Citizen Smart

FREE SYRIA NOW!

2011-07-04T05:57:00.002+01:00

THE PEOPLES' REPUBLIC OF BONNIE SCOTLAND

2011-07-04T05:53:00.002+01:00

FREE INVERCLYDE

2011-07-04T05:50:00.002+01:00

DOLLAR PIPE BAND FOR FREE SYRIA

2011-07-04T05:45:00.002+01:00

For Bill Speirs, Scotland and Palestine

2011-04-03T19:51:00.001+01:00

We Are The Palestinians 2011

2011-04-02T17:06:00.001+01:00

We are the Palestinians

We were the PLO

The labeled us as terrorists

for fighting for our homes

We live in refugee camps

...Our life's a daily hell

We fight against oppression

they call it Israel

From '48 to present day

We waited for the west

To help us win our freedom back

to bring us some redress

But with that US veto

And Israelis's pulling stings

In Hebron Gaza and beyond

were still waiting in the wings

And as for our opponents

Their heads are in the sand

They quote to us their bible

Claiming its their promised land

They call us anti Semites

They play on people fears

They lecture on fascists

We've been fighting them for year

And now we look at Libya

And all those NATO planes

Claiming that their fighting for

The freedom of our weans

But we can see their plain hypocracy

as they fly overhead

On their way to conquer Libya

There laughing at our deal

We are the The Revolution

we ARE the PLO

We've been driven out the Lebanon

Few place left to go

but our struggle will continue until Palestine is free

What we want’s a fair solution

We don't need your sympathy

What we want is revolution

We've had years of sympathy

For Bill Speirs (Paisley, Scotland)

and for Mooney Peace ( Ramallah, Palestine )

Both Alive and Kicking

VIDEO OF SONG COMING SOON

APRIL FOOL! And still "The Best Wee Numpty in the World"

2011-04-01T08:05:00.004+01:00

The Best Wee Numpty, 2011

My name is Jack, noo Lord McConnell
There wis nae problem, I couldnae haunal
I came fae Arran. lived on a farem
It wis the best we farem in the world

But I got to leave now, cause the Lords are calling
Though its slave rate wages, I find quite appalling
But I’ve ma parly pension, then there’s Bridget too
It's still the best wee country in the world

Yeh I love Scotland , Ma Bonnie Scotland
Where the comrades run things and wi all get on
That’s oor cosy famiies, even numpties get paid
Yeh ,its the best wee county in the world

And noo there’s Ian, ma Grey successor
I get real mad when they say he’s better
Better than me, and ma best pall Wendy
We were the BEST wee numpies in the world

But there’s still Andy, he’s mister handy
If you want thing fucked up Then he’s your man
If you live near Monklands, you might well remember
He was the numpty who near flushed you doon the pan

But he’s fae Scotland, Were aw fae Scotland
We know whit’s best for oor great wee land
Cause we’ve been told, by oor civil servants
With their own wee numpties who can always lend a hand

And the there’s Richard think his name is Richard
Don’t know whit he done, But he’s oor man
To cut doon crime, by jailing half o Scotland
That’s the half, who think that he’s a bam

But he’s frae Scotland the part of Scotland
Where the numpites, clearly understand
That the worse you are, means you're really brilliant
If you just say, yes, Jack, yes , it's your promised land

I go to go now, touch base wi Ed
When I head him speak, I thought that he wis dead
Whit they said wis “red” That he’d a big head
But we don’t need that sort oo thing in oor wee land

And he’ no fae Scotland, oor Bonnie Scotland
Run by oor families, Granda, bairns and Mam
And we a get paid some, it;s just like in the masons
We run the best wee racket in the Land

Hey I’m no Nat, But I can see this far
That we’re moving forward, wi wee Eck in charge
Could of done thing better, But faced heavy weather
And they deserve to stay in Reekie land

Cause I’m frea Scotland, that’s BONNIE SCOTLAND!
Where we’re no aw numpties, or pals o Broom
And on 5th of May, when we get oor say
We should a unite , and drive these numpties oot a toun

To be continued……….video coming soon. Oh the joys of Laboutite imposed underemployment

(c) Alan Smart, 1st April, 2011

Lest we forget

2011-04-01T07:57:00.001+01:00

The Bill Speirs March

2011-03-31T07:01:00.000+01:00

I Am Back !

2011-03-20T09:03:00.002Z

Hi After a break of just over a year my ayewecan blog is back - well not quite yet.

I'll start posting regularly once the election campaign starts for real. But I have been so inspired by the oratory of Annabel and the Gray man that I have broken cover early.

I promise fresh videos to match my two 2007 election contributions The Best We Numpty in the World and Labour Pie, both of which are still available and still relevant. Indeed, aside from the King Numpty himself, near all the old numpties are trying to get back in high office again - presumably to make a total arse of it for a third time, get enhanced ministerial salaries - followed by generous payoffs for pie munching induced ministerial sackings. All this, plus enhanced pension increments to help prepare them for that impoverished lifestyle poor we Jacko will have to endure in the House of Lords.

Or was that the High Commissioner to Malawi job? Oops GB lost in London, so that deal fell through - lucky Malawi. The last thing that poor country needs is the export of our failed numpties. Maybe though Wendy might want to have a go - she can take her weans -indeed her entire family - with her, with our blessings. The Malawis will suss her in about a month. They no longer indulge quasi-intellectual Presbyterians missionaries - the historical root cause of that nation's principal difficulties: Jacko was always more superficially palitable - he'd have come bearing gifts of Rangers and Celtic strips as part of his ongoing campaign on "Scotland's Shame" - himself

So, I hope you can see there will be plenty to write and sing about.

In the meantime check oot my wee video below which encapsulates what was and will continue to be the spirit of this blog. And if you want more than that - some thoughtful and entertaining non-partisan articles, in the meantime id recommend Bella Caledonia.

Finally, you might have noticed my Obama themed banner has gone, replaced by one of the true revolutionaries of our epoch. - The fab five ( the fifth being the Scottish Beatle, Edinburgh born- Include Stuart Sutcliffe from the early Hamburg days). What's more, I did not fancy having pictures of NATO freedom hunting warplanes on ma site. Would spoil the tone, and might get my blog confused with that of the Israeli Government's Department of Information .

Until later

Happy Christmas

2009-12-16T00:51:00.000Z

Scottish Labour's Local Government Concordat

2009-12-07T09:40:00.011Z

Commenting on "Marqueegate", an East Lothian Council spokesman said:

"It appears this application was just put through every year by habit."

I suspect how Labour has largely run Scotland for the past 50 years.

PS And its all the SNP's fault for bringing this matter to public attention.....says a nulab spokeperson. Honest, that is what they said!

Salmond on Cybernats

2009-12-05T14:37:00.011Z

Alex Salmond, to delegates, SNP National Council in Perth, Saturday, 5th December, 2009:

"The Internet Is a wonderful tool. It gives us a means to engage with the public, to motivate activists and to affirm our positive case for Scottish independence.

We must use the Internet for positive campaigns, to build our case and not get engaged in the negative agenda.

The SNP can only win and will only win on a positive agenda"

"Cybernats"- do you get the message?

Pious unionists - is that clear enough for you?

Sunday Update: By popular request, a link to Joan McAlpines excllent article on The "Cybernats" in today's Sunday Times, Scotland.

News of Moridura - and now others!

2009-12-01T16:59:00.016Z

Amid the controversy that has lead to the demise of the Wardog and Universality of Cheese blogs in recent days, many will have also noticed that the highly respected Ancient Order of Moridura blog has also disappeared - gone "invite only" if you go looking.

Understandably, there was some speculation that yet another nationalist minded blogger had been pressurised into a low profile/out of existence by our media friends. I can happily ( but also sadly) report that this is not the case. Rather Moridura ( Peter ) has just decided to stop and focus his energies into more conventional writing, and also - you will be pleased to learn - though concentrating on his video clips service, which is now best accessed through his continuing YouTube channel.

Nevertheless, the passing of the Moridura blog is to be regretted. It was, in my view, one of the very best. Indeed, at times "blog" did not do its posts justice - often we were treated to mini-essays, immaculately researched , cross-referenced and often illustrated by the aforementioned video clips. Peter's blog was the antithesis of the "cybernat" stereotype - always polite and ecumenical in its outlook. But nat and cyber for sure.

Hopefully, Moidura is just taking a break and will return in some form or another in due course. One disappointment is that the blog is now closed for viewing rather than left online and open to all with a "gone fishing" note. Because, even as an archive and source of info, many of the posts are still very useful. But more than this - if any new (or old!) bloggers want to see how it should be done - and done well - they could go look at it. Or for that matter any journos who want to see how "cybernats" can hold them to account through rigorous and well researched argument rather than self-defeating abuse.

Stop Press
You can now access the blog archive without invite online

Stop Stop Press
I the near immediate wake of this sad news, I also hear prominant "nat" bloggers Subrosa and Advanced Media Watch have also decided to call it a day: For their own and differing reasons, but I cant help think there is some sort of inter-relationship in all of this.

Needless to say these two blogs will also be badly missed, up their with Moridura in terms of the quality of their posts and overall eccumenical, non-abusive approach. Good luck to them all.

Independence White Paper

2009-11-30T12:01:00.006Z

I think I will read it before commenting

In the meantime, happy St Andrew's Day and a wee word from the doyen of Tory bloggers Iain Dale!

Scottish Parties Are Blind to the Obvious
Iain Dale, 30 Nov, 2009

Blinkered. That's the only way to describe the idiotic decision by the three main parties to oppose a referendum on Scottish independence, which the SNP promised in their manifesto and are delivering on today, when they issue a white paper. If there's one way to whip up separationist tendencies Tavish Scott, Iain Gray and Annabelle Goldie appear to have found it.

The SNP have a mandate for the referendum. Perhaps I am missing something, and no doubt you will tell me if I am, but the SNP would lose a referendum of it were taken within the next year, so what have the three main parties got to lose by allowing the SNP to press ahead? If the vote is lost it would kill the SNP's electoral fortunes for a decade or more.

The simplest path when it comes to a vote in the Scottish Parliament is for the other parties to abstain. But it looks as if they will continue to act like ostriches and use the referendum as a stick to beat the SNP with. Alex Salmond may have had a bad year, but he is not to be underestimated. As a political tactician he is in a different league to his opponents, and they would do well to remember that."

Jim Murphy's Calman White Paper - how nationalists should respond

2009-11-26T12:16:00.007Z

Simply - "put to to a referendum vote."

Because Calman is radical - in terms of tax powers, a big change from what Scots were made to vote for in a specific question on tax in the referendum of 1997. So if you want to change these powers, have a specific vote.

In this regard the SNP is in danger of clouding the issue over its demands that aspects of the Calman Report over which there is "consensus" - those that relate to firearms legislation and speed limits - be implemented now. I see where they are coming from, but it's a confusing message.

"Give us all a vote Jim" is what we should be demanding loud and clear. This is about the sovereignty of the Scottish people, not a cosy "consensus" cobbled together by a self appointed committee and a bunch of politicians.

And of course they fear a referendum - on near anything.

Labour's Next PEB?

