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The rise and fall of The SNP.


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John Findlay
18 minutes ago, OTT said:


👏 common sense here John. Big difference between voting and making laws. 
 

Baffled at what we’re seeing from Sturgeon. Seems like this shit doesn’t go through any sort of filter.

Supposed to vote on a party's manifesto, which I would suggest can be just as complicated as any law. 

16 is far to young to vote, in any election Imho.

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New Town Loafer
On 08/04/2022 at 19:16, Malinga the Swinga said:

Reckon it's Labour for me. He is the only one making effort to come round and listen to voters.

Been a while since I voted for them, but happy to do so this time.

It's local elections so voting on local issues and in Edinburgh, the SNP and Greens have been horrific.

Do you mean the SNP-Labour coalition in the council?

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jack D and coke
5 hours ago, John Findlay said:

Supposed to vote on a party's manifesto, which I would suggest can be just as complicated as any law. 

16 is far to young to vote, in any election Imho.

It’s not age dependent imo. Do you see some of the drivel grown men write on here? 😐
 

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Seymour M Hersh
22 hours ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

You can be put in the front line of a conflict at 16hoifh.

 

No you can't.

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John Findlay
22 hours ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

If you can be put in the front line in places like Iraq or Afghanistan you can, if you have the ability, sit in a parliament as an elected member.

 

IMO obv.

You are not put into the frontline aged 16. You can take that from someone who has been in the frontline.

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Malinga the Swinga
1 hour ago, New Town Loafer said:

Do you mean the SNP-Labour coalition in the council?

I do, I got local and national coalition mixed up.

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Malinga the Swinga
1 hour ago, New Town Loafer said:

Do you mean the SNP-Labour coalition in the council?

I do, I got local and national coalition mixed up.

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Malinga the Swinga
1 hour ago, New Town Loafer said:

Do you mean the SNP-Labour coalition in the council?

I do, I got local and national coalition mixed up.

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Seymour M Hersh
28 minutes ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

@Seymour M Hersh & @John Findlay

 

Thanks for the correction gents, I obviously got the age wrong but there was a very young laddie from Edinburgh that went out to Afgan....there was a bit of a stushi about it at the time IIRC

👍

:cowboy:

 

One of Konrad's frontline soldiers. :lol:

 

 

gettyimages-140373257-612x612.jpg

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New Town Loafer
24 minutes ago, Malinga the Swinga said:

I do, I got local and national coalition mixed up.

Yeah the current administration in Edinburgh has been nothing short of a disgrace.

 

Results will be interesting. You’ll get the nats who will always vote SNP no matter what but have been hearing of a lot of SNP voters switching to Tory for the council as they’re fed up.

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Seymour M Hersh
2 minutes ago, indianajones said:

 

Kids up for election next month. 

 

Well that's okay he has plenty of life experience to fall back on. Put you 1 next to Benjamin Button.

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Japan Jambo
1 hour ago, Imaman said:

Police speak to Nicola Sturgeon over mask breach https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61142777
The SNP said Ms Sturgeon realised she was not wearing a mask "within a few seconds" of entering the shop at the weekend.
 At least she remembered (for once) 

 

must be a serious breach of the rules - down here they send questionnaires for minor infractions :whistling:

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manaliveits105

Elsie walked into the shop had a wee chat then someone mentioned selfie and she was like hud me back - more than a few seconds - just another snp lie

she certainly has a lot to say about breaches dan saf but rules don’t apply to her really 

 

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The Mighty Thor
7 minutes ago, manaliveits105 said:

Elsie walked into the shop had a wee chat then someone mentioned selfie and she was like hud me back - more than a few seconds - just another snp lie

she certainly has a lot to say about breaches dan saf but rules don’t apply to her really 

 

A non-story investigated with no action required. 

 

Move on comrades 👍 

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Japan Jambo
3 minutes ago, The Mighty Thor said:

A non-story investigated with no action required. 

 

Move on comrades 👍 

 

It's a repeat offence and she is guilty of not following the rules she set for others; can you think of any recent parallels or is it only one political party that is worthy of your criticism? 

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She's done it twice, for a few seconds each time.

