FREEDOM!!!! [2]

lol wat

Seems like I've got to step up my border patrol duties if we're not a NATO member anymore - the Russians will be over us any day now!

Any chance that Yes Scotland is hiring, Petty? Or do they get by on volunteers? Either way I think you'd be a great spokesman for the (crabbit) cause.

I already am a volunteer with the Yes campaign- so this encounter was actually quiet encouraging in a way- but my main worry is how many people he gave this speil about NATO too would have pointed out or known how poorly informed he was? And how many would have taken him at his word?
Its more likely we will lose out on independence to lies and fear mongering like this than to the truth.  

Heroes still exist!!

'A Scots soldier who risked his life trying to save an injured Danish comrade in Afghanistan has been honoured by Denmark for his courage.
Explosives expert Andy Peat went to the aid of Oversergeant Rene Brink Jakobsen after his patrol was blasted by an improvised explosive device (IED).
The warrant officer class One (WO1), from Edinburgh, disarmed a second IED and lay across the path of another.
He is the first soldier outside Denmark to receive the Anders Lassen Award.
He was presented with the honour by Crown Prince Frederik at a ceremony at the Royal Danish Military College in Copenhagen.

They were moving into a compound used for manufacturing IEDs in the Upper Gereshk Valley when one of the bombs triggered on the roof, severely injuring WO1 Brink Jakobsen.

As he went to his aid, WO1 Peat noticed another IED lying underneath the Danish soldier and worked to disarm the device by locating and cutting its wires.
While colleagues struggled to stretcher the Dane off the roof, he lay across the path of another IED, using himself and his body armour as a shield to protect the rescuers.
WO1 Brink Jakobsen later died of his wounds, leaving behind a wife and three children.
WO1 Peat is credited with saving the lives of several other Danish soldiers and members of the Afghan police that day.
At the ceremony in Copenhagen, he received the framed award and donated the 25,000 Krone (about £3,000) to his late colleague's wife, Camilla Brink Jakobsen, and children, Sara, Maja and Thor.

The serviceman paid tribute to his own wife following the ceremony and said of his attempt to save WO1 Brink Jakobsen that "all the guys would have done the same thing".
He said: "To bring my wife and daughter along has been fantastic. I knew when my wife heard about what I'd done I'd be mostly in trouble.
"She deserves the rewards as she has to stay up at home at night worrying all the time."

Mrs Brink Jakobsen said: "I was quite overwhelmed that he wanted to give the money to our family.
"I really appreciate what he did in Afghanistan and I'm very grateful that he would think of us in this way." - BBC


Sir, I salute you. You do our whole country a service by your actions and example.

This made me laugh- its a site mocked up to take the piss out of the unionist stance of the BBC on the independence issue.

http://www.bbc.scotlandshire.co.uk/index.php/city-news/509-scotland-may-not-be-welcome-in-the-federation-say-klingons.html

Imran Kahn: grandson of Alistair Darling..... 
The whole thing made me laugh ! & I aint scottish !  

Thought Id ask, since you like frequenting this thread Petty, but, did you ever find out any more bout your mysterious floral painting ? The one that arrived anonymously ?

Oh that! yeah, the writing contains the secret to the universe and if the surface of the painting is ever damaged it will unleash a living hell upon the entire world*- so I was reliably told by the person who sent it, once I'd found out who that was- this sort of thing happens to me all to often you know

More from the fake BBC Scotland site- but this may take a bit of context to get the joke.

