FREEDOM!!!! [4]

On the topic of freedom, this is huge:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hong-kong-leader-withdraws-extradition-111259894.html

Mainland China, your move.

Cameron sought Queen's help over Scottish independence - BBC News

Former PM David Cameron has revealed he asked whether the Queen could "raise an eyebrow" about the prospect of Scotland voting for independence.

He told the BBC he sought help from royal officials days before the 2014 vote amid "mounting panic" he may lose.

What was discussed was not "anything that would be in any way improper... but just a raising of the eyebrow even... a quarter of an inch", he said.

The Queen later urged people to "think very carefully about the future".

The comments - made to a well-wisher outside a church on the Balmoral estate - were one of the main talking points of the referendum campaign.

At the time, the BBC's royal correspondent said the Queen's words were "more of an observation than an intervention", while Buckingham Palace said any suggestion the Queen was seeking to influence the outcome of the referendum was "categorically wrong".

Officials insisted the monarch was above politics, and the issue of Scotland's future was a matter for the people.

Two weeks after the Scottish referendum, Mr Cameron was forced to apologise after suggesting the Queen "purred down the phone" when she was told about the No result.

tHe BrItIsH mOnArChY iS aPoLiTiCaL

{{ Mind you, not many folk in Scotland at the time thought she was impartial. And her comment was widely seen as interferring in the referndum at the time.

The only surprising thing here is that Cameron actually comes out and confirms she was being political. Thats unheard of. What is said between PM and Queen is meant to be forever private. And it has not gone unnoticed by Her Majesty! }}

'David Cameron's revelation that he sought help from the Queen ahead of the Scottish independence vote in 2014 has caused displeasure at Buckingham Palace, a source has said.
A source told the BBC "it serves no-one's interests" for conversations between the PM and the Queen to be made public ."- BBC

That is what unadulterated narcissism has done to an entire country.

I think it's pretty awesome that some of the Hong Kong protestors are showing support for Calalonia. Those in the mainland may not even know about Catalonia because of internet restrictions.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hong-kong-protesters-rally-support-031001300.html

Found this to be very interesting.

The place: Scotland. The time: 1695. Already, much of the Northern Hemisphere was shivering its way through the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1850. The decade from 1695-1705 was the coldest of all, though, according to a recent study in the Journal of Vulcanology and Geothermal Research. In fact, it’s still Scotland’s coldest decade in the last nearly 800 years. The century 1612-1711 is the coldest hundred-year period on record (1911-2010 is the warmest). Looking at rings from centuries-old trees in the Cairngorms in northern Scotland, the researchers and determined that this particular cold spell was caused by a few significant volcanic eruptions in the tropics and Iceland from 1693-1695, and possibly a shift in the North Atlantic/Arctic Oscillation, the atmospheric pressure pattern that affects the climate of the northern hemisphere.

The study’s authors lay out some of the consequences: Population loss in Scotland of around 10-15% (25% in some places) because of crop failure and ill-advised export laws, and over-enthusiasm about Darien, a proposed colony in Panama, which was a spectacular failure. It lasted less than two years and resulted in the deaths of about 2,000 colonists and the loss of about a third of Scotland’s wealth.

The effect of all of this — population loss, economic and agricultural collapse — was that Scotland united with England in 1707 after centuries of resistance, the authors write. And while no decades were as bad, climate-wise, as the 1690s, once unified with England, Scotland never saw the same kind of desperation again.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/climate-change-lesson-scotlands-little-080011868.html

yes that is interesting I remember reading that in the 17th century the Thames froze over completely and they held markets on the ice, it was so deep. It was the mini-ice age.

And moments like that give us gorgeous pictures like Bruegels snowy landscapes.

{ Great example of our 'Union' works and whyit has to end.

To respond to the covid crisis the UK has borrowed £125 billion. Scotlands share of that debt is £10 billion.
SOunds fair?
Until you release Wesmtinister has only given the Scottish govt 3. 6 billion out of it.
So as nation Scotland just subsidised the rest of the UK to the tuneof £6.4 billion!
We cant afford to be doing this, and it happens all the time. }}

{{ Great example of how the media report things differently in Scotland and in rest of the UK, and how differenrtly our parliaments respond.

First the background.
This is about the school exams. As they could not take part this year Exam Boards in the different parts of the Uk had to try to come up with a way to award exam results in  a way that would be a fair reflection of the pupils work and likely results.
What all the Uk boards came up with was almost identical, it would be based in part on pupil course work and in part on the average of the exam results from the school a pupil attended over previous years. It was decided not to include teacher assessments and expectations, as it was found that doing so would seem to squew the results towards about 30-40% more A passes than is average or normal.

