CAMPAIGNING FOR SCOTLAND (Owned, Edited and Printed in Scotland since November 1926) "Promoting all that is best in Scottish Nationalism and all that is best in Scotland." Content of the Flag in the Wind Web Site is the copyright of the Scots Independent Newspaper. [ Issue 352 -  2nd March 2007]

Compiled by Jim Lynch

Old Tories Recycled

 I have received a letter telling me that the Scottish Progressive Party is being relaunched  in time for the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May; those of us of a certain age will recall that Progressive was the name adopted by the Tories in municipal local government in Scotland up to the Seventies, when the Tories told them to stand as real Tories.   In the rural areas they used the term “Independents”, a word they like in selective circumstances.

It looks very much as if the Tories, having failed to make a lot of progress as themselves, have decided to become progressive, and change their name accordingly; looking at their aims I can see no difference from the Tory party per se, so just another Trojan Horse?  The literature states : “We are a party of real independence, that puts individual freedom and responsibility before government interference and regulation.”  No independence for Scotland though, this is reasonably deduced from their statement : “Opposing the sterile politics of nationalism and class hatred.”  Also their avowed intention of  combining the roles of MSPs and Westminster MPs into a parliament of 59 members; am I mistaken in thinking that this is the Tory policy? 

Membership is open to those who pay the dosh, accept the principles (?) of the Party, and “are not members of any other political party other than one explicitly approved by the Progressive Party Executive Committee.  Acceptance of your application is subject to approval.”   Somehow, I don’t think they would accept SNP members, but somewhat like Labour and the Co-op Party, Tories would be acceptable.  I think we should be told  which party would be “explicitly” approved. 

Oh, and they managed to sent it to me twice, with the same address – maybe do not trust the Royal Mail, or just a penchant for wasting money?

 

The following item has been sent to me by Archie Young in Dunoon, it is from the Sun newspaper of 30^th November 2006 – St Andrew’s Day – but not in England.  The piece is by Kelvin Mackenzie, who is not a Scot.  I do not know if this article appeared in the Scottish Sun, which in January this year had an average circulation of 428,975.

We don’t want to subsidise idle Scots any more

I agree with the Scots.  They should have their own nationhood.

In my heart I am English, not British.  I don’t share many personality traits with my chums across the border.

The have three strengths.  Parsimony. Canniness (ie cynicism meets deception). Clannishness.

The English strengths are different.  Openness, Generosity (of spirit if nothing else). Wide friendships.

So it came as no surprise to me when a poll in the Sunday Telegraph found that 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.  This compares with only 52 per cent of Scots wanting independence.

The English are fed up to the back teeth with sending £30 billion annually to prop up the Scottish economy.

They’re further fed up with giving, for some inexplicable reason, 20 per cent per head in benefits of all kind to Scots than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

More than Ulster.  Why?  More than Wales.  Why?  More than the wasteland called the London Borough of Newham.  Why?

I think I know why these alleged bravehearts get such a good deal from us mugs in the south.

The Scots no longer produce great engineers, great academics, great explorers or great bankers, but they do produce some great and devious politicians.  This is the turning point.  The English don’t want to subsidise the idle Scots any more.

I read an astonishing fact recently.  There are only 169,000 net taxpayers in all Scotland, a nation of five million people.  It’s the English who create the wealth in our nation.

Of course, there are Scottish MPs who want to keep us united entirely out of self interest.  They would all be thrown out of a job if the place broke up.

So I’m so pleased that at last the English are fighting back against these ungrateful wretches.

I fear we are not going to get our way.  The Scots know that independence would mean poverty, a political backwater, a nation simply ignored.

So they are never going to vote for independence.  More’s the shame.

Unfortunately we are lumbered with the tartan tosspots.
 

Naval Gazing

 Proposals to scrap Trident, and for Scottish Independence have frightened the Labour MSP for Dumbarton;  presumably, unlike the majority of the people of Scotland, she approves of weapons of mass destruction being based within 30 miles of Scotland’s largest conurbation?