2009-11-22T16:48:00.003Z

The SNP and a Second Term - What I am trying to say

2009-11-19T13:08:00.007Z

I think in 2007 the SNP was right to take power, show there is an alternative to Labour and it that could run things competently. But it has done this and circumstances are now changing. So it might be time to consider tactical changes.

Getting a referendum , with the SNP as a party and a movement well placed to fight it, is I think where the focus must be. And whilst this is never going to be easy, having the Tories in Westminster with a small lead ( maybe a minority), Labour desperately looking for a way back to some sort of influence in Scotland , plus the lib dems keen on any slice of the action, might just see the SNP well placed to get a referendum - but neither as an incumbant government nor an irrelevance. But, unusually, and as a party on the front foot, Scotland's largest, one prepared to forgo office in order to win its principal objective. And this would not per se be independence, but rather a direct say in their future for the people of Scotland.

I would not condemn the SNP for what it did in 2007, but increasingly it looks like what it may have done - unwittingly but objectively - is traded power for forgoing a referendum: By this I don't mean a referendum was on offer (cause it was not), but rather that the Unionist parties have only let the SNP run a minority administration because they can block any referendum.

All I am suggesting is maybe - and only maybe - in 2011/12 there might be the opportunity to reverse the deal.

But power is seductive - for both the SNP who have it at Holyrood, and others who want it in London and Edinburgh. A potential trap, but a potential opportunity also.

The Second Term?

2009-11-17T20:40:00.011Z

As SNP activists digest the implications of the defeat in Glasgow North East and revise downwards that 20 plus Westminster seats target, they can still be comforted by the substantial lead the party enjoys in polls on Holyrood voting intentions.

So the second term remains on course.

But with the Tories in power at Westminster, Labour in opposition both sides of the border, and big block grant cuts inevitable, should the SNP want a second term?

A Bad Bad Night for the SNP

2009-11-13T08:51:00.016Z

Glasgow North East was a dreadful result for the SNP and a pretty good one for Labour.

Cast your minds back to last May when Michael Martin announced his resignation and ask yourself if there would have been a single person in Scotland predicting Labour would out poll the SNP by 3 to 1 in this by-election? Cast your minds back further to July 2008 when the SNP won in the neighbouring, and near identical seat of Glasgow East.

Some SNP bloggers this morning seem though to be turning their focus, not on a bad bad result for their party and the cause of Scotland's freedom, but on turnout, "unthinking" labour voters, the constituency itself, and on successful Labour candidate Willie Bain.

First of all let me say Willie Bain was a good candidate - local and plausible, and as far as I can make out a cut above the average Scottish MP, all parties. Why the SNP chose to make him an issue is beyond me. In almost every respect he topped the SNP candidate: Certainly on quite a few big issues - the Royal Mail for one - Willie was prepared to ( allowed to!) take issue with his party's line, unlike David Kerr.

But this was not a by-election won or lost by individual candidates, nor was the depressingly low turnout of 33% any surprise. ( no lower than should have been expected). The surprise - the thing that needs focused upon - is why the SNP did so badly: 20% of the vote in a "two horse race". Or indeed, not even 7% of those eligible to vote.

As for attacks on the "unthinking masses" who did vote labour - at least they voted. And I'm sure they mostly did think first. They just found what the SNP was saying to them, and how it was saying it, unattractive.

I was not there, nor do I have any pearls of wisdom to offer the SNP - other than this: Dismiss the implications of this result at Scotland's peril. Learn from it instead.

A Final Appeal to the Voters of Glasgow North

2009-11-10T10:36:00.006Z

"Hash in the Attic" - or mince on the BEEB?

2009-11-04T10:41:00.028Z

Last night I had the misfortune to watch BBC Scotland's much hyped "Hash in the Attic" documentary on home grown cannabis production. Or should I say the Scottish Police Service's documentary?

Because rarely have I watched such a blatant piece of establishment placed drivel of my TV set. "Propagandist" would be too mild a word to describe un-sourced assertion after assertion made in this programme - "a £100 million pound industry", ( apparently more than the total value of all Scottish vegetable production!) , and one with, of course, direct links to organised crime, illegal people trafficking and prostitution. Links which, in the view of the closing and unchallenged remarks of Scotland's top drugs busting plod, "should make people think long and had before they roll their next joint"

Aside from facts to back up any of this - but loads of police supplied video - the most obvious thing totally absent this "investigative report" was any alternative perspective, any questioning of why busting into people homes to seize hash plants was a police priority? ( I had to laugh as a council scheme in Leven was described by the BBC reporter as "suburbia"!)

And whilst we were told, totally unchallenged, the police view on all the valuable work they were doing to combat this evil "£100million pound industry", we got no information at all about the cost of the policing operation, its conviction rates, and the overall point of it - especially in light of epidemic in terms of hard drug dealing, to say nothing of alcohol abuse. particularly by under 18s.

But it was as a piece of investigative journalism, rather than the issues it purported to report upon, that most concerned me about this film. Is this police driven establishment propaganda the best BBC Scotland can come up with? And where was the "due impartiality? In the light of the litany of police driven urban myths to justify many of their high profile operations - "the 25,000 sex slaves" one most recently busted wide open by some real investigative reporting in The Guardian, is BBC Scotland operating in some sort of bubble of naivety, sold hook line and sinker this police placed mince ? In the same week as the UK Government's main drugs advisor was sacked for speaking some sense on the "war against drugs" it is genuinely depressing to find BBC Scotland, not just so craven, but so far off the pace.

For Bill....and seriously good

2009-10-30T01:22:00.001Z

The Flower of Scotland

2009-10-22T12:23:00.007+01:00

Islam Feruz, a refugee from Somali, making his debut for Scotland Under 17's at Dumfermine's East End Park earlier this week. Scotland lost 2-1, but Islam set up the Scotland goal - and he is still only 14 ! And watched from the stands by his proud parents. Read more about this inspiring story in, of all papers, The Daily Mail. If only it and other media outlets would report more stories like this......

And Feruz is already signed up - by The Celtic!

Right To Buy?

2009-10-19T02:11:00.007+01:00

The ending of the right to buy for all new tenants was a good headline grabber by Nicola Sturgeon on the closing day of SNP conference yesterday. But on this one I do kind of agree with Labour's Cathy Jamieson when she said it "misses the point".

For me, the distorting factor in the whole right to buy debate has been the level of discount available to sitting tenants - one that in many instances makes it stupid for them not to buy and pocket a windfall capital gain plus often mortgage more or less (and sometimes less) than their rent. And we all know of cases of purchase by proxy, where a sitting tenant effectively buys on behalf of a relative or even private landlord: No real right to buy at all, just the right to pocket some dosh at the expense of the public in general and those on waiting lists in particular.

So it is the discount, plus the temptations and distortions this brings about that has been and remains the key issue. And it is long term sitting tenants that get the biggest discounts, new tenants taking years to accrue much. So yes, this announcement I think does miss the point in terms of the current housing crisis. Indeed, it will probably encourage more sitting tenants to buy, fearing pretty soon they will be next

I personally think all tenants, should retain the right to buy, an absolute right, but within the context of a much reduced discount regime. I think the maximum discount even for a long term tenant might be reduced to around 15% of a property's current market value, with next to nothing for those who are more recent tenants. To me this would be fair to the tenants - some recognition that their years of rent paying had made some contribution to the property's capital cost. But crucially, all the capital receipts from sales need to accrue in full to the relevant local council or housing association , with a legal obligation on them to use these receipts on new build. And with the discount level low to non existent, this should lead to a more or less like for like replacement in terms of new build for rent. Good for construction industry jobs too.

Keeping a reformed right to buy would also help promote a degree of mixed tenure, surely a good thing and some sort of guarantor against 60's style sink estates re-emerging? And also a guarantee against bad social landlords - if your service is sub-standard as at least some tenants can exercise their right to buy. Run a good service, why would they want to in great numbers?

And finally, I can't help but think this is all a bit of a smokescreen by the ever politically astute Nicola. Because her government, her department, is presiding over a £260 million cut in the social housing budget next year ( 2010-11), as proposed in the current draft budget. That's a 27% cut in this year's budget, the single biggest cut in any Scottish Government department, by quite some way. So much for shielding the poor from the worst of the recession, folks who it appears are now to lose the right to buy to help compensate for and cover up these cuts. And "record number of houses being built this year?" A record budget maybe, but where is all the money going? Let's see the detailed figures....still not published in any detail, and massaged in ways that would make Alastair Campbell blush.

And all politically stupid I think. Labour in Scotland will have the SNP's balls on plate on this issue, starting in Glasgow North.

Mahatma Macaskill

2009-10-17T16:37:00.003+01:00

............Has Eck lost the plot? Or Was Mahatma also worked from the back by the British foreign office?

Scotland Wins Nobel Peace Prize!

2009-10-09T12:46:00.002+01:00

Bill Spiers

2009-10-02T15:22:00.006+01:00

Trade Unionist and Internationalist, 1952-2009

2009-07-07T11:00:00.001+01:00

The View of would be Tory MPs

2009-07-03T13:17:00.002+01:00

.........Not bad for starters! Full Survey results

10 Years Ago

2009-06-30T09:01:00.000+01:00

Elvis's Final Concert - This one's for Jacko

2009-06-27T08:26:00.001+01:00

The Essential Michael Jackson?

2009-06-26T22:33:00.006+01:00

By Nick Currie, this is the best I've read today - and it was written in 2005! Thanks to Pat Kane for the recommendation.

........Consider all the extraordinary ways in which Michael Jackson is Yet-Also. He's black yet also white. He's adult yet also a child. He's male yet also female. He's gay yet also straight. He has children, yet he's also never fucked their mothers. He's wearing a mask, yet he's also showing his real self. He's walking yet also sliding. He's guilty yet also innocent. He's American yet also global. He's sexual yet also sexless. He's immensely rich yet also bankrupt. He's Judy Garland yet also Andy Warhol. He's real yet also synthetic. He's crazy yet also sane, human yet also robot, from the present yet also from the future. He declares his songs heavensent, and yet he also constructs them himself. He's the luckiest man in the world yet the unluckiest. His work is play. He's bad, yet also good. He's blessed yet also cursed. He's alive, but only in theory..........

Read the full article, written in 2005, here

Greengairs Incinerator

2009-06-26T08:58:00.012+01:00

North Lanarkshire approves 300,000 tonnes per annum toxic fag end and the Scottish Government doesn't think that this is of national importance - read this and make up your own mind.

Environmental Campaigner Fiona Sinclair writes.

As someone who fought a campaign against one of Scotland's 2 merchant incinerators and who lived as a teenager within a 5 mile radius of the other, and having gleaned a wealth of informationabout the effects of environmental toxins down the years, I may be one of the best placed people to comment on the planning approval for a 300,000 tpa incinerator at Greengairs in North Lanarkshire.

Given that my own campaign was successful in stopping the incinerator, inspite of retrospective planning permission having been granted centrally by the Scottish Office, there is still hope that the Greengairs incinerator can be stopped in its tracks.

