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clacher_holiday2

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Everything posted by clacher_holiday2

  1. I was following hte debate earlier and it appears the BBC has yet again edited the coverage lessen the blow on the No camp. Widespread reporting of BBC pollsters asking kids to say they're currently 'Don't Know' to balance the results. Can anyone defend this from a press conference this afternoon?
  2. I posted this on pie and bovril, if you want a vision of the future of Scotland then look no further than a guy I work with, whos daughter has decided not to go to university after gaining entry on academic merit. They have a fear of debt and tuition fees, choosing the safer option of joining the army, to play in their ******* band at 19k a year. Over the course of her lifetime that decision could be worth hundreds of thousands in lost income. I posted another story about a girl whos 2 year old daughter ate a bunch of tablets thinking they were sweets, who almost died because the nearest doctor was over 30 miles away with no ambulance to take her in. Our local clinic for emergencies was closed down in 2012 but lets face it, that couldve happened in Scotland with nationwide cutbacks hitting already. In Scotland you have free elderly care, free water, free child care, free prescriptions, free higher education, a bedroom tax rebate and probably a bunch of other things I cannot think of... if you vote No then we'll be able to play 'social bingo' as more and more of them are cut, not because there isnt enough money in the pool but rather the money is being spent on 2nd generation Trident, trains that go a little bit faster around London, bailing out banks and aircraft carriers with no planes that work on them. The collection of voices calling for a No vote should be signal enough to the people of Scotland in all walks of society that No is the wrong answer. Self regulating bankers issuing threats, ex etonian 'career' politicians, business leaders relying on an army of minimum wage employees and a media who are owned by wealthy men that don't give a sh1t about the truth on other matters (yet are trusted on independence?)... No voters are trusting these voices to have their best interests at heart? The old arguements might well be right, maybe Scotland isnt capable of running her own affairs.
  3. If we arent scared to vote yes then London will be begging us for currency union. Our neighbours in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and potentially the UK all use their own currencies, we should do the same. Nevermind what the SNP says, its not about what they want in independence you're voting on, the tartan petrodollar would do just fine without having to prop up banks that are apparently too big to fail.
  4. How many of those 60 years, did Scotland get the government it voted for? 25 years
  5. This is a case of generations past being mis-informed about the source of pension payments, people like me who pay into the system now through NI are funding the pensions dished out on a weekly basis, the money doesnt come from a secret bank account worth multiple trillions sitting in a vault under Westminister. Despite what you were told your whole life, you were never paying into a savings account, NI was never a private pension. The people currently entering retirement age and those close to it will go down in history as the laziest generation in history once the books are finally written. The absolute rott the baby boomers have accepted from government and ease they were conditioned into apathy has led us to the pension problem aswell as countless others (housing prices, reliance on the financial sector to fund the country, lowering education standards etc all coming from a period in history the baby boomers ran the show). State handouts are considered an entitlement by these people regardless if the money is printed out of thin air or not, with not one consideration ever given to the fact they en-masse never took the chance themselves, while working, to look deeper into their own finances and how they could improve their lot in life independently. I am allowed an opinion on this by virtue of me being one of the people funding the welfare system today, who will likely never see a state pension for myself.
  6. Your first point is the hope, Scotland will shine a light on the inequality and corruption that has taken over Europe. Who will ultimatley control Scotland post-Yes vote will be the people of Scotland, in the event of a No vote it'll be any combination of Farage, Boris, Ed or Clegg.
