SNP shenanigans continued…

[TheBelmont]

A follow on to…
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/scotsnet/4778465-sturgeons-husband-arrested

Thought I’d get a new thread going as we are perilously close to filling the last and I for one am enjoying watching events unfold in your good company!

buckle up…it’s gonna be a bumpy ride….😁

There are plenty of issues that even Scot Nats should have got upset about before this. But it is always about independence at all costs.

Bet Mrs Murrell snr will be needing her monoblock fixed. That big campervan will have sunk it. Taxpayer can stump up.

Tend to agree with this. My cohort are 'indie above all else' so it's 'vote SNP or Green for indie, then sort the rest of it out when we have it. Yes Lavinia, we know the SNP are a shit show and we'll probably go back to voting Labour or Lib in an indie Scotland, but we need an indie Scotland first.'

That’s exactly the problem. The SNP and
the greens get away with it because of the (bullshit) promises that the only thing that matters is securing independence.

It should be a completely separate question from the vitally important question of who should govern Scotland right now. The SNP have been on power for a very long time and they have neither delivered their promised independence nor shown any ability to actually govern the country.

It’s pretty clear that, even if you think independence is all that matters, neither the SNP nor the greens is equipped to achieve that.

Indeed, if you want to convince the undecided parts of the Scottish population on independence, the single best thing you could do is to insist that the parties advocating for it are absolutely amazing at all the stuff that matters day to day. A Scottish government that delivers high quality public services, that improves the lives of people in Scotland in meaningful ways and generally demonstrates why Scotland would be better off without the UK dragging it down would be far more convincing than this ongoing shower of shite.

What is happening now matters a great deal. Not a promise of jam tomorrow.

Having just put a DS with SN through the horrors of a Scottish education and watch it disintegrate in front of my eyes (he started school in 2010 so very much educated through the 'SNP times') I completely agree with you. And even though I'm non-indie, I like to think that I would have given my vote to a party who were delivering amazing things for the people of Scotland. But that party is not the SNP.

I want to vote for a party that looks as though they can manage the finances that are currently available to the Scot P. The ferries fiasco and all the queries about the finances make me question the SNP. But who else to vote for? Everyone else looks even more inexperienced. I will not vote SNP but have no idea which other party to go for. I'll probably decide on the basis of who is the best local candidate.

who has the necessary authorisation to make such an expensive purchase? Wouldn't it have taken 2 people?

When I was chair of the local pre-school I had to countersign the cheques for £20 every week for the milkman for the treasurer. And I wasn't married to the treasurer. And he had receipts. And everyone knew we were buying milk.

Seriously, people bang on about charities being corrupt and "big business" and "creaming off" money, but this is 100 times worse.

Isn’t it strange though- the impacts of Brexit are here for all to see. We know about deficits, debt, currency, defence, borders. Yet for some reason people think that independence will be easy, relatively inexpensive to do and quick.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

This is an interesting about face
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65425495
He would not have won the leadership battle with this…this was Forbes policy was it not?
I actually don’t mind this…takes the pressure of Indy for a while while the scot gov proves themselves. I’m not holding my breath but would be pleasantly surprised if they actually run the country well. (Spoiler alert…they can’t).

A Scottish government that delivers high quality public services, that improves the lives of people in Scotland in meaningful ways and generally demonstrates why Scotland would be better off without the UK dragging it down would be far more convincing than this ongoing shower of shite.

Totally agree.
I'm prepared to be persuaded but it needs to be demonstrated to me, Im not interested in rhetoric. There is nothing SNP has done so far that demonstrates to me we would be better off leaving the UK. Even during covid, we should have faired so much better as we're sparsely populated for our land mass. But despite our special Scottish version of covid management we did no better than other areas. I'm baffled by people saying how much better Scotland managed covid. The rhetoric was better than Boris (which wouldn't be difficult) but the outcomes were no better.
I have voted SNP a long time ago when I felt we would benefit from a bigger voice in Westminster but I would never vote for this lot in Scottish parliament.

Look I now absolutely fuck all about Scottish politics and have just loosely followed this thread recently in a looking for popcorn moments kind of way but has their been discussions north of the border about the similarities between what SNP and indie people are offering and what Brexiteers have been offering? Presumably the sell is that Westminster is bad for Scotland and that Scotland would be rejoining Scotland rejoining Europe at the first opportunity.

I am born and bred in south east England with very little Scottish connections and am fully prepared to be laughed at/shouted at/ignored but to me there appear (to my uneducated self) great ironies at play. Unicorns 🦄 promised by SNP/UKIP?

Sorry in advance 😬

Sorry for typos

*know
*there

Really what I'm wondering is, what are non Indie people saying?