I am sure that there are rather a lot of people who are breathing a sigh of relief that such an incinerator is not going to be in their back yard. The illogicality of that position, given the known pollution fallout from incinerators, has to be challenged, as indeed should the decision by the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment not to call in this permission, on the basis that it is not of national importance. (A golf resort in Aberdeenshire is of national importance, but not a major additional source of environmental toxins.)

The Greengairs campaigners say that the whole `development`, including the incinerator, is contrary to the Structure and draft Local Plans, but because of changes to planning legislation since April, is not being called in. The draft Local Plan was not part of the councillors' consideration, even though the campaigners had spent a great deal of time and effort in their contribution to this. Councillors used the previous plan of 1991 instead. Of course, this fails to take CO2 emissions, let alone anything else, into account. Local campaigners also point out that, if all the council's proposals are implented, Greengairs will be dealing with 1 million tpa of waste per annum. As such, the proposals are clearly of national significance and importance. From experience elsewhere, incineration acts as a disincentive to recycling, re-use or, indeed, to clean production. Therefore, unless the Lanarkshire councils plan to abandon the targets they are set for recycling, they are going to have to import waste from outwith Lanarkshire on a far bigger scale than they are doing at present. Given the economic downturn, it is more likely that such importation will include waste from outwith Scotland. How much of a PR disaster will that be to a naionalist government?.

The Women's Environmental Network, FOE Scotland, Greenpeace, WWF Scotland and the Scottish Green Party should all be asked to add their voices to a call for this planning application to be called in, on the basis that, at 300,000tpa (tonnes per annum), it is clearly both a major additional source of environmental toxins and carbon dioxide and incompatible with a purported`zero waste policy` which seeks to minimise waste and maximise recycling and re-use of resources. Quite how a reduction of 42% in CO2 is to be achieved by 2020 without including transport or incineration in this strategy, beats me. I can only assume that this represents a further entrenchment within the permanent North British government, even to the extent of denying that incinerators emit CO2, pretty much along the same lines of the expressed attitude of waste disposal companies that incineration is a liability-free method of waste disposal.

When I was campaigning on this issue during the late 80s and early 90s, there was no internet, and therefore no cheap or easy way to access information or to lobby. Even more importantly, there was little research on the health effects of incineration and of the environmental toxins that this processcreates. Indeed, Greenpeace specifically warned community campaigners against campaigning on health grounds because of this. Nearly 20 years later, there is plenty of research and scientific consensus on the health effects ofincineration, in spite of what SEPA officials may claim. The early research pointed to cancer as a suspected health effect - concerns are now more focussed on the longer term effects on children and more recent research isproviding evidence of neurological effects. There has been an explosion in the incidence of neurological disorders, and there are established links between these and environmental toxins..

The fact that much research cannot prove causality for specific toxins as regards human health is neither here nor there - we don't live under laboratory conditions. When there has been a 30 year assault on independently funded scientific research within the UK, it's no wonder that it has taken so long to establish a body of research providing clear links between ill health and environmental toxins. Indeed, most of the research is international, not domestic. It is government's job to apply the Precautionary Principle, not to play pass the parcel between suspect pollutants and polluters when it comes to accountability.

No-one can say that this is not a national issue, for the aforestated reasons, and because there are more incinerators planned in Scotland and elsewhere inthe UK. The Scottish Government should dispose of the toxic chalice of incineration and implement a geniune zero waste policy.

Fiona Sinclair undertook all the Scottish research for `Waste Not, Want Not`, by Robert Allen, published in 1992 by Earthscan. This book collated theaccounts of community campaigns throughout the UK against proposals for toxicwaste incinerators and dumps. See Comments section for some useful links

This film is good - in many ways

2009-06-16T17:42:00.004+01:00

................read why

Calman Reflections

2009-06-16T11:42:00.016+01:00

It would be churlish to call the recommendations of the Calman Commission irrelevant tinkering. Potentially granting the Scottish Parliament £10 billion pounds worth of tax raising powers, plus extending its remit in a number of other important areas is, in Unionist terms, significant.

But first of all, let's be clear: Unionist proposals maybe, but produced in the context of the SNP's historic win in May 2007 and the SNP's subsequent successes. So, even without participating, these concessions are nationalist victories, whatever the spin. Because as Jim Murphy, Brown and co all hail the Commission's recommendation, remember Jimbo's immediate predecessor as Secretary of State for Scotland, Des Browne said he saw no need whatsoever for a review of The Scotland Act, a view endorsed by both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

So whatever happened to that "settled will of the Scottish People"? And who are these Unionist appointed Calman commissioners, and now a committee of Unionist party leaders chaired by Jim Murphy to unsettle it?

Remember it was Nulab in 1997 that insisted on a separate referendum question on the new -parliament's tax raising powers when the power on offer was no more that what has turned out to be a theoretical right to vary the basic rate of income tax by 3p. But now Holyrood is to have, not just theoretical power, but the annual obligation to set all rates of income tax, plus the ability to vary these by as much as 10p.

But no referendum to endorse these significant new powers.

How very old politics. How so not 1997. How so not 2009 .....for it all to be down to of a small cabal of polticians to decide. No need for a referendum - incredulously confirmed on Newsnight Scotland last night by Tavish Scott, who leads a party screaming for one on electoral reform. And this morning Labour is making a virtue of having most of the Calman's proposals legislated on before the next UK General election. That's right, disgraced and corrupt MPs like Margaret Moran and Andrew McKay get a say, but the people of Scotland don't.

And whatever happened to the sovereignty of the Scottish People, the claimed DNA of the Scottish Constitutional Convention?

So, well done Calmun Commission, you've done you job within the remit you were given. But now surely it is the job of the people of Scotland. not a cabal of Unionist politicians (half appointed directly from London), and a whipped fag end Westminster parliament containing people that may end up in jail to decide the next steps?

Unionist politicians seem strangely afraid of the people - even on their own proposals!

Got a view - post it here by all means, but why not instead make it on Scots Voices an new broad based blog set up to discuss Calman and related matters? Worth a visit.

In Search of Labour's Soul

2009-06-14T17:53:00.009+01:00

Today's Sunday Herald carries and excellent feature by doyen of diarists, now returned reporter Tom Shields. I recommend a full read , but below for me are the most striking paragraphs, especially as we mark ten years of devolution: The infamous 1998-99 selection process, when a Blairite London appointed committee, chaired by Rosemary MacKenna, supervised by Jack McConnell, and fully endorsed by Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown, ripped the intellectual and independent soul out of the Labour Party in Scotland before the new parly even met. Where it all started to go wrong for Scottish Labour, what in big measure explains where it is today. Tom Shields takes up the story:

"....The party does nothing to encourage or recruit energetic, colourful or independent-minded individuals. The default choice is for the candidate who will be a safe pair of hands. Which usually means docile and biddable. The decline of personality in the Labour ranks is a legacy of the infamous selection process of 1999. The great and good of the party were supposed to choose the brightest and the best for the Scottish parliament. They singularly failed to do so.

"Applicants with a spark were excluded in favour of people who had made no mark and would make no mark. People in their 30s and 40s who had left no fingerprints of achievement were put into our national legislature. We were landed with legislators and tribunes who were ineffectual and unaccomplished, with no track record as strategic thinkers or ability to communicate. They were never going to bloom. It is a legacy which affects Labour and Scotland. ........."

Full article

The intellectual alternative to Baron Foulkes

2009-06-12T10:54:00.006+01:00

....................Thanks to BCN and Monty

Scottish Labour - And they wonder why they are losing

2009-06-10T11:42:00.017+01:00

I've just noticed from Scottish Nulab's web site and associated news releases that the comrades are making a big deal out of Alex Salmond being in Westminster today to vote for his party's Parliament dissolution motion. Why? Because according to Scot NuLab, in doing so he is "snubbing the victims of rape crime", as at Holyrood this afternoon there is a vote on the Sexual Offences Bill.

I'll come back to that in a moment, but can you imagine the furore Scot Nulab would be making if Alex Salmond MP was not at Westminster today? Total Hypocrites.

But on the Sexual Offences Bill, soon to be a Act, why did such an Act never appear on the statute books during the 8 years Scot Nulab had total control of the Holyrood chamber? What about that very real 8 year snub to the victims of rape crime? No, not a snub, a vicious reality - Labour in power left vulnerable women under-protected.

But today the Sexual Offences Bill will sail through - no small part down to the enthusiastic support of the SNP, a party Alex Salmond leads - I mention just in case Nulab - north and south - had forgotten what a leader was.

And I am glad Alex Salmond will lead in London today, one which , if he's successful, will be his last day as an MP . Because if he suceeds, he will grant the people - the people of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland - the opportunity to elect MPs, a government and ultimately a Prime Minister of their own choosing. One that represents them, rather than one that uses every trick, manipulates every cabal going to deny them their voice.

And what is Nulab so afraid of? Why will it whip its MPs to a man and woman, Blarite and Brownie, left, right and centre, honest and corrupt, into the lobbies to deny the people a say?

We know why.

But London is calling .....and your liberator is on that Shuttle!

Quote of the Day

2009-06-09T01:47:00.002+01:00

"Even I didn't think a Brown administration would be as inept as this one. The Brownites are attempting to terrorise Labour MPs into inaction. If they succeed then we deserve our fate."

Frank Field MP

The Bunker

2009-06-08T10:32:00.001+01:00

...............thanks to Man Widdicombe Blog

That wee bit closer this morning....

2009-06-08T09:56:00.001+01:00

I Must Write

2009-06-07T14:55:00.010+01:00

I'm kind of trying to keep out of this. Let events run their course, let others thousand times more influential have their say, make it happen.

But I kind of feel the need to say something, commit something to paper if only for my own benefit - a sort of spritual outlet!

Because, thanks to a good blog Ive just read by a Lib Dem Councillor in Grimbsy , I've come across an interview Tessa Jowell gave on BBC Radio 4 today. Here, she said Gordon Brown would quit if he believed it to be in the best interest of the Labour Party.

Now I write as someone who was in the Labour Party with Gordon Brown, active in it from the late 70s to the mid 90s, and can tell you with near certainty the only thing Gordon Brown has ever had the best interests of in mind is - Gordon Brown. Then and now.

And just who , except those on his carefully constructed payroll or the simply deluded, could possibly think it is in the best interests of the Labour Party for him to remain its leader? And who, apart from an egotistical buffoon like Alan Sugar - a man who can judge real bright 25 year olds as not up to running a shoes sales promotion, but think Gordon Brown up to running a country - believe Brown "the best man for the job"? Of leading our country out of a mire of sleaze, recession, immorality and illegality - a mire Brown more than anyone alive has helped create?

A man booed by vets at D-Day....elderly folks who had travelled hundreds of miles to pay their respects to fallen comrades, but who had no respect for the Prime Minister of their country

This man best to lead us? The genuine judgement of Tessa Jowell apparently, and of Mandleson, the Alexanders, Murphy, Balls and his Mrs....and Alan Johnston.........

Who appointed these goons?

Who appointed McBride, Wheelan before him, John Rafferty before him? Thought Tommy Graham ( ex MP for West Renfrewshire and expenses milker par excellence) worth protecting? Who brought back Mandleson? Who feted the bankers?. Who schemed for years against Blair, but now has the hypocrisy to attack schemers, demand "loyalty".