  7. by Irvine Welsh When I think back to how the Scottish independence debate has evolved in terms of my personal journey, I can see it in three distinct phases. The first was best expressed by the bitter and ugly sentiment “it’s all the English’s fault.” This guff was fairly ubiquitously trumpeted when I was a kid, and largely sustained, I believe, by an infantile football mentality. I was always unmoved by this idiocy: nobody was going to tell me that my cousins in Wolverhampton or Aunt in West London were in any way culpable for our circumstances north of the border. In retrospect, the ban on the annual Scotland v England match was the best thing that ever happened to the debate, it helped folk think a little more clearly. When ‘politics’ is mixed up with football, the end result is invariably the ossification of cretinism. This phase left it’s psychological legacy; to this day I find it hard to support the Scottish national team, or, indeed, have any truck with the term ‘nationalism’. I’ve been greatly inspired by the post-devolution generation, and their pragmatic thinking on the issue of independence. I came from a family of trade unionists, and in my youth I was a Labour Party supporter. My political hero was Tony Benn. I recall, with my dad, watching Neil Kinnock in a political broadcast, and, roused by the Welshman’s stirring oratory, I joined the party in my teens. I hated the SNP, regarding them as a divisive force of tartan Tories. I loved Brian Wilson’s attacks on them, in magazines like the West Highland Free Press and the short-lived Seven Days. For most of my young adult life, I moved between Edinburgh and London. As the 1980’s wore on, I noted how things started to change in Scotland; there was a growing realisation that the problem wasn’t the English, it was our own stupid selves. Whatever our circumstances, they were only existent because we tolerated them. This was what I regard as ‘phase two’ on the evolutionary scale of the Scottish Independence debate. It was progress, for sure, but the downside of it was the self-hating element, which the character Renton identifies with in Trainspotting. Ultimately self-loathing is no more edifying than the scapegoating of others, but in order to make headway it’s probably essential to face up to your own shortcomings, no matter how painful. And this led us to stage three of the debate. I’ve been greatly inspired by the post-devolution generation, and their pragmatic thinking on the issue of independence. I believe they have enabled an emotionally backward and immature country (as all countries, by definition must be, when they are governed from elsewhere) to grow up and move forward. It’s this generation who have given us phase three of the independence debate: beautiful, wonderful phase three, which says that it doesn’t matter who is to ‘blame’, the important thing is to fix it. When I was recently back in both Scotland and England, it was instructive to see how generational the independence debate has become and how my own one has split on the issue. There is certainly far less unanimity between us than there is with the smart, educated young people I met in Edinburgh. Almost to a man and woman they were enthusiastically, if critically, on the ‘yes’ side of the discussion. Crucially, the few who demurred seemed very different from the depressed, resentful naysayers of my own generation, in that they were also highly ebullient about the ongoing discourse. This youth represents the new Scotland; they won’t be looking for safe a Labour seat in Westminster, or marching in sectarian parades with flute and pipe bands, and they are equally unexcited by the tartan army-esque see-you-Jimmy buffoonery of kitschy nationalism. It’s a little painful to report that the representatives of this post-devolution generation were far more impressive than many of my old comrades. Of my motley crew, the ones excited and revitalised by the independence debate are all firmly ‘yes’ advocates. But my ‘no’ friends, all people I respect (and yes, love), were invariably annoyed, scared and even angry, that this debate, this democracy, this real discussion on their own futures was even taking place. When I asked why, what kept coming back was that we should be talking about something else. That they were almost all Labour Party supporters should come as no surprise, nor should it be a shock that the ‘something else’ was usually defined as ‘kicking the Tories out.’ To what end, I would enquire. To build a fairer society, was the invariable reply. So I wondered, sometimes out loud, sometimes not, how exactly they intended to do that. Through Trident? War in Iraq? NHS trusts? Deregulation of the City, with subsequent bailouts after they ****** it up? Through the House of Lords? Or the continuing negation of democracy, and siphonage of the country’s resources to a transnational elite? It struck me that we, the post-war consensus generations from hippy to punk to post punk to house, have left them, the new breed, this youth engaged and politicised at grass roots level by the independence debate, with absolutely nothing. The trade unions have been debilitated, Labour rebranded as a centre-right conservative party, the welfare state and the NHS destroyed, and with this, a massive redistribution of wealth from everybody to the super rich. And all of this took place on our watch. So if the current youth of Scotland, with their free tuition fees and free medicines, have been ‘bought off’ by Salmond, it has been in exactly the same way that I was ‘bought off’ by Bevan. The delusion by many on the left, that by trying to maintain the United Kingdom (the clue is in the name) they are fighting to preserve some sort of socialist internationalism, is an astonishingly persistent one, representing the ultimate triumph of hope over experience. The UK has always been an imperialist construct, set up to protect and further the interests of the rich. There was a brief period after the Second World War when it sought to be something more. The elites conned people into participating in the bloodbath of WW1 on the promise of ‘homes fit for heroes’ and the ‘patriots’ were rewarded with more slums, a depression, and hunger marches that met with only the indifference and hostility of the UK state. Then, the ordinary folks were shunted back into the line of fire to face the Nazi’s. Something fundamental did happen when we opened Hitler’s death camps at Auschwitz and Dachau, and our collective humanity was stirred. Moreover, people returned in the mood to fight for concessions, and the elites were pragmatically ready to concede them. So we had the emergence of a post war consensus and the welfare state. I was a benefactor of that consensus. I took evening classes at the local college for a pound, had my university fees paid, obtained a full student grant, and benefited from universal healthcare. For the social equivalent of me today, making this progress would be impossible without accruing a lifetime of debt and becoming no better than a slave – **** that bullshit. So if the current youth of Scotland, with their free tuition fees and free medicines, have been ‘bought off’ by Salmond, it has been in exactly the same way that I was ‘bought off’ by Bevan. All that has now gone, and the Labour Party will not be bringing it back. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were no aberrations; they were the natural progression of a movement that has ‘evolved’ from its radical roots into a centre-right focus group-driven party of power. Now, on a policy level, they chase middle England votes, while lecturing working class people on their ‘duty to vote’ (Labour), in order to ‘keep the Tories out’. Gordon Brown’s recent book My Scotland, Our Britain on the case for the union, like his critique of Thatcherism, Where There Is Greed, would be highly impressive if this was still 1985, and he himself hadn’t been in power for so much of the time that has passed since it was. Yes, politics is the art of the possible, but the message from the Labour Party to the people, is that in the face of neo-liberalism, nothing is possible – but keep voting for us anyway. Why? Because, goes the stock reply, ‘we care more than the Tories’. This is true of Labour voters and party members, but it hasn’t been true of the leadership for a long, long time. They don’t seem to care that much that it’s likely that UKIP, the right-wing of the Tory party and the Mail and Sun will set the agenda at the next election. A no vote is therefore a vote to preserve that poisonous dialogue of nationalist politics, with more unwanted racist policies on Europe, immigration and security, foisted onto Scotland. Our Labour has gone; it probably died when it got rid of Clause Four, the ‘public ownership’ statement, which served as the radical conscience of the party. An anti-independence argument, repeated in the discussions with my old Labour-supporting pals, is one I’ve consistently heard down the years. It contends that we have to ‘stand alongside our comrades in England.’ I agree wholeheartedly, but fail to get how ‘standing alongside’ somebody involves trudging to the polling booth every five years and sheepishly sending down a cluster of political class lobby-fodder careerists to Westminster, who then continue to preside over the transfer of resources from the rest of us to the super rich. The brutal truth is that we haven’t properly ‘stood alongside’ any English or Welsh comrades since the miners strike of 84-85, because we haven’t been able to – the UK state has made sure of that with its anti-union laws. Yes, the same ones the Labour Party has had plenty of chances to modify or repeal, and let people in their workplaces have a role in our democracy. I recall twelve years later, really ‘standing alongside’ comrades in Liverpool during the dockworkers dispute, to the complete indifference and embarrassment of the Labour Party, who would