The police have laughed off the reportings of these incidents.

 

Trying to equate this with Boris' multiple pished-up karakoe parties in Downing St is hilarious.

 

PM:
"there were no gatherings"

"ok there were gatherings but they were not parties"
"ok they were parties but I didn't know about it"
"ok so I was there but all rules were adhered to"

"ok so nobody was distancing or wearing masks but anyways rusha is on the march"

 

FM: "Yes I did it, yes it was wrong and I fully apologise"

Edited by Cade
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The Mighty Thor
10 minutes ago, Japan Jambo said:

 

It's a repeat offence and she is guilty of not following the rules she set for others; can you think of any recent parallels or is it only one political party that is worthy of your criticism? 

Yes she's a serial offender. That's why she's been fined by the police. 

Furthermore she's lied about it in the Scottish Parliament repeatedly. 

 

I'm struggling to draw any parallels here. 

 

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doctor jambo
53 minutes ago, manaliveits105 said:

Elsie walked into the shop had a wee chat then someone mentioned selfie and she was like hud me back - more than a few seconds - just another snp lie

she certainly has a lot to say about breaches dan saf but rules don’t apply to her really 

 

At least she remembered it….

honestly though - who gives a shit what she did.

the rules were dumb.

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59 minutes ago, The Mighty Thor said:

Yes she's a serial offender. That's why she's been fined by the police. 

Furthermore she's lied about it in the Scottish Parliament repeatedly. 

 

I'm struggling to draw any parallels here. 

 

I can't believe unionists are actually dumb enough to equate them. 

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Lord Montpelier

Reality is Sturgeons latest faux pas is something and nothing .

 

Doesn't give Bunter Blackford as much ammo though when he goes after Johnson in Parliament. 

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  • 2 months later...
Malinga the Swinga
48 minutes ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

No chance the fat Hibby scrote will do the right thing. Politicians nowadays never fall on their swords.

 

https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20220094.ian-blackford-patrick-grady-recording-hears-snp-leader-give-full-support-shamed-mp---reports/

 

Not a very nice man is Mr Blackford.

Oct 2017 - confirms SNP Westminster group will have zero tolerance of unacceptable behaviour.

June 14 2022 - Patrick's going to face a number of challenges and so he should our absolute support.

Despite the denials from their followers, they're no different to Tories. 

Absolute hypocrites.

 

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Konrad von Carstein
1 hour ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

No chance the fat Hibby scrote will do the right thing. Politicians nowadays never fall on their swords.

 

https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20220094.ian-blackford-patrick-grady-recording-hears-snp-leader-give-full-support-shamed-mp---reports/

 

 

15 minutes ago, Malinga the Swinga said:

Not a very nice man is Mr Blackford.

Oct 2017 - confirms SNP Westminster group will have zero tolerance of unacceptable behaviour.

June 14 2022 - Patrick's going to face a number of challenges and so he should our absolute support.

Despite the denials from their followers, they're no different to Tories. 

Absolute hypocrites.

 

Irony overload :lol:

 

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Cairneyhill Jambo
On 08/04/2022 at 17:39, pablo said:

As Westminster grapples with the P&O scandal, a very different farce over ferries has been playing out in Scotland. In the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum, a Glasgow shipbuilder went bust and was rescued by a Scottish National party adviser. It was later awarded a £97 million government contract to build two ferries. Neither emerged. The cost now stands at £240 million and last month Scots learned that there will be another eight-month delay to the boats. What happened? Why did so much public money change hands? Was the taxpayer swindled?

 

Those trying to get to the bottom of these questions have hit a problem common to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland: much of the relevant documentary evidence has vanished. Jim McColl, the businessman who funded the original bailout, now says the deal was ‘for political capital’, but no one has been able to prove anything. This is not a one-off. Poor planning, wilful waste and absence of accountability have characterised so many episodes in the SNP’s 15 years in power.

 

Under first Alex Salmond and now Sturgeon, Holyrood has become one of the most centralised and opaque regimes in the democratic world. The power devolved to Edinburgh in 1999 has been hoarded by a party and a government – it’s hard to tell where one stops and the other starts – that specialises in dodging accountability. The SNP’s record of failure on public services is matched only by its ability to conceal the extent of that failure.

