Scots are in for a shock when the English run out of patience

Blackleaf

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Why English patience, which has remained remarkably steadfast so far, could end up running out if Nicola Sturgeon's Far-Left SNP get their way. Could GK Chesterton's Secret People finally speak out?

Despite the SNP's success in Scotland - they look set to win almost every single one, if not actually every single one, of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats in Thursday's General Election which would make them the third biggest party at Westminster even though they look set to get around a third of the votes that Ukip are predicted to get, and that is even more remarkable when you consider it comes just months after the Scots rejected independence in a referendum - it seems that the Scots still don't want independence, with a new poll showing that most of them don't want another independence referendum (indeed, a survey has found that the Scots would rather have an EU in/out referendum than another independence referendum).

What is needed is to make the UK a federal state to help strengthen the most successful political union in history.

Scots are in for a shock when the English run out of patience


This wave of hysteria sweeping Scotland appears to be unstoppable. It is not going to end well if the SNP gets its way


Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon take part in the Live BBC Election Debate Photo: WPA Pool

By Iain Martin
03 May 2015
The Telegraph
1791 Comments

UK GENERAL ELECTION 2015: FOUR DAYS TO GO


One of the most remarkable features of the SNP’s never-ending fixation on breaking up the United Kingdom is how patient and reasonable the English have remained in the face of repeated provocation.

During last year's referendum, when almost half of Scotland was howling about the suppose iniquities of sharing a government with peaceable England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the polls showed that voters south of the border still wanted Scotland to stay. This wasn’t an order, merely a friendly invocation of shared endeavour and common feeling.

Yet throughout that period, as a Unionist Scot living in England, I encountered considerable sadness and bafflement on the part of friends who could not understand why anyone would want to break up a successful arrangement. Who likes to be told that a long-standing partner wants to leave?

Quietly, more than a few others said they wished that Scotland would go immediately if only to make the Scots shut up. Since the No campaign won the battle in September, and then lost the war, one has heard this said much more frequently. Especially when it became clear that the referendum was not the end, or even the end of the beginning. It looks, to misquote Winston Churchill, as though the referendum was the beginning of the end for the Union.

This wave of hysteria sweeping Scotland appears to be unstoppable. A party that scored under 20 per cent in the 2010 Westminster general election, the SNP, is now polling above 50 per cent. The once-dominant Scottish Labour party, whose leaders used to strut about proclaiming that Conservatism had to be wiped out because they deemed it inherently un-Scottish, now find themselves getting the same treatment from the SNP. They are confronted by sinister nationalist demonstrators calling Labour “Red Tories”, quislings and scum.

For the tragedy is that beyond the hype, last year’s referendum has ruined Scotland, with friends and family pitted against each other.

Indeed, noisy Nats now demand a vote for the SNP as proof of patriotism and seem incapable of realising that their antics genuinely scare many of their quieter and less demonstrative countrymen.

Referendum madness – making sufferers immune to economic facts or reason – has even infected some of those who voted No last year. Such is the scale of the approaching tsunami that unless Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour-supporting Scots vote tactically this week in significant numbers, to stop the SNP and save a batch of seats, the Nationalists will take every seat in Scotland.

Understandably, much attention has been focused on what the SNP plans to do with its new power, and the nationalists seem to be loving the attention. Bizarrely, the party’s position is that it wants to install in power in London the same party it is seeking to wipeout in Scotland. As The Telegraph reported yesterday, the SNP has drawn up its negotiating plan to prop up a minority Labour government, increasing benefits and hiking taxes.

The rise of the Nats has got some on the Left in England excited, presumably because the hope is that it will put some Socialist steel (as though that is needed) into an Ed Miliband government. The front cover of last week’s New Statesman magazine featured an illustration of a Saltire-waving Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond aboard the Flying Scotsman steam train, poised to run over Ed Miliband and David Cameron, who were both tied to the track.

The headline on that piece proclaimed that “The Scots are coming!” But weary English voters could be forgiven for responding that the Scots are not coming. They are already here. Scots have played a role in UK affairs out of proportion to their country’s size for several centuries.


SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon out and about on the campaign trail in Corstophine, Edinburgh. Bizarrely, despite the SNP's remarkable success in Scotland, a new poll shows that most Scots don't want another independence referendum Photo: Robert Perry/EPA


That being the case, how much more Scottishness can England take? For more than a year, the referendum dominated political discourse. In the years preceding that festival of navel-gazing and Scottish self-regard, every piece of devolution to the Edinburgh parliament was banked and then branded insufficient five minutes later. Meanwhile, the Scot Fred Goodwin and the Royal Bank of Scotland played a starring role in blowing up the British economy, and the English had to listen to Scot Gordon Brown’s lectures for 13 years about the alleged superiority of his “values”.

Now, it seems, a majority of Scots want to dictate terms to England – and even if Mr Miliband refuses to do a formal deal, that will only mean a deal every day as the SNP decides vote by vote whether to strike. If the Tories win, a large group of Nationalists will be in the Commons taking every opportunity to foster resentment. How will the English respond to being run over in this manner by the Sturgeon-Salmond express?

One of the curiosities of the Scottish nationalist pysche is that the separatists should so frequently misread English opinion in all its complexity.

