Be Excellent To Each Other

In his latest round of crowd-scrounging, he answered the question of why he was asking for a full year of support when the referendum was only 9 months away. He when with the 'well, when it DOES DEFINITELY HAPPEN, we'll need to write more stories about the aftermath' and whatnot.

If the position reported in the Mail is correct and he says 'Fuck Scotland' in the event of a No (which I'd argue he did over 20 years ago when he moved to England), then I'd imagine his blog might stop overnight. Since it's such a money-engine though I would expect there to be cries of a fix, or coverage of alleged ballot fraud or some tinfoil hat bullshit, and a few months of bitter sour grapes about how it all went wrong and how everyone is ultimately a cunt for not stopping the No vote.

I'd guess Wings might have more viability post-No than post-Yes, to be honest. There'd be a market for people who were miserable about the result for some time after it happens that it'd slot quite well into, whereas I doubt there'd be quite as broad a church of people who'd be interested in its post-Yes views.

Also, a Yes vote is only the beginning of a long process, with much opportunity for Monday Morning Quarterbacking along the way.

No-one understands you, Yankee.

Oh, Lord, I hadn't thought of that. The separation period is going to be hell to live through in the event of a Yes, I think; I'd be astonished if there isn't at least some serious dispute between negotiating sides.

Which is kind of why it's risky for Yes campaigners to promise a workers' paradise.
And some day the Scottish leaders will be spotted walking on their hind legs.

I still toy with a view that Salmond wants to lose. Far easier, after all, to campaign and win power by continually comparing yourself to the Tory/English/etc elites in far-off Westminster than to have to rely on your own record.

That said, I get the impression the SNP adminsitration deserved to win in 2011 based on its record since 2007.

Surely even Stu would back down from an ill-thought-out position rather than appear transphobic, right?

Oh, maybe not. This is about Chelsea Manning



Pretty nasty stuff. I liked this follow up:



(Found via these posts: http://www.betternation.org/2014/06/yes ... -misogyny/ and http://athousandflowers.net/2013/09/01/ ... -scotland/ .)

I'd always suspected Wings would implode at some point, and after those tweets it seemed more or less a certainty. I'm surprised it's taken this long, to be honest.

Yeah I mentioned this incident a while back in this thread. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, apparently, unless you disagree with him. Then you're a 'sanctimonious wankhole'. Transgender people clearly have no right to expect others to refer to them as their chosen sex -_-

Look at the dates there vegetables, this was back in August - although from what you say you believe it's imploding now? Is something else afoot that I'm not aware of?

His current supporters *know* this is what he is; A bigoted twat. They're just like him, they love it and will throw money at him to keep doing it.

I know it was in August; I saw it when it went out. At that point I thought it was only a matter of time before someone took enough issue with him for some of the less forgiveable things he's said to be more widely distributed.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you were being slow on the uptake, I was wondering if he'd done anything recently that has torpedoed his credibility among his zealots.

I think the difference now is that he's finally managed to stir up enough misinformation, hatred and ill-feeling that he's made a couple of national newspapers write a byline about him. Unfortunately that kind of attention is the self-justifying rocket-fuel that he uses to keep on honking his opinions ever louder.

Just listened to this thundering 8-minute speech by George Galloway.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehous ... ependence/



Vitriolic stuff, and highly enjoyable. Strange times make strange bedfellows.

I haven't listened to it but I have to assume it works a lot better in context because the quotes that article pulls out aren't very compelling and, in places, don't really make a lot of sense. I mean I think it's obvious that the 'one purpose' of nationalists has got sod all to do with the relative merits of a coach company owner and an author of children's books; that's a particularly bizarre thing to come out with.

Aye, it's worth listening to the whole thing. He just spews it all out in a Galloway-esque rant.

Whether I agree or totally and completely disagree with Galloway I can always appreciate something in his skill of rhetoric and delivery.

George Galloway is a despicable human being. Too little publicity is given to the more repulsive things he says, he couldn't be more anti-semitic and bigoted if he tried. Before he latest round of swearing in as an MP, he said on radio that his pledge to the Queen thereby would be a lie and he wouldn't mean a word of it.

But... that was a decent speech. While I'd prefer to have him removed from the UK, his words might well sway those Scots who, for reasons that are beyond me, really like him and are more ambivalent about their position on the vote.

Agree entirely..

Who, me?

