down the tracks. ALBA have the chance to get organised and grow. The ALBA party will be the driving force for Independence and will re activate the grassroots YES movement. The SNP have, at best, been Luke warm to the grassroots movement. Probably because they can’t control them!
As the YES movement gets reinvigorated, the SNP will have to decide where it stands! Having talks with the Greens will not progress Independence one inch!
Dispiriting as it is, the SNP has without doubt been undermined from within and without.
As of repeated, and accurately so, by Alf Baird, Scotland is a colony, and has been run as a colony. It’s language, it’s culture, it’s right to self determination, it’s status as a colony secondary to an all powerful Westminster has continually been served to Scots to reinforce a mindset of inferiority and subsidiarity.
And then the independence movement gained strength and devolution was granted. Granted in the ploy that power devolved would be power retained.
But that did not satisfy the populace and the SNP gained strength and became the major player in the devolved Parliament using the parliament as Alex Salmond did to run the the union close in 2014.
And it was from that point on with the appetite for independence still not whetted and a hugely popular SNP that things began to change – and change things did. No way did the establishment want a re-run of 2014. Even less so with the huge electoral majority of Scots MPs at Westminster did the establishment want a constitutional legal challenge to the Act of Union itself.
And so it began.
From the initial position of caution about another referendum the policy on independence slowly but surely moved to outright opposition to independence and concomitant with that came the slow but sure isolation, and then purge, of any senior politicians who supported independence.
And purge they did by every crooked and corrupt mechanism at the cabal of control’s disposal.
Rigging the NEC, rigging the candidate selection committees, disenfranchising members, using the police and the Crown Office prosecution service against political opponents, mainstream media smearing the list of ploys is an odious one.
But what of these tricks. Where did they come from.
Infiltration of a political party, a movement is standard procedure in the British military – political establishment. Brigadier General Sir prank Kitson wrote in detail about these tactics in books that were withdrawn from circulation because of their content and how they told of the dirty tricks in Kenya or Ireland.
Bribery, blackmail, set up, control the media, use the law and the courts against the insurgents, false flag, hearts and minds, its all there. That is what Britain does and it will not stop in its resistance to independence movements. It is an undercover war and it is a war that is extant in Scotland right now – an the apparatus of a colonial masters see to it that it is carried out relentlessly..
So how many compromised individuals are there in the SNP. Very good question and no doubt we might find out in fifty years. But most certainly key ones at the top with others mixed throughout the ranks.
So we must understand why things have gone the way they have gone. Ask Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland about the dirty war played by the British to resist the nationalist movement.
We in Scotland are fighting the very same war form the British establishment. They have the money, the have the influence and they have the tricks, and they are now deploying it in full to destroy the independence movement.
But if we can understand that we will all be in a much better position to resolve that the march of a nation will not be stopped.
If your theory is correct then the logical position is that both Sturgeon and her husband are British operatives, is that your contention?
Could they have done any more harm if they were?
Yes Roddy, my contention is that there are dark operatives within the SNP.
Britain is well skilled in trying to retain colonies and prevent independence using subversive means. People can be compromised or bribed and it would be naive in the extreme not to think that this is not happening.
For different reasons both Sturgeon and Murrell could have been turned, but so could many others. Exposure of sexual practices, real or created, money issues, the lure of a future high profile future job ( and why for example did Lord George Robertson get the Secretary General job at NATO or why did the security services and police do nothing in the sixties about Lord Boothby ) the options in manipulation are endless.
And didn’t the system kick in well to try to break Alex Salmond and others who were focussed on bringing the fight for independence back onto the front foot.
But maybe a read of Brigadier General Sir Frank Kitson.
Roddy
That is Marion Millar just been charged with ‘malicious communication with a hate crime aggrevator’.
Welcome to Nu Scotland where free speech is a crime.
Your bloggers podcast at the weekend suggested setting up a fund to cover some individuals legal costs (if I correctly understood).
I think this is a great idea and would be happy to contribute.
Marion will not be the last to face what is clearly politically motivated charges.
We are moving ever closer to a police state.
Appalling.
Hi Barrheadboy.
New contributor here.
You typed,
“Back then as now, I just could not understand why others couldn’t see the light. Westminster was never going to prioritise Scotland over England. In England it prioritised SE England over the rest of England. The farther north you go the less interest Westminster has on the people, outcomes or events. The same is true if you go west and south west from the Home Counties. It was so obvious to me I just couldn’t understand why others couldn’t see it.”
What you type is correct. In 1983, my wife at the time and I spent just over a week in Cornwall, just south of St Austell. In blethers over cocktails with locals, we found that their belief was that “all the money” went to the Greater London area and Cornwall was forgotten about.
In 2007, my son and I spent a few days in Bexhill-Upon-Sea, East Sussex. Their major complaint was that “all the money” went to the Greater London area, particularly regarding the upgrading of TV transmitters to digital (Freeview). Bexhill is a two hour train journey from London and their TV reception was crap.
There was an article in one of the papers a number of years ago, that demonstrated how the cash flows into the Greater London area.
https://i.imgur.com/0XZP1bT.jpg
Brilliant Article and all very true, I should add many of us don’t have 40 years left, all we can hope for is that come 2026, that the people of Scotland realise that the SNP aren’t interested in Scottish independence, and that they vote for the Alba party and Alex Salmond, who want to see an indy Scotland.
Murrell and Sturgeon must go, or the SNP will become the new SLAB.
There are some murky tales going round about Nicola Sturgeon. Tales about her and her husbands sexuality and mores. Tales to of police incident along with reports of not to be mentioned super injunctions.
Are these tales true. After nearly twenty years it emerged that the sainted Nicola’s career as a lawyer came to an abrupt end after a law society investigation into malpractice and behavior unsuited to a solicitor. Perchance a foretaste of her character the issue was effectively hidden for many years.
So what does lurk in the sainted Nicola’s background. Could there be issues of what the Russians call ” kompromat ” and if so will we ever find out. Or is she just a saint pursuing saintly issues.
One thing for sure Saint Nicola is no supporter of the fight for independence – and the question is why.