She is also indulging indulging her fantasy as to what might happen after independence; she claims that Scotland’s share of the Royal Navy would be 4 ½  ships and half an aircraft carrier. Perhaps we could add the half ship to the half aircraft carrier and get a whole one!  The point is that there will not be 44 warships by the time independence comes along, or by Christmas, for that matter; already the Ministry of Defence has scheduled 19 warships to be mothballed, so we will only get a share of 25 – 2 ½ warships!  Scotland just needs enough to look after her own waters, including the oilfields, and we have already paid for our share of the Royal Navy.

The MSP’s concern for the jobs in her constituency (or for her own one?) does not touch on the fact that Faslane has to cut its costs by £30 million a year, nor the fact that the Treasury has forced a review of British Naval bases, as they want to cut them from three to two.  The three bases are Faslane, Portsmouth and Plymouth; Devonport does not come into the equation, as it is a privatised operation, and readers will well remember how the work of refitting nuclear submarines was transferred from Rosyth to Devonport to save money.  Unfortunately, the amount of money “saved” was dwarfed by the costs of bringing the base up to the nuclear safety standard that was already at Rosyth, but they managed to create a lot of jobs in England; somehow, they forgot to also take away the six or seven decommissioned nuclear subs left rusting in Rosyth.  That was the Tory Minister of Defence, Malcolm Rifkind, at that time MP for Edinburgh Pentlands, no doubt with many constituents working just across the water.

Can you see the Royal Navy closing Portsmouth – the cradle of the English navy, or Plymouth – echoes of Sir Francis Drake and a load of bowls?  Faslane, is of course in Scotland, but they keep these harmless and perfectly safe Trident submarines and warheads there, so the Admiralty will not want to lose that. However, most Scots would be quite happy to see the Trident nuclear submarines going to bases in England, where they can also refit them. We do not grudge them this need to protect themselves.
 

Ministry of Expense

All of the above is happening because there is not enough money in the defence kitty, since they keep blowing it on procurement projects which run over budget; the RAF’s Eurofighter Typhoon, costing £1 billion a year, Type 45 destroyer £600 million, Bowman communications system £545 million and Astute submarine £415 million, to say nothing of Trident, where the sums involved are beyond comprehension.  These expensive toys are for politicians to play with, who then use them to invade any country they choose, but forget to give the soldiers adequate equipment; they want to bomb and annihilate people and places from thousands of miles away, and neglect that after that the army needs to get in close and dangerous.   We’ve already seen shock and awe, and the aftermath; shock and awe is the easy bit, so a bit less of that would mean less carnage to clear up.

 They are still at it, our wonderful politicians; they have recently spent £200 million on plans for a  new troop carrier, but changes in methods of warfare ( the vehicles need armour plating) means that the planned vehicles are too heavy to be transported by air, another lead balloon.  The reason that there is not enough money in the kitty is that the United Kingdom is a bit player in the modern world; the Empire has gone, none of the former colonies want to come back, and the superiority of the European effectively went when the Third World got machine guns.

 And they try to mock any SNP defence policy, because we do not have wish to attack other countries on the other side of the globe!

The late Oliver Brown, writing in the Scots Independent in January 1971, put it this way: “The Union of 1707 put an end to centuries of war between England and Scotland……..We then enjoyed the Pax Britannica which meant we fought the French, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Americans, the Russians, the Africans, the Maoris, the Indians, the Italians, the Austrians – and here I must stop because the SI is not an eight page paper.”

 

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

Chancellor Gordon Brown was announcing his new feasibility plan for the 2018 World Cup at the not yet completed £800 million Wembley Stadium; for some reason, in a stadium designed to protect everyone from the weather, those in the first four rows of very expensive seats got drenched during a rainstorm, and had to move elsewhere.

Secularists please note – there is a God!