Newly elected MPs from all parties will travel to Westminster having spent weeks talking to their constituents against a backdrop of SNP demands. If the Scots say they want full fiscal autonomy – an SNP policy that would leave a multi-billion pound black hole in public services north of the border – then why not let the Scots have it?

To navigate this treacherous terrain will take real leadership from whoever is in No 10. A constitutional convention will be required to resolve the situation, perhaps introducing federalism to deliver justice for England and Wales. Without level-headed statesmanship and practical solutions, the risk is that the division and ill-feeling that predominates in Scotland will spread rapidly to England.


Making the UK a federal state could help to strengthen the Union


Here, one might invoke GK Chesterton’s famous poem, The Secret People, in which he describes the quiet determination that has, historically, made the English slow to anger though fearsome when eventually riled.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.

Of course, there is an ambiguity. Sometimes the English merely grumble and grouse before returning to their pint or glass of wine. As Chesterton put it: “It may be beer is best.”

I very much doubt, however, that the vast majority of Tory voters, Ukippers and sensible Labour supporters will be sanguine about government by Scottish Nationalist diktat.


Scots are in for a shock when the English run out of patience - Telegraph
 
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Blackleaf

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english were begging scotland to stay a part of the uk.


Just like the Canadians begged Quebec and may have to again one day. Such things are the norm.

Where's William Wallace when you need him:).

He was hanged, drawn and quartered in London's Smithfield — strangled by hanging, but released while he was still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts. His preserved head (dipped in tar for good measure) was placed on a pike atop London Bridge along with his fellow terrorists. It was later joined by the heads of the brothers, John and Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed (separately) in Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling and Perth. It was job well done, so you'll not be seeing much of that fellow anytime soon.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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Just like the Canadians begged Quebec.



He was hanged, drawn and quartered in London's Smithfield — strangled by hanging, but released while he was still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts. His preserved head (dipped in tar for good measure) was placed on a pike atop London Bridge along with his fellow terrorists. It was later joined by the heads of the brothers, John and Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed (separately) in Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling and Perth. It was job well done, so you'll not be seeing much of that fellow anytime soon.
Briddish culture.
 

Ludlow

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Just like the Canadians begged Quebec and may have to again one day. Such things are the norm.



He was hanged, drawn and quartered in London's Smithfield — strangled by hanging, but released while he was still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts. His preserved head (dipped in tar for good measure) was placed on a pike atop London Bridge along with his fellow terrorists. It was later joined by the heads of the brothers, John and Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed (separately) in Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling and Perth. It was job well done, so you'll not be seeing much of that fellow anytime soon.
And you have determined that other cultures are barbaric. Thanks for the info Blackloaf.
 

tay

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Fury as Boris Johnson BANS bagpipes from streets of London








The pipes are classed as a “repetitive loud sound” and “piercing” - just like beatboxing, amplified guitars and hard “attack” sounds like drums.


It says they can all become “annoying quickly” and warns buskers to find locations with “no flats, offices, shops or hotels.”


The government classed it as “an instrument of war” after the Jacobite Uprising in 1745.


In 1746, piper James Reid, who led the army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart into battle at Cull­oden, was executed for carrying a set of pipes.




'Don't silence the pipes': Fury as Boris Johnson BANS bagpipes from streets of London - Daily Record
 

damngrumpy

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I am not far left but I hope Scotland sends all SNP members to office.
I hope other less left form a coalition with them to get rid of the Tories
Cameron is a pain in the *** as far as I am concerned.
I also hope in Canada they get rid of Alberta Tories and in Ottawa the
same happens we need some real change
 

Blackleaf

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And you have determined that other cultures are barbaric. Thanks for the info Blackloaf.


Well, Scotland is.

I am not far left but I hope Scotland sends all SNP members to office.
I hope other less left form a coalition with them to get rid of the Tories
Cameron is a pain in the *** as far as I am concerned.
I also hope in Canada they get rid of Alberta Tories and in Ottawa the
same happens we need some real change

There is going to be no Labour coalition with the SNP.

It's looking like this election on Thursday will result in a Hung Parliament like in 2010 and 1974, with no party winning an outright majority, so another coalition may have to be formed, just as in 2010 (we have been saddled with a Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition since then). Coalitions are rare in Britain.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband and others in his party have repeatedly said time and time again over the last week that they will not do any deal whatsoever with the SNP. In fact, during last week's last live televised debate Miliband said that he would rather not become Prime Minister than do a coalition deal with the SNP, a party whom 91% of the British electorate aren't able to vote for.

That is why it was revealed a day or two ago that there are already talks going on behind the scenes over a possible Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition after the election, and there's also a possibility that the Conservatives might have to form a coalition with the anti-EU Ukip and anti-EU Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is what I would like to see.

But another possibility is that no coalition may be able to be created. We could have weeks of behind the scenes negotiations going on after Thursday with no deal, no coalition, agreed upon, so it's a very real possibility that we may have a SECOND General Election later this year. In fact, that now looks almost certain, with the odds on it now shortening to just 4/1 in the wake of Labour leader Ed Miliband saying he will do no deal with the SNP under any circumstances. If there were to be another General Election in the autumn, then it'll make either a Labour or Conservative outright majority more likely (believe it or not, the Conservatives have not won a General Election outright since 1992). A lot of those people who voted Ukip or SNP or Greens and some of the other smaller parties first time round, causing the Hung Parliament, will probably time vote Labour or Consercatives the seond time around to prevent their being another Hung Parliament and more upheavel, and we'll end up with either a Labour Government or a Conservative Government.

