Thursday 24 October 2013

We Don't Need no Revolution.

I couldn't count myself as Russell Brand's greatest fan, but he obviously has a passion for popular sovereignty.



We in Scotland don't need a revolution to acquire popular sovereignty. Our popular sovereignty is enshrined in Scots constitutional law and, though it has lain dormant since 1707, it was famously reiterated by the Lord President in the case of John MacCormick and Ian Hamilton v The Lord Avocate in 1953 (MacCormick v Lord Advocate 1953 SC 396):
“The principle of unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle and has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
That case was about the styling of the Monarch as Elizabeth the Second. Scotland had never had a regnant Queen Elizabeth before and Ian Hamilton's is the first name on the roll of Queen's Counsel in Scotland which does not have the offending ordinal, as he refused to swear allegiance to a non-existent Queen. It's also worth remembering that my local postbox was the first victim of the use of explosives for domestic political ends in Scotland since 1746 when it was repeatedly vandalised and finally blown up for having the offending E II R monogram. 

In future, newly installed postboxes will probably bear advertisements for payday loans or somesuch now that the Tories and their Liberal Democrat lickspittles have sold the Post Office off to their chums at a knock-down price. 

Cartoon: Frank Boyle.
Thankfully, all we need to do to regain popular sovereignty in Scotland and to stop the theft of our public assets is to vote Yes on 18th September 2014.

Thursday 17 October 2013

£25,000 Internet Fraud. Lord Robertson Presses Charges.

It's only been running since yesterday, but already nearly 30 Scots have allegedly been fleeced of almost £1,300 according to Lord Robertson. The fraud, believed to be masterminded by Russian internet criminals Юлие Фоулис & Чхрис Ригхт, aims to net £25,000 in only 60 days.

Should  Юлие Фоулис & Чхрис Ригхт be behind bars?
This scam is being perpetrated on the ludicrous basis that an organisation known as Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o' Riches has been preserving and making available to the public free of charge thousands of hours of non-existent Scottish Language and Culture. 

Aren't we lucky to have quondam socialist and SNP member George now The Baron Robertson of Port Ellen KT GCMG FRSA FRSE PC to save us from unscrupulous scams like this? As recently as 23rd September at Abertay University he warned students and the wider Scottish public that there was no such thing as Scottish culture or language (35:50):


“There’s no linguistic differentiation, no great cultural, eh, discrimination that might argue for it, like it does in some other countries, you know, in Flanders in Belgium they say “Why can’t we become an independent state?”, or Catalonia and Spain, where a million and a quarter people marched in the streets. They say they want to become an independent state, but they've got language, and culture, and all these sort of things. We don’t have any of that.”
Lord Robertson is understood to be writing to Chief Constable of Police Scotland urging that the gang be rounded up. Speaking exclusively to Logic's Rock this morning he said: 
"It's deplorable! At a time when NHS Scotland is making a special effort to deal with alcohol consumption, these scammers are offering £50 off courses in speaking Garlic and Garlic songs of drinking and revelry given at some place called Sabhal Mor Ostrich by a lush from Lvov called Маргарет Стеварт. Well, she must be Russian or Ukrainian since a proud Scot like me can't understand a word she says.
"Two of the scammers, the aforementioned Юлие Фоулис and a Донние Мунро actually expect gullible Scots to pay up and then invite them into their homes to give private concerts! Would you invite a Russian internet criminal into your home and pay for the privilege?"
A spokesman for Police Scotland said "Lord Robertson has been detained for questioning and will be examined by a police surgeon in due course.  Until our investigations are concluded on or about 15th December, we urge people to click on links to Tobar an Dualchais' Sponsume site and to give as much as they can."




Sunday 13 October 2013

Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff The Outrage Bus

Nancy Nicolson
I've posted about manufactured outrage before, but yesterday's Daily Express really takes the biscuit with Scottish pupils taught to sing for separation. The cause of this trip aboard the double decker of outrage buses? The Quango Education Scotland has put a teaching resource on its website called Scotland's Songs.

The site gives the lyrics to hundreds of Scottish songs and the background and recordings of some of them. Only a few feature in the Express expose of the Scottish Government's dastardly plot to indoctrinate the youth of Scotland with, erm, their own culture. Of course, Lord George Robertson famously argued that we don't have our own culture or languages, and as part of the dastardly plot, the website has songs in Scots and Gaelic as well as English.