 

All major decisions are expected to be signed off by Sturgeon’s office; even junior officials talk of referring decisions to her apparatchiks for final approval. The Scottish government’s 175 communications staff dwarf the BBC’s 34 reporters, meaning that even the publicly funded broadcasters have one person asking questions for every five who answer them. Remarkably, the bill for Holyrood’s press officers and special advisers has increased by 50 per cent since 2018, despite newspaper sales halving since the SNP came to power. Is it any wonder that important questions go unanswered when there is an excess of gatekeepers and a dearth of interrogators?

 

The Scottish parliament is supposed to hold government to account. The original idea was for a unicameral system to create huge efficiency, with no House of Lords to slow things down. But this system means there is little scrutiny. During the Alex Salmond trial, where his evidence against Sturgeon was redacted, members of the Scottish parliament were warned that they did not have protected speech as MPs do in Westminster: they can be prosecuted by Sturgeon’s lawyers if they speak out of turn. Such a threat would never and could never be made to MPs.

 

The First Minister’s latest idea is to dispense with even the pretence of parliamentary approval and, as part of a future pandemic law, to ‘modify or amend’ any act of parliament without a vote. Unusually for a democracy, the legislature and the executive would be merged. In her defence, one can argue that this has, in effect, already been the case for years.

 

Even businesses have been warned that dissent is not welcome. Jack Perry, the former head of Scottish Enterprise, last year explained how Scottish companies ‘get shot down instantly and boycotted’ if they cause trouble for the SNP. ‘It’s very slick,’ he said. ‘Tunnock’s [teacakes] got berated for promoting a British identity in export markets rather than Scottish. They subtly changed branding – and suddenly there were boycott calls.’ A 2018 newspaper investigation revealed that companies working for the Scottish government risk having their contracts terminated if they are disobliging about the SNP.

 

After 15 years of power, the boundaries between party and state have become increasingly blurred. The Salmond inquiry last year showed the lack of distinction between the SNP, its government, supposedly impartial civil servants and legal officers. This merger is embodied in Bute House, the residence of the First Minister which she shares with Peter Murrell, her husband – who is the SNP’s chief executive. Leslie Evans, the recently departed head of the civil service, is married to a prominent SNP activist.

In Westminster, political parties are internal coalitions with lively debates. But inside the SNP, parliamentarians are forbidden from criticising their leadership. Joanna Cherry, for example, was an SNP home affairs spokesman and a rising star until she demurred from the party line on trans rights. She has spoken about the ‘abuse, threats, bullying and smears’ she receives from her own side now she’s on the backbenches – a warning to others who may be tempted to challenge Sturgeon.

 

Intimidation and fear have been hallmarks of the wider regime. Charities have been subject to ‘gagging orders’ that prevent them from criticising SNP policies or backing rival campaigns to qualify for state funding. Quangos are now so concerned about political interference that they include it on their formal risk assessments. Universities, too, are on notice. When Louise Richardson was principal of St Andrews, she warned that Scottish independence might hurt research funding. She was subjected to a ten-minute ‘loud and heated’ phone call from Salmond.

The SNP hasn’t grabbed power just from Westminster, but from local government too. ‘Scotland is one of the most centralised countries in Europe,’ reported Cosla, the country’s association of local councils, in 2014. Since then, ambulances, schools and social care have all come under increased central control.

 

Council tax freezes further erode local authority autonomy. Elected mayors have become commonplace in England but in Scotland, the man in Holyrood still knows best.

In England, the Crown Prosecution Service is independent of the government. In Scotland, the chief prosecutor – the Lord Advocate – sits in Sturgeon’s cabinet. This came in handy when she was facing accusations by Salmond that she conspired to put him in prison on false charges to remove him as a political threat.

 

Information has become increasingly hard to obtain from the state. Even before the pandemic, the country’s Information Commissioner warned that the Scottish public sector’s obsession with secrecy was a problem, with ‘serious systematic’ failures in the handling of freedom of information requests. These are routinely vetted, in spite of a legal requirement for them to be ‘applicant blind’. One was recently rejected on the grounds that it ‘would prejudice’ Scotland’s global relations if a critical report on the SNP’s school reforms – ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ – was published in full.