Who - and do look - got Michael Martin elected as Speaker in the first place, and then let him , encouraged him, to develop an expenses system based on chums, patronage and graft? Who kept all these guilty as sin ministers in his cabinet until they walked out or were found out to such a degree even they knew it was time to leave?

Who is so interested in the views of Labour Party members that two years ago he got his goons to strong arm potential supporters of John McDonald out of nominating him? - to stop an election even Brown would have won!

And who is this "man of the people" who, every time the people have been asked - in elections he can't avoid - give their verdict on him as "not wanted". Not remotely wanted.

But still he think he knows best, he alone can lead us out his wilderness. Close to sectionable.

Who is Gordon Brown?

Who ever voted for him? Who ever said he was "brilliant" except his well constructed spin machine that lazy journalists, for a time, bought into?

Why is he running the country? How did he get there? How do we get rid of him?

EXCLUSIVE: New Euro Poll !

2009-06-07T11:37:00.012+01:00

As we wait for the results, let's have one...on the Party Election Broadcasts the parties in Scotland inflicted on us in the run up to them.

For the first time the BBC has helpfully put them all online. You can view them all here.

So if you are bored rigid - or to be serious - are interested in effective political communication - have you say. Vote on the one you think most effective.

I don't mean the one you personally agree with most. I mean the one, from an objective point of view was most effective at getting its point across, was most memorable, had most impact. One that had you saying, " I wish my party had done one as good as that", or maybe even genuinely had you thinking "bang on" , that said what I'm thinking and it said it well.

The four big parties all had three PEB's , so to even it up, I'm only including their most recent one in the poll. So you have ten choices in total. (I'm reluctant to include the BNP, but the BBC has, so I'll go along for just this once)

Get viewing ,

POLL NOW CLOSED:

Result: SNP 46%; SSP. 20% ; LibDems 13 % ; others, nowhere

(turnout suitably low for a euro poll)

Obama on Palestine

2009-06-07T02:52:00.002+01:00

"Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding.

"This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.

"That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.

"Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist."

That was part of President Barack Obama's message in Cairo to the Palestinians

Cry Freedom

2009-06-06T13:29:00.003+01:00

“We would go in to Liverpool and we were treated like normal people. There was no segregation and we could go where we wanted and do what we wanted. We went dancing in the Grafton Ballroom and shopping on Whitechapel like everyone else.

“My time in England was the first time I had really felt free in my life. And I wondered why another country was treating us better than our own country, better than the country we were fighting for.”
Read more

Never Forget

2009-06-06T11:44:00.002+01:00

They will never forget,
the events of 'D-Day',
they will never forget,
their friends who passed away.

They will never forget,
the sound of bagpipes playing,
they will never forget,
the thousands of men praying.

They will never forget,
the blood red sea,
they will never forget,
the courage and the bravery.

We must never forget,
why they had to fight,
and we must never forget,
always to do what's right.

The Piper was Glaswegian Bill Millan of the 1st Commando Brigade.

He played until his bagpipes took a bullet,
the Germans all thought he was mad,
he miraculously never got killed,
our lucky Scottish lad.

But when a German sniper,
put his bagpipes out of action,
he picked up his gun,
a natural reaction.

For if they thought he was mad before,
they just had no idea,
for to deny a Piper his bagpipes,
leaves a man with no fear!

Stanley Bruce
written 6th June 2004

At the Top of Their Games

2009-06-05T15:48:00.001+01:00

Enough Said

2009-06-04T05:14:00.003+01:00

"Gordon Brown is a man at the top of his game"

Sean Woodward, Secretary of State for Nothern Ireland, Newsnight, 3rd June, 2009

The Nixon Regime - the verdict of The Guardian

2009-06-03T16:47:00.003+01:00

"The prime minister demands loyalty, but that has become too much to ask of a party, and a country, that was never given the chance to vote for him. Had there been a contest for the leadership in 2007 - and had Mr Brown called a general election - he would probably have won. He decided not to do these things. And he has largely failed since.

"All must agree that the die is cast and a hard judgment made. Otherwise progressive politics will be dragged down at a general election in May 2010 that could lead to a much bigger defeat than Labour suffered in 1979. ...

"Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose."

Here! here!

Vote for "Something Better", Thursday, 4th June

2009-06-01T13:39:00.002+01:00

.....................Song Lyrics

Go Everton! - The People's Club

2009-05-29T18:57:00.007+01:00

................................"Chelsea won the match, but the extremes of joy and sadness, hope and despair, were all wearing an Everton shirt – losers yet unvanquishable."

The Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2009

Barca! Barca! Barca!

2009-05-27T09:12:00.003+01:00

................Why Barcelona are More Than a Club, and this is more than a song. Find out here

The World's Best Dieting Aid

2009-05-24T11:34:00.004+01:00

Something Better Lyrics

2009-05-20T20:26:00.003+01:00

Gordon Brown, ain't got a clue
Washed up, dull and never true
So right wing he’s turning blue
There’s something better

Murphy’s Law's to make us scared
Major Joyce who paid his fares?
Wendy, Dougie whit a pair!
There’s something better

Chorus

Something better, its hard to find
But Something better’s, still on my mind
When we make our stand, and reclaim our land
And build a brand new country of our own

I’m no saying it would all be fine
Building nations, it takes some time
But we’ve brave hearts and we’ve sharp minds
For something better

Glasgow, Reekie, Aberdeen
Lerwick, Lewis, Ayr, Coldstream
And a’ the places in between
Build something better

Chorus

Scots-Italians, Irish too
Folks from England, Chad, Peru
Muslims, Christians, Bhuddists, you!
Build something better

Mods or Rockers, we dinna care
Raving queens and down right squares
Neds, and even millionaires
Build something better

Chorus x2

(c) Words and music by Alan Smart, May 2009

Guitar Chords:
Verse: C, F, C , G, Am , F, G, F, C
Chorus: F, C, Am, G, F, G, C, Am, F, G, C

The First Ever !

2009-05-19T17:12:00.006+01:00

"The first Speaker to be ousted since 1695".

But in 1695 Scotland was an independent country, had its own Parliament. Even in disgrace, the self-styled mother of parliaments canny get its history right.

My Message to Tom Harris

2009-05-19T15:49:00.007+01:00

The doyen of nulab bloggers, Tom Harris MP, has been at sixes and seven over the past month or so as the reality of the regime he serves has been laid bare. Tom, as MPs go is pretty honest and, from his perspective, his blog is honest, insightful. Do read his most recent post on Michael Martin's resignation speech for a well written ringside seat account. Below though is my response to it, no doubt lost amongst the dozens of comments Tom's blog deservedly gets.

Tom, this is a nice post, insightful and human. But in it you highlight the problem. You have "huge affection" for Michael Martin and were disappointed you could not all make "tributes". But why on earth should you? I am sure quite a few folks in RBS had "huge affection" for Sir Fred Goodwin.

Like Sir Fred, Michael Martin is the CEO of once proud but now almost bankrupt institution, and will get a nice big taxpayer funded pension. But - as opposed to Sir Fred, who your lot are trying to "de-knight" - Michael Martin will become a Lord, and with this gain all the associated status and perks.

Why should this measurable failure of a Speaker - the first to be ousted for over 300 years, indeed the first ever UK Parliament Speaker to be booted, be feted, ennobled, paid, etc?

Because you all - indeed,you Tom - live in a bubble, and as MPs act in ways the real world does not, could not, would not be allowed to.

Despite your blog, your attempts to reach out, engage, you still don't get it. Your constituents -and I know Glasgow South well - will just see a way over-promoted career politician who has milked the system for years ( even before he became Speaker), getting found out. Found out by the truth, events, and his inability to deal with them. Not one thing "honourable" about it.

In Defence of The Working Class - John Wheatley

2009-05-19T01:14:00.010+01:00

Today is the 160th birthday of Red Clydesider and affordable housing pioneer John Wheatley. For those unfamiliar with his fantastic life story here it is in summary:

Born into absolute poverty in rural Ireland in 1869, his family moved to Scotland a few years after his birth, regarding scraping a living in the Lanarkshire coalfields and being treated as third class immigrants, as a step up. John Wheatley received only an elementary eduction and by the age of 12 he was working down the mines. Aged 23, and still living with his family of 13 in a two roomed house, he moved to Glasgow to become a publican and eventually a campaigning journalist and publisher, educating himself along the way. He joined the infant Independent Labour Party in 1907 and in it developed his own unique brand of Catholic socialism which saw him take on not just the establishment of his day but also a local catholic hierarchy inclined to advise Irish immigrants to keep a low profile and wait for the afterlife.

Elected to Glasgow City Council, Wheatley was a tireless campaigner against injustice , the appalling housing conditions in his adopted city in particular. An opponent of World War 1 , Wheatley was the leading light in the 1915 Glasgow rent strike, started by the impoverished and doubly exploited wives of on duty servicemen, - a strike so solid and successful it forced Lloyd George to come to Glasgow and cut a deal in which rents were controlled and wages guaranteed.

Wheatley was not done. Elected MP for Glasgow Shettleston in 1922, he became UK Housing Minister in the first ever Labour Government two years later. A minority administration, it did not last long. But long enough for Wheatley to near single handedly pioneer the 1924 Housing Act through Westminster. And the Act was so good it was the basis upon which almost 500,000 council houses were built across the UK over the next 15 years. And good quality homes for rent, "workers cottages", with gardens and front and back doors, with local shops and facilities that built communities: Knightswood, Carantyne, Bellahouston, Lochfield, Gallowhill - places where my own parents were born and brought up. Good places.

And every city and town across the UK has its Wheatley homes - so fine that sadly they were amongst the first to go under Tory right to buy policy in the 1980s....... Land that is lost now.

But Wheatley delivered - and he never sold out. Spurned by Labour leader Ramsey MacDonald because of his opposition to Labour's move to the centre, Wheatley never regained office and died suddenly in 1930. His funeral was one of the largest Glasgow had ever seen. In a deeply divided city, Catholics, Protestants, Rangers and Celtic supporters, even Tories turned out in their tens of thousand to pay respects to a man who had not only offered hope but had delivered homes.

John Wheatley, for his people, in his time - Martin Luther King. And his promised land was for everyone, not just the chosen few. So let's all celebrate his birthday today.

JOHN WHEATLEY - Alive and Kicking

2009-05-19T01:09:00.003+01:00

Vote Labour!

2009-05-18T20:15:00.002+01:00

............How did the once oh so media savy Labour Party allow the day of its Scottish European election campaign launch - where it is rightly fighting for its life - be dominated by this pair? I have no political sympathy for them at all, but having done it countless times in the distant past, I do have a certain personal sympathy for Labour canvasers knocking doors tonight. paticularly in areas of need, "Labour areas". You are though now reaping what Gordon Brown has sown. And do please keep this pair, indeed this trio, praise them, protect them - long may they reign! Alternatively, you might ask - "what am I doing here?"