The last time Britain had two General Elections in one year - when the first election resulted in a Hung Parliament, leading to months of talks to create a coalition but without much success, leading to another election - was in 1974. In the first election in February, Harold Wilson's Labour won the most seats but Prime Minister Edward Heath's Conservatives won the most votes. It resulted in a Hung Parliament. Another election was then held in October, which led to Labour winning by a small majority of just 3 seats.

I hope either the Tories form another Coalition after Thursday or they win a majority should there be another General Election later this year. This country cannot afford another Labour Government, especially in an arrangement with the SNP. Labour will wreck the economy like the last time they were in power, and it'll be even worse this time around, with the SNP milking the English taxpayer for even more money to lavish on the already extravagantly lavished and pampered Scots. A Labour/SNP coalition would be a disaster for our booming economy. The Tories, as usual, have managed to fix the economic mess the last Labour government got us in.

The SNP's success in Scotland - a country whose votes Labour has relied on over the last 50 years to get into power - makes it more likely that Ed Miliband will not become Prime Minister on Friday. His party surely cannot win when they are to be wiped out in Scotland.

As the saying goes: Vote SNP, get a Conservative government.

Scotland is on the verge of becoming a one-party state


40 comments
5 May 2015
Daniel Jackson
The Spectator

General Election 2015: Two days to go



Nicola Sturgeon has her eyes on the prize (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)

My constituency is one of the SNP’s most coveted prizes. If they win in Midlothian they can win almost anywhere. This is Gladstone’s old seat, where the modern political campaign was born. He wrested it away from the Conservatives in 1880, after a series of stirring speeches on the government’s foreign policy failures. On Thursday the SNP are hoping to pull off a similar upset.

The momentum behind the nationalists is incredible. Everything I’ve seen and heard in the last couple of weeks points to an SNP victory here. My entire family is voting for them. My mother suggested that I should do the same. ‘Give your dead grandfather a vote,’ she said without irony. A straw poll of my neighbours reveals that the rest of my street have become nationalists too.

The fact that the local SNP candidate was apparently caught fronting an organisation called Labour for Independence doesn’t seem to bother many people here. But in Scotland this election isn’t about personalities. The vast majority of the MPs we send to Westminster this month will be almost completely unknown. The incumbency effect means very little now in this changed landscape. Just ask Michael Moore, who may be about to forfeit former Liberal leader David Steel’s old seat. Or poor Danny Alexander.

The nationalists’ phenomenal success has inspired many people to vote tactically. Countless Conservatives and Liberal Democrats I’ve spoken to have already voted Labour by postal ballot. Incredibly one of them is a sitting MSP from another party. ‘An evil thing known is best,’ he said by way of explanation.

There is evidence to back up the anecdotes. According to a recent YouGov poll one in seven Scots are considering voting tactically to try and stop the SNP. The possibility of the break up of the country has invigorated unionist parties before, and to some extent it’s doing so again. ‘We are at least used to living in a Labour fiefdom,’ one true blue Conservative told me. ‘But if the nats get another referendum we’ll probably lose.’

There are three new websites dedicated to facilitating tactical voting. It certainly seems to be on the rise. But will it be enough to fend off the nationalists? Not in Midlothian. Even if everyone who voted Conservative in 2010 suddenly turns red it won’t be sufficient. And it is quite a representative constituency. In the referendum 43.7 per cent of us voted Yes. The national figure was 44.7 per cent. Electoral wonks and SNP strategists will be keeping a close eye on the results here in the early hours of Friday morning.

Tactical voting could save a few key Labour seats, which will be important for their activists’ morale if nothing else. In East Renfrewshire Jim Murphy could just hold on if YouGov’s poll is accurate. But that’s a rare example of a straight red/blue marginal. There are only a few of them in Scotland, and that could change in a few days. Labour is doomed north of the border, even if there is a phenomenal amount of tactical voting.

Scotland is on the verge of becoming a one-party state. There isn’t a single seat the SNP can’t realistically take. What does this mean for the United Kingdom? It would take a Blair-like figure to win a majority for Labour without the party’s Scottish coterie. And Miliband is no Blair. Nothing is certain in this election, but it’s hard to see how Ed Miliband can walk into Downing Street, even if Scottish Tories try their best to send him there.


Scotland is on the verge of becoming a one-party state - Spectator Blogs
 
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Blackleaf

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Scottish journalist Hugo Rifkind, the son of the former Tory Home Secretary and Defence Secretary Malcolm, asks: If the SNP doesn’t hate the English, why do so many of its supporters behave as if they do?

He also believes that, despite the rise of the SNP, who could win all of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats in tomorrow's UK General Election, the Scots still don't want independence and would reject it again should there be another referendum at some point in the future.

If the SNP doesn’t hate the English, why do so many of its supporters behave as if they do?


88 comments
6 May 2015
Hugo Rifkind
The Spectator


This is a preview from this week’s issue of The Spectator, available from tomorrow.