rather have had everybody just go home. Towards the end of the strike, I was sitting in a London hotel with Dockers leader Jimmy Nolan and the writer Jimmy McGovern, meeting American intellectual Noam Chomsky. Jimmy Nolan was telling our visitor that they had far more support from Larry Bower’s New York longshoremen than the UK Labour Party or senior Trade Union officials like Bill (Lord) Morris. Where was this ‘internationalism’ or ‘solidarity’ from the Labour leadership? By contrast there was significant support from the Labour rank and file. They deserved better then, and they deserve better now, than a leadership that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Conservative Party against Scottish independence. Our Labour has gone; it probably died when it got rid of Clause Four, the ‘public ownership’ statement, which served as the radical conscience of the party. (I think of it as being the member of the band who kept it real. Nobody listened to him that much, because they knew that if he had his way they would never sell another record. But once he was kicked out, the band quickly lost its soul and now contests the ‘political’ version of Britain’s Got Talent every five years.) Therefore I don’t designate what we’re currently doing as ‘standing alongside’ anybody; I call it endorsing a set-up that maintains our joint misery. Better to call time on that self-defeating nonsense and encourage and inspire others to do the same. This ‘internationalism’, so publically heralded by ‘No’ leftists, (but only in response to the Scottish independence threat –otherwise its generally forgotten about) has in reality been used as a Trojan horse for a corporate-led globalisation and imperialism, where this transfer of resources from the rest to the rich is aided and abetted by the UK state. On a related note, as well as Scotland and England, I visited Ireland, where I lived for five years, in order to attend a wedding. I felt just as close to my friends there as I did to the ones in England and Scotland: we don’t need to have the same domestic governments to moan about in order to bond as human beings over common areas of concern. It’s called internationalism, and as tough a concept as it is for some people to grasp, that doesn’t stop or start at London. Independence isn’t divisive; gross inequality, as promoted by the UK state, now that is schismatic. So perhaps the unionist apologists from my generation should consider that it isn’t just about them any more. A march towards democracy is a process, not a destination; it’s not solely about a ‘vote’ on September 18th, or any other vote. It’s not about politicians, including ‘Salmond’ (the bogey man who brought us free prescriptions, paid higher education fees, and protected the NHS from Labour and Conservative privatising trusts – that’s also the one who hasn’t led us into war in Iraq, deregulated the City, redistributed our wealth to the already stinking rich – we should choose our demons with a sense of perspective), for once, just this once, it simply isn’t their party. What I think it is about, is this generation having something of their own, a project that inspires them. The rest of us should be cheering them on, not sneering, grumbling, or ‘standing alongside’ establishment reactionaries against them, fuelled by a petty strop because we so manifestly failed to deliver on our own dreams. For the new generation, social progress is about more than trying to vote in a right-wing Labour Party every five years. So maybe its time to let those smart young Scots take the lead in building something different and inspirational, free from the whines of the browbeaten, gloomy naysayers and vested interests of the elitist no-can-dooers. And, while we’re at it, support the bright young people of England in getting on with creating a truly post-imperial, multi-ethnic civic identity and democratic society, based on ability, rather than cemented rank and privilege. Give them the chance to take the fight to the Tories, UKIP, EDL, BNP and other small minds, without being distracted by the Scottish agenda, which will not go away. As with the young Scots, I believe in their ability to do just that, without a cynical, moribund Labour Party leadership professing to enable the process, but in reality always standing in their way. Because it’s our great conceit that we’re currently ‘standing alongside’ people in England; in my opinion, we’re just getting in their road. I looked at the smirking face of Tony Blair and thought: there is no ******* chance I can ever vote for this guy. I’ve felt massively liberated ever since. I believe that our joint aim should be to make these islands the home of a batch of healthy, vibrant democracies, instead of a chess piece in the saddo G7/militaristic ‘sphere of influence’ games of the power brokers: those war-mongering (never war-fighting) cowards and their pathetic groupies in the privately owned media. Let this happen in Britain, in