FREEDOM!!!!

new zealand and australia are independent countries, though they recognize the queen as the head of the state (correct?) so could that not be a solution?

Or are you scottish people way to stubborn?

Norc wrote:Or are you scottish people way to stubborn?

Run, Norc. Run NOW!!!

I did suggest earlier that Sweeden might be willing to give them THEIR king rather cheap (so they could get Victoria on the throne in a hurry!), though he might be loved again now that he is a proud grandfather.

The Royal Family is Scottish not English- when Scotland and England joined together the Scottish Monarch, King James, became King of England too- its our Royal Family and the English should feel lucky hat after independence we are letting them keep the Royals at all.

Norc being a nice Scotshobbit I will give you a 5 second head start to make use of Amarie's advice- RUN!

Pettytyrant101 wrote: and the English should feel lucky hat after independence we are letting them keep the Royals at all.

yeah - good luck with that! we don't do gratitude!

No nor these days public health, public eduation, public policing or even public water either- good luck with those!

*runs like hell towards a tall tree*

Yu are lucky Norc being a Scotshobbit raised on fried food and buckie that at this moment in time that tree seems a mite tall and too far away for me to climb! I shall punish you instead by standing beneath it and playing the bagpipes at you.

Haha.. but the eagles will come

Very sensitive hearing eagles- they won't come near the sound of me trying to play the bagpipes I can assure you. I can shatter glass.

I'll just use my bow and arrows and my awesome bow and arrow skills and puncture ur bagpipe

Puncturing a mans fully inflated pipebag Norc is a capital offence in repsectable parts!

I almost feel sorry for the Scottish Tory Party. They are having their conference and their leader Ruth Davidson has been doing her bit to paint themselves as true Scots fighting for Scottish issues, telling the party faithful to go out their and fight for what they believe in regards the Union etc and David Cameron and Theresa May come stomping in from the London Party and spout the same old unfounded scare-mongering negative nonsense that keeps giving the SNP a boost in the polls every time.
Having warned us last week that becoming independent would inevitably lead to us being invaded and England having to bomb our airports, apparently we no longer have to worry about that, because before then immigrants willl have overrun us! (Theresa May's contribution that one).
As for Cameron, he gave a speech in which he talked about how he had put Salmond on the backfoot and had him on the run- which is fine except its clearly not actually happened- so far the score goes- Cameron insists Westminister decide the wording on the election- Salmond says no- Salmond gets his way- Cameron says Westminister will set the date of the referendum, Salmond says we stick to the plan outlined in the manifesto- Salmond gets his way. The SNP are riding high in the polls, Salmond is riding high in polls on satisfaction with him personally- the impression Cameron's speech gives me is that he is so used to spinning this guff to an english audience he forget he was talking to a scottish one.
There is a case to be made for the Union, about social ties, histroic ties, where financially we can be more secure, about how much power and influence we want at the top tables such as Europe (though Cameron has temporarly knacked that from a UK perspective) or the G9 countries- a positive case to make for Scotland remaining- and an opportunity to cut a better fairer deal for both sides rather something that has the weight of centuries of tinkering bringing it down. But so far none of the unionists have bothered trying this preferring to tell us we will be invaded, overrun by immigrants, or detroyed by pestulance within days of voting yes for seperation. That's not going to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0B8ZRBaLu0

All I can find of Camerons speech so far.
Dont know where to start with it but here goes,

1. Accussing Salmond of delaying the referendum- SNP mainfesto said it would be in the later half of the parliament, towards the end of the parliamentary term (2014) since then we have had that clarified to Autumn 2014, the latter part of the Parliament. This is everyday knowledge here, not just known by political nerds like me, the SNP won their election campaiging on this too, its not come out of the blue, its not a suprise, its not new its goimg to be in 2014- its when we were told it would be. Cameron on the otherhand started out insisting it had to be much sooner- within a year in fact- then had to back down from that and go with Salmonds date.
2. Salmond wanting 2 questions- the SNP's postion is that there should be 1 question. Salmond has said however that if other groups get together and decide to campaign for some form of maximum devolution he wont stop them presenting a demand for it to be on the ballot paper when the time comes as he is not in the buisness of stifling voices but of hearing them (of course its political manovering and is a good fall back position but Salmond also gets the moral ground by doing so). The SNP have not, and are not, propsing any other question- if there is another question it will come from another group not them.
3. Devo-max etc- the other possible versions that might be on the ballot paper besides independence are being proposed by mainly the liberal democracts (in coalition in Westminister with the Tories mind) and a cross party group containing Tories, lib-dems and a few rogue labour members- they are the ones supporing a devo-max style option and it is the preferred option of the Scottish Liberal Democrats- it has nothing to do with the SNP beyond Salmond saying he would not stand in the way of them asking the election commission to include such a question on the ballot if support for it was evident.
4. Braveheart reference- we thought we were having a serious debate about the future of our country and all the implications of that, apparently not. This must be the 'respect agenda' he has with Scots he keeps goign on about!
5. Delay creates uncertainty for business- a new renewable energy firm set up in Scotland yesterday invested millions into reveloping the harbour front for commerical use in Leith and creating directly 800 permanent jobs and several hundred more will benefit in the supply etc that a large renawbles plant will create in the area- its one of a long list of companies investing in Scotland over the last few years since the referendum was announced- considerably higher than invesment made in England over the same time (excepting financial services as nowhere in Europe and few in the world do as much financial business as the City of London).
This argument has even been publicly refuted by head sof large corporations and business who have choosen to invest here - but still Cameron trots it out.