You get bad losers in politics and bad winners, too, but it’s surely a rare business to get a bad winner who didn’t actually win. Yet this, since they lost last September’s referendum, has been the role of the SNP. Dismay, reassessment, introspection, contrition, resignation; all of these have been wholly absent. Instead, they have been triumphalist. Lording it, with cruel and haughty disdain, over their vanquished foes. Who, we must remember, they didn’t even vanquish.

Well, maybe they’ve vanquished them now. I write this pre-election, with the polls all saying that the Nats will win something between almost every Scottish seat and actually every Scottish seat. Only, of course, you don’t call them ‘Nats’ any more, do you? That’s a word from my youth; you used to hear it all the time. Nats were cranks, weirdos in kilts and cagoules. Half Jacobite, half trainspotter; you really didn’t need to worry about them. I see the numbers today, and it is not my place to say they are wrong, but I still cannot quite believe they aren’t. Really? You’re all actually going to do this? You’re going to vote for the Nats?

The day of the referendum I walked Edinburgh’s streets, polling station to polling station, struck by the sheer volume of ‘no’ voters who suddenly, finally, seemed to have dragged themselves into the light. Never forget that a majority of Scots still don’t want independence. Offered it, they said no. Offered it again, they’d say no again. Many are sickened by what Scotland is becoming; the jingoism, the aggression, the piousness, the division. Most of all, they’re sick of being miserable all the time.

For make no mistake, being a unionist Scot is miserable. Even the word is miserable. Unionist? Unionist? Half a decade ago, the word meant Ulster or Ian Paisley or the ageing, brittle members of weird Masonic lodges who got their kicks out of marching down your road in a bowler hat. Most ‘no’-voting Scots never wanted to be bloody unionists. They didn’t want to have a fight over the Union and win it. They just wanted to be left the hell alone. Call the SNP ‘nationalists’, or draw attention to their more militant, scary fellow travellers, and supporters will invariably respond by pointing out that there are unionist thugs out there, too. Indeed there are. That’s because if you start a big fight, the fighty people come running. And you lot did. So don’t bloody blame me.

For the unionist Scot, though, the misery doesn’t end there. Did David Cameron comprehend, in this election campaign, the extent to which he ripped the rug from under our feet? I don’t see how he could not. I can only assume he didn’t care. The Tory campaign has traded heavily on the notion of Scots being a problem; of Scottish influence at Westminster being a thing to be feared, and where possible, marginalised. That the legitimacy of Scottish MPs, in other words, comes not from the people who may have voted for them but from the extent to which they can be accommodated in Westminster with the least difference made. That’s not a Union. At best, that’s a vassal with a voice. I can well understand why even some Scots with no interest in secession at all might have heard all of this and fancied sending the SNP to box clever on their behalf, as a regional bloc.

The trouble is, that’s just not what the SNP is or wants to be. That’s certainly not where its passion comes from, much as Nicola Sturgeon might occasionally pretend otherwise. A year ago I wrote a column in this paper asking why, if Ukip was not a racist party, so very many racists seemed to flock to it under the impression that it was. A similar set of questions have to be asked of the SNP. Why do the haters of difference, the defenders of Scottish purity, the loathers of the English all cheer it on? Why does it seem to operate so often on faith rather than logic? Why does it appear to contain no internal dissent whatsoever? Why does it inspire such wariness and intimidation in a majority with quite different views? Why will the response to this very column be so different from the response I’d get for writing about any other British party, bar Ukip? If this is not — on any level at all — a traditional, nasty, blood-and-soil nationalist party, why do all those traditional, nasty, blood-and-soil nationalists seem to think it is?

Scotland has a problem, whichever way this week’s vote goes or went. Its politics have become shrill, illogical and nasty. It has learned to exclude. It always has a bit, of course, and a whole vein of Scottish politics has long involved the ridicule of the likes of me, the private-school poshos, as ‘pretendy Scottish’ or ‘Scottish-ish’.

The striking thing now, though, is how much further it has gone. Scottish nationalism has bundled all of its enemies together, as Tories and Red Tories and quislings and traitors and all the rest of it. Scottish Labour, the dominant political force for a generation, is in absolute shock; speak to them and they sound like White Russians not quite in exile yet. They’ve lost their country. It sounds melodramatic, I know. But they have.

Sane and sensible politics doesn’t do that to anybody. Really, this is my beef with nationalism. It is the politics of people who claim to be defining themselves, but are actually defining everybody else, thereby cowing a majority into silence. And for the lonely Scot in London, left trying to hold the centre against the divisive ravages of Sturgeon and Cameron alike, it is about not being sure who you are any more and, more than anything else, minding the way it no longer seems to be up to you.


If the SNP doesn't hate the English, why do so many of its supporters behave as if they do? - Spectator Blogs
 
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Blackleaf

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These, folks, are your lovely, cuddly Scottish nationalists, proudly following in the footsteps of their hero William Wallace:

The leader of the Scottish Tories today claimed 'burly' SNP supporters were turning away voters from polling stations if they were not going to back Nicola Sturgeon's nationalists.

Ruth Davidson has said she is contacting the authorities as police also issued a Scotland-wide warning amid fears of 'threatening behaviour' from firebrand SNP supporters.

Mrs Davidson tweeted: 'Disturbing reports of people being turned away from an Annan polling station by burly blokes if they say they don't support a certain party'.