A Song and A Sleezbusting Plan

2009-05-18T14:07:00.006+01:00

...................I've just read Conservative Home on a "Five Point Action" plan for David Cameron to follow. Pretty good advice I'd say - for Tories! On reading it I thought about the fair degree of commonality of ideas with "The Declaration of Scotstoun", now defunct YouScotland launched just over two years ago in the run up to the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections. The organisation might now be no more, but in light of what we all now know about the real state of our political systems the Declaration's ideas are more relevant than ever. And unlike the Tories, there is a guid wee song and video to go with it: The 10 point declaration is right at the end, but the song and film set the scene nicely.

Or Even This!

2009-05-16T01:10:00.000+01:00

This is What the SNP should have done in tonight's PPB

2009-05-15T21:00:00.007+01:00

I am no Tory, never voted Tory, never will. I've voted SNP consistently for a decade. But on watching the tacky and tired SNP PPB tonight - which did not once mention the expenses scandal - I then watched this one online, seen only on TV in England, due to different scheduling arrangements. I then asked myself, " who, tonight, is more in touch with the mood of the people?" Not a hanging offence SNP, Eck, but waken up, sharpen up.

For Foulkes Sake - step forward The Red Baron

2009-05-15T10:42:00.008+01:00

With speculation gowing on Speaker Michael Martin's future, pundits have started to ponder the prospects of an early by-election in his Glasgow North East ( Springburn) constituency

Maybe Baron Foulkes could be Labour's candidate. He could stand on his chum Michael's unimpeacable record. And The Baron needs that third - or is it tenth? - salary.

He could get the law chaged to allow him to sit simultaneously in the Lords. Genius should know no boundaries.

One problem? - would the Martin familly let him stand? I think some auntie has been promised first refusal.

But "The Red Baron of Springburn" - unstoppable. A worthy heir to John MacLean! .

......Unless Carrie Gracie presented the hustings programme

Margaret Beckett

2009-05-15T08:36:00.008+01:00

Margaret Beckett takes the biscuit. I remember her as Margaret Jackson in the 70s and 80s, a self styled "Bennite". Yes a Bennite, though she used the term selectively - she dropped it when it got in the way of her career. Today she is a Brownite , previously a Blarite and a Kinnockite. I do wonder what she would have been were she brought up in Germany in the inter-war years? Not in jail, that's for sure.

But today, she is English Housing Minister, presiding over the worst housing crisis in living memory. I'll give you the figures for Scotland, but in England they are as bad, in some places worse: Over 30,000 Scots classified as "priority homeless" and over half a million Scots on housing association or council waiting lists, figures more than double what Nulab inherited in 1997 - yes , twice as bad as the Tories!

Nulab will of course claim times are tough, they are doing all they can, but as ever the poor need to wait as the rich are bailed out. But adding insult to injury is surely having a Housing Minister charged with solving the crisis having three homes! Two of these have been wholly paid for by the taxpayer - a taxpayer who apparently can't afford help the homeless. As Foreign Secretary she had a grace and favour free flat in London, but she also managed in this same period, to claim £72,000 for a "second" ( third!) home in London as well. Illegal wars, illegal expenses?

This is graft, pure and simple. Unnaceptable. Margaret Beckett should resign now and retire from politics today. And the police should investigate.

And leaving aside any potential crime, just think how people on housing waiting lists - over 5 million across the UK - feel about having a Housing Minster who, in addition to her own home ( paid out of her £110k Government Minister salary) and her free Government provided town house , also claims another £72,000 of public money for a third home in London over a four year period? That's almost eight times the rent they would willingly pay out their own pockets - if Margaret Beckett could provide them with just one home to rent.

Beckett - an MP since 1974 and grade one career politician, has totally lost it. Unfit for purpose . Go, and forever. And take your corrupt colleagues with you.

Don't believe me? Watch her pathetic arrogant performance on BBC Question Time last night. The years have not been kind.

Support Democratic forces in Burma in their hour of need

2009-05-14T09:39:00.004+01:00

....................Click here to help

The Day John Smith Died

2009-05-12T10:51:00.017+01:00

Fifteen years ago today I was working as a TV producer at Scottish Tory Party Conference in Inverness when the news came through. I was on the conference hall balcony about to interview Ken Clarke, and had to tell him we had a problem - his long term sparring partner and now Leader of the Labour Party had died.

I knew John Smith quite well, but his daughters better, and for a few moments I just lost it. But when I came around I saw Ken Clarke was even more distressed than me. And when the announcement was made to the in session and in government Scots Tories, you could hear a gasp of shock, could feel their genuine sadness as they solemnly filed out the hall - the measure of the man.

I had been with Scottish TV's ( now BBC Radio Scotland's) Colin MacKay three years previously for the first interview John Smith had given after his earlier heart attack. I knew from this - plus direct knowledge of how much it had taken my own dad to get back on his feet after his heart attack - how hard it had been, would be.

But by 12th May,1994 John Smith was on the verge of greatness. He had the Tories on the run, politically, intellectually and I'd say morally - though he was never a man to preach, despite his religious beliefs.

But all this was not to be for John, the torch instead passed over to Tony Blair. And history

Exactly five years later - ten years ago today - as the Scottish Parliament's Head of Broadcasting I was again present at history, as I filmed the first ever sitting of a democratically elected Scottish Parliament. This was a day John Smith, Devolution Minister in the 1970's Labour Government, the Labour leader who had bravely led his party into the all-party Scottish Constitutional Convention, had lived for - died for even. His spirit was ever present in the Church of Scotland's converted Assembly Hall , but nowhere more so than in his university friend and long term political ally, Donald Dewar, who saw John's promise home.

This film below I hope captures that moment - our moment, Scotland's moment, John's moment.

God is a Catalan - with a Norwegian Granny!

2009-05-06T21:54:00.001+01:00

VIDEO: SNP Win - Exactly Two Years Ago This Evening !

2009-05-04T20:13:00.004+01:00

................Watch all my 2007 Election campaign VLOGS here

For May Day - and for Scotland

2009-05-01T00:47:00.000+01:00

For May Day - and the World

2009-05-01T00:45:00.002+01:00

Ab Fab

2009-04-30T09:45:00.004+01:00

Ghurkas 267

NuLab 241

"When it came through, we saw it on the screen and I can't tell you the sense of elation, the sense of pride – pride in our country, pride in the democratic system and pride in our Parliament,"

Johanna Lumley

Swine Flu - A Damien McBride Conspiracy?

2009-04-30T01:29:00.007+01:00

This thought has entered my head.

On a day that the Government was humiliated over the Gurkha vote, is about to lose ( has already lost) the MPs expenses vote, and Brown has had a car crash of a performance at PMQs, what do all the networks lead and bleed on? " About thirty people have flu", or "Mexican girl dies in Texas of swine flu" - as opposed to the hundreds of Mexican that die in Texas ever year of general neglect and discrimination.

I know Swine flu is potentially serious, but is this media hype in anyway helping - other than spreading unnecessary panic? And what is the practical advice on offer other than "don't go to Mexico"

I could say all this was one big NuLab conspiracy, especially as Damien McBride has this week astonishingly been spotted in the Commons chatting to journalists - apparently still with his Downing Street issued parliamentary pass! But I wont. Instead I'll say this feels like one big pharmaceutical industry conspiracy.

Meanwhile, GB goes from bad to worse, with that "Resign" e-petition now topping his own website's petitions page, and pulling away rapidly from its rivals. I now don't even know if Brown can hang on until his planned execution day - the day after Euro Election results.

Here though is an alternative exit strategy: He could feign illness and resign on health grounds - swine flu - caught off a Gurkha in Iraq. How appropriate?

For the Gurkhas

2009-04-29T23:41:00.002+01:00

Thanks to Lord Elvis of Paisley's blog

Gordon Brown is Number 1 - In His Own Chart!

2009-04-29T00:47:00.007+01:00

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/

Homage to Catalunya - And Chelsea No More!

2009-04-28T01:02:00.011+01:00

. More Than A Song......

"Barca!" was written in 1974 to celebrate FC Barcelona's 75th anniversary. A great song for sure, but penned under the rule of a Spanish dictatorship on its last legs, after 40 years of power. And whilst the corrupt Franco regime had done lots of bad things to the entire population of Spain, nowhere had its vengeance against those who had stood, fought and died for democracy and freedom been harsher than in Catalunya, and its capital city, Barcelona.

But despite the oppression - including the bricking up of the Catalan Parliament, the execution and exiling of its leaders, and the banning of the Catalan language and the the Catalan flag - throughout, a safe haven for the people had been the terraces of FC Barcelona. Even attempts by the dictatorship to crush the club on the field through direct funding of its main rival, Real Madrid, plus the bribery and intimidation of officials and more had failed.

So listen the words of this rousing tune in this context. Yes a celebration of 75, now over a century of a fantastic football club, but more than this. More than a club. Mes.

That is just one - but the big - reason I will be supporting Barcelona tonight against Chelsea, and I hope beyond in the Champions League final in Rome next month. And the contrast between the fast flowing expansive football of a club owned and ran by its own members - its "Socis" 160,000 strong - and the grinding dull output of the personal plaything of a foreign billionaire could not be greater.

And whilst most Chelsea fans have thankfully moved on, amongst them will be a not insignificant band of racists and neo-fascists, who would have been well at home in the Falange of General Franco - they still even use his salute.

So Samsung or UNICEF? Democracy or dictatorship? Football from the community or bought in football - bought in with dodgy money.?

........I'm with the original, and forever, Peoples' Club!

- Et Viva la Quinte Brigada!

A Legend Speaks!

2009-04-27T17:49:00.004+01:00

"During my time at Everton, Goodison Park came to feel like a second home, with the supporters of the club, and the people of the city becoming a second family to me. If you were to take Everton out of the City, I firmly believe the club could no longer call itself the ‘People’s Club’ and I give my whole-hearted support to the campaign to keep Everton in the City."

Duncan Ferguson

Join Duncan in the Campaign

God is a Wee Bald Guy from Ayrshire - if you work at Scotland on Sunday

2009-04-26T05:47:00.013+01:00

Scotland on Sunday is this morning leading with an article in which tycoon billionare, Sir Tom Hunter mumbles something about the Scottish Goverment cutting income tax by 3p. "It has got to be good", he answers to a question from an SoS reporter.

This has sent SoS's editors and top scribes into overdrive - the scoop of the century? Certainly compared with Guido's hyped-up blog expose of a little bit of high jinks in high places, ( that's the one SoS totally missed) Here though the authoritve, real journalistic community - the voice of the nation ( well the EH1 bit) - hits back with this fine stuff.

SoS.... "say no to drugs" - please stop taking those mind altering chemicals.

Lets start with basic facts: A a cut of 3p would lose the Scottich Government about £1,000m per year in lost revenue. So where will these billion pound worth of cuts now required come from?. And how could Eck then still bleat on about the "viscious" £500 million ( near non existant) "cut" impossed by Darling?

And the idea that the UK Treasury, any Treasury, would sit back and allow rich English folks to move their tax base to Scotland to take advantage of our lower rate is a fantasy. Pure fantasy - stuff so unrealist JK Rowling would not put in her next Harry Potter book, if there ever is one, An internal tax haven? When they, ( and the entire G20!) are at last trying to clamp down on the offshore ones.

Sir Tom Hunter blows his nose and SoS would run it as a lead story.