They are promising independence, rejoining the EU as an indy country, keeping the pound, and sunshine and daisies.
BUT, joining the EU would take ages, leaving Scotland pretty much in limbo in the meantime - a tiny country, no allies, trying to figure out trade deals etc - and a condition of joining the EU is to join the euro - so no pound - not that it would be easy to keep the pound either.
And all the other stuff that isn't devolved, like defence - there's a lot of people in my area who depend on the nuclear base for work either directly or indirectly.

@ttobee there are many promises made EU membership being one of them but the biggest unicorn is that Scotland should make its own rules and be in charge of its own stuff not ruled by Westminsterso yes very similar to Brexit and getting rid of EU.....

Except many matters are devolved and the Scottish govt have fecked up the vast majority of them whilst wasting huge sums of money.

Most non indy supporters don't want the economic fallout or prefer the security of being in the UK. Some are as strong a unionist as independent activists are.

Apparently Scottish nationalism is different from English nationalism. Scottish nationalism is good and right. That's the argument I've heard on MN, anyway. And yes, the argument that we can vote different politicians in once we have independence. Not sure where these wonderful alternative politicians will come from - bearing in mind that no-one outside of the SNP and Greens will have any experience of being in government, plus the SNP and Greens have their fingers in so many pies.

And it will be the SNP negotiating scexit…

EU membership would take easily at least 20 years. For a start we would need a good record of stable monetary system before you can begin to apply for membership. Until independence there won’t even be a monetary system let alone a stable one.

I don’t think anything good has ever come from nationalism.

I’ve can’t see the logic of trying to survive as a tiny country which lacks the numbers to generate enough talent to run effective governance and infrastructure.

In short, we are fucked

DGM grew up in Nazi Germany. Saved the lives of jewish neighbours when just a teenager, before marrying a Scot.
She was very much alarmed by Scottish nationalism and said there were similarities. These similarities became most evident to her during the referendum campaign, all the intimidation (I was surrounded by supporters chanting at me, shaking my car, at a red light, putting leaflets into car windscreen wipers when they were queuing at the lights) and I didn't even have anything on my clothing or car that marked me as a No Thanks or anything like that.
DGM was frail by then, had lived in Scotland for over 70 years, it was her home, she insisted on being taken in her wheelchair to put a very firm NO on the form.

Non Indie people either believe in the Union and the ones that don’t but won’t vote for it are smart enough to realise that the present government- who are third rate regional administrators at best would be unable to negotiate us out of the Union . If you want further entertainment look up Scotlands ferry fiasco - this is a Government that can’t build 2 ferries and simply don’t have the intellectual gravitas to negotiate independence. The brown envelopes just wouldn’t be big enough 😂

@tobee As a matter of principle I'm in favour of the union. I feel that dismantling a unit of government which is so geographically obvious, for no clear reason is unethical. Politicians and civil servants should not be spending their time setting up new beaureaucratic institutions where functioning ones already exist. They should be working with other countries and international blocks to promote more and more international cooperation. Not creating more borders and more competition.

Ideally I would like to have just one global government divvying up the world's resources according to need, not to which people happen, through no merit, to live closest to them. Countries would have much less power. Different departments would be based in different countries and each geographical area of the globe would take it in turn to host the presidency.

The thought of Scotland becoming independent is terrifying and horrifying.

Personally, I can see the romantic appeal
of the whole independent Scotland thing. But the reality is that it’s a ludicrous idea.

Who is going to run an independent Scotland? How would it even manage to have a currency, never mind everything else?

If we’ve learned anything from
brexit (and I was definitely not for that!), it’s that unpicking unions, reproducing services and creating boundaries is hard and you aren’t better off on the other side. Why would anyone imagine that severing the union would somehow produce a glorious utopia. Especially when the best the independence parties can offer is an idea that somehow joining the EU would sort it all out.

Fantasy v reality. Pragmatically a devolved Scotland (properly governed) within the UK is probably the best outcome for
Scotland. And devolution would be much more successful if the spectre of a continual push for independence were off the bloody table. Then Scottish politics could grow some decent parties and politicians who wanted to concentrate on doing devolved government well - and for the whole country too (not just the central belt).

The last referendum was supposed to settle the matter. But the indie zealots just won’t accept anything.

Thank you for all the replies!

Yes I (re?)acquainted myself with the Scottish ferries fiasco because you lot were all mentioning it @annabelindajane. And, indeed, have just been looking at MV Pentalina story today. Don't know if that's a part of the wider issue though...

I suspect that there is a good deal of overlap between SNP voters and Brexit supporters. It would have been very interesting to see how many Scots voted for Brexit if the SNP hadn't instructed them to vote Remain. I see people ranting on social media for complete "independence" from both the UK and the EU. How they think they would survive, I have no idea. I assume that they don't do much "thinking".

I suspect that there is a good deal of overlap between SNP voters and Brexit supporters