Chaos in Scotland.

[4mastacker]

Where's the howls of protest?? There was plenty of noise when that Belorussian was lifted off the diverted plane and when Putin has his opponents incarcerated. Shameful.

If it was a Central American or African banana state, the UN would be sending troops in "to restore democracy".

[Undried Plum]

Meanwhile: poverty figures are up; education standards are down; the roads are quite literally shocking; drug deaths are up; life expectancy is down; hospital waiting lists for elective surgery are longer (even before Covid kicked off in March of last year); obesity is up; child healthy nutrition is down; food insecurity figures for the poor are up; homeless deaths are the worst in Britain; suicides are up; GDP growth is much lower in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK; Scotland now has the longest tax code in the world and the highest income tax rates in the UK; local accountability of the police has been abolished and control centralised in the hands of the First Minister; freedom of speech, even in private dwelling places, has been criminalised; two ferries for the state-owned ferry company and built by the state-owned shipbuilders are six years overdue and £100M over budget. the government appointed head of that firm is the highest paid government executive in the whole of the UK (£720k pa) but he still lost £100M in just one year; the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow eventually opened late and overbudget and immediately had severe problems of sewage flowing through operating theatres, resulting in at least four deaths through infection; the new Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh was accepted and vast sums started to be paid despite the fact that there over two thousand items in the punch list, including extremely serious problems with the ventilation system and the fire system and the emergency genny system and dozens of misconnections in the sewage system; etc etc etc.

State aid for failing businesses is quite simply bonkers. Prestwick exists solely on the proceeds of an extortion racket which demand millions of Pounds of "compensation" from windfarm developments as far as 30 miles from the airfield. The Scottish government gave £37M of state aid to Bifab oilrig construction yard and then the firm went bust.

The SNP government lent Sajeev Gupta £7M to buy two steel plants, which has never been repaid. Sturgeon also provided a £575m guarantee to Gupta to help him buy the Lochaber aluminium & hydro plants, in return for a promise that he would create 2,000 jobs in an alloy wheels factory. Gupta sold the hydro for profit and the promised alloy factory hasn’t been built, although he recently bought a £42m London mansion.

Sturgeon also provided a £575m guarantee to Gupta to help him buy the Lochaber aluminium & hydro plants, in return for a promise that he would create 2,000 jobs in an alloy wheels factory. Gupta sold the hydro for profit and the promised alloy factory hasn’t been built, although he recently bought a £42m London mansion. Gupta’s main financier has gone bust and his company may go bust too. Much financing was done on the basis of imaginary invoices. Gupta is defaulting on supplier and tax payments. Scottish taxpayers could face a bill of £600m.

The SNP finances seven pseudo-embassies called ‘Innovation and Development Hubs’ in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Washington DC, Beijing and London. These cost £7.6m and do not focus on trade and investment alone but also handle political, social and cultural affairs.

The SNP Government also finances a ‘Constitution, Europe & External Affairs’ department with a budget of £26.8m, despite the fact that constitution reserves such matters to the UK government. Europe and external affairs being reserved matters outside its competence. It also finances a £10m International Development Fund.

The SNP Government cut more than £100m from the Affordable Housing Supply Programme, but spent over £44m duplicating reserved foreign policy functions.

I could go on, but I won't because this stuff is no good for my blood pressure.

[4mastacker]

I sense the need for a wee dram....or three.

[FD2]

No time for Nicola! Boris Johnson jets into Scotland with visit to police college just 30 miles from Sturgeon's Edinburgh residence after rejecting her offer of talks - but denies it is a snub

Boris Johnson has snubbed the SNP Leader's invitation to meet when he visits
Ms Sturgeon wanted to meet Tory leader in Edinburgh to discuss Covid recovery
But Mr Johnson is said to have suggested they hold talk with other leaders later
It came after police named guard operation for Tory leader 'Operation Bunter'
The name of the operation was later scrapped over fears it may offender him

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... TODAY.html

Ha Ha! I'm no Boris Bunter fan but I suspect he saw through the real reason behind her invitation to Edinburgh - her SNP activists could gather a crowd of howling rentamob 'protesters' for a good press opportunity, to show the depth of local feeling against the hated English fat boy. One up for the Fat Owl.

[FD2]

How, in all that is holy, is that kind of third-world corrupt situation allowed to exist in the UK?