The recent stooshy in the independence campaign has been over a small SNP payment to someone for something they wrote-

'An email allegedly hacked from an account of the Yes Scotland campaign detailed payment to an academic for writing a newspaper article.
A spokesman for the pro-independence group said Dr Elliot Bulmer was given £100 for a piece in The Herald.
Yes Scotland confirmed the content of the email after what it said was "unhelpful speculation".
The pro-Union Better Together campaign is now demanding to know who else might be being paid by Yes Scotland.
The details of the email were not initially released but Yes Scotland later revealed it was concerning correspondence with Dr Bulmer in connection with the newspaper article headlined: "A Scottish constitution to serve the common weal."
Better Together campaign director Blair McDougall said if the allegations against Yes Scotland were true, they "fatally undermined" trust in the independence campaign.
He said: "Who else received payment? Who knew that this kind of payment was being authorised by the campaign's chief executive?
What other supposedly independent voices are being paid bungs to say what the nationalists want? What else are they willing to do to deceive the people of Scotland?" - BBC Scotland

Now here's something closer to truth in my view!

http://www.bbc.scotlandshire.co.uk/index.php/city-news/511-shocking-new-emails-reveal-further-payments-by-blair-jenkins.html

This should probably win an award for most blatant-

'The national event for Armed Forces Day is to be held in Stirling next year ahead of the independence referendum.
UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the event would help underline the strength of the union.
Mr Hammond said the events represented what was best about the UK.
"They remind us in a very graphic way that we are stronger together.
"Britain, the United Kingdom and Scotland benefit from the scale and the power and the capability of our armed forces.
"And I know that the people in Scotland have a deep affection for the armed forces."- BBC Scotland

Yes traditionally Scots do have a deep affection for the regional armed forces- Argyll and Sutherland, Highlanders, Black Watch, Highland Fusiliers-- oh no wait a minute- Westminister disbanded all those and their hundreds of years history and ties to local areas with the stroke of a pen!

Good piece about the Scottish Enlightenment and its influence on the US.

'Two hundred and fifty years ago, Edinburgh was the backdrop to the Scottish Enlightenment, an intellectual movement which transformed the world.
At the heart of the Enlightenment was a faith in the individual and in the power of human reason to determine what was of benefit to the individual and to society.
The Scottish Enlightenment produced giants of British philosophy, economics and science; men such as David Hume, Adam Smith, James Watt, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Black and James Hutton.
Together they challenged established beliefs and traditions. Their ideas kick-started the industrial revolution and developed political theories that would be exported around the world.
"A lot of the colleges in America taught the [concepts of] Scottish Enlightenment. So some of the key founding fathers of America, a lot of their education, their way of thinking comes from the Scottish Enlightenment," says Dr Jones.
The ideas of the philosopher Francis Hutcheson, father of the Scottish Enlightenment and his views on liberal democracy and the rights of the individual had been embedded in the education of several of the men who signed the American Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the first draft and Benjamin Franklin, who contributed to revisions, were both taught by Scottish professors.
During his college years, between 1760-1762, the young Jefferson was influenced by Dr William Small, a professor of natural philosophy and mathematics who acted as mentor to the future President. Born and educated in Scotland, Small had immersed himself in Enlightenment thinking and philosophy.
Jefferson later described Small as "a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/23632255

America never quite picked up the trick of crabbit though. Was crabbit invented later?  

No, no the Scottish Enlightenment was the direct result of the Forty Fifth Great Crabbit Explosion.
Problem was the Enlightenment itself when it happened caused crabbit levels to plummet as everyone thought we had solved the really annoying problems- like churches telling you what to do, or people having to work.
So what the fledgling America got was all the stupid hope and none of the crabbit behind it- of course the Enlightenment turned out not in fact to solve all those things but to make a whole load of new things to become crabbit over instead, and so the Great Crabbit Cycle will continue, as it will until the Final Crabbit Explosion in which either (scholars are divided on this) all the universes crabbit making issues are resolved once and for all or we give God a Glasgow Kiss- don't they teach you anything in US schools?

You cant get more apocalyptic than a Glasgow kiss !  

Yes, Scots Boffins say it could be the opposite of the Big Bang- they call it the Big Malkie*



*Malkie- Local to the West Coast of Scotland to describe in slang terms, the act of head butting another individual

Scotland’s second most famous Loch monster – Morag of Loch Morar – has made a comeback.