Row: Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson MSP, visiting a polling station in Glasgow West End, who has since accused her SNP rivals of intimidating voters not backing them in Annan, Dumfries & Galloway


Scottish question: Some SNP supporters, a party led by Nicola Sturgeon, pictured voting today, have raised fears with police they may use 'threatening behaviour' at polling stations



It came as nationalists who believe that last year's referendum was rigged in favour of the 'No' campaign urged people to photograph their votes and covertly watch election officials.


The campaign, called Operation Scallop, has been widely shared across Facebook and Twitter because some SNP members fear their votes will be torn up, changed or not counted.

Organisers also say that supporters should vote in the last hour - between 9pm and 10pm - and then 'hang about outside' and 'take photos of anything suspicious' as the papers are loaded into vans.

They should then use their own transport to trail ballot boxes when they leave polling stations and follow them to the count and watch them being unloaded, it says.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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But. . . but. . . the Scots really WANT freedom! I know coz I saw a movie made in Ireland by an Australian-American that showed the Scots fighting for freedom at the Battle of Stirling Without a Bridge.
 

Blackleaf

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The great Scots lie: Nicola Sturgeon rages that Scotland's had no voice at Westminster. Really? Look at the McMafia who ran the UK for 13 years under Labour (with no gripes from the English)

By Daily Mail Reporter
7 May 2015
Daily Mail

As campaigning escalated in the run-up to today's election, Nicola Sturgeon raged that Scotland has had no voice at Westminster.

The Scottish National Party leader insisted this week that the next government cannot 'ignore' Scottish voices and must not simply be made up of the party which has the most MPs in England.

She called on Scottish voters to 'come together on Thursday to deliver a strong voice at Westminster' - warning that any future government would not be legitimate if it did not reflect the whole of the UK.

But here are the faces of 16 prominent Scottish MPs who ran the UK for 13 years under Labour between 1997 and 2010 - with no gripes from the English.


Tony Blair (left): Prime Minister, born in Edinburgh. Gordon Brown (centre): PM and Chancellor, MP for Kirkcaldy. Robin Cook (right): Foreign Secretary, MP for Livingston



Alistair Darling, Chancellor, MP for Edinburgh Central



John Reid (left): Defence, Health, Home, Scottish Secretary, MP for Airdrie and Shotts. Lord Irvine (centre): Lord Chancellor and mentor to Tony Blair, born in Inverness. Donald Dewar (right): Scottish Secretary, First Minister of Scotland, MP for Glasgow Anniesland.



Lord Falconer: Lord Chancellor, born in Edinburgh



Douglas Alexander (left): Transport and Scottish Secretary, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South. George Robertson (centre): Defence Secretary, MP for Hamilton. Jim Murphy (right): Scottish Secretary, MP for East Renfrewshire.



Helen Liddell: Scottish Secretary, MP for Monklands East



David Clark (left): Cabinet Office Minister, born in Castle Douglas. Des Browne (centre): Defence and Scottish Secretary, MP for Kilmarnock. Gavin Strang (right): Transport Secretary, MP for Edinburgh East.


Ian McCartney : Minister without Portfolio, MP for Makerfield


P.S. And the piping son of a Scot who called the tune... Tony Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy Alistair Campbell

 

Blackleaf

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But. . . but. . . the Scots really WANT freedom! I know coz I saw a movie made in Ireland by an Australian-American that showed the Scots fighting for freedom at the Battle of Stirling Without a Bridge.


It's ironic that the very SNP who complained without evidence, when they were soundly defeated in the referendum, that the referendum was rigged are the very same SNP who are now trying to intimidate voters into voting for the SNP today.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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It's ironic that the very SNP who complained without evidence, when they were soundly defeated in the referendum, that the referendum was rigged are the very same SNP who are now trying to intimidate voters into voting for the SNP today.
Um. . . that's actually not what irony is. But still pretty retarded, or even lower on the intelligence scale, political.
 

Blackleaf

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Richard Littlejohn days GK Chesterton's "secret people" (see OP) finally spoke on Thursday and says that this election result was a victory for the English over the SNP and Labour. The result was an emphatic reminder of the innate good sense and moderation of the vast majority of the English people.

Also, Nigel Farage may not have won the South Thanet seat like he deserved to do but his 15-year crusade to secure a vote on whether or not we should leave the EU - which is what we will get, due to Ukip pressure, in 2017 thanks to the Tories being re-elected - has been heroic.

Scottish Stalinists and why Dave's a very lucky bunny: RICHARD LITTLEJOHN gives his view on Cameron's narrow victory


By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail
9 May 2015
Daily Mail

You can stop holding your noses now. We’ve dodged the bullet. Yesterday was VE Day and not just at the Cenotaph.

The outcome of the General Election was a Victory for England. Chesterton’s ‘secret people’ have spoken.

As I predicted on Tuesday, voters simply couldn’t countenance the terrifying prospect of an extreme Left-wing Labour government propped up by a gang of marauding Scottish Stalinists.

The result was an emphatic reminder of the innate good sense and moderation of the vast majority of the English people.

And with all due respect to our fellow citizens in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who also rejected the Life On Mars retro-socialism of Labour and the SNP, this was an English victory.