Scotland, whose exam results come in earlier than in England got their's first and all hell broke lose.
It turned out doing it this way and disregarding teacher assessments of their pupils meant that bright pupils, but who happened to be attending a school in a poor exam results area historically, were being marked down and failing to pass or get expected grades. It was turning out to be disproportionaly unfair on the poorest areas. Whilst private schools seemed to be being favoured thanks to good previous results.

The Tories took the lead in calling for the Scottish Education Secretary, Swinney, to resign. Even though the exam board has responsiblity, the government only oversight.
Sturgeon took a look at the results, spoke with Swinney, listened to the compaints and then apologised, saying the idea was to achieve fairness, but it had not been fair so they had got it wrong. She then got the board to revalutate the results taking into account teacher assessments this time.

Today the Scottish Parliament is voting, as I type in fact, in a vote of no confidence in the Scottish Secretary, backed by the unionist parties.


Meanwhile Englands exam results came out today, and guess what? Exact same issue, same way board caculated things, and seeing what happened in Scotland the Westminister government hurriedly, the night before the exam results came out in fact,  promised a means of pupils to appeal and to pick which result they want from a list, based off their teacher asessment, their mock exam results, or the one they got.
But again the issue is that it is still penalising brighter students who happen to be in poor results areas.

The difference? No one is calling for the Tory Education Secretary to resign. The Tories, currently voting to try to oust the SNP one for the same thing, are silent at Westminister.
More so a lot of them have spent today deleting tweets about the Scottish government handling of it.
And whilst the vote of no confidence is purely a political move by unionists desperate to damage the SNP before the Scottish elections, it shows that the processes of the parliament, if the opposition wish to call the government to account on such things, have the means to do so.
There is no such vote scheduled to take place in England. And there are no Tories there calling for it, whilst in the Scottish Parliament Ruth Davidson (yeah she's back- long story)  votes for it in Scotland against the Scottish Education Secretary. The hypocrisy is stark.

And the reporting?
Well for nearly two days my BBC front page was a huge picture of Strugeon looking glum and troubled and a headlineof her apoligising with a report blaming the Scottish government and the education secretary and barely mentioning the exam board.
The page is gone now, and theyve buried it in the dephsof the scottish politcs sections- but here is the headline still-



and here's the picture of her they choose to accompany the headline (and no its not from the day in question so they went looking for this)-



Incidentally what she was actually saying sorry for was that it had unintentionally affected the poorest and most disadvantaged in society and that it had undermined confidnece in people in the fairness of the system, which was why she was going to sort it and change it to better reflect expected attaintment.


Today's front page is the exact same story only in England with Tories and Westminister, and with no one taking responsibility of course - here it is-



As you can see there is no glum and troubled looking Boris, there is no dramatic quote from him because the entire article does not reference him at all, not once, whilst the Scottish version of the story was made to be about Sturgeon herself. The Westminster version attributes no blame, and only has one quote from the education secretary, putting a positive spin on it. The rest is all about the exam board.

And the worst of this is we pay for BBC Scotland through taxation for this bias reporting against us!

edit add- Swinney survived the vote of no confidence with the Greens backing the SNP to keep him in place.}}

well to be fair Johnson is pretty busy this week killing grouse with his cronies. Childrens education is way down his list of interesting things to sort out during his holidays.

Disparities increase when kids are not physically in school. For many of the students it's a much needed safe zone, and the only place they can perform academically. Not at home.

{{ Scotttish schools statred back up yesterday. Time will tell how that works out. }}

How much in the classroom versus online?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53691501

The German schools have just re-closed, new cases in Spain, France and Greece are off the charts, and Germany is not far behind. Its people on holiday.

https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1319016046343454720

Perhaps you are aware of what the shenanigans referenced were, Petty?

{{ It appears to be a reference to the SNP Conference, where a motion to hold a referendum without the consent of Westminister was not put to a vote on the floor. I think anyway.
There is a large section of the SNP would hold a referendum tomorrow if they could and to hell with if its legally recognised or not, this has become all the more prominent since polling has YES consistently over 50% and as high as 58%.