Had half an eye on C4's Dispatches last night; turns our Salmond & Co have apparently bullied the Scots' whiskey industry/trading association into keeping schtum about their opposition to "independence" (i.e. much like most other large businesses and employers who naturally oppose also, except some of them had the balls to speak out). Much the same story with the CBI apparently, which allegedly suffered a mini-exodus (of public sector members) as allegedly orchestrated by very senior SNP figures.

The SNP: not exactly fans of democratic dissent and debate, huh? It's no wonder their Cybernat supporters adopt the tone and tactics that they do.

I'll have to catch that on 4od later. I started to watch the Robert Peston thing on BBC2 last night but got bored and started vacuuming instead. 2 months to go.

How big is your house?!

:roundofapplause:

Something like that. But with more dirt on the carpet and less suction on the hoover.

Offer it a Holiday

Infograms!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28192293

That life-expectancy one is quite possibly the most pointless statistic I've seen in a long time.

And the population density one. Oh no, suddenly we're more crammed in now Scotland is gone! *hyperventilates*

Vote yes to make those sassenachs live longer, more uncomfortable lives.

I liked the bits about size though.

It's true, if we dump you assholes each of the walls in your house suddenly move in three feet!

Well, maybe it's not so pointless. Bear in mind that unpopulated land is often farmland. You like food, right?

Because we won't be able to import food from Scotland at all.

Scotland has no farmland at all. It's all the boggy fens that are the roaming grounds of the wild haggis, and Irn Bru factories.

You forgot the heroin meadows.

ETA: And the lakes of naturally boiling chip fat in which we fry all our Mars bars.

I must of misheard, I thought it was all meadows from her' on in.

It's funny because it's true.

They should have split England into "London" and "not London".

Nice stats, and I think the age stat is interesting. Obviously you won't start living longer, but it just shows how unhealthy Scots are dragging down the average.

Most interesting, all the stats relating to its contribution and economic power show it punching at below its proportional rate at 8% of population. And presumably this includes oil? Eeeash.

Depends how much it costs, I guess.

Need to bear in mind that much of this sparsely populated landmass is not prime arable land capable of producing big crop yields or whatever.

There's a reason why these areas are sparsely populated in the first place.

Do we believe this though?
The Nats are most vehement that this isn't the case.

I live here but I don't have any misplaced chest-thumping nationalism that makes me think everything about Scotland is not only good, but the BEST.

Frankly, if anything, I'd think the figures were too generous. Scotland is not the secret economic powerhouse some would like to think it is. If businesses move after independence, any skilled Scot won't hang around in a shitty job for patriotism alone. It certainly hasn't stopped the 600,000 that already live in England, probably for the very reason that there are more and better jobs available.

Particularly in Edinburgh, you'll find a lot of the talent isn't coming from home-grown Scots either - there are an awful lot of us filthy English here here. This just means those people will be even less incentivised to hang around when the better jobs start moving south.

At this point I can't wait for this shit to be over. The observable extent of fanatic self-delusion that the Nats have brought to the fore is quite depressing. So many chip-on-shoulder small-minded little twats, giving voice to their anglophobia under the guise of a desire for independence. When the no vote comes in they'll be like the fans on the losing side of a football team - wondering what to do with their lives without appreciating that they should have been doing something worthwhile for themselves the whole time, instead of hoping for someone else to do it for them.

There's a TV debate between Salmond and Darling on Tuesday at 8. As far as I can tell, it's only on STV so viewers elsewhere will have to either rely on the Internet or fiddle with their satellite boxes to add that ITV region.

I'm trying to devise a drinking game.

Very interesting, levelheaded and well-argued blog piece re. the whole iScotland/currency union issue:

http://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/0 ... metry.html

Thanks for that. I hadn't considered the exporter of oil/gas issue in relation to how it might affect the Scottish economy before and the currency implications thereof.

That was an interesting read. One thing that stood out is that 20% is a heck of a large amount of GDP to be based on Oil and Gas - price fluctuations are gonna play some havoc with the economy. It's also worth noting that there are very few countries you'd actually want to live in that are that dependent on oil. There's no correlation between "having lots of petro-dollars" and "being a non-basket case of a country".

That was an interesting read. One thing that stood out is that 20% is a heck of a large amount of GDP to be based on Oil and Gas - price fluctuations are gonna play some havoc with the economy. It's also worth noting that there are very few countries you'd actually want to live in that are that dependent on oil. There's no correlation between "having lots of petro-dollars" and "being a non-basket case of a country".