To think that the new SNP leader just pledged to ignore the will of the majority of Scottish people?

[RudeBarbandCustard]

Forgive me if I'm being naive - I may well be.

But Nicola Sturgeon pledging to continue to fight for Scottish independence is essentially a pledge to fight against the majority of the Scottish people's democratically expressed wishes?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-30011423

I mean, it couldn't be clearer. The majority of Scottish people voted No. So she's essentially saying "Hey, majority of Scotland - I'm going to ignore what you voted for in a democratic process, and fight for the opposite!".

It smacks of arrogance, and a complete disregard for what people voted for!

I may be missing something though, but it's intriguing and bugging me so I'd be interested to hear what others think.

these services

Sturgeon is pathetic. She is not behaving as a leader of the country but is solely determined to push her own idiotic nationalist agenda.

The SNP does smack of ineffective leadership. Their subjects sorry members are so loyal that all they need is a bit of guidance from the top on how to behave (ie not to abuse people who disagree with them, to embrace tolerance, to respect education, etc) and they might achieve more. Nothing she seems to say about Scotland's future is visionary - it is all monoissue, based on getting away from the UK, being "different" and "special" on some undetermined fanciable notion of "Scottishness". It doesn't make sense and isn't logical. There is no mechanism of achieving this envisaged, its the same old again and again about socialism, being different from England, and it just doesn't work - the referendum result shows that.

Sturgeon is an interesting one. She is actually a lawyer, although her Wikipeadia profile lists her experience in practice as a brief spell working for a law centre in Glasgow before she went into politics, which is very noble, but is not generally the type of experience country's leaders are drawn from. Well, outside the UK anyway - in that respect at least, she is a typically British politician. She is no Angela Merkel or Christine Laguard.

It must also be a long time since Salmond studied his economic notes as well, either that or whoever the SNP got to prepare the White Paper doesn't understand how the EU Single Market works, particularly the Free Movement provisions.

Theres a bit too much of the night of the long knives about the SNP for me. I mean if you think about the former East Germany or USSR, about how people were turned in to the authorities, or informed upon, by their neighbours, and disappeared in the night. I don't mean that's likely to happen, but maybe some modern day equivalent...

You know fine well which service is being referred to. It showed them up for being the sore losers that they are and that all the rhetoric about working together only applied if the yes vote won.

The wee blue book was the bane of my life. It was staggering how many people just swallowed it as fact despite it coming from a clearly biased source. I even saw people claiming they were government endorsed figures. [hmm[

I agree re the service. That was shocking.

I cringe when SNP leadership use the expression "hold their feet to the fire".
of Westminster.

What happened re the Sunday service?

Didn't John swinney attend? I assume lamont, Davies and whoever the lib dem leader is were all there? Darling? Cameron? Clegg? Milliband?

Are you asking about the memorial service in London on remembrance day? (sorry if I'm wrong)

I actually heard sturgeon asked about this on morning call on radio Scotland. The caller was implying the snp hadn't been asked.

In actuality there is a reciprocal arrangement with the welsh parliament that they take it year about to present a wreath on behalf of both Scotland and Wales and this was Wales turn.

Sturgeon said she was at the Glasgow service.

No idea if that's true or not, I take anything from snp with a big pinch of salt (too many years of looking at their housing budgets)

Trixy The wee blue book was the bane of my life. It was staggering how many people just swallowed it as fact despite it coming from a clearly biased source. I even saw people claiming they were government endorsed figures. [hmm[

A very profitable source of income for the otherwise seemingly unemployed organiser ( I hesitate to call him author because he doesn't have any non-self published publications to his name). "The 45" will obviously guarantee him with further income in years to come. Marketing genius, hard at work establishing a fairer and more just future for himself!

You would have to suffer from literacy difficulties to actually be able to read that stuff, wouldn't you? No-one who has had the benefit of a good education could take it seriously.

The service on the Sunday after the referendum : Scottish party leaders went, and Alastair Darling. Swinney was there for the SNP. I think there was some discussion on MN about the SNP leadership not going, and various people commented that it didn't bother them because they weren't religious. I wasn't that interested in the service, but my feeling was that that type of service, similar to remembrance, isn't really about religion, it is one of those occasions in which religion hosts an event for wider society. There's certainly a case for debating whether that should continue to be the case, but I think the weekend after the vote wasn't the time to have that. I also think if you are an elected representative in the UK, there are various things you accept with the job, one of which is turning up at these kind of events.

My MSP is regularly at events hosted by a range of religions and community groups. I'm sure sometimes he'd rather sit at home and watch trashy telly, but he doesn't.

Oh sorry I had completely the wrong service then.