NASA satelitte pic of Scotland sweltering under a cloudless sky. It ain't natural!!! (I need a proper sunburnt emoticon )

Its bloody scorchio!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:NASA satelitte pic of Scotland sweltering under a cloudless sky. It ain't natural!!! (I need a proper sunburnt emoticon )

How about:


?

Mmm that could also double for out of buckie!

Peter Crudass the Tory bloke caught on tape offering policy influence for donatations was also caught saying this in the same sting on the subject of the Union.

"We, as a party, have to be seen to be fighting to keep the Union together. Even if we don't agree with it, because at the end of it all, if the Scots say we're out of here and they want to go independent, we can turn around and say it's not what we wanted, it's not what we campaigned for, you can't have this, you can't have that, and you can get on with it."

Love for the Union or juts a bargaining chip Mr Cameron?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Peter Crudass

I had to Google him to see if that was really his name. Apparently it's actually Cruddas, but that typo.

Its an inward truth Eldo- suits him. Dodgy hopeless and definently an ass!

Recent events in the Scottish Independence Referendum have been on a petty level so I have not been reporting them- but the end result of the pettyness has been to highlight why Scottish Labour are incompitent.

Here's what happened.
The SNP are having a Public Consultation about the refernedum- they have received just over 20,000 submissions. (out of a pop just over 5 million) and has yet to finish.
Not to be outdone the UK governemnt held its own Public Consultation. It got just under 12,000 submissions. It has just reported.
The Labour party discovered the SNP referendum was allowing anomynmous submissions, this opened the possibilty for SNP suporters to rig the result by making lots of anonymous submissions which happend to mirror the SNP view- so Labour claimed.
The SNP said it wasn't an issue, the results of the Consultation were going to an independent group to assess and a part of that assessment was identifying and noting anonymous entries.
This was not good enough and the cry of 'its a fix went up'- now minor as all this was it was doing Salmond a small amount of damage and casting doubt on the process. Labour were actually landing some punches by accusing the SNP of a fix.
To salvage the situation the SNP announced that less than 3% of the submissions were anonymous but in the intrests of retaining confidence they would not be counted and no further anonymous submissions would be allowed.
And that should have been that with Labour forcing a climb down.
Unfortuntely it turns out the UK Consultation, which suprise, suprise, supported to the two key points the Unionist parties want, an early referendum and one question on the ballot, turns out to be the most rigged.
1/4 of all the submissions were made by members and supporters of the Scottish Labour Party who sent a ready filled out template to their party members and workers so that they just needed to put their name to it and send it in.
So instead of getting one over on Salmond they have been caught doing exactly what they accused Salmond of doing-rigging the outcome- and Salmond's didn't looked rigged in the first place and has been corrected anyway now.
Hopeless. Why accuse Salmond of something he is not actually doing when you are on the very shaky ground of being the one actually doing it? Its amatuer hour.
Problem is to have a proper debate about this we need a decent opposition.

Latest SNP policing inititaitve:

'The Scottish government has said money from criminals will help police officers who have been assaulted.
Scottish courts have dealt with about 5,000 cases of assaults on police officers in the last two years.
In future, anyone convicted of such an assault will contribute through a restitution order.
Money raised would go the Police Benevolent Fund and the Scottish facility run by the charity Police Treatment Centres.'

Anyone else country have a scheme like this? And if so does it work? Or does it cost more to run than it actually collects?

US tycoon Donal Trump is/was building a luxury golfing complex on the east coast of Scotland- however he has tempoarily halted it because there is going to be an offshore windfarm twenty miles away.
Mr Trump seems to have a bit of phobia where they are concerned. Earlier in the year he called Alex Salmond 'mad Alex' for his support for wind farms and said they would destroy Scotlands natural beauty and destroy tourism. Describing them as "ugly monstrosities" and "horrendous machines".
Now the Scottish Renewables group responsible for overseeing the countries green energy policies have written to Trump. And in a genius move they have invited him to consider investing in wind energy and to become 'a part of the success story.'

'In the letter Scottish Renewables Niall Stuart said people in Scotland and the UK "do not oppose wind power" and he said wind developments were "not destroying the environment or our tourism sector".
He added: "There is no evidence that wind farms are having an impact on tourist visitors to Scotland, and indeed, renewable energy sites across Scotland are becoming tourism attractions in their own right."
The letter went on the cite the example of the Whitelee Wind Farm near Glasgow.
Mr Stuart also argued that wind energy was "neither inefficient nor unreliable".
He said: "Scotland is the windiest country in Europe and there is a clear economic and environmental case for us to harness this plentiful and valuable natural resource."- BBC news

Mr Trump has, later this month, been asked to give evidence to the Scottish parliament's economy, energy and tourism committee which is conducting an inquiry into renewable energy targets. That should be interesting.

Organ Donors in Scotland hit the 2million mark - over 40% of the population is now a donar card carry ing citizen.
I have always felt however you should need to carry a card to opt out of being a donor not in. Everyone should be assumed to be a donor unless you explicitly state you dont want to be- hell we could have an export market in organs! (except livers of course, not much use for a liver after a Scotshobbit has been using it).

the whole business about being buried in an expensive coffin is a crock. Stir me into the mulch pile.

"If I should die before I wake, all my bone and sinew take
Put me in the compost pile and decompose me for a while
All that I am will feed the trees and little fishies in the seas
If cabbages or corn you munch, you may be having me for lunch
And then excrete me with a grin, chortling 'There he goes again!'"

Lee Hayes, the Weavers.