{"id":2573,"date":"2019-08-15T16:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2019-08-22T15:17:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T15:17:07","slug":"2573","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/?p=2573","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\ndid not know if I would be able to do The Flag this week as I was in\nhospital, kept longer than I anticipated, but everything went well. \nDo not believe all the criticisms you read from the Unionists, I get\ngreat service from my surgery and this week it was the Western\nGeneral Hospital in Edinburgh as well. So nothing but admiration for\nthe NHS.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nin hospital I was able to keep up with the news through the Herald\nand the National, my wife brought the papers in each day; so where\nare we?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latest comment about the Nationalising of Ferguson Engineering; Derek Mackay was reluctant to take this route, but it was going to have to go into administration, which would have meant it would be sold off to the highest bidder \u2013 if any. As we are talking here about 350 jobs, 2 ships in process of being built and the last shipbuilding firm in Scotland this is serious stuff. Jim McColl was helped by the Scottish Government in the first instance because it was going bust then; the current problem arose as two ferries ordered by Calmac are going seriously over budget, with arguments about design changes being cast about, while the Islands are desperate for new ferries \u2013 I caught one criticism from a Union rep, I think, that Nicola Sturgeon was on Loose Women when she should have been at Port Glasgow!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\ndare she!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway\nwork is going ahead; as there are complications with the EU about\nstate aid, rules glossed over by other countries, perhaps Brexit may\nhave a marginal effect, but I do not know enough about the rules.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nam also watching with wry amusement the state of affairs in the\nLabour Party and the Tory Party with regard to the UK; John\nMacDonnell, deputy Leader of UK Labour, has stated that Labour would\nnot block a second Scottish Independence Referendum, while that non\nexistent beast, the Scottish Labour Party, has opposition in its\nmanifesto. On the Tory side, new Prime Minister Boris Johnson\nignored advice from Ruth Davidson on retaining David Mundell as\nSecretary of State for Scotland, and unceremoniously sacked him. Ms\nDavidson is not amused \u2013 incidentally she is now the most unpopular\nof the Tory hierarchy \u2013 looks as if her star has fallen.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now\nLondon, to put it briefly, has over-ruled anything Scottish which in\nthe course of events led to the creation of the Scottish National\nParty. Perhaps this is just a case of poetic justice, but perhaps\nthe <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unionists\n haven\u2019t noticed they have been hoist with their own petard.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incidentally\nthe louder they shout about No to Indyref2, even when it is not\nbeing discussed, the more obvious it becomes is that they expect the\nSNP will win it; just consider the Tory output at the time of the\nEuropean Elections; the sole Tory leaflet was a picture of Ruth\nDavidson and 12 mentions of Nicola Sturgeon!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now we have a by-election in Shetland, where Liberal MSP Tavish Scott is leaving to take up a post with Scottish Rugby. He has been MSP in Shetland for 20 years, and was Transport Minister in the Lib\/Lab coalition. I remember well that in the Dunfermline by election where Willie Rennie was standing he – Willie – was shouting loudly about No Bridge Tolls, while Tavish Scott was opening new tolbooths on the Bridge; no contradiction there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr\nScott has a good record in Shetland, as have the Liberals. They\nidolised Jo Grimond; he was their Leader for many years, and I\nrecall heckling him in Peterhead in 1967\/68. The occasion was an\nadoption meeting for the Liberal Candidate in East Aberdeenshire;\nthis was a safe Tory seat, and we regarded Liberals as second class\nTories so this adoption made the seat winnable for the SNP. The <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberal\ncandidate was a Mr Hoyer Miller, apparently a well known social\nfigure. Jo Grimond rhapsodised about Federalism, and I asked him\nwhat was the timescale for this to happen. He answered eloquently,\nand was greeted with rapturous applause. I then responded and\nstated that he had not answered my question, and repeated it. Again\nhe answered eloquently, to further rapturous applause. At this I\ncame back that I had already asked him the question twice, and as far\nas I could ascertain he did not have an answer. The local paper\nreferred to me as an \u201cSNP Partisan\u201d. In conclusion, Mr Hoyer\nMiller praised Mr Grimond \u201cMr Grimond is a wonderful leader and if\nwe cannot have him as Prime Minister of All England, then let us have\nhim as Prime Minister of Scotland\u201d to rapturous applause. Yes\nthis was in Peterhead in the North East of Scotland.