Let's savour the outrageous outrage from rent-a-quote politicians:

Better Together Spokesman:
“This is an outrageous example of taxpayer-funded political propaganda. It is a deeply cynical ploy aimed at presenting a distorted view of history to people who will, after all, be voting next year.
 “This exposes the lengths SNP ministers will go to in order to get people to vote for independence.”
Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Mary Scanlon: 
“The SNP is abusing the education system to promote its own separation propaganda. 
“It should be up to teachers to use the material they choose, but there is no doubting in the run-up to the referendum the Scottish Government is trying to influence things with an independence slant. 
“First we had Mike Russell insisting all colleges play a video of him at graduation, now we have an influx of divisive anthems for the classroom.”
Not all of the songs on the website warrant a ticket on the outrage bus. The outrage is caused by the inclusion of the following songs and the blurb they come up with to justify their inclusion is at times beyond parody:

Shock-horror!
One of the political songs on the Education Scotland website, which is designed to be used by both teachers and pupils, is The Freedom Come All Ye, by the late Scots poet Hamish Henderson. It is regarded as the unofficial anthem of the independence movement and was recently sung en masse at the Yes Scotland rally on Calton Hill. 
Hamish always railed against it being used as a Scottish anthem, seeing it as an international anthem. But those nasty separatists sang it up a hill so it must now be expunged from the national canon.

The Outrage Bus gangs aglae on the M8
Another is Both Sides of the Tweed, a protest song against the Treaty of Union which was written by the Glaswegian folk singer Dick Gaughan after the 1979 Devolution Referendum. On the website, Gaughan is quoted as saying: “The verses call for the recognition of Scotland’s right to sovereignty and the choruses argue against prejudice between our peoples.” 
My understanding is that it was written by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd and Dick Gaughan made some minor amendments to give it contemporary relevance, although Dick attributes the original words as Trad. A lifelong Leither, Dick put the tune to it.

Nurse! Ma Pills! Someone's just flashed their Burns' Songs at me!
Two of Robert Burns’s most famous works – Scots Wha Hae, the official song of the SNP which is sung at the end of party conferences, and Sic a Parcel of Roguesare also on display. With regard to the latter, the website states that “many Scots were angry in 1707” and suggests that Sir Walter Scott – who was a prominent Unionist and Tory – was against the formation of Great Britain. 
As if reporting the private parts of some flasher in a park, two of Burns' most famous songs are also on display. There are dozens of other Burns songs on the site which don't warrant a mention. Does the website suggest Sir Walter Scott was agin the Union? No, it doesn't. Here's the only mention:
Many Scots were angry in 1707. Sir Walter Scott summed up the popular Scottish attitude of the time in the words of one of his characters: 'I ken, when we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament - men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stones when they werena gude bairns - But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon.'
Apoplexy!
Education Scotland even appears to be pre-judging the outcome of the referendum by listing the various “candidates for a Scottish national anthem”, including Caledonia, The Freedom Come All Ye, Scots Wha Hae and Scotland the Brave
So Scotland can't have an anthem if we vote No?

Jacobites and Lefties, whatever next?
There are also numerous Jacobite songs, as well as a number of left-leaning political works. They include Ding Dong Dollar, “the anthem of the Scottish Anti-Polaris movement of the 1960s and beyond”, which remains popular with protestors at Faslane naval base. Students are also encouraged to learn If It Wisnae for the Union, “a song in praise of trade unionism”, which was adapted by Billy Connolly into The Welly Boot Song. 
I've said for a long time that if the Jacobites were half as good at military strategy as they were at songwriting, the Stuarts would still be on the throne. It follows that if the lefties were half as good at political strategy as they are at songwriting we wouldn't have Cameron in Downing Street. When did you last hear a Tory political song?

Aaaargh! The Russians are coming - and THE IMMIGRANTS!
Another song pays tribute to the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, while All Jock Tamson’s Bairns are Coming Home, by Steven Clark, welcomes refugees from “Iraq, Zimbabwe, Turkey and Somalia”.
Welcoming immigrants? I bet that had the Express readership choking on their cornflakes.