Call Me Dave is a lucky bunny. This result owed nothing to the lacklustre Tory campaign and everything to the small-c conservatism of the English electorate.

Tony Blair understood that, which is why he won three elections. Ed Miliband didn’t, which is the reason he suffered such a humiliating and thoroughly deserved drubbing.

Cameron is also fortunate still to have a fearless free Press, willing and able to alert their readers to the impending calamity. That’s why Labour and its self-serving celebrity supporters were so keen to bring Fleet Street under State control.


Say what you like about Tony Blair, but the man knew that Labour don't win elections when they move too far to the Left. That is why he kept Labour in the centre ground as leader and won three General Elections on the trot as a result


As I predicted on Tuesday, voters simply couldn’t countenance the terrifying prospect of an extreme Left-wing Labour government propped up by a gang of marauding Scottish Stalinists


Call Me Dave is a lucky bunny. This result owed nothing to the lacklustre Tory campaign and everything to the small-c conservatism of the English electorate

The Left already dominate the airwaves, especially the BBC. Without an unshackled, vibrant newspaper industry, voters would be subjected to an unchallenged, constant bombardment of anti-Tory propaganda.

Cameron’s victory hasn’t gone down at all well in New Broadcasting House. As the Conservative majority mounted yesterday morning, the BBC’s Huw Edwards adopted the demeanour of a man who had just learned that his dog has been run over.

We were told that this was the first election which would be fought and decided on social media. But governments aren’t chosen by the shrill self-publicists who shout at each other on Twitter.

They are chosen by well-informed voters putting a cross on a ballot paper with a stubby pencil in the privacy of a polling booth. The spectre of a Miliband-Sturgeon tyranny concentrated minds and ushered the undecided into the Conservative column.

That’s why I was pretty confident that despite the opinion polls, sanity would prevail and the Tories would be returned as the largest party.


What joy it was to watch Saint Vinny suffer his Portillo moment on a night when the British people ousted many big political beasts



Comeuppance: The then Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, seen by many as a juvenile bully boy, lost his Morley and Outwood seat to Andrea Jenkyns of the Conservative Party



The Repect Party's George Galloway lost his Bradford West seat to Labour's Naz Shah. He was one of the many big names in British politics to lose their seats on a night of political carnage


Even so, no one anticipated that the victory would produce a working majority. As a result, Cameron no longer has to deal with the duplicitous Lib Dems, who found themselves on the receiving end of a richly warranted wrecking ball.

They have nobody to blame but themselves.

They could have been rewarded for their contribution to five years of fairly stable Coalition which delivered Britain’s remarkable economic recovery.

But instead they reverted to type, bickering and back-biting and boasting about how they prevented the evil Tories from ruining the country, slashing public spending and selling off the NHS.

There were so few of them left standing yesterday that when Cameron was making his way to the Palace, ITV was reduced to interviewing the disgraced former Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten, whose political career spectacularly hit the fan when he was discovered consorting with rent boys and indulging in ‘an act too disgusting to be described in a family newspaper’.

Nick Clegg seemed to think he was entitled to remain in government whoever won the election. Others, such as Vince Cable, were openly flirting with Labour.

Oh, what joy it was to watch Saint Vinny suffer his Portillo moment. His eviction by the people of Twickenham was right up there with the defenestration of the appalling Ed Balls.

Gordon Brown’s former bagman was bounced by the voters of Morley and Outwood, in Yorkshire. It means we will be spared his infuriating bombast and juvenile hand gestures, not to mention the nightmare of him being handed the keys to Number 11 Downing Street.

If the result of the General Election had gone the other way, Balls would have become Chancellor of the Exchequer, spending and taxing like there was no tomorrow.

Labour thought that peddling the politics of resentment and division would be enough to get them over the line. Fortunately, that theory seems to have been tested to destruction.

Much now depends on how Cameron uses his slim majority and whether his backbenchers behave themselves.

The last thing we need is a re-run of the early Nineties, which was marred by running battles over Europe between John Major and some of his own MPs.

And while we’re on the subject of Europe, spare a thought for Nigel Farage, who deserved but failed to get elected in Thanet.

His 15-year crusade to secure a vote on Europe has been heroic, in the face of concerted and often violent intimidation.

The good news is that with no Lib Dems to stop them, the Tories can take a chainsaw to our unsustainable levels of public spending. And soon.


Spare a thought for Nigel Farage, who deserved but failed to get elected in Thanet. His 15-year crusade to secure a vote on Europe has been heroic

Fortunately, the SNP isn’t in any position to prevent the Government balancing the books.

For all her noisy posturing about building a ‘progressive’ alliance with Labour and the other fringe headbangers, a Conservative Government in Westminster suits Nicola Sturgeon down to the ground.

So what’s in all this for the English voters who have given Cameron his majority?

Not only will we get the EU vote the other parties would have denied us; the Human Rights Act will be scrapped; the low-paid will be taken out of tax altogether, millions of hard-pressed middle-income earners will be taken out of the 40p band and the top rate won’t rise to an enterprise-sapping 50 per cent.

We’ve also been spared the mansion tax and the bullying bureaucracy and attack on civil liberties and free speech which would have come with a recovery-wrecking Labour/SNP set-up.

For that we can thank the sensible voters of Middle England, however reluctant many of us may have felt when voting Tory.