 

Good luck to anyone trying to assess how Scottish pupils are doing. The SNP specialise in hiding poor performance by ‘data divergence’: changing the metrics so it’s impossible to compare with England. Scotland’s schools have now been pulled out of inter-national league tables. Having withdrawn from TIMSS and PIRLS, PISA is the only international education survey in which Scotland still participates. Ministers have even debated quitting that: unsurprising, given its most recent damning findings.

 

Some problems are too big to conceal. Under the SNP, drug deaths have tripled to become the highest in the developed world by some margin. Numerous metrics point to the conclusion that Scotland has the worst health service within the UK. Yet the Health Foundation said in 2014 that it was impossible to compare health outcomes across the four nations, because Scotland had changed the way it collected the data since devolution.

 

During Covid, Sturgeon’s system clam-med up even more. But it now appears that ministers tried to cover up Scotland’s first major Covid outbreak in February 2020: the Health Secretary said the discovery of cases in an Edinburgh hotel should have been made public, but this was overruled. Ministers were also later found to have kept second-wave death and case predictions secret, in defiance of the law. Emails sent to and from special advisers about Sturgeon’s Covid briefings have been deleted.

If Boris Johnson had personally hushed up a Covid outbreak, there would have been a huge scandal and calls for his resignation. In Edinburgh, it’s 

business as usual, all part of Sturgeon’s secret state.

 

Devolution was supposed to allow the new government to be held accountable by a new form of scrutiny so that politicians were not in hock to ministers. Enoch Powell famously observed that ‘power devolved is power retained’. Sturgeon has made this the lesson of devolution.

 

 

 

 

 

🤣🤣 some of the stuff in this article is comedy gold. Is it from the Daily Mash or Viz? Desperate stuff. 

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Konrad von Carstein
12 minutes ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

 

Denial overload! 

Ooft! Get me some ice for that burn. :qqb006:

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jack D and coke

Blackford and this SNP lot are sickening man. The damage they’ve done and are doing to the Indy movement boils my piss. 
 

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Lord Montpelier
4 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Blackford and this SNP lot are sickening man. The damage they’ve done and are doing to the Indy movement boils my piss. 
 

Yep. They don't half shoot themselves in the foot sometimes. Just demonstrates their integrity is no different to any other political party. 

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Seymour M Hersh
9 hours ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

Ooft! Get me some ice for that burn. :qqb006:

 

Perhaps I should be recommending a good optometrist for you. None so blind as those who will not see as the saying goes. 

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Konrad von Carstein
37 minutes ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

 

Perhaps I should be recommending a good optometrist for you. None so blind as those who will not see as the saying goes. 

 

The irony persists...

:wow:

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8 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Blackford and this SNP lot are sickening man. The damage they’ve done and are doing to the Indy movement boils my piss. 
 

 

I can't understand how they could think backing Grady is a good idea... Zero tolerance to sexual impropriety means zero tolerance. He's been found guilty so now is the time to force him to step down and maintain credibility. 

 

I find it interesting that with Salmond, the SNP couldn't have been more helpful. Sending emails round to dredge up any potential complaint, leaking details to the daily record etc. contrasted with rallying behind someone who has been found guilty.. it reeks and IMO gives credence to the Salmond stuff being politically motivated nonsense. 

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Lord Montpelier
1 hour ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

Abuse now 😂

Konrad - do you agree with the stance Bunter has taken in support of his political colleague ? A yes or no answer will suffice.

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Konrad von Carstein
10 minutes ago, Lord Montpelier said:

Konrad - do you agree with the stance Bunter has taken in support of his political colleague ? A yes or no answer will suffice.

No.

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Lord Montpelier
6 minutes ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

No.

I agree. Do you also agree Ian Blackford should consider his position for supporting this dubious fella ?

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Konrad von Carstein
4 minutes ago, Lord Montpelier said:

I agree. Do you also agree Ian Blackford should consider his position for supporting this dubious fella ?