 

On Tuesday one week, Deputy First Minister Nicol Stephen  said : “I am committed to ending the use of flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow to London for executive business, in all but the most exceptional circumstances.”  The following Sunday he flew business class from Aberdeen to London  to attend the TV and film awards, the flew back to Glasgow. 

Must look up the Liberal dictionary to find the definition of  “exceptional circumstances”; it probably says  DATU – disnae apply tae us.
 

Interested to see that the Ministry of Defence spent £78 million on charter flights to take troops round the world. 

Don’t suppose any of them went business class.
 

The Liberals seem to think that instead of an independent Scotland, they would prefer it to have more fiscal powers, and have cited California as their model.

Perhaps they are not aware that a few years back the state of California nearly went bankrupt, as the person in charge of managing the finances was investing the cash in the stock market, guided by astrology.  Sounds very liberal.
 

No content with being told by the BBC that I live in “Whereyouare” (Edinburgh), a London weatherman has now christened the Western Isles as “nowheresville”.

The MP for the Western Isles is Angus McNeil, SNP, and he has rocked the British establishment with his Cash for Honours enquiries, which may well end with the Prime Minister charged with perverting the course of justice.  Who’ll be in nowheresville then?

 

On Thursday, 15 February, Alex Salmond visited the Ocean Power plant in Orkney, and the Herald printed a brief report and a picture measuring 85cm by 44 cm.

On Wednesday, 21 February, Nicol Stephen Liberal MSP visited the same plant; the Herald gave him half a page and a picture measuring 210 cm by 90 cm.

 

Discrimination.
By Jeff Fallow

I am trying to compile an exposure on discrimination against Scots who support independence, and would be grateful to hear from any of your readers who have been humiliated, ridiculed, persecuted, slighted or faced job and other discrimination simply for expressing their belief in independence for Scotland. Two brief examples here:

1. An acquaintance of mine (an SNP activist) faced a barrage of hostile abuse from trade unionists at work for refusing to subscribe to the Labour Party affiliation fund.

2. I was once ridiculed in a college classroom situation for pointing something out during discussion (we’d been shown a Tourist Board film on Fife, and I noticed that the narrative voice was in a plummy Oxford accent). The tutor dismissed my observation, saying ‘Yes, we all know your nationalist sympathies’. Laughter ensued. My point, it seemed, wasn’t even worthy of consideration (incidentally I was not a member of any political party).

I could continue, but there isn’t room here.

Like the term ‘separatist’ used by scaremongering enemies of independence, ‘nationalist’ is a convenient label. One minute you’re a person, but as soon as you mention your belief in independence for Scotland, you become a ‘nationalist’. That makes you something different. You are not an internationalist. You are not rational or sensible. You are anti-English, even if you are married to an English person or have English friends, relatives or family.

Yet us so-called ‘nationalists’ or ‘separatists’ probably make up half the population of Scotland, and I am most interested to hear from anyone who has faced humiliation or discrimination – whether they are members of a political party or not, and whether Scottish-born or not – just for voicing outwardly their opinion on equal status for Scotland among the nations of the world.

I ask anyone interested to please contact me.

Jeff Fallow

jefffallow@blueyonder.co.uk

1 Brown’s Buildings, Leven Rd, Windygates, Fife KY8 5DA

 

Alex Salmond launches Michael Russell’s campaign

Alex Salmond will launch Michael Russell’s parliamentary campaign for Dumfries constituency on Monday 5th March in Annan.

The launch will take place at the historic Queensberry Arms Hotel, Annan at 7pm, after visits around the constituency. Alex Salmond stated after his spirited performance on Any Questions in Eyemouth “I am looking forward to my trip to Dumfriesshire, the Dumfries constituency has suffered greatly under its current Labour administration and now we intend to change that through the experience and dedication Michael has always shown to this area.”

Michael Russell added “Alex and I have worked together for many years and it’s an honour to have him launch my campaign for the Dumfries constituency in Annan on Monday night. This is certainly going to be the most exciting campaign in years for the SNP and I feel privileged to be part of it.”