Is it due to some misguided regulations dating back to 1999 over devolved powers? Westminster seems frightened to change anything and the SNP has taken full advantage of the situation. I can't think of a situation that will bring the Scots voters to their senses apart from the collapse of the SNP and that doesn't yet seem to be happening despite all the terrible things that UP has pointed out they are responsible for.

[FD2]

'Vertical drinking'! There seems to be a little confusion about getting a 'swallie' in Scotland! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... n-country/

Comment
If Nicola Sturgeon can’t organise a booze-up in a pub, how can she run a country?

SNP's supposed easing of Covid restrictions are a confusing shambles that have left Scotland's hospitality sector in disarray
Alan Cochrane
5 August 2021 • 5:43pm
Alan Cochrane

Nicola Sturgeon's government has scored an own goal with its confusing new rules for drinking in pubs

The English language is a wondrous thing, ever adaptable in an ever-changing world. It is for this reason that we must be grateful to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP government for their recent addition to our vocabulary - albeit that they probably had no idea what they’d done.

Just as their sure-to-be doomed obsession with having a second independence referendum has led to such a vote being dubbed "indyref2" for short, so in the last few days they’ve inserted the phrase "vertical drinking" into our speech patterns.

It is their bizarre replacement for the common or garden behaviour, formerly known as standing at the bar in a public house while enjoying a refreshment, and it is one that has created all manner of confusion for our omnipotent leader.

It all began on Tuesday when, in delivering her supposed easing of Covid restrictions it transpired, from a careful reading of the small print, that what she was proposing was in reality a confusing shambles which neither publican nor pub-goer could make head nor tail of.

It appeared, from that first reading of the rules, that customers would not have to wear a face mask while standing at the bar and having a drink but as soon as they stopped consuming that drink they’d immediately have to put the face mask back on, presumably - although the First Minister was far from clear in this respect - until they took another sip.

It was such a mess that her deputy, John Swinney, who’s also the minister in charge of the Covid battle, was sent on to the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland to clear things up. In that he failed spectacularly, insisting that "vertical drinking" would not be allowed.

However, no sooner were those words out his mouth than publicans, some of whom claimed that up to 80 per cent of their normal, pre-lockdown business was dependent on people enjoying their drinks while standing at the bar. And they claimed that the government ministers and officials with whom they’d been dealing had said that, after all, belly-up-to-the-bar behaviour, without masks, would be allowed. Moreover, the Scottish Government insisted that Mr Swinney had "misspoken" with his banning order.

Sadly that was not the end of the matter, given that into the fray then came Jason Leitch, Scotland’s clinical director. As often happens when the ever-enthusiastic professor seeks to clarify things, all that he succeeded in doing was muddying the waters again.

He told the world that mask wearing would not be necessary while eating or drinking, whether standing or sitting and that that would cover everything from weddings and function rooms and karaoke nights in pubs and that further discussions were taking place. But that contrasted with the official Scottish government statement which suggested that "mine hosts" might wish to retain masks and to avoid crowding by sticking with table service only. And so, are masks and stand-up drinks now optional? Nobody seems to know.

Furthermore, in terms of nightclubs, it is still not clear whether masks will remain mandatory - even on the dance floor - although it is hoped that this along with the exact guidelines for pubs will be thrashed out by the time the new rules are due to come into place on Monday.

However, there is no great confidence in Scotland’s hard-pressed hospitality industry that the Sturgeon Government will ever get this right; indeed it’s almost as if visiting pubs, restaurants and clubs is an alien behaviour for Scotland’s ruling class of nationalists, so dreadfully have they behaved towards this vital part of the economy.

And when the First Minister has shown that she cannot even organise a drink-up in a boozer, what hope is there that she’d be able to run a country?

[barkingmad]

I think you're all being a bit hard on Wee Krankie, seeing as how she's the one-party dictator of a country trapped in a Western democratic bloc.

Maybe our old friend Jeff can explain how distracted she is and obviously not concentrating on how to defeat the plague by micro-managing the posture and face decor of the average Glasgow pub goer;



One has to give the Pig Dictator of England credit for not being seduced into another PR disaster by politely refusing to a one on one with Kim Il Sturge, especially after his previous visit ended in ignominy by having to sneak out of the back door to avoid the baying crowd.

[FD2]

BM - see 1143 (can't find the hashtag on the new keyboard!) - even Bunter wasn't stupid enough to fall for that one!