But Tax cuts? Even the Tories in the face of the UK's £175bn fiscal deficit and rising, have all but admited any tax cuts for the forseeable future are an impoosibilty

But here is SoS peddling it a a realistic Scottish only policy choice. Desperate stuff journalistically. "Rio Ferdinand shagged three hookers" would be a more newsworty headline - and he probably did. Yet it's us Bloggers that make things up, hype, publish tripe!

Thsi Blogger preducts, guarantees, there will be no Tartan Tax cut.

When Tavish Scott and his Scot Lib Dem panto sidekick Jeremy Purvis raised this very same issue at Holyrood during the Scottish Budget Debate in February, other MSPs did not know whether to laugh or cry, Fellow Lib Dem MSPs headed for those hills. And the whole infantile idea was quickly buried by Tavish in round two of the Budget Bill negotiations. But the SoS has revived THE BIG IDEA !

I say SoS , because look at what Tom Hunter actually told them on their promting - "It has got top be good,," Of couse it would be - in a theoetical bubble. But then examine the consequences, the reality. Did your sleauth journo not think to ask Sir Tom, about the consequenses, as every political party - SNP, Lab, Conservatce and Green had done relentlessly the Lib Dems, to the point of demolition, only a few weeks back at Holyrood?

Why not? Probably as the repoorter feared, - all but knew - what Sir Tom would have said; Near exactly what I've just said above. What Alex Salmond, Ian Gray, Anabell Goldie, Partick Harvie near every MSP, left, right and centre said a few weeks back, and said so effectivey that even Tavish has belatedly began to agree with them.

But that would have gotten in the way of this "scoop"

And, oh to be a billionaire. I could say anything and be on the front page of SoS. and half of the rest of them every week. An end to this tiresome blogging, thinking. Retire and let these trained, professional, investigative journalists Margo so admires get on with it.

Ma Dull Day at Hampden

2009-04-25T15:48:00.013+01:00

Dissappointing to say the least - a goal down in 70 secomds and beaten three nil, going on five. Enough said.

Well almost enough. I could not but contrast the lacklustre athmosphere in a third empty Hampden compared with Wembley last weekend.

Was it just that my team lost this time? I think not - even Rangers fans, who I sat amongst, seemed bored, as interested in the half time pies than the match. And they only got aggitated when Pedro Mendes was victim of a clumsy tackle and had to be streachered off. The extent of The Saints challenge.

Driving back from this non event I concluded an Old Firm move to the Premiership, in the news once more this week, could not come soon enough. Beacuse the radio post match chat told listeners that was the 21st semi- final in a row Rangers had won. So, whilst some rightly complain at the "predicatabilty" of the Premiership, it ain't remotely as predictable as this. And that's only the "unpredictable" Cups. The Scottish Premier League Champions? Rangers or Celtic this year, and next, and next, and next, and next........

And whislt the Old Firm -take your pick - are inevitable Champions, they aint even good - unlike Jock Stein's nine in a row Celtic team of the 60 and 70s, who won the equivilant of the Champions League in 1967, and therafter cut it with the very besy of them - Inter, Ajax, Bayern. all comers for over a decade, Or even the Souness-Smith Rangers of the 80s and 90s, one that poavched a good few stars from Everton and other top English sides - even tricky Trev and the then England first choice centre back, Terry Butcher. Gazza before he became a circus act. And not a bad side - only narrowly denied a Champions League final place by the subsequently proven corrupt Marseilles.

But the Rangers team that comfortably saw off the Saint today? - not a single "star" amongst them , not one who would be guaranteed a start in even a bottom six Premiership side, or most of the Championship ones. Honest, decent, pros but "jobbers" - and every Rangers fan in that stadium knew it.

But Rangers and Celtic are great clubs, have massive support, and are global "brands" that still rival the Man U's and Real Madrids. But for how much longer in the set up they now find thmesleves? They are now drawing massively on historical pedigree, not footballing reality.

And next time, I'd like to go to a cup semi-final where my team has a higher than 21 to 1 chance of progressing. So win win I reckon, from whatver Scottish perspective you see it. And the Premiership, fab though it is, would benefit too from Rangers and Celtic being in it - in time, at the very least a big 6 would emerge, and with this some genuine world class players based in Scotland for us all and the world to see. Some Baxters, Johnstones or Laws would be magic - but Ashavins, Cahills or Yakubus not bad either .

And with them, a jammed packed Hampden with its roar back. Not not just for Celtic v Arsenal. The Saints' gtreatest ever triumph came atHampden in 1959, when we beat Aberdeen 3-1 in the Scottish Cup Final. The crowd - over 100,00. You could apparently hear it at Paisley Cross when the thrid goal went in!

St Mirren Win The Scottish Cup - Exactly 50 Years Ago Today

2009-04-25T10:05:00.009+01:00

.........Find out how they did it - and in front of over 100,000 fans, not an Old Firm one in sight.

For The Saints - And the Toffees !!

2009-04-24T09:10:00.002+01:00

Jagielka Took a Notion

2009-04-22T10:28:00.011+01:00

Tune: Z Cars

Hear Audio

Jagielka took a notion
To errupt that sea of blue
So we left old Fergie’s boys behind us
On a sunny Wembley day

Timmy Howard he was brilliant
Pulling off two magic saves
In a team of Toffee heroes
On a sunny Wembley day

Hibbert, Lescott, Cahill, Feliani
Neville, Osman, Saha, Pinar, Baines - Leighton Baines!
And a subs bench of more than fifty thousand
On a sunny Wembley day

Davy Moyes he has a notion
to lift high the FA cup
That Chelsea boss he does not even want them
He rather smoke some hash than join tht bankers' club

Some billionaire and mafia money
Cockney wide boys no one cares
We’ll have a subs bench of more than 50 million
On a sunny Wembley Day

Jagielka took a notion
To errupt that sea of blue
So we’re off again down to that London
For a sunny Wembley day

© Alan Smart, 20th April 2009

AYE WE DID!

2009-04-16T23:46:00.008+01:00

.... For Lyrics go Here

AudioMP3? - e-mail me at ayewecan@gmail.com and I'll e-mail you one back for free. (Cup semi weekend service only) Other times - go to my MySpace site and download it there, still for free.

And want to "rip" (download) the video? Do so with my blessing - try this guide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fok3lcUMdzE There are plenty other guides - tricky, but once youve done it once, easy. Like winning The Cup!

World Champions!

2009-04-13T15:54:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to Scotland's Men's National Curling Team who late last night triumphed over hosts Canada to win the World Championship. Aye We Did!

And a big congratulations also to Argentina's Angel Cabrera who last night clinched The Masters title in golf after a tense play-off in Augusta, Georgia. Cabrera is no box standard golfer. Born into poverty, and abandoned by his parents, he started from the bottom up , making ends meet by caddying his way around golf course from the age of ten to become South America greatest ever golfer. And did you see these Celtic fans in kilts on that final green, as Angel holed the winning put? I don't know who they were or how they got there, but I'd like to think via the Calton. How approriate!

And a final thought for Master's runner-up, the USA's Kenny Perry, who had he won, aged 48, would have been the oldest ever winner of a Major. He just missed out, but showed the world how to lose with dignity. Kenny, I hope your day will come, but you were a winner in my eyes anyway.

Now to Wembley with the Toffees!

Fred Goodwin, my Chauffer!

2009-04-12T00:06:00.010+01:00

Welcome Readers of the Scottish Sunday Express. The blog entry refered to in today's paper can be viewed here . The Sunday Express article here.

But take a look around my blog- find out how Everton are going to win the FA Cup, Obama is Scottish and Gordon Brown is a waste of space.

There are some nice videos set to original songs here too - including to one about our former First Minister being the best wee numpty in the world

Britain's Worst Prime Minister

2009-04-11T22:21:00.014+01:00

As a student of history, I am of the firm opinion that Gordon Brown is destined to be judged the worst Prime Minister of the democratic age.

His achievements?

Getting elected? - nope, not even by his own party, A vote? - can't have that!

Ending sleaze ?- nope, its got worse, can't even sack the likes of McNulty, Smith or Hoon now as they are no worse than the rest of them - they just got caught

Economic prudence? , - nope. Brown has presided over the most wreckless credit fueled boom in history that has brought near every major financial institution in the UK to its knees - and now the Treasury as well. All on Brown's brief, his unique brief. He set up the FSA, made all the appointments, wrote all the rules

Peacemaker? Nope. war criminal. It's taken Obama to end an illegal war Gordy help plan, finance. An he is still planning Trident2, putting scarce public funds into this dangerous and expensive vanity project. But he was once in CND - it helped his career at the time.

And now the revelations about Damien McBride, Brown's Head of Strategy and Policy, until his resignation caused by the expose of his plans to smear senior Consrevatives. And paid over £100k per year of taxpayers money on Brown's recommendation that he was the best man for the job. Brown hand picked, groomed, brought McBride with him from the Treasury, consciously allowing him to bief and spin against Labour MPs, journalists, and now her majesty's opposition .

This comes as no surprise to me. Because this is Brown - an amoral hypcritical schemer, who has wormed his way into high office by always having a Damien McBride, an official smearer, close to hand, and always paid for by public funds.

There of course was Charlie Wheelen, caught up in this latest scandal, that everyone in his office appears to have known about - execpt poor innocent Gordy. But Charlie Wheelan is just one of a long line of official smearers going back decades. I remember John Rafferty, the unctuous head of the Glasgow based Volunteer Centre who helped Brown smear his way up the greasy pole in the 1980's on the backs of cash syphoned off from projects designed to help the young unemployed. And then there was the legendary Tommy Graham MP - a buffoon and an embarrassment, who survived for a decade as an MP for one reason only - Gordy. Brown needed him to spy and blackmail dissident members of the Scottish Parliamentary Labour group. And in the end Tommy could have buried Brown with what he knew, why he held on so long - (try going to Tommy with a big cheque Daily Telegraph or News of the World, that payoff money must be running out) .

And then the Alexanders - his official vote riggers

So as this pious Presbyterian hypocrite deploys the full government spin machine in an attempt to persuade us that Damien McBride's smear project, despite being orchestrated from 10 Downing Street, was a freelance operation he knew nothing about, I have one word to say. Shite.

Normally Labour, or any party, would just remove so useless and hopelessly compromised leader - but Brown is such a schemer he has even planned against this eventuality, made sure it can't happen. It will be down to the people to vote him out - the people this great democrat has so meticulously avoided asking about anything.

Wembley Here We Come!