Holidaymaker Doug Christie, a recently retired oil industry engineer not given to flights of fancy, said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw a solid 20ft black shape in the water.
He and wife Charlotte say they saw the beast three times during a stay at Kisimuil B&B by the loch. Doug, 66, from Brechin, Angus, said: “I could not believe my eyes.
“I am not the type to get excited unduly but this just couldn’t be explained.
“It was a large black shape on the loch that looked just like a bit of a ­submarine and around the same size.
Charlotte said: “I thought it was a whale. We saw it three times in the space of two days.
“The ­longest sighting was about 10 minutes before it submerged again.”
The couple were staying for a night at the B&B owned by Barra-born Michael MacNeil, 53, and his 50-year-old nurse wife Catherine, who was brought up on the lochside.
Michael said: “Doug shouted to me asking if there was a rock out in the middle of the loch.
“I laughed and shouted back that the loch was almost 1000ft deep and there were no rocks near the surface.
“But sure enough, there was a largish black object, maybe two, very close together, in the middle of the two-mile-wide loch.
“I have seen otters in the loch but this was no otter, much bigger and almost ­motionless.”

The last person to see the monster, 58-year-old factory boss Alistair MacKellaig, of Mallaig, Inverness-shire, said: “I was fishing with a group in a boat and we all saw Morag and only about 50 yards away.
“It was the classic three humps moving through the water with the head underwater. We were left astounded and a wee bit fearful at what we had seen and how close we had been to it.
“I bumped into Michael the other day and firmly believe that what he, his daughter and guests saw was what we witnessed but they saw Morag at a far greater distance than we did.
“I am sure others have seen Morag in the past 23 years but feel too embarrassed to say so.”

The most dramatic sighting and only known actual physical contact with the ­monster was experienced by two local men in August 1969.
Willie Simpson, 66, and crofter Duncan McDonell, now 80, were returning from a ­fishing trip up Loch Morar when the creature struck Willie’s boat. He grabbed a rifle and shot at the beast, which sank out of sight.
He said: “There is no doubt in my mind that there is a large monster, maybe more than one, in Loch Morar.” - Daily Record

could they be Dolphins  

No- its a fresh water Loch and you dont get fresh water dolphins here, only the sea going sort.
Its very deep- the deepest freshwater loch in the UK.
It used to be settled along the shores- but the Highland Clearances put a final end to that.
Maybe Morag is a bit of a Godzilla- in the 1930's the Ministry of Supply set up a station there involved in atomic energy and weapons research!

Just an idea but, is there no chance of any under water tunnel, even a small one that was only just large enough to enable a migrating creature to swim thru ?

Not impossible- grabbed this from google earth to show location in relation to the sea-



The loch feeds out the western side into the sea.
It not impossible there might be connecting tunnels underneath- but Im not sure how that would effect the loch in term sof it being fresh water.
I cant find anything to indicate there has ever been salt water detected there.

A poll published in todays Scottish Sun puts a yes vote ahead for the first time- but only by a point- with 44 percent of those polled saying they would vote yes to independence and 43 percent saying no with the rest undecided- so all to play for next year.

Interestingly the BBC referundum coverage seems to have missed this poll. Odd when they are so quick and keen to publish polls showing the no campaign in the lead

Will the referendum only require a simple majority of votes cast to pass? Because if so, I think the yes vote will have a relatively easy go of it, if only because they should have a significant advantage in turning out voters.
Edit:That's assuming they can hold somewhere near even in the polls.

Yeah just a majority win- the last time Scotland had a vote like this was in the 70's- and Westminster set the bar so high- I think it had to be over 70% in favour that despite a majority vote it lost.
The SNP made sure that this time the Scottish Parliament (there wasnt one in the 70's) set the question and terms (although it had to be ratified and slightly modified by the electoral commission- the independent body that oversees elections in the UK)