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nSNP is a minority government in Scotland because we lost one seat to\nthe Liberals. In the 2011 Scottish Parliament Elections I was\ncampaigning in the Borders. On the Monday after the election I went\ninto Corstorphine Bowling Club for the Hat Night; the Secretary\ngreeted me \u201cMr Lynch, how nice of you to grace us with your\npresence\u201d. I replied \u201cCome on Iain, there\u2019s been an election\u201d.\n He then asked if I had been at the party after the election, and I\nsaid no, but I was going to one in Penicuik the next Sunday. This\npuzzled him and I said \u201cI am a free agent and at election time I go\nto the nearest winnable seat, because we would never win Edinburgh\nWest in a hundred years\u201d. He burst out laughing for the party in\nthe bowling Club was because Colin Keir had won Edinburgh West with\nthe biggest SNP majority in Edinburgh.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe aftermath of 2015, when the SNP won 56 Westminster seats the\nParty grew quickly, and some \u201cclever \u201c coves in Edinburgh West\ndeselected Colin Keir; accompanying this were reports in the\nEdinburgh Evening News from an \u201cunnamed SNP activist\u201d quoting\nthings Colin never said. I was furious at the character\nassassination, but the constituency selected one of Colin\u2019s\nprevious staff .<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nquotes from an \u201cunnamed SNP activist\u201d were recycled by the\nLiberals again and again and the SNP lost the seat to the Liberals. \nWhoever the \u201cunnamed activist\u201d is they did not grasp that the\npress releases attacking Colin Keir were actually attacks on the SNP,\nso I was not surprised when the poisoned boomerang hit the Party. I\nhad been a member of Corstorphine Branch for about 40 years, so I\nbecame a Headquarters\u2019 member.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndo not blame the Liberals for using the allegations made, if the boot\nwas on the other foot I might do the same. However they like to play\nGoody Two Shoes, and they aint!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wings\nover Scotland is now perhaps going to stand on the List system at the\nnext Scottish Election as an independence supporting party. Stuart\nCampbell thinks he can attract enough List seats to ensure the SNP\ngets an overall majority. I do not like that idea at all. In 2016\non the crest of a wave there was a drive within some parts of the SNP\nto \u201cgive\u201d your second vote to the Greens; the SNP did not like\nthat but I know some did just that. Giving a second vote away to\nanother party is an attack on the SNP, and Stuart Campbell\u2019s idea\nwould lead to chaos; the SNP would fight all the constituency seats\nand all the list seats so just chaos; I am not an anti-Wings fan, I\nread it every day and used the literature during the Referendum \u2013\nWee Blue Book anyone?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Independence\nis the raison d\u2019etre of the SNP; once independence is gained I\nwould hope for the first two Parliaments to be SNP, and then for\ncoalition governments after that \u2013 power corrupts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nin hospital I was reading a book called \u201cMoneyland\u201d by Oliver \nBullough; it is absolutely fascinating and covers shell companies\nand a totally domination of the financial markets by organised crime,\ncrooked dictators, a shallow realm of oligarchs and gangsters. The\nsystem is everywhere, and the term \u201coffshore\u201d was pioneered by\nLondon bankers who showed crooks and politicians how to hide their\nmoney \u2013 or rather the money they stole.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\nseemed peculiarly apt was one address used for shell companies \u2013 29\nHarley Street London. This address, a very prodigious one, is home\nto 2,159 businesses, which use it as their contact address. In fact\nit is a stone fronted terrace house, five storeys high; rather than\nanything to do with health it is used by Victor Yanukovich who fled\nthe Ukraine in 2014 and owned his secret property empire from here.\nMr Burroughs wrote that it was like discovering that the New Jersey\nmob was operating out of a Quaker meeting house.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\napart from allowing England to keep Trident at Faslane to keep the UK\nin the United Nations Security Council, we now know that London, and\nother places, are stuffed by illegal companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just\nanother reason to deny Independence.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did not know if I would be able to do The Flag this week as I was in hospital, kept longer than I anticipated, but everything went well. Do not believe all the criticisms you read from the Unionists, I get great service from my surgery and this week it was the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh as well. So nothing but admiration for the NHS. When in hospital I was able to keep up with the news through the Herald and the National, my wife brought the papers in each day; so where are we? Latest comment about the Nationalising of Ferguson Engineering;Read More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}