2009-04-02T19:30:00.019+01:00

Go here for Audio track download (MySpace)

The Leaving of Goodison

We were born in the City of Liverpool
It seems a long time gone
But in our soul runs the rhythm of the Merseybeat
We hate Bill Shankley and we hate St John

We first kicked a ball across the Stanley Park
Then the landlord he put up our fees
So me moved down the road to play at Goodison
We were first and we will always be

Chorus

So its fare thee well to Dixie Dean
To the Winslow and those Cavern days
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But our Peter living far away

Lets’ remember the team of Harry Catterick
Wright, Wilson Gabriel, Labone and Young
Harris, Scott, Temple Trebilcock, and Harvie too
Like Alan Ball they are forever young

So its fare thee well to Dixie Dean
To the Golden Vision and those Cavern days
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But big Our Peter living far away

Let’s raise a glass to Howard Kendall now
Our greatest living boss
He had us Champions, in Europe and at Rotterdam
We showed those red shite who was really boss

So its fare thee well to Graeme Sharp
Kevin Sheedy and to Andy Gray
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But big Our Peter living far away

I look back to Wembley 95, my greatest ever day
Where we beat Sir Alex and his millionaires
We kicked those Roy Kean so hard
He couldnae play

So its fare thee well to Barry Horne
To Neville Southall and to King Joe Royle
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But when the dogs of war went off the boil

Now we gonna have to leave old Goodison
Were off to Kirkby and to Tesco’s ground
But were from Toxteth, From Bootle and from Wavertree
And see that Kirkby it’s another town

So think again the People's Club
Please don’t take us for a bunch of fools
It’s not the leaving of Goodsion that grieves me
But the leaving of dear Liverpool

Now we beat‘ burgh in the quarters of FA cup
And beat the Villa, the red shite too
Next up United, as easy as they come they say
And then the Arsenal or those Russian blues

Because we’re Wembley bound with Davy Moyes
With Phil Neville and the toffee blues
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But the prices of that London booze

But well calling out to Duncan Ferguson
Now sunning it in Spain
Dust down those Puma football boot
We need a striker so forget you weans

Please, please stay fit Louis Saha
Cause were heading down that Wembley way
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But those red buses on the motorway

So its fare thee well to Dixie Dean
The Golden Vision and those Cavern days
Its not the leaving of Goodison that grieves me
But our Peter living far away

© Alan Smart, 8 March 2009

Obama is Scottish ! - and in more ways than one

2009-04-01T05:36:00.006+01:00

No April fool, but because he is in town.

And for Tartan Day 2009 - 6th April.

To fully get this you need to watch the original Irish version

Yes, and I wrote and sang the Scottish version. Have a go singing it yourself - here are the words, and even the guitar chords

Go here for audio track download (MySpace)

View non sub-titled and other related videos here

A NATIONAL DISGRACE: £1.5 million payoff for 8 parly bosses

2009-03-29T10:57:00.010+01:00

This is a national disgrace, a symbol of how far we have fallen short of these high aspirations we had of our new parly only ten years ago.. I re-produce below in full the article in today's Sunday Herald on payoffs to 8 senior parliament staff totalling £1,5 million below. I intend to post much more later, but I already know what is going on.

I worked at the parly fot 7 years, know exactly the set up, who's who's and how they inter-relate - indeed who appointed them, and what they were paid in the first place. So if you are a bemused MSP wanting more info please to contact me.

But you probably won't, as it will beg the question what 129 of you - no, 128, I'll exclude Margo - have been doing for 10 years, other than presiding over one of the worst public sector bodies in Scotland. And you can blame nobody but yourselves. It has been the all-party Scottish Parliamentary Corporate body - one Labou,r one SNP, one Lib Dem and one Tory - that has been in charge from day one. And Sir David Steel, George Reid and now Adam Fegusson - your senior statesmen, the consensual pick of your bunch.

Yet you, all 129 of you, are meant to hold the entire public sector in Scotland to account, but can't even hold your own place of work to account, don't seem to have the slightest clue, are propably reading about these obscene payoffs for the first time in the Sunday Herald.

As a result, in my eyes anyway, you have no credibility demanding efficiencies, even the accountabilty of Scottish Goverment departments , local councils, quangos and the rest of us, as you preside over one of the worst public sector bodies in Scotland. And set up only 10 years ago, by the Convention parties and with belated SNP and Scots Tory buy-in. Nae Maggie T, these English and co to blame for this mess.

And in the name of people of Scotland

But just do any reasonable like for like comparisson with the costs of running Holyrood with any parly in the world - even fully independent ones, and you will see instantly just how inefficient Holyrood is. ( something in my time the senior officials point blank refused to do, indeed they even rubbished an Irish Parliament consultants report that put Holyrood as bottom of their international efficiency league table)

We know what they wasted on that building- we got a disfunctional building worth £150m tops, but paid £450m. But the very same people who mismanaged this, still blow close to £50 million every year, year on year and rising just running the place. Ask how much it costs the Catalans - population 6 million, many more powers than Holyrood, check out a comparable sized Lander in Germany, a US state, or even the Irish Dail.

And our democratic reps don't seem to care - indeed they are in on the act. Did you for example know one of seven Bills currently going through Holyrood is one to improve MSP pensions? A national priority of course in these trying times, these poor put upon impoverished MSPs worried about their future ( well some should be!) . And these new improved pensions all set up by the senior parly staff , who are in turn benefiting from these obsence payoff. Nice wee number, nice cosy arrangement.

Nigel Griffith only screwed one person in the Commons. This mob are screwing 5 million of us every day at Holyrood.

Enough for now, but here's the Sunday Herald article to be getting on with.

Holyrood boss under fire as eight staff share £1.5m pay-off
By Paul Hutcheon

HOLYROOD CHIEF EXECUTIVE PAUL Grice has been criticised after eight senior parliament staff shared an early retirement pot of at least £1.5 million. The deal is worth the equivalent of £190,000 for each of the Holyrood bosses.

The redundancy round was sparked after Grice accepted recommendations from his colleague Carol Devon to cut the number of senior management posts. Devon ended up as the main beneficiary of the plan after her application for redundancy landed her up to £270,000.
Holyrood's head of personnel Ian Macnicol, head of security Bill Anderson and Ian Perry, head of the external liaison unit, all negotiated deals. Patsy Richards, head of the parliament information centre, and three clerk team leaders will also benefit.
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These seven include two employees at grade seven, who earn up to £71,327, and five at grade six, whose salary reaches £58,022. Devon's salary, according to parliament accounts, came in at up to £95,000.

The £1.5m is a combination of lump sums and pension payments. If Devon's sum is taken out of the equation, the seven others stand to benefit from an average gain of £175,000. The Sunday Herald understands one of the seven had a short length of service and is unlikely to have received a large sum.

The payments have led to criticism of Grice, who approved the early retirement applications, although the parliament insists the plans will yield savings. Grice has already been rebuked over his role in the cost overruns surrounding the Holyrood project.

The payments raise further questions about public-sector bodies paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds to senior staff in pay-offs. North Lanarkshire Council has spent almost £2m on early retirement and severance since 2007, while Scottish Enterprise (SE) paid over £20m in lump sums. Within that total, four individuals received severance lump sums of over £250,000.
Glasgow City Council paid almost £19m in similar deals, while NHS Lothian confirmed spending around £1.3m in redundancy payments since 2007.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "At a time when many taxpayers are having to postpone their own retirement, or have seen their private pension reduced out of recognition, these pay-outs are totally unjustifiable. Mr Grice has some serious questions to answer."

John Wilson, an SNP MSP for Central Scotland, said: "While large sections of the workforce are concerned about their future, senior parliament staff are leaving with golden goodbyes prior to their normal retirement age. No doubt they will end up on other public bodies, picking up other salaries."

A parliament spokesman confirmed that £1.5m had been allocated for eight staff, adding: "The full expectation is that the team changes will pay for themselves within five years and thereafter deliver annual savings."

Pay No Poll Tax !

2009-03-29T09:24:00.010+01:00

It is 20 years ago, 1st April 1989 to be precise, that the Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland. That legal requirement to pay, and a year ahead of England, was of course preceded intense campaigning, and Scotland on Sunday has done a good feature on it all today.

I would recommend it to those too young to remember or so old we have forgotten!

In particular, I like the paper's slideshow- here's a direct link to it.

Strange days, in hindsight great days, but they just felt like any other day to me and I guess most folks living through them at the time But we won! - the beginning of the end for Thatcherism

And a campaign led from Scotland - but let's not forget finished in England.

But a big hats off to the tens of thousands of Scots who led the way, refused to pay.

If only Sandi Thom had done likewise

Sandi Thom's £581 Breakfast - and 'a that

2009-03-28T04:35:00.021Z

From Today's Scotsman
By David Maddox, Scottish Political Correspondent

THE SNP has been accused of providing one of its most high-profile celebrity supporters with "Scottish Government kickbacks" worth almost £10,000.

The money was paid to the singer- songwriter Sandi Thom as expenses for gigs she performed for the Scottish Government in 2007 and 2008. This included a flat-rate fee of £3,000 for a St Andrews Day event in 2007. In 2008, the Scottish Government paid a £860 hotel bill and £581.75 for breakfast and refreshments when she performed for another St Andrews event in West Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh. Flights for Ms Thom, her band and tour manager cost another £1,440.53, while she also received £404 for car hire and there was an agency fee of £750.

At the launch of the First Minister's Christmas card at Duff House in Aberdeenshire, she was paid an agency fee of £1,000 and transport costs of £1,478.30.

The information was revealed in a Scottish Government written answer to Labour delivered three months late. Scottish Parliament rules says answers should be given within 20 days. The answer also did not include Thom's expenses for 2009. These include being flown to Ayr for a Burns Night supper and being jetted to Washington DC to perform at a Scottish Government event close to the time of Barack Obama's inauguration. Ms Thom, who is from Banff, in the Westminster constituency of Alex Salmond, has been a high-profile supporter of the SNP and appeared on its 2007 election literature in a letter aimed at young voters. She also sang a duet of the song Caledonia with Mr Salmond at the beginning of her Homecoming tour this year, and the tour itself was promoted to SNP members in an e-mail from the party chairman Peter Murrell, the partner of Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy leader.

John Robertson, the Labour Glasgow North West MP, said: "These lavish expenses are kickbacks for helping the SNP election campaign. This stinks." He added that the SNP could not afford to "fritter away £500 on an expensive hotel" when it has cut 1,000 teachers in the past year. read full article

Nats - Indefensible

In the USA they call this pork barrel politics, but it is commonplace the world over, and of course New Labour has it down to an art form. So don't think I am unaware of their hypocrisy here. From the party of Tony McNulty, Jacqui Smith, Cheri Blair and hundreds more.

But that don't make what has happened with Sandi Thom right, remotely right.

If we are to succeed - win our independence - we must rise above these temptations of graft and corruption, some even put there deliberately as temptations so as the unionists can run stories such as these.

But did you fight to win office so as Sandi Thom and her pals could enjoy inflated fees and obscenely priced breakfasts at taxpayers expense? Real people , voters, the Scottish working class?

Get a grip of wee Eck I suggest rather than whinge at The Scotsman or an obscure Labour MP on this one - they are only doing their jobs. Do yours - Sort out your leader, no your king. Ask party HQ ( oh sorry, it's Peter Murrell, Nicola's man and Sandi's groupie), whit does Eck thinks he is playing at - other than slowly but surely blowing it?

And whilst you're at it, tell him he also needs to dump Sir George Matheson as his Government's Chief Economic adviser pronto - before the Edinburgh neds or the fraud squad get to him first.

It's a democratic and accountable government you are running, no a monarchy, a fiefdom, King Eck. And a minority one - so you are well exposed here - nae whipped votes will protect you.