More dodgy is Westminsters increasing attempts to prevent it, the Tories have hired a company in secret to come up with ways to undermine the SNP, Sturgeon and independence in general. Fortunately some good journalism brought it to light, but then the mainstream UK media didnt cover it, like at all. It didnt appear in any of the Unionist or English based press ( which make up 99% of all the newspapers in Scotland) it didn't even make the BBC.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-19/u-k-s-tories-start-war-gaming-to-stop-scottish-independence

'Perhaps you are aware of what the shenanigans referenced were, Petty?'- Blue

Theres a Who quote for every occasion! }}

{{ So yesterday there was a vote inthe hous eof commons on whether to extend free school meals during the pandemic to the poorest families during holidays put forward by Labour. The Tories whipped against it and the bill was defeated by 322 votes to 261.
Some of the arguments made during the debate certainly show the Tories colours-

"Where is the slick PR campaign encouraging absent parents to take some responsibility for their children? I do not believe in nationalising children, instead we need to get back to the idea of taking responsibility." Conservative MP for Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith (who recieved free school meals as a child).

'The vote was not to help poor kids, yes or no but a promise to roll out a huge expansion of long term state dependency to millions, when a large [percentage] of those on [free school meals] are not impoverished and don't want or need it." - Tory MP Ben Bradley

Fortunately things are differnt inthe devolved administrations. In Wales and Scotland the free meals program will run through holidays too.

'In Scotland, the government has made £10m available to local councils to continue to fund free school meals over the Christmas, February and Easter breaks. Local authorities that offered provision over the October school break can apply to be reimbursed.
The Welsh government has also pledged to extend free school meal provision to every school holiday until Easter 2021, spending £11m on doing so.'

I'll never understand why the people of England accept this, but not only do they accept it they keep voting for it. }}

{{ A Tory campaign leaflet has been dropping through Scottish letterboxes the last few weeks, heres one of their pledges-



Then every Scottish Tory MP voted against free school meals to the poorest in the Commons. Utter bastards, every last one of them. }}

I am disgusted by the Tories pathetic excuses for denying kids school meals. Ben Bradley and his little mates are scum.

{{ I see the Tories are showing rather starkly how they really think of working class families-

'Conservative MP, Ben Bradley, who has backed the government, defended his position... Commenting on a school in Mansfield, Mr Bradley said that "one kid lives in a crack den, another in a brothel. That's what FSM vouchers in the summer effectively did."

When people were rightly outraged at this he deleted the tweet and claimed it was taken out of context. I am struggling here to think of a context in which this is anything other than a horrendous thing to say. Apart from the fact the vouchers can only be spent on food I've been working class my whole life and Ive never been either in a brothel or a crack den. Oddly, over the years, Tory MP's have been caught in both.

Worst of this is people in the north of england voted for this, they elected Tories last election for the first time, well now they are getting a timely reminder of why generatins before them didnt vote Tory.
At least NI has stepped up and ignored Westminister are providing free meals over the holidays too, joining Wales and Scotland. So only England are being screwed over, which is a sort of poetic justice as it was England who voted for this. This is what you asked for, Tories in charge again.}}

I don't have enough words left for that depraved vicious arsehole. I hope the people of Mansfield are ashamed of what they have done.

{{ He is trying to worm out of it still, insisting it was out of context etc. Problem is, besides the tweets being clear enough and screenshotted before he deleted the exchange, he has a history of attacking the working class, in a blog post from 2012 he said that unemployed 'wasters' should be forced to have vasectomies to stop them having children.
But this is and always has been the Tory play book, promise the working class everything for their vote, then once in power hammer them with draconian benefits systems, cuts to community support groups, youth centres and the like, then blame them for the situation and say its their own fault for being dependent on the state. It'll never change. The best recent history example being the last financial crash caused entirely by the financial sector leading to ten years of austerity and cuts to services, which the tories somehow convinced the middle classes was the fault of the poor and working poor as they were a bunch of lazy, workshy scroungers sponging off the middle class taxes. Its the Tory way, the poor are there as fodder, nothing more. Never will be anything more to them. Stupid proles to be used and manipulated at need, its how they see us. }}

{{ I should add he's not the only Tory expousing this sort of out of touch views. When local business horrified at the lack of government support for poor children stepped up to do what the Tories wont, help poor families feed  their children by offering them free meals Selaine Saxby, the Tory MP for North Devon tweeted-

“I am delighted our local businesses have bounced back so much after lockdown they are able to give away food for free, and very much hope they will not be seeking any further government support.”

And after deleting her post guess what her excuse is? Yup you got it, she has been taken out of context! Fucking Tory scum every last one of them. }}