Europe, across the world. That’s internationalism, not preserving an elitist, reactionary, pomp-and-ceremony failed UK state, which has over the last thirty-five years systematically crushed every single gain that non-privileged people in this country have fought for. Sept 18th is a very small but important step in that process. A ‘yes’ vote won’t deliver the kind of society people aspire to any more than a ‘no’ vote will derail the aspiration towards it, but it will be a setback to a reactionary UK state, that has promoted little but elitism, hierarchy and the transnational superrich, at the expense of democracy. I’m still –even now- often asked; don’t I feel sad at abandoning the party of my parents and grandparents? I went through that dilemma years ago, when I looked at the smirking face of Tony Blair and thought: there is no ******* chance I can ever vote for this guy. I’ve felt massively liberated ever since. On the contrary, I feel very angry about the current Labour Party’s continual betrayals of everything those generations fought to achieve. Brian Wilson still attacks the SNP, but now from the right, and I can’t believe Jack McConnell signed up for all this to argue against food banks from the House of Lords. Neil Kinnock is now a Brussels commissioner who probably doesn’t even know there’s a referendum in Scotland, but in the Yes movement I feel the same kind of inspiration I did when I was seventeen, after hearing his moving and invigorating speech in that broadcast. I know that plenty others who joined the Labour Party had one of those big moments in their youth too, and that’s why I’m writing this piece. Although I detest what it has become, with its detached political class leadership, and spineless, focus group opportunism, the voters and the rank and file members of Labour remain the salt of the earth. Underneath all the cynicism, defeatism and no-can-do-ism they’ve swallowed down the years, I believe they still want the same thing: a fair and democratic society. They’ve just been fighting rearguard actions for so long, to defend jobs and services, many have simply forgotten how to go on the offensive. For the first time in years the UK establishment are taking a kicking by the people, and it is on the issue of Scottish independence. Labour should be gleefully putting the boot in, not shielding our blows on their behalf. So we need real Labour people to be inspired again, as they were when they first joined the party, in order to help build new democracies in those islands. And if they try to tell us that they are getting that inspiration from either the UK state or the Labour leadership or the No campaign, we just know that they are faking it. Maybe some have merely grown old and tired. That happens to us all, but becoming a defacto Conservative and standing alongside the establishment, that still remains an optional part of the ageing process. But after mouthing off about the Labour Party, it’s only fair that I make a personal declaration as to where my own politics lie today. Like most people, I’ve moved away from my tartan Tory perception of the SNP and accept it as a benign, bourgeois party of the centre-left. Yes, it’s nakedly opportunist, but that factor certainly doesn’t distinguish it in modern politics, and its fairly narrow goal of Scottish independence makes it harder for it to sell out. Nonetheless, its not my party, I’ve never voted for them and would find it hard to do so, for the same reasons I can no longer vote Labour and will obviously never vote Conservative – it’s not in my internationalist DNA. Having long given up on parties, I’m stuck with having my political aspirations for these islands placed squarely in the hands of a new, broadly-based, grass roots campaign led by a different generation, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m now a dedicated ‘phase three’ yes man: let’s get it sorted out. But I want as many of my old buddies, and as many real Labour people on that journey as possible, and for bigger reasons than to deliver a yes vote for social progress on the 18th. That, as I’ve said, is only part of the process. I want them onside, because the core values that they believe in; fairness, justice and democracy, are the only values that a new Scotland -and a new England- can be constructed on. ___ I'd rather listen to an author who tried to write about the unseen reality of Scotland than an author who wrote about flying brooms, who made a billion by guilting parents into thinking they were neglecting their child if they didnt give them Harry Poter books.
  8. I think it was Tommy Sheridan who said it best, to paraphrase him it went along the lines of 'On the 18th of September, between 7am and 10pm, Scottish people will be free and sovereign, not for the firs ttime in 2 years, not for the first time in 15 years, not for the first time in 300 years but for the first time in history. It's up to us if we want to keep it after 10.01pm or lose it forever.'
