Again! The 'recruiting sergeant' myth trotted out with casual disregard for the facts. There is no measurable recruiting sergeant effect. We have gone through a period since the 2014 referendum when those supposed recruiting sergeants for Scotland's cause have been working very hard indeed. Quite remarkably hard, in fact. And what has been the product … Continue reading Blurring the picture
We were assured that support for Yes would get a massive boost from Brexit. Six years on from the EU referendum, three years after the UK was originally supposed to leave the EU, more than 15 months on from the UK actually quitting the EU, we are still waiting to see that boost. We are … Continue reading A movement slumbers
There is an important part of the Brexit saga (so far) which Mike Russell has omitted from his column in The National. It is easy to understand why. The SNP/Scottish government's abject failure to defend and protect Scotland against the insanity of Brexit is something those culpable would prefer to airbrush from history. That the … Continue reading A choice explained
Let me make one thing clear from the outset. I fully recognise the crucial nature of the climate crisis. I was persuaded by James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis long before climate change became the stuff of mainstream media interest and global political significance. Nor am I one to minimise the not unrelated issue of zoonotic pathogens … Continue reading There’s aye somethin’!
Our lives often seem to lurch from one fresh start to the next. Every morning is, in a small sense, a rebooting of our life. Each night we switch off. Each morning we switch back on again. Every day begins with the hope that it will be better than the day before. That we will be a better person. That this will be the day reality and aspiration draw closer together.
You could have been my hero. You could have been everything, Instead of nothing at all.
I hate to say it but there's also a definite whiff of the Bain Principle coming off the SNP's decision to vote against the Brexit deal.
The restoration of Scotland's independence is neither imminent nor inevitable. The complacency implied and fostered by such notions stands as one of the greatest threats to Scotland's cause.
The deceptively pleasing fantasy is that Scotland is on the verge of restoring independence. That independence is ' but a step away' or 'within our grasp'. At the extreme the deceptively pleasing fantasy shades into the truly demented delusion that 'independence has never been closer'.
Constitutional politics is dismissed as not being about real life in the real world. As if economics was! Those rights and freedoms are all very well, but will you be paying more tax? That's the important question. Why are you fretting about democracy when people are homeless and hungry? It's nice to have aspirations, but they just aren't economically viable. We have to make the hard choices. There is no other way!!!
Peter A Bell 