In this regard these New Labour pork barrellers at least know whit they are doing. Not sure you do. But I didna see no "inflated fees for cultural nats - especially ones frae Banff" promises in that 2007 manifesto. Though I read plenty more

And mind what happened last time he was in charge and naeone asked him aboot his taxi fares - apart from that Party Treasurer he, Nicola and co did in.

And an important postscript: The Scottish Sun has the story too - plastered over its front page and beyond. For the uninitiated The Scottish Sun is now far and away the best selling newspaper in Scotland, in part because its younger more open minded readers were increasingly put off by the once dominant Daily Record's pro Labour, pro Government sycophancy. So this is what the younger, independence leaning, open minded masses will be reading in their hundreds of thousands today, Read web edition here

So ask yourself why?

And incidentally, Andy Nichol, The Sun journalist who wrote this is about as nat friendly as you could ever wish for. But he is a good journo and can spot a good story a mile off. Just one of the reasons. the Scottish Sun does so well compared to its much better resourced Record rival.

BBC Brownose

2009-03-26T22:13:00.010Z

I was inspired to make this post by tory(ish) blogger Wrinkled Weasel's World who has performed an excellent public service by posting in full the text of Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's demolition of our beloved Prime Minister earlier this week in the European Parliament. Go visit the wrinkled one's blog for the text, play this youtube clip above to view it

But the thing I really wanted to highlight, is not so much the speech - which is great, a classic - but the total failure of the BBC to report it, in contrast to the other networks and papers, most of whom gave it well deserved big licks. It even made some US networks - but not the BBC

The BEEB really has become more New Labour than New Labour - craven, sycophantic and completely without independent judgement. "Don't upset the Government, Gordy in particular" would be the honest thing to write down as rule number 1 of its famous Producer Guidelines these days. Soon auntie will be doctoring Raith Rovers results to ensure, in the beloved leader's mind, his team always wins.

And having just read the wrinkled one's post , I turn on BBC 1 to find it has sent its Political Editor Nick Robinson, and no doubt a large crew of lovies (and maybe Tony McNulty's parents too) all the way to Brazil to report on a non event of a visit there by GB. This from the same BBC that passed on freely available, electric, topical and truly engaging footage of Danny Hannan, with Gordy and the rest of Europe watching in Strasbourg only a few days earlier.

Yet this shower of pampered, inefficient and overpaid cheerleaders have the brass neck to claim they are short of money!

I can't wait for the BEEB's "Gordy is our Obama" stuff when the G20 comes to town next week. All conveniently ignoring that the last place Obama wanted his first big international outing to be was Brown's (in near every way) bankrupt Britain.

"Where's Cuba?", I bet Barack will be thinking - "a country with a future and a youthful leader!" And a freer national broadcaster? - no, that's pushing it. But we are getting there.

Labour Pie - Just add Tony McNulty and Wee Nigel

2009-03-26T20:40:00.002Z

A Refreshing Alternative to Nigel's Bonking and Economic Meltdown

2009-03-23T21:16:00.004Z

Labour Has Just Lost Edinburgh South

2009-03-22T15:47:00.008Z

And as if an illegal war, a recession, billions of our cash to their banker chumbs, was not taking the piss enough.

But it's the rest of us that need ID cards?

Read the NOTW at its best - a public service.

And if sex scandals ain't to your taste, try this instead. Just the average weekend in the life of our institutionally corrupt New Labour Government.

"Once started out so young and strong, only to surrender"

Schools, pure mince, and apprentices

2009-03-22T11:25:00.007Z

Brian Taylor has done some excellent detective work on his latest blog - one on the various claims and counter claims over the Scottish Government's schools building programme.

It is a bit of a read - it's a complex subject - and Brian with his BBC hat on pulls his punches in terms of conclusions. But I'll say what Brian couldn't - Alex is telling porkies.

Don't believe me? - read Brian's blog and the numerous posts that follow it - some from obviously well informed sources who know who commissioned what and when. And Eck's info - delivered in response to Ian Gray at FMQ on 12 March - is near 90% mince, pure mince. All from that "overworked" Civil Service of his.

I don't quite know what I expected from an SNP Government when I enthusiastically voted for one in May 2007. I knew independence was a long term project, and that some of the manifesto's policy promises were, shall we say, ambitious. But would the truth be too much to ask for?

And as a related postscript, I see Ian Gray has been left with egg on his face by the news that Lewis Doig, the Tranent apprentice supposedly facing unemployment and now in search of his Scottish Government apprenticeship guarantee, has in fact got a job. Indeed, was in a new job when Ian Gray raised his case live on TV during FMQs last Thursday. How shabby, what crap research - did you team not think to check?

A curse on both your houses. Scotland deserves better, could do better, will do better.

The truth is out there.

Come on Ireland, Come on Scotland

2009-03-21T10:38:00.008Z

Aye We Can !

Ian Gray won, Alex Salmond nil

2009-03-20T08:05:00.013Z

First Minister's Questions, Thursday 19th March

I thought Ian Gray won , as he increasingly does, and comfortably. Exposing once more how slogans and well enough intentioned policy commitments ain’t enough.

Alex needed all his rhetorical skill to stay afloat.

But here is my analysis -which ain’t intellectually hostile to the SNP: It needs to waken up to the reality that the administration it presides over - The Civil Service and its sub quangos - are just rubbish, absolutely rubbish,

It was rubbish under Labour, but it suited the SNP in opposition to "blame London", not home grown bureaucrats, so it was never exploited. But it suits Scottish Labour in opposition's to exploit , and by god it is doing this well.

And the SNP - as it is the Government now - will pay the price. Especially if it continues to apologize for them, cover for them, read their briefs.

And especially if it continues - as Eck does like a talking parrot these days – bang on and on about London’s “ £500m cuts”, when all this is is a quite reasonable UK wide public sector 1% efficiency drive - in a recession where the prices of near everything are falling, and when private companies and voluntary sector organisations are habitually taking cuts of 10% or more. The SG/SNP should instead offer to save a billion ( to be then used of front line service provision) - if Labour in Scotland promises to help: Help root out the inept, take the vested interests, including the public sector unions - from the First Division Association to the PCS. And say loud and clear that the people of Scotland - that's 5 million of us - deserve better than this antiquated 35,000 (and rising!) mob provide.

The key to independence, of this I am sure. No small, new, dynamic nation could afford to carry this baggage. And 90% of the top mandarins are Unionists to the core, however nicely they smile in your presence minster, First Minister. A disturbing proportion of the top guys Oxbridge educated - and in realty mostly London Civil service rejects, up here as they couldnae cut it down south. Apart for 1% of them - M15 plants. There is probably one high up in Skills Development Scotland Eck!

And just do read the letter Fiona Hyslop's department wrote (I know not written Fiona, but signed by her to the Leader of the Opposition) to a 19 year old apprentice fearful for his job. Appalling - in any country, in any constitutional arrangement, under any government - even mine. Especially mine.

Dont believe me? - read this - Reality

Jimbo Murphy's Law

2009-03-19T00:13:00.014Z

By accident - I was looking for the Aberdeen v Dunfermline cup result - I caught the BBC's Scottish Parliamentary Question Time highlights programme from Westminster last night.

Id given up on this constitutional anachronism long ago, but I watched out of curiosity to be myself curiously surprised. It was relevant - and there were more that 20 MPs there, many more.

I guess most - the English ones - were there to get good seats for the next item of business, but they, like me, seemed to get caught up in the banter, and in particular the masterly front bench performance of Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy.

Jim and I have form - both former Presidents of NUS Scotland ( separated by a decade though) , he an arch Blairite, myself from now defunct Scottish Labour Action's "provisional" wing: Him a Zionist with double Z, myself pro-Palestinian , etc, etc.

But although I've long reckoned him to be a grade 1 careerist and a bit of a chancer, I've always strangely liked him, can appreciate his strengths , certainly his hard work, and at times his sheer balls when defending the indefensible. A sort of Michael Forysth like besieged figure, but with a bit more working class street cred. And he is great with people - watch him work a reception, or a rally as it assembles.

Now before all yee nat bloggers start going crazy, calling me a Unionist agent provocateur or worse, let me say hell would have to freeze over before I ever voted for Jimbo in any capacity - I'd emigrate to Israel and take my chances of avoiding arrest there first.

But the guy is able, dangerous I'd say to many of the causes I believe in, first and foremost Scottish independence. Compared with his predecessors as SoS - Des Browne, Wee Dougie, Alastair Darling - this guy is a class apart. Indeed, the ease with which he - at his discretion - chose to either swat away criticisms from all comers - English Tories, Scottish Tory, Lib Dems and nats - or alternatively disarm them by embracing them as allies was, in debating terms, highly impressive. Donald Dewar class - better I'd say

And as the chamber filled up during the Scottish Questions session, with primarily English MPs there for next business, you could see they were impressed. "Where did this guy come from? " I could almost hear them thinking. "A Scottish Minister that almost sounds credible, convincing - not washed up?" Not a Brown cypher

This guy is dangerous nats. Underestimate him at our peril.

And Dunfermline won 4-2 on penalties. The Cup is surely The Saints' - once the huns have been vanquished at Hampden.

It's coming home!

The Dream is Over?

2009-03-17T06:04:00.011Z

There is a blog, "Scot goes Pop", that today tells us - one opinion poll, and "the dream is over" - forever. I am now being told the blogger is a nat and being sarcastic. But no doubt Angus McLeod in The Times, Magnus Gardham in The Record and co will soon be wtiting something similar for real.

I'd agree with Scot Goes Pop seriously in only one sense - between now and the next Scottish elections in 2011 is not a good time to hold a referendum. The essential idea, that a mega recession, is a time to pull together not divide the country with an inevitably divisive independence referendum is a sound one. And, from an SNP/pro- Independence perspective, sound tactically too, as we'd near inevitably end up as the smaller half, way smaller half in present circumstances. Defeated, in Eck's words, "the issue settled for a generation" But forever? Mince.

But without a referendum now ( and arithmetically it seems for now undeliverable), I'd say until 2014, co-incidentally Bannockburn 700 !

Why then? - mid way through the SNPs 2nd term I'd hope, when the SNP in Government had well and truly proven itself - and I'd also hope a genuinely autonomous and large non SNP Independence "movement" had emerged; And the recession would either be by then on the mend or so fundamental that we provably needed radical change - independence, and a social and economic revolution with it.

And perhaps even more significantly still - especially if the SNP had had the strategic foresight to not just suspend it demand for a referendum in 2011, but be seen to do this, it would be regarded by more and more as as a truly "national" party: One that had worked with others to fight and hopefully defeat the worst aspects of recession that threatened the people of Scotland.

I do think there is such a thing as reward in politics.

Scotland's day will come - if less rapidly than the SNP's unthinking ( and tiny) card carrying fan base might continue to dream.

But.... A second SNP term , a defeated near bankrupt Labour party with its job seekers base realising the game's up; a Tory party interested in consolidating its English base, its own second term, an Obama administration sorting out the world's hot spots including delivering a independent Palestine; some sort of united Ireland moving ever closer; Today's 14 year olds 18: The Scottish working class.

Our day is coming.

Dead forever? - You will never kill us - unionists surely you should have learned that centuries ago?

And, Tavish - ta!!