SUNDAY AT NOON ONWARDS..
This week I am joined by Yvonne Ridley, Eva Comrie, Lloyd Quinan and Phil Boswell. Lots of topics to give us a lively show. The appointment of the Unionists Vow writer Murray Foote as the ‘new’ SNP CEO. A Continuity leader appoints a Continuity CEO. Now everyone that knows where the Sturgeon/SNP skeletons are buried has been given a financially rewarding sinecure.
The great Kevin McKenna article on what needs to happen to SNP at the ballot box good or bad for the movement in the long term?
SNP accounts leave more questions than answers.
We also go further afield this week and discuss BRICS expansion and the long-term effect this could have on an Independent Scotland.
The BRICS Bank gets our interest too. We discuss how it differs from World(US) Bank.
All this and more on your favourite Scottish political review show.
“Independence can only be rescued by the SNP losing, and losing big”
By Kevin McKenna
@kmckenna63
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23737582.independence-can-rescued-snp-losing-losing-big/
Great Prism as always, BB.
Fully agree that, if we want to win independence, a) we need a Scotland United approach; and, b) we need the old-style campaigning to return, with door-to-door leafleting and talking to people, and local hustings. You will always get lots of engaged, local people attending hustings.
The SNP will be badly damaged at the GE, and they may well lose Rutherglen to Labour. No longer any intellectual debate in SNP, whereas, in past, every wee branch held discussions where really good ideas were formed. The whole direction of the SNP (and every other party) is to take away any and all autonomy from members and voters. They are deliberately disengaging from members and voters and have become professional, managerial, lumpen yes men and women. Most of the MPs and MSPs, whether university-educated or otherwise, have disengaged their reason and now operate in a vacuum. I believe that the SNP must, not could, but must, fall before the damage to Scotland the Scots is irreparable – in no small part thanks to the Greens.
The accounts debacle highlighted by Wings is utterly depressing and impossible to follow unless money is being moved around to fill holes in one area, then moved back to refill the hole left by the initial removal – robbing Peter to pay Paul, in other words. Either that, or it is all Cloud Cuckoo territory and logic no longer applies. It does not augur well for future revelations. Conversely, though, even as the SNP/Greens struggle, independence will continue to rise, I’m sure, until any anchoring to one party is gone.
Kate Forbes, I think, has always flattered to deceive. She is no braver than the other so-called ‘dissidents’. They have all been such a disappointment, with one or two honourable exceptions. They are still part of the ‘herd’, terrified to make a move in case it panics the bovine acceptance of the status quo. It is going to take a courageous coo or bull to stampede the herd towards independence again.
American hegemony was always going to be challenged eventually, and BRICS was always going to happen. The proxy war in Ukraine has taken the US eye off the ball, and a real war with Russia would destroy the US – and Europe and the UK as its slavering poodles, although no one has told the EU yet, or the UK. I can’t say I’m cock-a-hoop about the prospect of, essentially, authoritarian states one day lording it over us, even flashing non-fiat currency, and displacing our liberal democracy, though – but, to a great extent, the West has brought this on itself by acceding to and acquiescing in what can only be described as authoritarian elements in our midst, so they have made the whole task much easier.
The hard left in the West has been stupid to the point of sucking out its own brain, as per, and, as per, the response of the right is used to batter people, who have no affiliation to the right, over the head with an icon of Genghis Khan. While, essentially, it has been hard-left versus right, it is so much more: cultural Marxism and Post Modernism versus a rearguard action of liberal entrenchment and Enlightenment principles.
The discrepancy over what the police are willing to investigate when it comes to so-called “hate speech” is breathtakingly hypocritical, one-sided and unjust, to say the very least. No balance or equivalence appears to exist. If someone decided to call him/herself a Brown (which is a colour, so has much in common with Green, and is the colour of the earth under the foliage and grass) and entered Holyrood and sat in Patrick Harvie’s seat, I am sure he would object that that person was not, in fact, a Green, but a Brown, not Patrick Harvie, a different thing, not elected, having behaved in very high-handed and entitled manner.
Isn’t that precisely what women are doing who object to men, similar in species, but not the real McCoy/McKay doing? Aren’t their rights also entrenched in law? So, basically, Patrick Harvie’s rights, as a man and as a Green and as an elected MSP take precedence, as they should in that situation, over other’s obligations not to invade his space/seat? That member of the public should get himself a good lawyer and blow the wee man out of the court. Oh, and Yvonne is right in her dictionary definition, so I wouldn’t be apologizing to the wee jobbie either.
Sounds like divide and fail.Yes the SNP needs to listen to the ordinary person more. Not this self destruct attitude .
Robin McAlpine has an interesting article here https://robinmcalpine.org/can-you-see-how-bad-it-is-yet/
according to him the SNP still have some way to fall before they hit rock bottom but they’re getting there, we have Operation Branchform , The leak to the Daily Record case still ongoing, perjury investigation, Alex case against Leslie Evans, Craig Murray case going to the ECJ or ECHR and now cash for seats, who knows what way the cards will fall, so much to look forward to
To change the tack a tad it seems that history repeats as our incompetent Scottish Government once again being found to standing silent having done nothing about another building standards safety scandal now emerging.
They are good at that. Standard SNP modus operandi in fact.
But this time it’s now the safety issue of RAAC ( or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) in schools and other public buildings.
As a construction material used predominately in the period from the mid 60s till the early 90s it has since been established that this concrete, often used in roofs and beams, deteriorates over a now established design life of 25 to 30 years where thereafter structural components can fail and collapse without warning.
Professional engineering concerns were raised in 1995 about the structural performance of RAAC following inspections of cracked units in school roofs.
Structural deficiencies and signs of corrosion were thereafter observed a year later in 1996.
Given safety concerns about this it was then recommended that owners of buildings, including schools, arrange for RAAC roofs to be inspected.
Concern regarding the material was again subsequently raised in July 2018, following a roof collapse at Singlewell primary school in Gravesend, Kent and in 2022, the UK Government Property Agency stated that “RAAC is now life-expired and liable to collapse”.
And so by 2022 it was more than clear that, at least in England, there was absolute recognition of unsafe public buildings with expired and unsafe RAAC structural components.
Indeed in May 2023 the UK government issued directive that in England defective concrete must be repaired.
Concomitantly a rebuild of Airedale General Hospital in West Yorkshire was approved due to apparently over eighty per cent of the hospital concrete being was RAAC, with the ceiling held up by props.
Serious stuff to the extent that now in August 2023, just as the schools return with the return in England more than 100 school buildings have been ordered to be closed pending safety measures being installed after a beam collapse in a school.
Seems too that other public buildings in England have been closed due to failed structural components, with the Harrow Crown Court that opened in 1991 being another example where the building has been closed indefinitely.
And so chaos in England as around 600,000 school pupils are now not able to return to school as frantic safety checks are indetaken.
And in Scotland the Scottish Government have anodynely confirmed that ” RAAC has been found in 35 schools”
Ah that’s reassuring. Just don’t tell the grieving parents of the Edinburgh school girl whose daughter was tragically killed around ten years ago when a school wall collapsed on her.
For me, and no doubt for many other folks, given the action in England, I’d be wanting a statement from the SG that they had identified and established that all schools containing RAAC were safe.
Parents should be demanding nothing less.