Time to stop holding our noses and breathe a deep sigh of relief.
 
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Blackleaf

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PETER MCKAY: Is the SNP a roaring lion... or a one trick pony?

By Peter McKay (a Scot) for the Daily Mail
11 May 2015
Daily Mail

Nicola Sturgeon gives David Cameron a ‘hard stare’ as they assemble for the VE anniversary ceremonies.

After winning 56 of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats, the SNP leader says there can be no return to ‘business as usual’ between Edinburgh and Westminster.

Then, after meeting Cameron, she says she’d told him that the promises he made on the eve of last year’s independence referendum about greater devolution do not go far enough. Who’s kidding whom here?


The 'hard stare': SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon gives David Cameron a steely glare during the VE Day commemorations in London on Friday - but Peter McKay says if anyone was going to give a hard stare, it should have come from the Conservative Prime Minister


Ms Sturgeon’s chief ambition before last week’s election was to combine with Labour to ‘lock the Tories out of power’. In the event of a hung parliament, she was happy to offer to help Labour form a government.

You’d think, in these circumstances, that she might have been suitably humble when meeting a victorious Cameron. And if there were any hard stares, they should have been on the Tory Prime Minister’s face.

Alas, Ms Sturgeon does not do humility. And if Cameron is capable of vindictiveness, he didn’t show it on this occasion.

On the contrary, he has said he will offer Scotland the greatest measure of devolved power in the world. So why Ms Sturgeon’s hard stare for the cameras?

The 50 per cent of Scots who backed the SNP at the election were not voting for independence. They were voting for a bigger voice in Westminster. I wonder if most voters north of the border always recognise this distinction.

With the SNP winning so many seats, it can be argued that the case for independence is made. But that option was rejected decisively in September’s referendum. So the SNP focus was to seek a bigger voice in Parliament. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.


SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is joined by her party's 56 newly elected MPs in front of the Forth Rail Bridge


But who will supply that voice? It won’t be Ms Sturgeon. For reasons of her own, to which I am not privy, she has not sought to contest a seat in Westminster.

The party’s leader there is the little-known Angus Robertson (MP for Moray). Will convivial Angus represent the wishes of Ms Sturgeon as well as the good people of Moray in Parliament?

Or will the loudest Scottish voice belong to Ms Sturgeon’s former boss, former SNP leader Alex Salmond, elected last week to join the tartan invaders of Westminster? Salmond said the SNP’s triumph was like a lion’s roar. No doubt, he fancies he could replicate this in Westminster. Whether it will prevail against the English bulldog is another matter.

The big problem with the SNP, when considering its role in Westminster, is that it’s less of a political party than a nationalist movement.

Though it espouses Leftist causes calculated to attract popular support, the chief reason for its existence is to obtain Scotland’s independence from the rest of the UK.

So, no concessions offered by Cameron — even ones that exceed the freedoms of all the other devolved assemblies in the world — are ever going to be enough.


England's much-loved humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, pointed out: ‘It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.’


All he can do is play nice: give every devolved freedom possible to Scotland in the hope their desire for complete independence will wither.

For many Scots, support for the SNP is a way of leveraging more financial benefits from Westminster or law-making powers that fall short of actual independence.

That’s why a majority said ‘No’ in the independence referendum and ‘Yes’ to the SNP as their voice in Westminster.

This raises the question: is the SNP any good as a conventional political party? The answer isn’t clear because it isn’t held to the same standards as others. The fact is that there has been no appreciable improvement to the range of services such as health and education that have already been devolved to the Scottish Assembly. The SNP’s ‘Blame Westminster For Everything’ mantra is designed to drown any complaints.

However, the nationalists’ war of attrition might work in the end. Not through another referendum in Scotland that backs independence, but by a decision in Parliament.

Devolved power is fine if those on whom it is bestowed accept responsibility. But it’s a bore if they continue to blame others for their own shortcomings.

Are the Scots especially prone to feeling hard done by? The English might think so. Their much-loved humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, pointed out: ‘It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.’
 

Blackleaf

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Fasten your seat belts, here comes Ayr Force One: As Nicola Sturgeon spends most of her time flying to and from London, RICHARD LITTLEJOHN imagines what it would be like on board her own private jet


By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail
12 May 2015
Daily Mail

For a woman who never misses an opportunity to play on her humble working-class Ayrshire background, Nicola Sturgeon certainly likes to travel in style.

During the election she whizzed around in a helicopter with her picture plastered on the side.

And these days she seems to spend most of her time flying backwards and forwards to London. How long before she commissions her own presidential-style SNP jet?



For a woman who never misses an opportunity to play on her humble working-class Ayrshire background, Nicola Sturgeon certainly likes to travel in style

Good morning, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Ayr Force One for the inaugural flight of Progressive Airways’ new shuttle service between Edinburgh and London Westminster.

If those of you who refuse to speak English would care to put on the headphones provided, all announcements are available in simultaneous Gaelic translation, courtesy of BBC Alba.

Progressive is the official airline of the Scottish National Party, a proudly independent, equal-opportunities transport provider. We welcome passengers from all ethnic backgrounds and belief systems — except, of course, the English, the Red Tories and ‘No’ voters.

