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….😁

@Shelefttheweb So according to that graph, 62% of anti-independence voters voted Remain, and 60% of pro-independence voters voted Remain. In the context of the SNP AND (in the main) unionist parties encouraging voters to vote Remain. That supports my suspicion that the majority of Scottish nationalists would have voted for Brexit if the SNP had taken an impartial stance on the question of Brexit.

The general argument for indie is that Scotland, as a whole, tends to vote differently and have different needs/priorities than the rest of the UK.

I used to be in favour of it; I have no idea anymore.

But isn't devolution supposed to deal with that issue, insofar as it is one? The Scottish government is in charge of education, health, housing, etc. If it does a good job of it, it will become more popular with voters and will be able to argue for even more power.

The Pentalina is n directly related to the SNP ferries fiasco, but it is often cited as an example of what the SNP should be doing. The Orcadian man who set up Pentland Ferries as a private business got the Pentalina commissioned and built in Asia for (I think) around £10m and then commissioned a second bigger one, the Alfred, to replace it for £19m I think? Point is, that’s absolute buttons compared to what the two long overdue Calmac builds are costing.

However, last nights Pentalina incident does impact the SNP ferry fiasco because the ‘other’ Pentland Ferries ship, MV Alfred, has been hired out to Calmac for £9m to provide roving back up for the knackered western isles fleet and it’s currently undertaking a cruise around all Calmac’s ports to check that it can safely berth at each. The question now is - who will be left without a ferry? Will the Alfred be recalled to Orkney leaving Calmac in the lurch, or will Orkney’s ferry provision be halved til the Pentalina is repaired? It will be very (ferry!) interesting to see what happens next…

Yes. In theory, that seems to be true. Although, there is a lot of diversity of opinion of opinion within Scotland that rarely ever comes through in Westminster elections.

Devolution should even that out in many ways - giving Scots more direct control
over several key areas of life and enabling the diversity within Scotland to be better represented in doing so.

But the spectre of independence distorts everything in unfortunate ways. And a whole range of changes in the world make
it pretty daft to imagine that Scotland actually can achieve independence without screwing everyone over. Brexit has made many things clear.

That’s without thinking about how internally stagnated and distorted Scottish politics have been by the indie debate. It turns out that devolution has been terrible for those parties that are aligned with UK parties in various ways.

Of course, one of the big problems with how devolution was introduced is that there is no English parliament (or even a set of administrations that break up England). So Westminster is a big of a ridiculous fudge in several ways (and you get oddities like there being ‘UK’ ministerial departments that only have a remit over England). This creates all sorts of problems in relation to how westminster elections are framed.

Labour did make a big of an arse of constitutional reform back at the turn of the century in ways that become ever more obvious as time goes on.

Personally, I think it might have been better for Scottish politics if the pro-indie groups had been able to secure a yes vote in the last referendum. Circumstances would have necessitated better politicians and the break from the UK would have enabled a range of parties to be more effective.

But… just as the indie-lot have refused to let the matter lie post-referendum, I suspect that a yes vote (unless it had been an overwhelming landslide - which it would never be because Scots are more risk averse than we like to imagine ourselves) would just have resulted in ongoing unionist ‘rejoin the UK’ nonsense. And
it wouldn’t be better.

That’s totally ignoring that Scotland would almost certainly have not done amazingly at negotiating scexit and setting up the flourishing small utopia the pro-indie campaigns promised.

Which is to say, I have no idea what the answer is there. And none of it changes the fact that the SNP are a shower of shite.

Quite a lot of issues we don't have control over that are quite important, though - defense, for one (having all the nuclear subs parked a few miles from one of our major cities focusses the mind somewhat), and I don't see how that could be disentangled from UK politics. Brexit, of course.

Agree, Squidward, with much of what you say, not least of which the rotten state of the current governance.

The whole ‘let’s park the nukes near most of the Scottish population’ thing isn’t a brilliant example for the UK.

The thing is, Scotland is an after thought for the UK. It always has been. Most people in the UK have absolutely no idea about basic stuff about life in Scotland. I
used to teach at an English university and would literally amaze the students by telling them that there are no sixth form
colleges in Scotland. I’ve also been involved in advising people at work about basic stuff about the Scottish education system (what exams people actually take, for example!).

So it’s not all indie lies or whatever.

But that being a problem doesn’t make independence the right solution.

Would you really want this lot in charge of defence.....they can't even get 2 ferries built Jesus could you imagine them in charge of Lossiemouth fighter jets which are scrambled fairly regularly against Russia flying too close to UK Airspace without permission.......
Would end up with gliders so Scotland can reach its net zero or borrowing jets from England because their build programme which they insist is undertaken in Scotland is 5 years late!!!!