  9. Ryan Christie would be an ideal candidate for one of these 'buy then loan back' deals I hate, yet seem to happen all the time these days.
  10. Scottish Premiership Sa 09Aug 2014 Hamilton 0 - 2 Inverness CT W Scottish Premiership We 13Aug 2014 Inverness CT 0 - 0 Dundee D Scottish Premiership Sa 16Aug 2014 Motherwell 0 - 2 Inverness CT W Scottish Premiership Sa 23Aug 2014 Inverness CT 1 - 0 Celtic W Scottish Premiership Sa 30Aug 2014 Inverness CT 2 - 0 Kilmarnock those are this seasons results so far. Scottish Premiership Sa 03Aug 2013 Inverness CT 3 - 0 St Mirren W Scottish Premiership Sa 10Aug 2013 Dundee Utd 0 - 1 Inverness CT W Scottish Premiership Sa 17Aug 2013 Inverness CT 2 - 0 Motherwell W Scottish Premiership Sa 24Aug 2013 Celtic 2 - 2 Inverness CT D Scottish Premiership Sa 31Aug 2013 Inverness CT 2 - 0 Hearts W Scottish Premiership Sa 14Sep 2013 Kilmarnock 1 - 2 Inverness CT W Scottish Premiership Sa 21Sep 2013 Aberdeen 1 - 0 Inverness CT First 7 games last year up until our first loss. To me those results are more impressive, the Celtic Draw, Motherwell and Dundee United wins stack up werll considering how the league ended up. Plus the dropped points v Celtic away from home, having gone 2-0 up, is far superior to the 0-0 home draw with Dundee this term. As I say though, 4 points from our next 2 matches and we will be further ahead than we were last time, so we can't do much more than what we're doing already.
  11. I was about to ask if this had been our best start to a SPL campaign ever but last years was superior, just. This stage last year we had 4 wins and 1 draw (away to Celtic 2-2, our only conceaded goals) and a goal difference of +8, we then beat Killie away 2-1 before going down 1-0 away to Aberdeen. Our next 2 games are away to Partick and at home to St Johnston, 4 points from those and we'll have done better than last year, has to be a short term target. I've been really biting my lip this past couple of weeks about how impressed I've been for fear of jinxing it. Hughes hasnt totally won me over yet but the clean sheets are a major plus in that direction.
  12. I'm not overly shocked with some business 'leaders' beingworried about change. If everybody had 7 figure+ private pensions, an army of low paid employees to call upon, multiple properties, no need for socialised health care or housing and found the wider welfare system a massive burden in itself, then I'd be all for a NO vote myself. As it happens the Brittish Empire hasnt exactly worked out for everyone. Independence might not either but then the choice for voters in September is the mediocre status quo versus potential, worst case scenario is things stay the same as they always have been.
  13. There is a depressing parallel between that farce and the independence referendum incoming. Voters were told by the leading parties and the media that proportional representation wouldnt work in the UK as it does in other countries because people here are too stupid to figure it out. We were told that it would confuse us having a different looking bit of paper to tick, ushering in the apocalypse when trying to count votes. Then of course people lined up in their millions to agree.