We are particularly keen to attract customers from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, transvestite, questioning and bi-curious communities, as well as non-homosexual men in kilts.

I’d also like to welcome on board one of our celebrity frequent fliers, Sir Sean Connery, who has just jetted in to Scotland from tax exile in the Bahamas to lend us his support.

See you, Double-O-Seven!

Please accept our apologies for the delay in the launch of Ayr Force One, which was due to start last September but failed to get off the ground because of a shortfall in projected passenger numbers.

We stuck to our business model and refused to accept that temporary setback. And as a result it is my pleasure today to extend a very warm welcome to our 56 newly-elected SNP MPs who have joined us on our maiden flight south.

We are confident that we can provide a strong alternative to British Cameroonian, even though two other airlines have recently suffered spectacular collapses.

Progressive is a full service operator, unlike some of our low budget, no-frills competitors, who are only in the business so they can cut services and generate huge profits for their millionaire, non-dom owners.

We are proud to provide all our passengers with unlimited, unrestricted anti-austerity return tickets, completely free of charge. Once we have reached our cruising altitude we will be passing through the cabin offering complimentary snacks and beverages, including a traditional selection of deep-fried Mars Bars, pakoras and pizzas.

Our Gleneagles-trained chef has also prepared a special commemorative menu to celebrate this historic flight.


For a woman who never misses an opportunity to play on her humble working-class Ayrshire background, Nicola Sturgeon certainly likes to travel in style. During the election she whizzed around in a helicopter (probably paid for by the English taxpayer) with her picture plastered on the side


During the election Nicola Sturgeon, pictured with her SNP MPs outside Westminster today, whizzed around in a helicopter with her picture plastered on the side


Ms Stugeon poses outside the Houses of Parliament with newly-elected SNP MP Mhairi Black and former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond

Why not start with some delicious Scottish caviar from our home-grown, free-range Sturgeon or a bowl of our award-winning artisan electric soup?

And for your main course, you can choose between Wild Salmond, poached in pink champagne, and fillet of Angus Robertson beef. The menu can be found printed on the sick bag in the seat pocket in front of you.

We also offer a full bar service, including premium brands such as Tennent’s Super and Smirnoff Ice, which we are stocking specially for the new member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, Mhairi Black, who we are privileged to have travelling with us today. Mhairi regards Smirnoff Ice as the drink of the Gods.

You may care to raise your glasses to toast Ms Black, who at just 20 years old has defeated Labour’s Douglas Alexander to become the youngest MP since the 17th century.

On yer go, Mhairi doll!

However, we regret that the drinks trolley is the only service on our flight that is not complimentary as we are required to adhere to the Scottish government’s minimum pricing policy, designed to combat alcohol-related violence.


Phil Green, a former city councillor in Glasgow, flies the Saltire to welcome Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP's 56 new members of parliament outside the Houses of Parliament today

And please be advised that alcohol should only be consumed in accordance with the new Scottish drink-drive laws. Passengers will be limited to a small glass of wine, a single whisky or two-thirds of a pint of beer.

Something like that, anyway. No one’s quite sure, so best stick to Irn-Bru. Passengers will be subjected to random breath-tests after their meal.

I should also remind you that it is a criminal offence to smoke on this flight and that includes pipes, roll-ups, spliffs and e-cigarettes.

Please familiarise yourself with our state-of-the-art, in-flight entertainment service. On our classic movie channel, you’ll find Braveheart, which tells of William Wallace’s heroic struggle for independence against the English scum, like that woman who wrote Harry Potter, and Scottish traitors like Sir Alex Ferguson.

We are also very pleased to be screening an exclusive preview of Planespotting, based on the latest novel by Scotland’s own Irvine Welsh, who lives in Chicago.

This follow-up to Trainspotting centres on the adventures of a planeload of Scottish welfare junkies heading for London to rob the English to fund their dependency culture. It stars Ewan McGregor as Wee Eck and Susan Boyle as Wee Burney.


Ms Sturgeon also had her photo taken with the 56 new MPs in front of the Forth Bridge last week

Passengers may also access our on-board internet wi-fi service. Feel free to troll opponents of independence, but please be warned that the Police Scotland Diversity and Hate Crime Task Force will be monitoring Twitter for any inappropriate comments of a homophobic or sectarian nature.

The singing of football songs is strictly forbidden on this aircraft and anyone humming The Sash My Father Wore will be arrested on arrival and sent back to Barlinnie prison.

Our flight plan today takes us over the Forth Bridge and across to the former Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat of class traitor Gordon Brown, now safely in the hands of our patriotic SNP.

You will also see the wind farms, upon which all of Scotland’s energy needs will depend once we achieve independence and the oil runs out. If you look closely, some of these windmills may actually be turning.

As we fly over the Clyde, if it isn’t raining — which it probably will be — you’ll be able to spot the soon-to-be-decommissioned Trident submarine base. Unfortunately, once we cross the border on our way south, the view begins to turn bleak since virtually every constituency on our route to Westminster is now held by the hated Tories.

Sit back, enjoy your flight and dream of freedom, just so long as the English are paying. We are now flying by the seat of our pants.

When you deplane at London Westminster, please remember to take all your grievances, hubris and sense of entitlement with you.

Have a great day. And thank you for choosing Ayr Force One.
 
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