Obviously putting this lot in charge of defence or national security would be a terrible idea.

That’s the problem really. It’s not like they’re showing us that they can be trusted with anything.

Of course I don't want the current Scotgov in charge of defence. They have the army being asked to run the bloody Corran ferry right now, right enough.

I'm just saying that for some rather huge issues, Scotland does get shat on from a great height. Can you imagine anyone suggesting parking nuclear submarines within 10 miles of London?

Thank you for your reply @Piffpaffpoff

"Most people in the UK have absolutely no idea about basic stuff about life in Scotland. "

Yes very true. And have even less knowledge about Northern Ireland I think. Not good really.

But they are there because of shape and depth which makes it a good spot.
I don't really have any issues with them being there maybe because I lived in Plymouth for a bit where they also regularly have them in Devonport for refuelling and repairs and that's in the middle of the city.

Most people in the UK have absolutely no idea about basic stuff about life in Scotland. I
used to teach at an English university and would literally amaze the students by telling them that there are no sixth form
colleges in Scotland.

Most people in the UK have absolutely no idea about basic stuff about life in Scotland. I
used to teach at an English university and would literally amaze the students by telling them that there are no sixth form
colleges in Scotland.

Sorry posted too soon!!
Many people don't have much knowledge of other education systems though, that's not really unusual.
I was in my 30s before I knew in many areas school in England only goes up to age 16 and then they go to colleges, and that NI has single sex grammar schools. Just wasn't something that had ever been on my radar

Most people in the UK - do you mean England? Given that Scotland is in the UK too?

it’s this sort of ignorance which provides ammunition to the nationalists.

I would have more sympathy with the idea that Scotland has different needs IF the Scottish Government ever looked up from the central belt for longer than it takes to throw wind farm plans everywhere.

Most people in the central belt have absolutely no idea about life outside the central belt.

How many Scottish pupils know about sixth form colleges in England?

Snp strongholds very much favoured by Scottish govt in regards to funding.

most Scottish kids could probably tell you that the rUK do A-levels for exams though. That doesn’t happen the other way around to the same extent. In fact, a small number of English students used to claim I was lying that Scotland has a different education system (this was relevant to the course). I could never work out why some of them got so angry about the idea that not all British people had the same schooling experiences as them. Not all of them. Of course.

The statement ‘most people in the UK’ applies whether you include Scotland of not. Generally the numbers work such that popular culture reflects how things are in England - and the fact that things are different in other uk nations isn’t obvious to many people. It’s not necessarily prejudice (as the indie narrative might have it). It’s just the fact there are far, far more English people than Scots, or Welsh or northern Irish people.

It is worse for Northern Ireland. Definitely. An observation that is often as true of Scotland as anywhere else in the UK. And in worrying ways, given the political significance of some of the stuff for the whole UK.

It is also true that many Scots in the central belt haven’t the faintest clue about life elsewhere in Scotland. And the Scottish media doesn’t help with that really either.

None of this stuff makes it inevitable that Scotland must be independent. That assumption - we Scots are inherently just different and must have our own state - within the independence narrative is quite dodgy, especially given that the experiences of urban Glaswegians are not representative of all Scotland.

oh definitely.

The irony is that the parts of Scotland with the best claim to different needs (for obvious geographic reasons, but also cultural reasons) are so often overlooked by the Scottish government.

Expect for the purposes of romanticising Scottishness. Some pretty stock images (not of the wind farms obviously; unless the narrative is ‘Scotland is a renewables utopia’) and a bit of decorative Gaelic can be useful rhetorically. 🙄

Soooo, where do we think the will donations of circa £400k have been spent? I wonder if their house(s?) are mortgage free and maybe listed as SNP business premises?

Fancy pens apparently.

No cheap biros for the SNP.

How much longer is it all going to take before the investigation is concluded and we hear the truth? I'll be pretty pissed if it all gets dropped quietly.

Yes, this is the bit I don't get - where has the money gone and why? Usually when people embezzle money from their workplace, they have been spending wildly on holidays or cars or other luxuries, or are using it to pay off hidden debts or something, so what's been the motivation here? Is it as simple and mundane as they have been redirecting ringfenced funds into the general day to day business because their overall funding is down and they didn't want to make this public? Because that would be bad for 'the cause'? And where and why does the motorhome come into it?

There was a 2021 newspaper article on the last thread that said the funds had been spent. That still doesn't explain the camper van though. Nor would it explain why the Auditors resigned last year because they were presumably looking at more recent finances.