Said dubious fella should have been emptied as an SNP MP.

IB should at the least withdraw his support and apologise.

I'd remind you that others in WM are guilty of FAR worse and are still in post

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il Duce McTarkin
2 minutes ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

I'd remind you that others in WM are guilty of FAR worse and are still in post

 

The least smelly shite in the pan is still a shite. 

We can't stop holding our politicians to the highest standards just because the other lot are a shower of shysters. Unacceptable behaviour cannot be normalised if we ever hope for better than what we have at the moment.

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Lord Montpelier
10 minutes ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

Said dubious fella should have been emptied as an SNP MP.

IB should at the least withdraw his support and apologise.

I'd remind you that others in WM are guilty of FAR worse and are still in post

I was wondering at what point you would try (and fail) to deflect.

 

I do agree though with your other points and my view is anyone elected to public office should be removed when not demonstrating the very highest levels of integrity. 

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Konrad von Carstein
Just now, Dirk McClaymore said:

 

The least smelly shite in the pan is still a shite. 

We can't stop holding our politicians to the highest standards just because the other lot are a shower of shysters. Unacceptable behaviour cannot be normalised if we ever hope for better than what we have at the moment.

That is not what I meant, and I think you know that, given my posts previous to the one you've partially quoted!

 

IMO Blackford has made a serious error of judgement.

Do I consider it to be a sacking or resigning issue? No.

Am I happy at what has played out? Again No.

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Konrad von Carstein
4 minutes ago, Lord Montpelier said:

I was wondering at what point you would try (and fail) to deflect.

 

I do agree though with your other points and my view is anyone elected to public office should be removed when not demonstrating the very highest levels of integrity. 

Not deflecting at all. My post previous to this one explains my point of view.

 

I'll concede, however, that I find it difficult to discuss WM without viewing it via the behaviour of the current occupants of the government's benches.

Edited by Konrad von Carstein
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Lord Montpelier
2 minutes ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

That is not what I meant, and I think you know that, given my posts previous to the one you've partially quoted!

 

IMO Blackford has made a serious error of judgement.

Do I consider it to be a sacking or resigning issue? No.

Am I happy at what has played out? Again No.

If he can make a serious error of judgement on something so obvious to the rest of us, does it give you confidence in his judgement in general when dealing with more complex matters ?

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il Duce McTarkin
1 minute ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

That is not what I meant, and I think you know that, given my posts previous to the one you've partially quoted!

 

IMO Blackford has made a serious error of judgement.

Do I consider it to be a sacking or resigning issue? No.

Am I happy at what has played out? Again No.

 

I partially quoted you because your final point was the salient one in that post. It detracted from what you'd written previously. Nobody needs reminded about Tory chicanery when discussing Blackford.

Stick to your usual standard of posting and don't lower yourself to whataboutery.

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Konrad von Carstein
1 minute ago, Dirk McClaymore said:

 

I partially quoted you because your final point was the salient one in that post. It detracted from what you'd written previously. Nobody needs reminded about Tory chicanery when discussing Blackford.

Stick to your usual standard of posting and don't lower yourself to whataboutery.

 

Thanks :wub:

 

I did try not to go into whatabootery mode.

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ArcticJambo
4 hours ago, OTT said:

 

I can't understand how they could think backing Grady is a good idea... Zero tolerance to sexual impropriety means zero tolerance. He's been found guilty so now is the time to force him to step down and maintain credibility. 

 

I find it interesting that with Salmond, the SNP couldn't have been more helpful. Sending emails round to dredge up any potential complaint, leaking details to the daily record etc. contrasted with rallying behind someone who has been found guilty.. it reeks and IMO gives credence to the Salmond stuff being politically motivated nonsense. 

Whatever happened to just simply telling him at the time to: '**** off, I don't fancy you you weirdo!', and leave it at that.  Instead a big fuss is made of it and then try and ruin his life. He touched someon's hair ffs. 

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Seymour M Hersh
2 hours ago, Konrad von Carstein said:

Abuse now 😂

 

Stating the obvious from your replies konnie dear. It's as if my second sentence didn't exist. Or perhaps critical thinking just isn't your forte. 

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