  14. A surprising number of people I've spoken to in work today (in Englandshire) watched the debate last night, even after al lthe shouting and bickering over each other I got the impression that most stayed tuned in until the end. Opinion overall appears to be that it was a total clusterfuck and the NO campaign have offered no reason to not vote YES. You know, even after me telling people the likely outcome will be a NO vote with a 10-15% swing, the majority of the thoughts shared ignore that blindy and ask 'well if you don't want to be in the UK, why don't you **** off then?'. People around here quite rightly couldnt care less what Scotland decides. Yet, when asked, you find most people willing to talk about it agree theyve no love for Westminister or the rows and rows of career politicians calling the shots on their behalf, yet somehow hold a grudge against the minorioty of Scottish people who want a referendum at all? If you aks people flat out, do you think its fair that banks regulate themselves and change the amount of money you have sitting in your pension/house/bank account, without being accountable themselves.. people say of course not. If asked outright, do you think the current first past the post system, which elects hundreds of former etonians and PR men into government is in the best interests of the people whom government was created to protect.. they say no. Ask people if they would rather pay for their health care on top of taxation. Ask people if they would rather pay for their higher education on top of taxation, ask everyone you meet if they dont want a consitiution that writes into law protection of their few remaining privacy and human rights. I hope the people of Scotland are not cowards come September. As I said on this topic earlier, there are working class people all over the world watching Scotland, hoping they do the right thing. A Scottish YES vote will have a ripple affect all accross the EU and around the world, Scotland can force those who still believe the media and the self proclaimed academic/politicval elite can force people to do what they have always done, expecing us to bow at their feet, to take note of what a grassroots movement can achieve. It will breathe live into people at the bottom everywhere, even if it amounts to nothing in the long term, it will prove that people can still have a voice under democracy. When the leaders of NATO, the USA, the IMF, the UK and other organisations of questionable morals firmly level themselves on one side of the arguement, everyone else has to take the oppoiste view, as this is truely a once in a lifetime opportunity for a modern, westernised and rich country to make a decision ons something that actually matters. Party politics and the usual round of electioneering are playschool compared to what Sctoalnd is deciding next month.
  15. Nothing short of 60% ball retention will be acceptab;e. The league doesnt matter.
  16. Superb result, happy I lost 20quid betting on Motherwell.
  17. I've said this before but you have to consider the benefit to us in the long term of allowing players to move on to bigger clubs or better leagues in attracting promising young players from elsewhere. A selling club that develops talent has to actually sell players or the masterplan doesnt work, especially given the perceived downsides of asking a young player to move a million miles away into the frozen wilderness to get a game. You have to be able to tell prospects over a contract signing that players X, Y and McZ all signed similar low income deals but we provided a proven platform that eventually leads to big money elsewhere. If you hang onto guys until they become totally irrelevant or we try to nickel and dime buying clubs in transfer negotiations then the rest of the current squad will be more reluctant to sign extended deals and new recruits will be more reluctant to take the gamble on us.
  18. Stevie MAy is better than Billy. If we were offered 300k I'd snap it up in a heartbeat.
  19. If it was ever going to be then it wouldve been on MFR or a Dundee station, doesnt look like theres any interest tonight.
  20. Any radio coverage for this besides the BBC?
  21. I've not checked elsewhere but Birmingham seem awfully generous at 19/20 on Skybet to beat a side who could only take Fleetwood at home by 1 goal, considering Birmingham have had a decent pre-season so far.
  22. But the Yes proposal is to be in the EU, at any cost! Its not up to the Yes campaign, it'll go to a vote at either parlimentary level or a national referendum. After the most recent round of European elections, you can be sure the negotiation postion wont be a begging bowl and a white flag. Yes, with an English, unelected monarch as our head of state. Seriously, WTF! Voting No will result in.... an English, unelected monarch as our head of state. Awesome argument Yngwie. If youre a republican you'll have more hope of seeing a change with a Yes vote, a vote for Yes will see the queen appear on currency and thats about it, as things stand she has to sign every act of parliament and rubber stamp decisions that goes through Westminster, something she doesnt do from other commonwealth countries and she wouldn't do for Scotland. But we'll inherit our fair share of national debt, and then run at an annual deficit by spending like there's no tomoroow on the wish list of social measures whilst oil revenues continue to plummet. In 2007 the UK national debt sat at 37% of GDP, now it