[FD2]

But Billy Boris Bunter was stupid enough to try his undoubted wit and humour out on some Scottish journos:

Boris Johnson’s ‘joke’ about Thatcher closing mines in Scotland isn’t funny – it’s distasteful

The Prime Minister proves once again to critics that he is a disaster in relation to the anti-nationalist and Tory cause north of the border
Alan Cochrane 6 August 2021 • 4:03pm Alan Cochrane

He almost did it. He had spent the best part of two days north of the border and hadn’t dropped anything even resembling a clanger. “Phew,” said worried senior Tories. “Maybe we’ll get away with having him up here for 48 hours, after all.” But they spoke too soon.

Perhaps because everything had gone so swimmingly, Boris Johnson thought he’d try out a bit of what he thinks is his ace sense of humour with a posse of Scottish journalists.

Result? Much head shaking and muttered curses from those self-same Tory optimists after the Prime Minister praised his predecessor Margaret Thatcher’s decision to shut down all of the UK coal mines as being the deliberate precursor of the current determination to tackle climate change.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... snt-funny/

How could he be thick enough to forget the hatred that exists in the Central Belt still over the mine closures? How could he be thick enough to try and joke about the matter, even after all these years? It's not as if it could even be taken as a rallying cry to the Conservative's diminishing support in Scotland. It has certainly delivered Stu'geon and the SNPee some great ammo to use in the upcoming elections.

It may be that he has just waved two fingers at them as he knows he can never again muster more than token support north of the Border or he's just astonishingly high on the Thicko Scale Measure. Maybe Carrie's phone was on the blink when he was looking for guidance. Maybe his policy of appointing Carrie-approved yes-men as ministers... I give up!!

[Boac]

Yet another fairy story https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... t-05082021

Fast forward to around 17 minutes.

[Pontius Navigator]

Thing that strikes me about one-off make work contracts is there is no incentive to actually complete a job. Once completed you are out of a job.

Things like Cross Rail have a similar issue. You finish the work, what is the next project.

[Boac]

"to actually complete a job" - that would be a start there!

[Pontius Navigator]

Aye, they're not doing so bad. Doubled the money, doubled the time, and still in work.

How many managers were simply re-employed in their old jobs on the new contract? Obviously with currency on modern ship construction they could command higher salaries too.

[barkingmad]

I can’t see how Kim IL Sturgeon will get Jockistan into the EU without having to accept the € as a currency?

The EUssr have shown they are notoriously inflexible when it comes to small countries having any control over their fiscal behaviour so what insanity makes Wee Krankie think she can merge seamlessly with the 27?



Yes I know, it’s the taxi-driving undertaker, but do try to concentrate at the back of the class and pay more attention to content and spend less time nitpicking with the delivery and the messenger...!

[Undried Plum]

A self-amputated Scotland wouldn't have to take on the Euro before applying to join the EU. They'd merely have to make a commitment to join the Euro at some point in the future.

Y'know, like making a commitment to improve Health and Education in Scotland at some time in the future. That sort of thing.

One of the reasons why less than 38% of the Scottish electorate voted yes in the Indyref was because there was no coherent plan for a national currency or a national central bank. Such a bananaless banana republic would have no way to defend a newly created fiat currency from a Soros-style run and so the only resort would be to endlessly print more more and more and more MacPoonds (or whatever the worthless trash would be called) to pay for stuff.

The patriach of the Rothschilds said "Give me control of a nation's currency and I care not who writes that nation's laws." The authors of the Bretton Woods "Agreement" knew all about that.

[barkingmad]

Plum muses on the name of the new unit of Jockistan currency: “endlessly print more more and more and more MacPoonds (or whatever the worthless trash would be called) to pay for stuff”.

How about the basic unit to be known as the ‘haggis’, subdivided into the ‘neap’, of which 100 would make up one haggis?

Easy to remember and the free-range haggis’s are much sought after in foreign lands...

[G-CPTN]

The historical currency of Scotland was the bawbie, carried in the bawbag.

[Woody]

The obvious answer, well too me anyway, is the Muckle, divided into 100 mickles, as many a mickle makes a muckle

[Boac]

Don't forget the Aberdonian pound coin - extra heavy to make it difficult to lift out of the pocket.

[Woody]

Don't forget the Aberdonian pound coin - extra heavy to make it difficult to lift out of the pocket.

Extremely rare, in fact nobody’s ever seen one.