Outrage at a song about an outrage.
Who Pays the Piper? by Nancy Nicolson attacks the “immensely rich companies” involved in the North Sea Oil industry, which is described as being “fed by workers’ lives”. 
To cap it all, irony is just a ferric adjective. Who Pays the Piper is about the Piper Alpha disaster. The advances in safety in the North Sea since that event are testament to the constructive use of the outrage voiced by the whole nation at the time.

Yours truly and Nancy Nicolson singing a duet in 1998.

Thursday 10 October 2013

The Fear Factor Episode 6 of 6: Attack of the CyberNats.

Well, here it is folks, the thrilling season finale of The Fear Factor: Attack of the Cybernats, featuring the story which kicked off this blog.


Missed the previous episodes? Fear not!

The Fear Factor Episode 5: The Artists, The Press and the Black, Black Oil. Why Better Together is only worth half a Serbian War Criminal to a blowhard and how his lawyers were foiled by a bunch of Arty-Farties. The dying Dead Tree Press and the rise of Aaaaaaaarrrrgh: The Cybernat! Scary stuff.


The Fear Factor Episode 4: Mean Scotland Syndrome. Journalists or Churnalists? Make up your own mind.


Missed the previous episodes? Fear Not! You can watch them right here with the Logic's Rock Catch-up service.

The Fear Factor Episode 3: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth.


The Fear Factor Episode 2: Part of the Union.


The Fear Factor Episode 1: This is the Fear Factor.



Got any questions about Scottish independence? You can either find the answers on Yes Scotland's Questions Page, or if you can't find an answer there's a wee form so you can ask your own question and get an answer.

Films by Rough Justice Films: Jack Foster & Chris Silver.

#Indyref #YesScotland #ProjectFear

Friday 4 October 2013

We Have Lift Off!

The Yes Campaign achieved Lift Off yesterday evening in Leith.  It was the self-styled Project Fear's worst nightmare: Over a year of unending negativity and scaremongering through a compliant Press and a BBC behaving like a UK version of Pravda to keep the Scottish People disengaged from the debate has failed.

On a fairly dreich night, Yes Edinburgh North & Leith's "Undecided About the Referendum?" event packed the hall. So much so that decided Yes voters volunteered to give up their seats and go home so that undecided voters could hear the speakers. They were left with standing room only in the hall as Nicola Sturgeon, Aamer Anwar, Margo McDonald and local Scottish Green Party Councillor Chas Booth addressed the packed room.

Yes Scotland has always said that once the Scottish People were engaged in the debate, turning a No voter to an Undecided voter then an Undecided voter into a Yes voter would become easier as the arguments speak for themselves. It is only years of unremitting propaganda and the Scottish Cringe that has meant a majority in the polls against independence.  The Scottish People are well and truly engaged in the debate and The Cringe is on the wane. I look forward to sights like this being repeated up and down the country.




Cllr Chas Booth (Scottish Green Party)



Margo McDonald (Independent)

Thursday 3 October 2013

The Fear Factor Episode 5 of 6: The Artists, The Press and the Black, Black Oil

Scared at the prospect of running your own country? Terrified about what the future holds? Haunted by nightmarish visions of deep uncertainty? The Fear Factor is a series of short films looking at why Scottish people are afraid, very afraid, about what's in store for their poor wee country...

The Fear Factor Episode 5: The Artists, The Press and the Black, Black Oil. Why Better Together is only worth half a Serbian War Criminal to a blowhard and how his lawyers were foiled by a bunch of Arty-Farties. The dying Dead Tree Press and the rise of Aaaaaaaarrrrgh: The Cybernat! Scary stuff.


The Fear Factor Episode 4: Mean Scotland Syndrome. Journalists or Churnalists? Make up your own mind.


Missed the previous episodes? Fear Not! You can watch them right here with the Logic's Rock Catch-up service.

The Fear Factor Episode 3: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth.


The Fear Factor Episode 2: Part of the Union.



The Fear Factor Episode 1: This is the Fear Factor.



Got any questions about Scottish independence? You can either find the answers on Yes Scotland's Questions Page, or if you can't find an answer there's a wee form so you can ask your own question and get an answer.

Films by Rough Justice Films: Jack Foster & Chris Silver.

#Indyref #YesScotland #ProjectFear