is over 87% of GDP, there were 854 million+ of bailouts and money printing in that time. £124 billion of the money to bail out UK banks came from the UK treasury and the rest came from the Federal Reserve in the US, who we now owe. £65billion in total was used to bail out HBOS and RBS, adding to the national debt. These banks were only deemed 'to big to fail' because of their foreign interests around the world, the cost of settling up their bad debt in Scotland wouldve been less than 6 billion, these banks couldve been folded at no loss to Scottish customers. It might have miffed the yanks a bit, so the debt was piled up to keep things sweet there between the UK and US, as we are already heavily in debt to them. A Scoialist-leaning Scottish Parliament would not have paid anything like the amount that was to 'secure' the banks. Don't see how anything will change in that respect, if Scotland still wants arms and pharmaceuticals. I could name names from work but theres plenty of examples in the public sphere as is regarding who is involved at the top of big pharmaceutical companies and their links to government. There are over 20,000 different drugs bought by the NHS but are not price regulated by the NHS, of those 20,000 drugs, 18,000 are cheaper in other European countries due to NHS mismanagement and bending over backwards to feed money into big pharma and chemists. The army is no different, dispatches did a program on the scams that went on between BAE and the buyers for the MOD, where the convinced top commanders to purchase sub standard weapons that kept failing for 3 times as much as the SAS was paying internationally for them (the SAS are apparently allowed to buy anything they want from anyone they want, so get the best market price). In an independent Scotland, we wouldnt be bound by 19th century charters that demands military equipment is produced in our own country, meaning these firms that currently have us by the balls would be competing with the rest of the planet for our business. You don't have to look back far to find Salmond proclaiming how prudent and well run Scotland's banks are, hence they would only require, and I quote, "light touch" regulation! Whats Salmonds opinion got to do with an Independent Scotland? Why not talk about Alistair Darlings record as Chancellor, where he more than doubles the UK's national debt for apparently nothing? Whats all the extra made-up money paid for in the past 6 years? Neither men are relevant to the scams carried out by banks and other trading bodies. At the moment, banks and the stock exchanges in London regulate themselves, even when they were found guilty of manipulating the London Inter Bank Operating Rate(LIBOR) in their favor (manipulating trillions in securities), next to nothing happened. Unless my memory has failed me I think Barclays were fined 200million, which is chocolate sweeties to them. Even after £26,000 per taxpayer was paid to bail the banks out, nothing has changed in terms of regulation. The Scottish Parliament would have far more leeway in dealing with them, as they wouldnt need to be propping up the City of London, which generates a massively disproportionate amount of money for the government compared to the rest of the country. The spineless cowards are those who are aware that changes CAN be made but don't want to risk their mediocre quality of life for something more. The ignorant masses who think its funny to vote no to wind up fat Salmond deserve everything they get in life. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to potentially change something, even if its very little and comes to nothing. Its an opportunity that cannot be passed up, as the worst case scenario for a failed independence is that life carries on just the same as before, rising debts, lowering living standards, lots of rain, crap football etc. The vote has nothing to do with the SNP, if there was a yes vote the SNP would become irrelevant overnight in Scottish Politics, we will find ourselves with perpetual center-left governments until the end of the time.
  23. Whos trying to win you over? I've nothing to gain either way on this referendum, I'm just offering my opinion as an outsider. Scots get the chance to leave the EU, the chance to build a new constitution from scratch that includes new rights to property ownership which finally makes the Abolition of Feudal Tenure Act 2000 worth the paper its written on, the chance to slash the national debt hanging over your future pensions, the chance to stop being dictated to by arms and pharmaceutical conglomerates supplying government services, the chance to regulate banking in such a way that they cant bet your mortgage on the derivatives market (among others) and get away with it... **** me its the opportunity to leave those murderers in NATO as well, all this from a country who turned out in their hundreds of thousands to protest the war in Iraq? To say you don't want to vote yes for the opportunity to see real changes to all of the above and hundreds of more issues because 'am no really shure aboot the posties like' makes you and others willing to put trivial details about a change spineless cowards. Don't worry beggers, you'll still get dole money in an independent Scotland, they might even pay you in pounds if you're that desperate for them.
  24. If the Turkeys want to vote for Christmas, I'm not about to lose any sleep over it lads, take care.
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