Tha totally by passed me but then I was in England for the long weekend lewving directly the referendum results came in so I managed to miss an awful lot of that weekend.

I was wiped out that weekend. Didn't sleep on the Thursday, barely slept on the Wednesday. Had taken time off that week to do final campaigning, but went into work on Friday (in retrospect should have taken that day off as well) - I think that weekend all I did was sleep and sit about.

Personally I didn't really care which politicians went - but it was a very pointed message when you looked at which senior figures were missing. The church isn't a big part of my life (once or twice a year escorting children to services with Guides/Cubs) but I appreciate they wanted to promote healing. I think that's still something that's needed, but isn't going to happen with one church service.

Was Harvie there? Colin Fox?

Does anybody have a list of attendees?

vague memory of seeing Patrick Harvie in the photo of key figures, but I wasn't ticking names off a register.

I am blaming the Referendum for kick starting my insomnia. I'm not kidding; it disrupted my sleep patterns and they have never returned.

But multiply that with disruption to the whole country and people's work patterns and work performance, and what do you get?

And they want to keep that pattern of disruption going?

It is simply no good for nationalists to claim that every vote for the SNP is a vote in favour of every jot and tittle of its manifesto.

But they do and they will continue to do so. It is their sole raison d'être. The SNP is not interested in doing what is best for the country. As for trusting them I wouldn't trust Salmond and Sturgeon an inch.

Typing Patrick Harvie and service of reconciliation into Google doesn't give any indication he was there either.

Darling, Lamont, Davis and the Lib Dem guy were all there.

I did come across a fucking terrifying article from Bella Caledonia though.

Reconciliation shouldn’t be necessary in our new Scotland. People who legitimately, if misguidedly, believed they were doing the right thing or who were enticed by their (often state-backed) fear should be welcomed with open arms, so long as they are prepared to work for the benefit of the wider population. But there should be no room for the people who looked only to maintain their comfort and luxury through exploiting and belittling the people they share this space with. We shouldn’t want to reconcile with them-their expulsion from our public and political life should be as thorough and declarative as every Yes vote struck in September. While revolutions don’t have to be violent they do have to be transformative, and we can’t do that if we offer amnesty to those whose interest was our subservience.

What. the. fuck.

I'm English but I could well understand why so many Scottish people wanted independence and wanted to cut the Westminster crew loose.

But when Sturgeon said that she wants a veto on an EU referendum etc, that has gone too far. It is still a United Kingdom.

I now feel sorry for the people who wanted to stay in the United Kingdom and won.

Don't worry though. UKIP are coming. They are not politically correct and my guess is that is why they will thrash the SNP just as they will thrash Labour down here. The SNP has had it easy against Jim Murphy and Margaret Curran and Gordon Brown and all that lot. But now they will have to beat UKIP. They don't stand a chance.

claig you really don't understand much about Scottish politics do you?

I don't, but I understand politics.
The Scotish Tories were once the dominant force in Scottish politics.
Westminster let the Scottish people down, just like it let millions of English people down.

Now there is a non-Westminster party coming. They're not politically correct, but they are populist. Have you seen UKIP's David Coburn take on whispering Jim Murphy and forcing some angry emotion out of the po-faced spinner? UKIP will challenge all the progressives in the SNP and what Coburn calls their Stasi-like "named person nonsense".

They have had it easy, but now UKIP are coming.

UKIP are not like the rest of the Westminster gang. They won't kowtow to anyone and there will be no EU referendum veto granted to anyone. If the United Kingdom decides to leave the EU, then no part of the United Kingdom will be allowed to stop the millions of people that make it up from doing so.

I don't think two or three UKIP loons are going to cluster the snp much. They've held seats in Westminster for decades.

I feel sick at the thought of an EU referendum.

LovleyRitaMeterMaid, I agreed with nearly all your posts during the referendum. I am not even Scottish but I felt gutted that the Scottish people got so close to independence and lost. The politically correct "love bombers" from England, the luvvies from London, made me feel sick, so heaven knows what they must have made the Scottish people feel like.

But there is an earthquake happening in England. The Scottish earthquake shook Westminster first, but now UKIP will shake Westminster and they will not allow any part of what is still the United Kingdom to prevent its millions of people leaving the EU if they want to.

There will be a real challenge to the SNP and it will be from UKIP.

Sorry but you are waaaaay off the mark if you think UKIP are any kind of threat to any of the political parties in Scotland, never mind SNP. There were many reasons/issues that persuaded the majority to vote no, and a biggy was the uncertainty over Europe & the possibility of leaving the EU with no guarantee of re-entry. If you think that there is the same appetite for a referendum on leaving the EU as there is elsewhere in the UK then you are sadly mistaken.